Threat does not look like what you think it looks like and can be very hard to detect . . . .  Symbols and signals will fly. We may be able to catch them in the air with NSA tools, but catching is not identification, now is it? I can catch a pretty insect in my back yard. But if I am not able to identify it, [if] it is poisonous and it bites me, it does me no good. It is not enough to capture words. We must understand these words and what they mean.

______

I’ve long characterized the Islamic Small Wars as wars for detectives and poets: detectives because so much that happens has been planned and put together in closely guarded private channels; poets because language and motivation seem inseparable, and language and objects made symbols may be used to facilitate operations.

Are computers close readers?

How is their apprehension of metonymy?

Do they play the glass bead game?

# # #