Real Life Knowledge Broker

How would becoming a Knowledge Broker work in Real Life? With organizations like the FBI and CIA, can it even work? Are there any famous examples that I can draw inspiration from? (This does not have to be limited to the USA.)

I would appreciate anyone who can provide a few answers.

Thanks

The key point in a Knowledge Broker characterization is not as much how much knowledge does he possess or have access to, as his/her easiness when it comes to trading or selling it. In a setting similar to ours, where Three Letter Agencies are dime a dozen but they can't effectively synchronize their databases for what's worth (except in weird cases such as the AFIS system, and then still they can't get the best use of it), being a Knowledge Broker requires not only access to intel, but also contacts who are willing and capable to help one remain hidden inside their own networks of contacts. Information is only truly valuable, commercially speaking, when it is still undergoing a creative flux, as otherwise is is bound to have already been backuped, and thus made hackeable into, somewhere else, that if it has not been somehow published in an image board. As the great Leroy Jethro Gibbs once said, "if you want to keep a secret, tell no one; at most, tell one; there's no second best." (Here, the "one" is the one you are selling information to)

See what has happened with Wiki Leaks stuff for a recent example of how knowledge broking breaks, on both sides of the fence.

What follows is in my opinion. Today is pretty hard to not leave a print in the digital word. A knowledge broker who wishes to remain truly hidden has to strongly rely on cash, use only other people's mail accounts or computer systems in a nondeterministic fashion, do random travelling across cities or across country borders, live somewhere with a not-insane level of paranoia, and keep a simple but apparently busy job that shields one from the effects of both market and social speculation.

That, or it can be inverted and have a Knowledge Broker who everyone knows about, but then you better have a small city's worth of an army to defend him and his data, as well as a reasonable means to dispose of both if he ever is caught by the wrong people. Unless you want to to the supernatural route and have the guy simply be on the known, in a nonreplicable manner.

It can work and it remains a legitimate and recognized field of work. It requires a master's degree in library and information science and oftentimes a master's or Ph.D in another specialized field.

The Knowledge Broker within the story I'm writing is doing so out of necessity in order to settle a vendetta. Now that her vendetta's been fulfilled though, she has a new identity completely based upon lies. It's all completely fragile, so she desperately keeps a network of contacts and UnwittingP awns to protect herself and her family.

Also, I should note that she's basically a genius (she graduated college at nine), so the education factor isn't a problem.

At 9?!

Even with accelerated-learning programs being what they are, I don't think there's a college in the WORLD that would accept a primary-school-age kid.

, what said. Entering and graduating college needs more than just intelligence. What about social interactions?

You can receive a bachelor's degree at an exceptionally young age. I think the real-life world record is ten years old, set by Michael Kearney.

And her social interaction is atrocious. In fact, to put it absolutely bluntly, she is not going to be the picture of mental health.

Well, that leads you into another problem. Generally speaking, maintaining a network of contacts and Unwitting Pawns requires at least some social skills.

Specifically, she possesses symptoms of Antisocial Personality Disorder (aka sociopathy). She lacks any feelings of empathy (she understands human emotion quite well and is capable of mimicking them, but feels next to nothing unless it directly affects herself) and she is utterly incapable of feeling remorse. At one point in the story, for example, she'll attempt to murder her own children because she views it as a convenient way to save her own skin. She won't succeed, and only one other character will know she tried to do it, but there you have it.

In generally, sociopaths can actually make very good businessmen/women because of their ability to see in gain/loss dynamics rather than morality. That's really what the story is meant to be an exploration of: how far she's willing to go just to satisfy her own impulses. Like I said before, the only reason she became a Knowledge Broker in the first place was because it was convenient so that she could accomplish a set of personal goals through blackmail, bribery and extortion.

All of that doesn't solve the problem of social interaction. As it stands, any character who happens to know your Knowledge Broker could go and hill her out of an impulse, and essentially nothing is lost, except perhaps the intel. What I mean is: at that age, and all things beyond the Knowledge Broker bit being close to realistic, her knowledge can's save her at that point, and she likely can't possibly predict that attack. I'm actually wondering why your witness character hasn't done it yet.

There's also the problem of notability. When you get a degree at 9, or whatever age below, say, 12, pretty much the entire intelligence world gets word of it, just in case there's a new model of missile AI test drive coming out of the corner. At that age, she's not gonna keep factual (or intellectual) independence, in particular if she lacks social skills, so she is going to reach only below what a Knowledge Broker, by concept, is, and remain The Informant at most.

edited 9th May '11 7:18:27 AM by SilentReverence

Try looking at this question: What does making her that young accomplish in the story? Is there a reason she needs to be emotionally a child? As Rev points out, she doesn't just need to be brilliant to be an Information Broker, she needs to have good working relationships with a lot of people in a lot of places that a child simply isn't likely to even have access to them.

I think there's a few things that we seem to be miscommunicating about.

First, she's not nine throughout the entire story. She only earned her first degree at that age. By the time the story takes place, she's well into adulthood.

Second, the person who knows about the attempted murder is, at that point, just as guilty as she is. They're both aware of each others' dirty laundry, and so both know that if one of them goes down, the other does as well.

Third, as I said, she ended up becoming a knowledge broker because it was necessary to gain information on her target (once again, she started this as a means of revenge). It isn't until she gets her revenge and finds the need to protect her family from the sort of things she did to kill her target that she actually becomes a Knowledge Broker.

At no point did I say that she was emotionally or mentally a child. I said, in response to the question of her education credentials, that education will not a problem. I also said that she is a Heroic Sociopath. Her social interaction is "lacking" only if you know her well enough (the first person who figures out something is wrong is her mother) to understand that she doesn't feel an ounce of pity or guilt for anything she does.