VIEWS In less than an hour last weekend, someone used email bombing software to flood my personal inbox with hundreds of mailing list subscriptions. The objective was to conceal three particular messages, not to overflow my inbox. Three welcome emails from American Express for a credit card I never applied for were buried at the bottom of the stack.

For a while, the plan was successful. There were 800 emails in all when I finally noticed the Amex messages. We would examine the strategies employed in cults, scams, domestic violence, and the recruitment of extremists as a single phenomenon. We would acknowledge that knowing how one adversary type takes advantage of a human weakness teaches us how all adversary types can do the same.

Complete organizational reorganization is not necessary for this.

These connections can now be made by individual analysts. Read outside of your comfort zone.