“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Sun Tzu
The value of the class isn’t complex. I teach students how to collect and analyze intelligence information. SHTF could range from a slow descent into the Third World (which is where my dollars are right now) to grid-down or hard tyranny, or anything in between. Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that, but what I’m here to tell folks is that we need to understand the threats and implications of any of the given scenarios. If we don’t understand the “who, what, when, where and why” of the battlespace, then we’re not going to be as effective as we should be.
This may not be a popular point to make, but I’ll make it anyway: intelligence is absolutely the most important way to spend your time right now. More important than medical, more important than communications, more important than tactical. At least in the beginning, everyone needs to begin with the work of intelligence and I’ll tell you why.
By front loading all these skills before intelligence, you are going to be reacting to threats that you don’t understand. If you’re going to prepare a defense, wouldn’t it first be prudent to understand what threats were most or more likely, and which were least or less likely?
