Transparent Intelligence — The CIA World Factbook
When you enter grade-school as a young child, some of the things you learn include basic social sciences and geography. The keyword there is “basic” because when you’re young, the idea is to give you the first building blocks of knowledge and to hopefully inspire a drive for curiosity about the bigger world in the context of history, societies, cultures, languages, and systems of government across the world.
This basic knowledge base stays with you forever. When we learn about the world, one of the first things we see in classrooms, textbooks, and at various educational online resources used by all educational institutions is what? Maps! When we learn about maps, we learn about the data that can be represented on all kinds of different maps. When we look at maps and map data, we’re looking at the result of years upon years of intelligence work made public for the educational benefit of all.
When we get older and more experienced with the world around us, if we continue the curiosity of our youth and choose to keep learning, whatever that continued learning may look like for you, you’ll eventually run across something called the World Factbook.
Understanding The World Factbook
What IS the World Factbook? That’s a deep question with several complex answers rooted…
