Last week a report by the US Army’s 304^th  Military Intelligence Battalion roiled government social web (“web 2.0”)  advocates. The microblogging service Twitter, it found, can be used as a potent tool by terrorists. There followed some handwringing on Twitter and among journalists, and even some thinking across the river here at Harvard.

Will this dustup affect the move to the social web in the defense and intelligence communities – wikis, blogs, Facebook, and the like? After all, there’s been good movement in recent months, impressive gains, and some major wins. But there’s been little enterprise-wide embrace. To many, the current position feels unstable.

All this makes me wonder: was last week’s “red team” caution flag a Twitter “PEBES” moment? Recall that some years ago, the US Social Security Administration was among the first US government agencies to the Internet, launching a web site where folks could run scenarios on their Personal Earnings and Benefits Statement (“PEBES”). At the time, the web was a new channel and the Internet was hardly mainstream. Being “online” was practically salacious – weirdos, scam artists and pornographers, it was thought, lurked like trolls on the “information superhighway”. So when the Social Security Administration broke its good news, USA TODAY broke the Social Security Administration: “Your Social Security Records Online” ran the headline. By the end of the day the site was dark, Congressional hearings were scheduled, and progress to the web set back by months if not years.

What’s the likely impact of last week’s Army report? Is the social web still too new and, like Social Security on the world wide web, the only thing we see clearly is risk and cost? Or has positive value been established enough to move forward? 

It depends. For those who would otherwise pause, they probably will take comfort from the Army's report. For those who would otherwise move forward they will too, and with due caution.

But how should we take it? Let’s look at the facts.

First, Twitter is like any tool or platform the defense and intelligence establishments use: it has risks, and they need to be managed. We would no sooner give up cell phones than we would landlines --  though we recognize cell phones are instrumental in facilitating attacks on our forces. We manage those risks accordingly.

All platforms are neutral, and Twitter may be the least of our worries. As a senior intelligence official recently commented,  “The same devices that thieves use to sneak into bank accounts, the same techniques that hackers use to disrupt Internet service or alter a digital profile, are being used by foreign military and spy services to besiege information systems that are vital to our nation's defense.” Even so, we won’t see banks shutting down the online channel anytime soon.

Second, Twitter is – sorry – not exactly battlespace ready, either for our own forces or adversaries. Anyone expecting to use Twitter as reliable or secure need only come visit the Twitterverse on a busy night.  “Real time” is a “sometime” characteristic,  and not predictably so. And this is not just a problem for social media or platforms – many weapons systems in theater today have reliability in hours, not days. It’s the price we’re paying for rapid innovation. It’s not just a Twitter problem.

Third, there will always be applications that are right for some purposes and not others. Twitter, for example, may have ways to go in financial services where there is high anxiety over “insider trading” leaks, and Twitter’s absence of Sarbox compliant record-keeping. But retailers, journalists and other businesses are using Twitter with great success. Even if for some reason Twitter falls afoul of the boo-birds at the Pentagon, let's remember it's great for some purposes, manage those risks well, and take its full benefit -- just as we would any other service. 

Fourth, platforms, services and devices are not silver bullets. Twitter will no more defeat us than lead us to victory. It’s a little more complicated than that. We looked for a single breakthrough technology to counter IEDs – we couldn’t find one. What worked was stitching together people, process and technologies in new architectures of action that allowed us to be more effective.  That’s what we have to keep our eye on – “it’s the architectures, stupid,” to paraphrase, and not necessarily individual platforms or services.

Fifth, in today’s battlespaces we need to constantly out-asymmetric our adversaries – much as General Patton once urged in cruder terms. If only our adversaries use a service – do we not confer asymmetric advantage right off the bat?

The fact is that we live in a world where we and our adversaries all have access to the same off-the-shelf commercial ware. It is arguable that there is little genuine military R&D going on these days. What is going on are mash-ups using freely available commercial R&D – ingenious measures and countermeasures.

Our strategic advantage will come from devising and moving our adaptations quickly to the warfighter. The foundation of that is our open society – authoritarian regimes have historically been disadvantaged on the battlefield. We leverage strategic advantage from that asymmetry by using means such as the social web to rapidly innovate, adapt, and disseminate.

Our goal now is not to build walled-gardens or fortresses – I could probably get you a deal on the last ruins of the Maginot line if you’re interested. We have competitive asymmetric advantage in our open society and the free flow of ideas; we achieve strategic asymmetric advantage on the battlefield by moving ideas to action quickly – and that means taking advantage of tools like the social web. Manage its risks, yes; but slam the brakes on the social web, and we risk fighting with one hand behind our backs in the asymmetric battlespaces of the future.