2. 职称英语
  3. Wild Bill Donovan would have loved the Internet. The American spymaster who

Wild Bill Donovan would have loved the Internet. The American spymaster who

游客2024-03-30  17
问题     Wild Bill Donovan would have loved the Internet. The American spymaster who built the Office of Strategic Services in World War II and late laid the roots for the CIA was fascinated with information. Donovan believed in using whatever tools came to hand in the "great game" of espionage—spying as a "profession". These days the Net, which has already remade such everyday pastimes as buying books and sending mails, is reshaping Donovan’s vocation as well.
    The latest revolution isn’t simply a matter of gentlemen reading other gentlemen’s e-mail. That kind of electronic spying has been going on for decades. In the past three or four years, the World Wide Web has given birth to a whole industry of point-and-click spying. The spooks call it "open-source intelligence", and as the Net grows, it is becoming increasingly influential. In 1995 the CIA held a contest to see who could compile the most data about Burundi. The winner, by a large margin, was a tiny Virginia company called Open Source Solutions, whose clear advantage was its mastery of the electronic world.
    Among the firms making the biggest splash in this new world is Stratford, Inc., a private intelligence-analysis firm based in Austin, Texas. Stratford makes money by selling the results of spying(covering nations from Chile to Russia)to corporations like energy-services firm McDermott International. Many of its predictions are available online at www. Stratford. com.
    Stratford president George Friedman says he sees the online world as a kind of mutually reinforcing tool for both information collection and distribution, a spymaster’s dream. Last week his firm was busy vacuuming up data bits from the far corners of the world and predicting a crisis in Ukraine. "As soon as that report runs, we’ll suddenly get 500 new Internet sign-ups from Ukraine," says Friedman, a former political science professor. "And we’ll hear back from some of them." Open-source spying does have its risks, of course, since it can be difficult to tell good information from bad. That’s where Stratford earns its fame.
    Friedman relies on a lean staff of 20 in Austin. Several of his staff members have military-intelli-gence backgrounds. He sees the firm’s outsider status as the key to its success. Stratford’s briefs don’t sound like the usual Washington back-and-forthing, whereby agencies avoid dramatic declarations on the chance they might be wrong. Stratford, says Friedman, takes pride in its independent voice. [br] It can be inferred that people use back-and-forthing in order to _____.
选项 A、be independent of any influence
B、make an official declaration
C、apologize for any mistakes
D、shift any possible blame
答案 D
解析 末段倒数第2句中，whereby引出的定语从句表明back-and-forthing的作用，从句中的avoid…the chance they might be wrong表明人们使用back and forthing是为了避免承担说错话的责任，本题应选D。A在文中没有提及；B和C则是利用原文中的个别词胡乱拼凑成的。
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