Via Space and Culture, the concept of "ethnographic intelligence". What a term, it reminds me of the name of a workshop at Doors of Perception called "Guerilla Ethnography". Here is how this concept is defined:

"As recent debate, especially in the services, attests, there is an increased demand for cultural intelligence. (...) "What we mean by EI is information about indigenous forms of association, local means of organization, and traditional methods of mobilization.

Clans, tribes, secret societies, the hawala system, religious brotherhoods, all represent indigenous or latent forms of social organization available to our adversaries throughout the non-Western, and increasingly the Western, world. These create networks that are invisible to us unless we are specifically looking for them; they come in forms with which we are not culturally familiar; and they are impossible to 'see' or monitor, let alone map, without consistent attention and the right training (...) Because EI is the only way to truly know a society, it is the best tool to divine the intentions of a society's members. "

Why do I blog this? it's intriguing to see how technologies are not the only thing militaries like to steal from researchers. Now, even ethnographical methods and cultural anthropology are possibly employed for warfare or military intelligence.