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In his prepared remarks, Gates cited the Soviet military's work in the 1970s on how to use sensors, reconnaissance and command-and-control systems to gain a battlefield edge. In the next decade, he said, top Soviet generals envisioned a scenario in which conventional weapons could be as effective as nuclear weapons — "owing to the gains made in precision, information technology and communications."

That became the standard for U.S. military innovation, which first bore fruit in the successful campaign to oust the Iraqi army from Kuwait after it invaded in August 1990 and triggered a U.S.-led invasion.

America's spies are decidedly green, and they're not comfortable -- or particularly useful -- working in bureaucratic silos without Internet browsers, instant messaging, and social networking sites on their desktops.

In his quest for transformation, Wertheimer is playing to this youthful workforce that finds collaboration neither newfangled nor threatening. For these analysts, networking is just the way information moves. But to the intelligence establishment, information is power, and relinquishing it means losing that power, as the WMD commission and many other critics have repeatedly lamented.

Wertheimer and other transformation proponents often point to iTunes, and the hugely successful iPod music player, to support their theory that collaboration can fundamentally change and improve people's lives. And they reason that A-Space, Intellipedia, and other innovative services will create demand in the intelligence community and overwhelm the transformation naysayers.

Wertheimer channels the enthusiasm of Apple's CEO and co-founder, Steve Jobs, whose rousing keynote speeches, known as "Stevenotes," command more press coverage and world attention than speeches by most members of Congress. But as with Jobs, some skeptics question both the substance and the goal behind Wertheimer's zeal.

Wertheimer, however, plays down the notion of analysts as revolutionaries. "I don't like the thought that transformation is changing something from the past to something new," he says. Rather, transformation is about "creating an environment in which more things could happen than could happen in the past. It's liberating. Let's call it 'analytic liberation.' "

Wertheimer seems perfectly comfortable working in this gray area, where there is no obvious way to know whether his ideas are working and where concepts change on the fly (transformation becomes liberation) and the end goal isn't defined at the outset.