U.S. building a network to hit militants

At the heart of the new center's analysis is a cloud-computing network tied into all components of U.S. national security, from the eavesdropping capabilities of the National Security Agency to Homeland Security's border-monitoring databases. The computer is designed to sift through masses of information to track militant suspects across the globe, said two U.S. officials familiar with the system.

Several military intelligence officials said the center is the brainchild of JSOC's current commander, Vice Adm. Bill McRaven, who patterned it on the success of a military system called "counter-network," which uses drone, satellite and human intelligence to drive operations on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a senior U.S. official reached Wednesday.

Officials said Afghanistan has been a proving ground for both the military's growing use of special operations forces in raids against militants and in honing its "counter-network" system.

The night raids have been a source of constant complaint by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who calls them a violation of Afghan sovereignty. U.S. officials insist the night raids always have a small team of Afghan security forces in the lead. Gen. David Petraeus but briefs Karzai on the raids nearly weekly to reassure him, according to a senior U.S. official in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss high-level conversations.

McChrystal's intelligence chief, Brig. Gen. Michael Flynn, recognized early innovations by special operations forces in the field and at the time refined the intelligence sharing process among the military into the "counter-network" system.

A tip from Africa that suspected militants are planning a strike in the United States, for instance, would lead to the names of those suspects being fed into the cloud-computing network. The computer would compare the information with U.S. and international border and flight information, mined from the database of watch lists from the Counterterrorism Center, DHS and the FBI.