Connecting Intelligence and Theory: Intelligence Liaison and International Relations

Intelligence liaison increased exponentially during the so-called ‘War on Terror’. Today it continues as the most significant dimension of intelligence, including impacting on accountability and oversight considerations. Nevertheless, the intelligence liaison phenomenon remains largely under-studied and substantially under-theorized. In this article, preliminary suggestions are offered concerning how this dearth of theory can be addressed. Firstly, the relevance of international relations theory and other bodies of theory, together with significant approaches concerning how international relations – extending to how intelligence and intelligence-related phenomena (such as, in this article, intelligence co-operation) – can be studied, are explored. These theories, and equally, approaches, are arguably most appropriate when deployed in an arrangement of ‘complex co-existence plurality’ across the different interrelated levels of experience and analysis, and they offer more effective explanations when intelligence liaison is disaggregated into at least eight systemic attributes or variables. More broadly, the suggestion that international relations theory, and indeed theory generally, is ‘irrelevant’ to intelligence studies is simultaneously challenged.     

Explaining Privatization: Notes Towards a Predictive Theory

This article starts from the assumption that some of the theoretical work used to explain welfare-state expansion can be used 'in reverse' to explain privatization, here seen as welfare state contraction, i.e., the transfer from the public to the private sector of the responsibility for certain activities involved in welfare provision. To this end, valiants of the 'power resources' approach are examined. Finding that the 'labour movement' thesis does not have a strong predictive value, I then discuss the 'game theoretical' variant of the 'power resources' approach. Its usefulness for predicting privatization patterns seems limited because of the reductionism built into it. Following the neo-Institutionalists' argument that actor preferences and strategies both reflect and form institutional arrangements of the welfare state, some institutional typologies are developed which are relevant to the course and patterns of privatization. An ideal-type dichotomy between 'pluralist' and 'corporatist' institutions is discussed, in connection with a further delineation of decision-making, financing, and implementing structures. In conclusion, an effort is made to combine actor-oriented and institutional approaches to formulate some preliminary predictions about when and where certain patterns of privatization will occur.     

Analytic Outreach for Intelligence: Insights from a Workshop on Emerging Biotechnology Threats

This article describes a new effort to engage in analytic outreach between academic scholars and intelligence analysts on the issue of emerging biotechnology threats to US national security. The context of this outreach was a September 2012 meeting in London to explore possibilities for enhanced analytic outreach in relation to emerging biotechnology threats, supported by the UK Genomics Policy and Research Forum. This meeting consisted of a mix of current and former intelligence practitioners and policy officials, and social science and scientific experts, from both the UK and the US. As will be described below, this unique pairing of experts and subjects revealed new insights into how to improve intelligence assessments on biotechnology and bioweapons threats. It also revealed continuing challenges in reforming assessments within existing intelligence work routines.     

论生态责任

生态危机已向我国社会经济的发展提出了巨大挑战,政府、企业和普通公众等生态责任主体必须切实履行各自的生态责任,推进中国社会经济的可持续发展。     

Intelligence Studies Centers: Making Scholarship on Intelligence Analysis Useful

Abstract

Improving intelligence analysis requires bridging the gap between scholarship and practice. Intelligence studies as an academic discipline is not very theoretical compared to the more established disciplines of political science and international relations. In terms of conceptual depth, levels of abstraction and theoretical development, even the theoretical portions of the academic intelligence studies literature could be described as policy relevant and potentially useful for practitioners, including intelligence analysts. Yet despite this orientation to the practitioner, there is still a substantial gap between scholars and practitioners, thus replicating within a more applied context the conventional theory/practice divide that exists in other fields. Those fields do, however, possess a variety of ideas and recommendations that could be used to bring scholarship on intelligence analysis closer to practice. If implemented, these ideas might help actualize the benefits of scholarship that are as yet still unrealized potential.     

Intelligence Analysis

American intelligence analysts have been severely criticized for failing to anticipate the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks and for the ill-advised invasion of Iraq. The resulting Intelligence Community reorganization, intended to repair these presumed deficiencies, reflects a misunderstanding of what intelligence analysts can do and where responsibility for political and military decisions lie. In fact, the Intelligence Community is far more diversified in its tasks than is generally realized. Where analysis is done and for whom makes a large difference in its effectiveness. Moreover, changing technology is altering how it is done, where, and by whom. The border between what is ‘strategic’ or ‘national’ intelligence and ‘tactical’ intelligence is much diminished. At the same time, intelligence analysts all too often fail to incorporate the growing amounts of open source information, as well as analytic concepts and theories available from academic and scholarly literature.     

多元智力理论与人才培养

多元智力理论认为,每一个体的智力都是多元的,都具有自己的特点和独特的组合方式。同时,智力的本质是实践能力和创造能力,个体智力的发展方向和程度受到特定社会文化的影响和制约。这一理论对当前我国人才培养有以下几点启示:促进人的全面发展;尊重人的个性发展;注重培养人的实践能力和创造能力;重视社会文化与人的发展相结合。     

The Study of Intelligence in Theory and Practice

The use of probability propositions is widespread in Intelligence estimation and strategic forecasts, as in everyday life. This paper attempts to give clear meaning to the use of probability statements for future strategic assessment. The first half presents possible interpretations in the philosophy of probability, while the second part applies the understandings of the first half to the Intelligence estimation process. A recommendation for a combination of ‘a priori’ interpretation of probability with a higher level of ‘relative frequency’ interpretation is the result of this paper.     

Toward a Theory of Non-State Actors' Intelligence

The literature on intelligence contains many laments that scholars of intelligence have not developed widely accepted theories, or even definitions, of intelligence. This paper describes, compares, and modestly theorizes about intelligence-related activities of two variants of non-state actors – violent insurgent/terrorist groups and advocacy NGOs – focusing on their counterintelligence and covert action-like activities. These groups operate in some ways similarly to, and in other ways dramatically different from, states' intelligence services. This comparative analysis extends the scope of intelligence studies and offers suggestions for additional research.     

Professionalizing Intelligence Analysis: An Expertise and Responsibility Centered Approach

Looking at trends of professionalization of intelligence analysis within the United States Air Force as a subset of the broader US Intelligence Community, this paper calls for a re-evaluation of the professionalization of intelligence analysis away from a bureaucratic ‘corporateness’ approach examining the traits of a profession. Instead, reform of intelligence analysis should focus on the unique expertise and responsibility that define the profession. It identifies the analyst's unique expertise as managing adversary information to reduce a decision maker's uncertainty, and the responsibility in striving to improve capabilities within the profession while ensuring both the strengths and limitations of intelligence analysis are understood by intelligence customers. By focusing on corporateness, the community jeopardizes reform efforts by moving professionalization toward ‘getting the right answer’ and away from a broader understanding of the strengths and limitations inherent in the field of intelligence, where getting the right answer isn't often attainable.     

Making Intelligence Analysis More Intelligent: Using Numeric Probabilities

A number of researchers have advocated the use of explicit numeric probabilities in the drafting and presentation of intelligence assessments. A trial of this methodology by a Canadian assessment unit has demonstrated that numeric probabilities can be used effectively in the preparation of intelligence reports. The practice leads analysts to pay greater attention to the estimative judgments they make and allows for greater transparency in understanding the degree of certainty that they attach to their conclusions. The use of numeric probabilities highlights the need for a consistent mapping standard for verbal probability terms. However, implementing the methodology requires overcoming a widely shared aversion among analysts and intelligence managers to thinking in numeric terms.     

Transforming Analysis: The Intelligence Community's Best Kept Secret

This article argues that analytic practices and processes within the US intelligence community have undergone far more fundamental reform than the public or scholarly communities recognize. It identifies the dimensions of this ‘Analytic Transformation’ and explains the reasons for optimism about the future.     

Managers of Analysts: The Other Half of Intelligence Analysis

The literature on intelligence analysis has a glaring hole: assessment of the management of analysts and their work. This gap is striking because managers influence all aspects of analysis and share responsibility with analysts for analytic successes and failures. While many managers ably recruit, train, mentor, and manage their analysts, they also are responsible for pathologies that negatively affect analysis and are often incorrectly attributed to analysts. Accurate understanding of the roles and influence of managers should change scholars’ views of the processes of analysis and better balance attention on analysts and managers.     

私有化前景:公共选择理论视角

美国<公共行政评论>曾经刊登米勒和金合写的一篇文章,作者指出,"从事实际工作的人经常需要预测潜在行动的后果"(Miller和King,1998).在实施私有化的过程中,这一点尤其富有指导意义.目前这一范式正在席卷整个世界.理智基金会(Reason Foundation)的<私有化:1991年报告>列出了64个国家的"私有化计划"与"私有化趋势".<公共行政评论>曾经刊登了3份有关美国政府私有化的报告(Chi,1998).其中的一份报告指出,美国50个州的15家不同机构都表明,它们大幅增加了私有化的活动.     

Cold War Pioneers in Combined Intelligence and Analysis

From its inception in 1947 until the late 1970s the primary missions of the United States Military Liaison Mission (USMLM) involved maintaining a presence in East Germany for confidence building measures and reporting on items related to indicators and warnings of hostilities initiated by the Soviet Army. While not abandoning its traditional missions, the unit underwent a major transformation in the early 1980s and became the first Humint integrated collection, analysis and production center. Through a combination of factors, USMLM was able to link targeting, single-source collection and analysis while providing insights in a wide range of areas, from nuclear weapons, troop morale, equipment production, technical data, health and ethnic issues and literacy. Most significantly, USMLM confirmed severely reduced manning levels in GSFG combat arms units.

‘Intelligence is best done by a minimum number of men and women of the greatest possible ability.’ (R.V. Jones, the ‘father’ of modern scientific and technical intelligence)