Chapter 11 – Review the employment challenge in the digital era (as well as the entire chapter). Reflect on the various challenges which are present in the digital era. Will things get better or more complicated as time goes on? Explain. What are some methods to assimilate new generations into the workforce and get them thinking about competitive advantage?
Sample Solution
The digital era has presented new challenges for employers and employees alike. The rise of automation, artificial intelligence, and remote work have changed the face of the workplace in a fundamental way. For example, employers must now contend with tight labor markets and an increasingly competitive talent pool as well as greater compliance requirements related to data privacy; while workers must cope with unstable job security, long hours, and non-traditional working arrangements such as telecommuting or gig economy jobs.
Sample Solution
The digital era has presented new challenges for employers and employees alike. The rise of automation, artificial intelligence, and remote work have changed the face of the workplace in a fundamental way. For example, employers must now contend with tight labor markets and an increasingly competitive talent pool as well as greater compliance requirements related to data privacy; while workers must cope with unstable job security, long hours, and non-traditional working arrangements such as telecommuting or gig economy jobs.
The main reason of the U.S. intelligence failure on Iraq is the corrupt nature of the U.S. thinkers and intelligence community, which then lead to the manipulation of sources resulting in the failure of intelligence. An example where this could be seen is in the presumption that Saddam was pursuing a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) program. Since 9/11 the United States government was searching for a casus bellum in order to invade Iraq (Freedman 2011, pg.8), thus the U.S. agencies started to investigate the flaws and threats posed by the Assad regime, which started the corrupt cycle of specific selection of information. The U.S. intelligence faced ‘confirmation bias’ where individuals selected evidence that supported their hypothesis rather than contradicting it (CIA 2008). An example of this is when the Iraq foreign minister, Naji Sabri, met with Bill Murray, CIA head in Paris, in September 2002, and discussed Saddam’s intentions to have WMDs, however the report presented at the end of this meeting clearly stated that at that point in time there was virtually nothing (Taylor 2013). Following this meeting CIA Director, George Tenet, made a speech claiming that Iraq is stockpiling chemical weapons and developing nuclear weapons that could be ready within 24 months and legitimized this by stating that he collected this information by having “Direct access to Saddam and his inner circle” (Taylor 2013). In response Murray said that his report mainly stated that Saddam did not have a real nor active WMD stockpile or program, majorly due to the shortage of materials. Murray himself, a CIA head, believes that the intelligence was cherry picking that consisted of selecting and combining supportive sections of the reports to stir public opinion towards the wanted policies (2013). Another example of this is when the CIA claimed that the aluminum tubes in Iraq were evidence of the WMD program, but this was not completely true because intelligence analysts explained that their size was too small to be used for uranium enrichment (Fitzgerald and Lebow 2006). This once again shows how the government reshaped the occurrences in Iraq in order to provide enough reasoning to start the war, however this also demonstrates how maybe this is not the intelligence’s failure but of the Bush administration poor approach to foreign policy which was based on weak evidence, thus shifting the blame to U.S.A.’s leaders for taking such aggressive measures against such a sensitive topic. Overall, this demonstrates the unprofessional nature of the U.S. intelligence and administration which undoubtedly resulted in the failure, the manipulation of information was successful in starting the war, but it was too fabricated to convince the Iraqi population and world spectators to support the U.S. invasion.
Additionally, failure derived from the increasing competition among agencies, each seeking “to maximize [their] position relative to the others for influence in national security policy” (Turner 2005, pg.46) by reshaping their assessments to best fit the government’s wanted results. This level of common false agreement was the perfect recipe for an intelligence plan with no concrete foundation and creating an infertile
