CIA economics

I saw 'Body of lies' today at the cinema and it was a good movie. Leonardo Di Caprio and Russel Crowe acted excellently and Ridley Scott made everything come together superbly.

The CIA has a sort of economy of information, and this information is like the name and location of extremist martyr suicide bombers. The most vital information has the most demand and the market is constantly being updated with new intelligence which the CIA can trade. Information is supplied by CIA gatherers who drain information from contacts. The nature of the information being traded is such that if the wrong information falls into someones hands it can prove to be deadly.

CIA personnel need intelligence in order to better understand criminals in the world and to try and prevent acts of terrorism. Criminals have no desire to let vital intelligence fall into the hands of the CIA as it can thwart their plans. Criminals incentive not to leak information is that they will be severely punished for doing so. CIA incentives for getting intelligence is if they dont they lose their job.

Information must get traded otherwise it cant be used when it gets old. The role of technology is to allow information to be gathered and stored, for example pictures in digital cameras, and text messages on mobile phones, and this data can be sent on computers via the internet to destinations across the world.

Information is gathered by moles who lie and decieve in order to gain positions of trust, and then abuse these positions by selling the valuable information. In the situation of good versus evil when information contained within a good person has a high demand the evil people will use fear of pain and death by torture in order to extract the information. Similarly fear of imprisonment can provide enough incentive for evil people to divulge their secrets.