User:Howard C. Berkowitz/Editor

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I have started an estimated 2000-3000 articles at CZ, and the list obviously is too long to detail here. Recently, I have been using the CZ: Subgroups mechanism to characterize many, encourage collaboration, and use for targeted recruiting. Not all my articles (e.g., red-stewing; sympathetic magic; Chatham, Massachusetts; chicken-based technologies; pastel; Chicken-based technologies; belong to subgroups (although there are applications of chicken-based technologies to nuclear weapons), and I have not yet placed all subgroup-relevant articles in the appropriate list. Nevertheless, I think it's the best way to see my contributions.

Fields of expertise

These do not strictly map to workgroups, and I have indeed specialized within workgroups. Nevertheless, these fields seem to express my areas of interest, not considering such things as serious personal participation in areas including cooking, visual arts and science fiction.

As George Santayana put it, “those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.” In my personal experience, it is difficult to separate serious current research from historical research. While there have been accusations that I do not consider formal historical methodology, it is a bit ironic that one of the complaints about my Adolf Hitler draft was that I included a section on historiography, now a separate article historiography of Hitler.

Computer network engineering

First started programming in 1966, moved into real-time and fault-tolerant military and health systems by 1970, operating systems in 1973, and networks since 1974. Did take some graduate courses in computer science at George Washington University; there were no computer science academic curricula when I started. Designed and implemented first network (management) control center for the civilian U.S. government, 1974. Network architect for the Library of Congress and interconnected libraries, 1976-1980. First technical staff member for the Corporation for Open Systems, a nonprofit industry testing center for Open Systems Interconnection Reference Model and Integrated Systems Digital Network, 1986-1991. Consultant and certified trainer for Cisco Systems and related contractors, 1991-1999. Contributing member of Internet Engineering Task Force since 1995; International Organization for Standardization since 1979, North American Network Operators' Group since 1998. Member of Nortel Networks corporate research staff, first as product line manager for carrier routers and then senior adviser on IP routing, 1999-2001.

Author of four books, two from Macmillan (Addressing architecture for routing and switching, Routing and switching for Enterprise Networks); two from John Wiley and Sons (WAN Survival Guide and Building Service Provider Networks). Wrote networking chapter for Harvey Deitel's Operating Systems, 6th Edition. Technical director for CertificationZone, a Cisco study guide business, with a number of topics published as collections. Technical reviewer for Macmillan, Addison-Wesley, Wiley and Prentice-Hall. Author or coauthor of four IETF RFCs and reviewer of many more; participant in Benchmarking Technology, Interdomain Routing, OSPF, IS-IS, and other workgroups. Numerous publications and presentations for trade groups and professional associations, some peer-reviewed, some invited.

CZ: Internet operations Subgroup, CZ: distributed computing Subgroup, CZ: Internetworking Subgroup

Distributed computing

Politicomilitary history and practice; intelligence

U.S. politics and history

While I oppose much of the activity of today’s U.S. Republican Party, I spent a number of years as an activist, holding office in party organizations, graduating from the senior campaign management program of the Republican National Committee

Transportation engineering

Current author for ‘’Marine Electronics Journal’’ (National Marine Electronics Association) and consult to a marine electronics business, Beachwerks, in the fishing and recreational port of Chatham, Massachussetts, on Cape Cod. Integrate Electronic Charting Systems and chartplotters, using NMEA 0183, Ethernet, and NMEA 2000 networking with GPS, marine radio with digital selective calling, automated identification system, radar with automatic radar plotting aid, vessel monitoring system, sonar, engine performance monitoring and autopilot. Developed proposal for conversion of waste cooking oil to biodiesel, including chemical quality control and effect on marine diesel engines. Currently involved in discussions on human factors engineering for charting systems.

Emergency management

Member of the Federal Telecommunications Standards Committee of the National Communications System (1976-1980). External network architect for the U.S. government Y2K information center and associated critical infrastructure monitoring. Developed designs for mass casualty management, weapons of mass destruction field laboratories, and U.S. Army field surgical team. Current member of Cape Cod Medical Reserve Corps, special interest in disaster communications; numerous courses from Federal Emergency Management Agency.

CZ: Analytical Chemistry Subgroup, CZ: Emergency management subgroup

Biomedical engineering and healthcare informatics

Active in the field since 1970, setting up the first clinical computer center for Georgetown University Medical Center, in a captive company called the Washington Reference Laboratories; had been in honors programs in microbiology and clinical chemistry since 1963. Implemented systems for toxicology (main military drug screening for the Vietnam War), regional virology center, regional blood banking for the American Red Cross, general hospital clinical chemistry, hematology and microbiology. Architect for nursing workflow product of Aionex Corp.; also designed electronic prescribing, data mining for clinical research, infection control root cause analysis.

Approval

Nominated for approval

Primary author

Expansion of remarks

Intelligence and social science

If you haven't read some of my articles such as intelligence analysis, and [cognitive traps for intelligence analysis]], you might find that there are quite nuanced approaches that are applicable here. They draw from political science, anthropology, group psychology; many of the theoreticians in the CIA retired to academic social science careers. The lead propaganda analyst at my day job also was the faculty member for international political communications in my evening graduate courses.

Look at Vietnamese Communist grand strategy, on which I worked at the Center for Research in Social Systems (CRESS) [formerly the Special Operations Research Office] at American University, a contract research center with classified access, the |Army Special Forces]] and Army Intelligence, but the people doing it were at a university, and often adjunct social science faculty. My graduate program in intelligence analysis, up until 1962, was formally funded by a CIA grant; after some embarrassing publicity, it was funded, in the identical amount, by the (cough cough) Avalon Foundation, and the same guest speakers assured us that they were there on their own time. My country study, incidentally, was on South Africa, and I must say the US intelligence community absolutely blew the idea (at least in 1967) that it could peacefully transform to a multiracial society.

Believe me, the charismatic vs. ideological, or to use Kissinger's triad, adding pragmatic (e.g., the classic Western legally trained negotiator), is an extremely important part of political intelligence analysis. Even within an apparently quite ideological political system, such as the North Vietnamese Politburo, a variety of techniques from the social science are used to try to predict the behavior of actors. If I go back 30 years or so, a good deal of this methodology was classified, not so much because the methods themselves were especially secret, but that it could be very useful for an adversary to know how an intelligence agency would attempt to predict their behavior. There are quite a few techniques, sometimes simple, that almost instantly lose their value when it becomes known they are used. Do not, however, fall into the trap of believing that there is a radical difference between what political scientists in academia and political scientists in intelligence do. The most significant difference is that the intelligence analyst may have to give a best estimate, with confidence factors, in an externally imposed amount of time.

The techniques of domestic political analysis aren’t necessarily the same, although there is some overlap, especially in opposition research. I can certainly say that a good political pollster, perhaps producing the polls that aren’t released to the media, makes extensive use of formal methodology that I studied in graduate-level political/social science courses.