What event, person, place, or thing affects military intelligence history today?

Ethics? How far are you going to go for that intel? Would you cross the line and lose it all?

I would compare the efficacy of military intelligence prior to and subsequent to the formation of the CIA. Although I'm not prepared to defend any opinion, it "seems" to me that the CIA greatly affected the military intelligence gathering arms of the individual branches (stole their funding and resources?). It also seems that a single agency cannot properly address the diverse intelligence requirements of military branches with diverse missions, especially when that agency must also focus on political intelligence which does not directly relate to military resources and operations. Again, this is pure conjecture but may prove fruitful ground for study. Then again, it may already have been studied to death. I'd love to know if someone else put in the time and effort.

just think..now ISIL and Al Quaida use video game counsels to chat and/or make up their own encrypted dark nets due to Snowden's Pentagon powerpoints making open source to all our enemies like China, Russia and the terrorist groups...I am really pissed off!
http://news.yahoo.com/intel-heads-edward-snowden-did-39-profound-damage-205332038--abc-news-topstories.html;_ylt=A86.JyRV65tW7zMAJEAPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTByNDZ0aWFxBGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwM2BHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--

D.H.S. 9-11, etc. crap read a news article and pick one. Said in a pain filled moment.

Electronic Communication, bar none.

I would suggest reading the book "Lights out" by Ted Koppel, and perhaps looking at the concerns of John Macafee (Presidential Candidate) [caveat, he will appear to be a whackjob. Read the the book or articles regarding the book, before making a determination regarding his platform]

Electronic Communication, literally, and figuratively connects all of the United States together. It has the potential to create "catastrophic" damage, and it gives our "Threats" (we no longer have enemies or allies, just those who have interests that are aligned or not currently aligned with us) amazing amounts of leverage to use against us. The entire US Power, Water, and Communication structure is a "weakness." The entire "global" INFRASTRUCTURE relies on the US.

SSG (Join to see) C4ISR platforms

Secured forms of communication -

I would start with Alan Turning and the use of brute force hacking that allowed his team to break a code with 150 trillion total possibilities. Also as well the first use of a machine being used to defeat a machine and thus creating an early form of cyber intelligence. You could bring this forward to the use of quantum entanglement, satellites and secured comm.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/532216/how-entanglement-generating-satellites-will-make-the-quantum-internet-global/

Chief petty officer spy , John Walker and his son........

Fiber Optics... The most secure media....fiber optics is used for many things such as perimeter fences, camera systems, alarm systems and this is just touching on the subject of light speed. Fiber is high security , splicing it is not easy without someone knowing it , and signals are contained within the fiber optic media.

The MQ-1 or more broadly the UAS/RPA as well as other manned sensor platforms. It brings a capability that we have not had in our history. The asset can stay on target for almost a whole day and we can gather a very detailed look at a target area and asses with an exponential amount of detail on what is going on.