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.     

Experimental Intelligence

This article explores the use and application of experimental methodologies in intelligence analysis. Previous experimental work has much to tell us about how people process information in making judgments. Calibration, and how appropriate levels of confidence might be improved with systematic feedback, is addressed. Training around uncertainty biases is covered. Extant experimental work suggests mechanisms and tests which might be used to better screen potential analysts for personality characteristics that might make them more suited for some tasks over others. The paradigm of experimental manipulation serves as a useful template for exploring alternative conceptualizations of uncertain environments.     

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.     

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.     

The Intelligence Paradigm

Ephraim Kam, Surprise Attack: The Victim's Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). Pp.266. $25.00.     

人工智能时代的政务智慧转型

当前人工智能技术的不断发展和广泛应用使得人类逐渐进入到人工智能时代.人工智能技术对以自然人为主体构成的整个人类社会产生了深远的影响.对行政体系而言,包括对传统政府的主体、行为模式、组织运作等都产生了深刻的影响.从知识管理的角度出发,政府可视为一种公共管理的智慧集合,在人工智能不断渗入的情况下,传统政府正在从单一的自然人的政务智慧集合逐渐演化为人机高度融合的泛政务智慧体系.人工智能是人类文明的一次巨大飞跃,最终会形成人与人工智能密切融合的新的社会文明形态,而传统的行政体制也将形成新的人机高度融合的新形态.     

Intelligence fact and fiction

Nigel West, GCHQ: The Secret Wireless War, 1900–1986 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986), pp.294; £12.95. Phillip Knightley, The Second Oldest Profession: The Spy as Bureaucrat, Patriot, Fantasist and Whore (London: Andre Deutsch, 1986), pp.436; £14.95.     

The Latest Intelligence Crisis

In the autumn of last year the National Intelligence Council issued a National Intelligence Estimate that states (in a portion of the NIE that has been published) with ‘high confidence’ that Iran years ago suspended its development of nuclear weapons. This paper questions the wisdom of a consensus intelligence document bound to be published in one form or another, and the soundness of the analysis in it, which pivots on speculation about Iranian decision making and on an ambiguity in the very meaning of ‘suspending’ a nuclear-weapons program while continuing to produce highly enriched uranium. These questions lead in turn to questions concerning the ambitious reorganization three years ago of the US intelligence system.     

Note on Teaching Intelligence

Over the last decade, intelligence has become one of the most widely taught subjects in higher education. In response to this, a sub-discipline has emerged within Intelligence Studies devoted to thinking about how the subject is actually taught. One of the most common arguments to come out of this literature is that there should be more practitioner involvement in the university teaching of intelligence. However, it is rarely specified what exactly intelligence professionals bring to the classroom, save the largely self-evident point that because they have ‘walked the walk’, they are uniquely qualified to teach the subject. Drawing on student questionnaires, as well as interviews with serving and retired intelligence officers, this article attempts to probe a little deeper and identify the specific benefits of incorporating practitioners into the university teaching of intelligence. It is argued that practitioners ‘put a face on the profession’ and help to remove some of the mystique and misperceptions that surround intelligence work. It is claimed that practitioners, especially with their ‘inside stories’, give added meaning to academic theories and make the subject more exciting. Finally, it is argued that practitioners enrich the broader ‘student experience’. In UK higher education, now under a new fees regime, students are looking for departments to go the extra mile not only in terms of their teaching, but also in areas like careers advice and support. In this context, intelligence professionals are enormously valuable.     

Intelligence writings in Australia

Andrew Moore, The Secret Army and the Premier, Conservative Paramilitary Organisations in NSW 1930–32 (Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1989). Pp.312. $19.00 (paperback).

Michael Cathcart, Defending the National Tuck Shop, Australia's Secret Army Intrigue of 1931 (Melbourne: Penguin, 1988). Pp.216. $14.99 (paperback).

Robert Manne, The Petrov Affair, Politics and Espionage (Sydney: Pergamon, 1987). Pp.310. $43.00 (paperback).

Mark Aarons, Sanctuary, Nazi Fugitives in Australia (Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1989). Pp.365. $24.00

Desmond Ball, Pine Gap, Australia and the US Geostationary Signals Intelligence Satellite Program (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988). Pp.121. $15.00 (paperback).

Desmond Ball, A Base for Debate, the US Satellite Station at Nurrungar (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987). Pp.122. $15.00 (paperback).

Desmond Ball, Australia's Secret Space Programs (Canberra: Australian National University, 1988). Pp.86. $15.00 (paperback).

Peter Morton, Fire Across the Desert, Woomera and the Anglo‐Australian Joint Project 1946–1980 (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1989). Pp.561. $99.95.     

Intelligence Requirements at the Crossroads: The 1948 French Plan de Renseignement,Intelligence Requirements and the Role of Intelligence History

Very often intelligence history concentrates on the knowledge produced by a country's intelligence service and its impact on national decision-making, or – in the case of intelligence failures – the lack thereof. Using a previously unexplored document from the archives of the French Foreign Ministry, this research note proposes another contribution of intelligence history to diplomatic history: By analysing national intelligence requirements – the ‘top secret diaries’ of governments – intelligence history can provide a window into the minds of decision-makers. The 1948 French plan de renseignement illustrates this case. Written shortly after the Cold War started in earnest in 1947, the plan de renseignement shows a French government deeply worried about the danger of global conflict and of internal upheaval in its empire, but also a government not fully committed to the western cause and particularly sceptical about American intentions. French foreign policy was at a crossroads in 1947/48 and, quite sensibly, French policy-makers wanted to know exactly what lay on all the possible roads ahead. While these findings do not contradict existing scholarship, they may help to encourage a re-weighing of existing arguments.     

The Epistemic Status of Intelligence: An Epistemological Contribution to the Understanding of Intelligence

We argue that the majority of intelligence definitions fail to recognize that the normative epistemic status of intelligence is knowledge and not an inferior alternative. We refute the counter-arguments that intelligence ought not to be seen as knowledge because of 1) its action-oriented scope and 2) its future-oriented content. We dismiss the traditional infallibilistic understanding of knowledge and follow David Lewis' argument, that knowledge is fallible and context-sensitive. Thus, we argue for the importance of developing a methodology by which the entitlement, justification and robustness of claims to intelligence-knowledge can be assessed.