Military Intelligence Taps Social Networking Skills
As a teenager, Jamie Christopher would tap instant messages to make plans with friends, and later she became a Facebook regular.
Jamie Christopher, second from left, uses social networking skills to hunt insurgents for the military.
Now a freckle-faced 25 and an intelligence officer here, she is using her social networking skills to hunt insurgents and save American lives in Afghanistan.
Hunched over monitors streaming live video from a drone, Lieutenant Christopher and a team of analysts recently popped in and out of several military chat rooms, reaching out more than 7,000 miles to warn Marines about roadside bombs and to track Taliban gunfire.
“2 poss children in fov,” the team flashed as Marines on the ground lined up an air strike, chat lingo for possible innocents within the drone’s field of view. The strike was aborted.
“fire coming from cmpnd,” another message warned, referring to a Taliban compound. The Marines responded by strafing the fighters, killing nine of them.
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