Of course, Intellipedia probably has its downsides, just as Wikipedia does. Knowing only what the government tells us about Intellipedia, we don’t know how tight the peer review is. On Wikipedia, administrators will lock users out of an entry if it is being vandalized, typically by partisans, such as the Wikipedia entry on Israel during its war with Hezbollah.

One can only assume the top-secret version of Intellipedia has the same administrative safeguards, or at least a more collegial attitude among its contributors. There is also the concern that intelligence will be politicised, such as happened in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

And not all intelligence is equal or equally sourced. One of Wikipedia’s flaws is that there’s no way of knowing if the entry on Chaucer has been authored by a Chaucer scholar or an English literature undergrad. Presumably, Intellipedia’s authors have a similar range of expertise—they’re not all James Bond and Jack Ryan.

And there is the threat of compromise by hostile hackers, who could plant disinformation designed to throw US intelligence experts and enforcement authorities off track, especially before a planned attack.

Frank Ahrens