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Data-Sifting For Timely Intelligence Still an Elusive Goal
gyrogeerloose writes "Although there was evidence to suggest that the Japanese navy was up to something in December 1941, that information was scant and came too late. Today's intelligence agencies have another problem altogether — more information than they can deal with, and computers aren't helping as much as one might expect for reasons that will be familiar to Slashdot readers: computers can crunch numbers faster and more accurately than humans, but they're still easily baffled by language as it is commonly used in the real world. Metaphor, slang and simple figures of speech can confuse the best algorithm and, as quoted in the linked article in the San Diego Union-Tribune, 'A system that takes a week to discover a bombing that will occur in a day isn't very useful.'"
Isn't that kind of begging the question? The problem here is, as you said, not being able to discriminate between useful and useless data. So how do we know what's relevant (a.k.a. useful)? Do we only collect data by using humans interpret the data? If so, then the role of the computer is much diminished. Do we automate the process by having computers discriminate between useful and useless data? Well, that's exactly the problem - we can't figure out how to do that yet. Even if we only have relevant data, how do we assign semantic value to the data in order for the computer to properly parse the data and give us semantically useful results?
It's not as simple as just collecting relevant data. Even if it were, that in and of itself is a major hurdle.
You're missing the point, denying the Japanese access to steal and other resources during wartime was, for all intents and purposes, and act of war. Without those resources, Japan wouldn't have been able to hold the ground they had already taken, let alone continue advancing. When the US cut off access to critical war resources, Japan had only two choices: End the war almost immediately and retreat back to Japan proper, or take control of the resources by force. For political and ideological reason, the former option wasn't much of an option at all.
Imagine if the US were fighting a major war (against a powerful, conventional enemy) and OPEC said "No more oil exports for a while". You don't think the US govt would see that as an act of war?