Wild Bill Donovan would have loved the Internet. The American spymaster who built the Office of Strategic Services in World War

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问题     Wild Bill Donovan would have loved the Internet. The American spymaster who built the Office of Strategic Services in World War II and later laid the roots for the CIA was fascinated with information. Donovan believed in using whatever tools came to hand in the "great game" of espionage-spying as a "profession". These days the Net, which has already remade pastimes as buying books and sending mail, is reshaping Donovan’s vocation as well.
    The last revolution isn’t simply a matter of gentlemen reading other gentlemen’s e-mail. That kind of electronic spying has been going on for decades. In the past three or four years, the world wide web has given birth to a whole industry of point and click spying. The spooks call it "open source intelligence", and as the Net grows, it is becoming increasingly influential. In 1995, the CIA held a contest to see who could compile the most data about Burundi. The winner, by a large margin, was a tiny Virginia company called Open Source Solutions, whose clear advantage was its mastery of the electronic world.
    Among the firms making the biggest splash in the new world is Straitford, Inc. , a private intelligence analysis firm based in Austin, Texas. Straitford makes money by selling the results of spying(covering nations from Chile to Russia)to corporations like energy services firm McDermott International. Many of its predictions are available online at www. Straitford. com. Straiford president George Friedman says he sees the online world as a kind of mutually reinforcing tool for both information collection and distribution, a spymaster’s dream. Last week his firm was busy vacuuming up data bits from the far corners of the world and predicting a crisis in Ukraine. "As soon as that report runs, we’ll suddenly get 500 new Internet sign ups from Ukraine," says Friedman, a former political science professor. "And we’ll hear back from some of them. " Open source spying does have its risks, of course, since it can be difficult to tell good information from bad. That’s where Straitford earns its keep.
    Friedman relies on a lean staff in Austin. Several of his staff members have military intelligence backgrounds. He sees the firms, outsider status as the key to its success. Straitford’s briefs don’t sound like the usual Washington back and forth, whereby agencies avoid dramatic declarations on the chance they might be wrong. Straitford, says Friedman, takes pride in its independent voice.
It can be learned from paragraph 4 that ______.

选项 A、Straitford’s prediction about Ukraine has proved true
B、Straitford guarantees the truthfulness of its information
C、Straitford’s business is characterized by unpredictability
D、Straitford is able to provide fairly reliable information

答案D

解析 本题是推理引申题。题干要求考生从文章第4段推论出其中的暗示。第4段最后两句说:“公开来源的谍报活动有它的风险,因此很难区分正确信息与错误信息,但这却正是司特雷福公司挣饭吃的地方。”最后一句话暗示区分正确信息与错误信息是该公司的优势所在,是它挣钱吃饭的本领,因此可推出D选项“司特雷福公司能够提供相当可靠的信息”为正确选项。B选项“司特雷福公司保证它提供的信息的真实性”不正确,因为司特雷福公司既然担有风险,它就不能够保证信息100%可靠。A选项“司特雷福公司关于乌克兰的预测已被证实”不正确,因为文章只提到一旦信息被公布,会收到一些人的反馈,而没有提到预测已经被证实是真的。文中提到司特雷福公司提供的信息具有不可预测的特点,并不是说它的业务也有不可预测的特征,因此C选项“司特雷福公司的业务特征是不可预测性"不正确。
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