: A prior effort, State of Knowledge Relative to Intelligence Analysis, was initially motivated by the fact that seemingly little change had resulted from numerous studies of the intelligence community. Starting with Pearl Harbor, the U.S. intelligence community has often faced criticism for failing to predict or warn of future events. Though the criticisms have come from different groups, a certain commonality exists among the proposals for change in the intelligence community. The other noteworthy feature of these proposals is how little their content has changed over time. A thorough analysis of the intelligence literature was accomplished. This analysis provided an answer to the question of whether the existing literature on intelligence analysis contains the requisite knowledge to inform the development and application of both the mechanistic and cognitive activities to support doing intelligence analysis. A dominant finding was how little the practice of intelligence analysis had been informed by the findings in related scientific disciplines. The primary objective of this research effort was to understand the research findings in relevant scientific disciplines and to relate these findings to the practice of intelligence analysis. This research effort was based on the full text of over 5,800 documents consisting of nearly 172,000 pages. Our analysis of the current intelligence literature showed a continuation of previously observed trends. The number of publications dealing with intelligence analysis has decreased since 2007; in 2012 publication was at the level observed in 1996-1997. Also, we observed that the literature places less emphasis on the improvement of the quality of intelligence analysis. During the effort described in this report we conducted research syntheses for the topics of critical thinking, thinking dispositions, epistemological beliefs, practice based training, and various facets of cognition.

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA595401.pdf

Advanced Analysis Cognition: Improving the Cognition of Intelligence Analysis

My objective is to deepen and thicken public and private policy debate about the competitiveness of nations in a global knowledge–based economy. To do so I first demonstrate the inadequacies of the Standard Model of economics, the last ideology standing after the MarketMarx Wars. Second, I develop a methodology (Trans-Disciplinary Induction) to acquire ‘knowledge about knowledge’. In the process of surveying the event horizons of seventeen subdisciplines of thought, I redefine ‘ideology’ as the search for commensurable sets or systems of ideas shared across knowledge domains and practices. Third, I create a definitional avalanche about knowledge as a noun, verb, form and content in etymology, psychology, epistemology & pedagogy, law and economics. In the process I demonstrate that personal & tacit and codified & tooled knowledge are the staple commodities of the global knowledge-based economy. Fourth, I establish the origins and nature of the Nation-State, the shifting sands of sovereignty on which it stands and the complimentary roles it plays as curator, facilitator, patron, architect and engineer of the national knowledge-base. Fifth, I examine the competitiveness of nations with respect to a production function in which all inputs, outputs and coefficients are defined in terms of knowledge. In the process, I demonstrated that competitiveness, as Darwinian win/lose against rivals, is inadequate because it does not account for the mutualism of symbionts and environmental change, i.e., coevolution and coconstruction. Accordingly, I propose ‘fitness’ as a more appropriate criterion for the competitiveness of nations in a global knowledge-based economy. Finally, I consider the comparative advantage of nations given their initial and differing national knowledge endowments.

Ideological evolution the competitiveness of nations in a global knowledge-based economy

: This study addresses the future of the Intelligence Community in light of 21st century issues/challenges/threats. In addressing this issue, the author reviews many of the chief intelligence reform proposals or legislative activities during the early years of the U.S. intelligence service and throughout the Cold-War era, to include the turbulent mid-1970s, on into the 1990s, and concludes with a review of the recommendations from the Joint Inquiry Report and the 9/11 Commission Report leading to the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. At issue is whether these ongoing schemes for reform, including the new legislation, are sufficient for the effective operation of the Community in a globalized environment. The methodology used in this study is principally historical analysis and review of primary and secondary source documents interpreted through the lens of the author, who has over two decades of experience in the Intelligence Community, as a tactical and strategic Army signals intelligent (SIGINT) officer, DOD contractor, and federal government systems engineer. The analysis is informed by interviews with select military and civilian professionals, academics, and other professionals. The author's intent is that this study further stimulate debate on the future of the Intelligence Community and its primacy in assessing current and future threats to our national security. If the Community is unwilling to make visible changes that are recognizable and understandable to the "talking heads" and more importantly to the American public, then a wake-up notice will come from outside the Community through executive order or congressional legislation. This study presents an argument for rational, professionally based, but overdue intelligence reform.

The Intelligence Archipelago: The Community's Struggle to Reform in the Globalized Era

: Nearly two centuries ago, Napoleon Bonaparte preemptively occupied Portugal and Spain and ousted the Spanish royal family for being less than cooperative in supporting his Continental System. The resulting guerrilla resistance, as described by Martin van Creveld, "made do without 'armies,' campaigns, battles, bases, objectives...or even territorial units clearly separated by a line on a map." Napoleon's "Spanish ulcer," as he described the Spanish response to his occupation, provides a myriad of timeless lessons for strategic and operational planners. The strategic gap that developed between Napoleon's rapid conventional military victory and the immediate requirement to influence positively the population as part of postwar stabilization operations highlights the limits of conventional military power in post-conflict operations and the perils of forgetting "the people" in the initial and ongoing strategic calculus. Unfortunately, nations and militaries around the globe have been forced to relearn that lesson many times in the ensuing 200 years. The parallels of Napoleon's challenges in Spain with the challenges of contemporary coalition forces in Iraq are striking. While there is a danger in attempting to take historical parallels too far, some similarities are too close to ignore. Moreover, such similarities may reflect the failure to understand the local populace within campaign planning. That understanding forms the bedrock for any successful post-hostility occupation phase. Thus, cultural intelligence preparation of the battlespace (IPB) with a focus on the post-hostilities landscape is perhaps more important than traditional IPB, which typically has monopolized the intelligence effort. This essay recounts Napoleon's occupation of Spain, discusses the mistakes he made in planning for that occupation and those that were made in planning for Operation Iraqi Freedom, and suggests ways to incorporate cultural intelligence into today's joint military doctrine.

Avoiding a Napoleonic Ulcer: Bridging the Gap of Cultural Intelligence (Or, Have We Focused on the Wrong Transformation?)

: Why? This is the key question that has so far gone unanswered in the current struggle, the United States so-called global war on terrorism. It is the why questions that can be notoriously difficult to answer. It used to be the case in American secondary education, when pupils were taught how to write, that they were prompted to consider answering the traditional battery of basic questions: who, what, when, where, how, and why. In a general sense, the who-what-when-wherehow questions seem rather straightforward; they involve description, characterization, classification, or basic fact-finding. But the why question is in a category all of its own. It can pose the thorny challenge of uncovering more than just superficial reality. In terms of human behavior, it probes deeper and requires the writer to explore such concepts as meaning, truth, falsehood, intent, passion, and belief. It demands a completely different scope and level of reasoning. Over and above description, classification, or characterization, it requires analysis. In the fields of study that address human interaction for example in ethics, politics, international affairs, or warfare answering why questions involves penetrating the underlying cultural and metaphysical belief structures that serve to guide both individual and collective behavior. While who-what-when-where-how questions more often lend themselves to measurement, why questions inevitably reach beyond the scope of data collection and processing. The latter explore the strategic high ground that forms the basis for understanding humanity in all its shades, customs, cultures, and conflicts. Policy and academic elites in the United States seem very skilled at answering the who-what-when-where-how questions. In the current conflict, apparently inaugurated by the shocking events of 9/11, policy and academic elites have meticulously researched the answers to this standard battery of questions.

/pdf/y-the-sources-of-islamic-revolutionary-conduct-ub8n1eym72.pdf

Y: The Sources of Islamic Revolutionary Conduct

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? --T. S. Eliot MULTIFACETED DISCUSSIONS about "America's information edge" transpired throughout the 1990s. In a significant article by that name in Foreign Affairs (March-April 1996), Joseph S. Nye and William A. Owens captured the essence and underlying importance of the idea: The one country that can best lead the information revolution will be more powerful than any other. For the foreseeable future, that country is the United States. America has apparent strength in military power and economic production. Yet its more subtle comparative advantage is its ability to collect, process, act upon, and disseminate information, an edge that will almost certainly grow over the next decade. In defense policy, the 1990s information-edge thesis appeared in different guises. Concepts such as information superiority, dominant battlespace knowledge, and decision superiority emerged as key elements of joint doctrine. National security strategy discussions focused on national information highways and critical infrastructure protection--key components of sustaining information-edge capabilities. In the most significant intelligence organizational reform of the decade, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) was founded with the mission of "guaranteeing the information edge." By the end of the decade, the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other national security agencies presented strategic plans aiming to sustain and expand America's information edge while planning for increased volumes of information gathered from an increasingly diverse range of sources. Our adversaries, meanwhile, moved to create and exploit their own information advantages. Al Qaeda, for example, developed a global intelligence capability, adapted the latest commercial information technology for their purposes, and exploited seams in our security defenses (witness the group's sophisticated use of stenography within the World Wide Web to communicate with operatives). Discussion of these seams now dominates national security reform debates. For us, the post-September 11 talk about intelligence transformation begged the question, Quo vadis, America's information edge? Despite advances in information technology and knowledge management within the most visible area of national security--the military--America's overall commitment to preserving its information edge across the larger security bureaucracy, pace Nye and Owens, foundered during the 1990s. To be sure, the situation is improving. Great strides in information sharing are being made. Pockets of innovation do exist. Additional funds are now available to correct nearly a decade of resource shortfalls. Yet we contend that despite significant initiatives to transform, government-wide information-sharing innovations and intelligence-integration initiatives are evolving too slowly. Framing the coming intelligence debate WE BELIEVE THAT the coming year will witness an unparalleled national debate over the future of American intelligence. Attention at the official level will be necessary to effect change, but by itself it is insufficient. What will also be needed is a reasoned public debate about the purposes and dynamics of U.S. intelligence. The debate will address a number of issues, though intelligence sharing and cross-agency integration will remain at the forefront. The intelligence-sharing issue has been a favorite topic within American security planning since the summer of 2002. So too have subsequent efforts to discover who had information and intelligence about the September 11 terrorist attacks and what, if anything, would have been different had all information been shared among U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The joint congressional inquiry into the intelligence context of 9-11 provides a number of points for consideration. …

Kevin O'Connell

Papers

Keeping the Information Edge