The U.S. Navy's data sat dormant for decades. Until one man used it to make sailing faster.
In 1839, a 33-year-old U.S. Navy lieutenant named Matthew Maury was in a stagecoach accident.
His right leg broke in several places and ended his years at sea. But he stayed in the Navy.
The Navy gave him a desk in Washington. In the Depot of Charts and Instruments.
The Depot stored the Navy's charts. Its instruments. And the old logbooks from Navy ships.
Every logbook had a daily record of events for each ship. Position. Speed. Winds. Currents. Weather.
Ship captains collected that data day after day. At the end of a voyage, they sent the logbooks to Washington.
And those logbooks sat. Collected dust.
Until the Navy lieutenant with the broken leg decided to analyze them.
Maury had sailed all over the oceans before his accident. So he knew what questions to ask. He asked questions like: In this part of the ocean, in this month, where will the winds and currents help me sail faster?
He and his clerks pulled the data from the old logbooks. They combined thousands of daily records. In 1847, Maury issued the first Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic.
The first captain to use it got to Rio 17 days faster than a normal trip.
Other captains used Maury's analysis and sailed from New York to San Francisco 43 days faster.
Then Maury did what an intelligence agency does. He sent requirements to the field.
He designed a standard form called the abstract log. It told the Navy captains what to collect each day. And how to record it.
But he wanted more data.
So he made an offer to every merchant captain on the oceans:
If you keep an abstract log and send it to Washington after your voyage, you can get the charts and sailing directions free.
It was a Positive-Sum Game. The captains got faster trips. Maury got data. And it was in the form he needed. From all around the world.
By the 1850s, Maury said he had a thousand mariners taking measurements at the same time.
In 1853, the maritime nations met in Brussels and adopted Maury's system. Within a few years, most of the world's ocean-going ships were sending their observations to one office in Washington.
And everyone was sailing faster.
You have probably collected lots of data. Bank statements. Calendars. Emails. Medical records.
You saved them because saving them is cheap. And you thought you might use them some day.
But who has time to go through them? Who has time to organize the data in them? And once that's done, who has time to analyze the data so it can be used?
You don't have rooms full of clerks like Maury did.
Now, you don't need to.
Now, you can upload it and have an AI organize and analyze it for you.
But for what purpose?
For that, you need the right questions.
Maury knew the right questions to ask because he had sailed the oceans.
He knew the decisions ship captains would make about currents, wind speeds, direction and positioning.
He knew the questions the data needed to answer.
So when he collected and organized and then analyzed the data, he knew the right way to do it.
An AI can organize and analyze your data. But if you upload your data to AI and then start asking it questions, the AI won't organize it the best way. Which means it won't analyze it the best way.
If you want an AI to do its best work, you need to have it organize and analyze your data around the questions you want to ask.
If you tell the AI: "I'm going to make decisions about budgeting next month and need to understand how much I am spending in an average month on my top 15 spending categories. Here are my last 12 months of statements."
Then the AI can organize the data the right way. And be ready to analyze.
So your data is ready to answer the right questions.
When AI can do what Maury needed a room of clerks and years to do, that is a significant change.
And making data organization and analysis lower-cost has an impact on the other parts of the DADA Chain.
That week, Spy's Guide Briefing members got two issues on what lower-cost and higher-speed analysis means for the rest of the DADA Chain: how a spy decides what data is worth collecting, and what AI can't do for you. Plus a bonus on how collecting data the way Maury did changes Boss Games.
To get the next ones, join the Spy's Guide Briefing. Members get two Briefings a week and PDF downloads on the Spy's Guide frameworks that aren't available anywhere else.
The rest of Maury's story: The British Navy had the world's largest fleet. But someone else drew its charts.
For more on Maury, here's a biography: Tracks in the Sea: Matthew Fontaine Maury and the Mapping of the Oceans.
The DADA Chain is in A Spy's Guide to Thinking.
-John Braddock
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