What If Sherman Kent Was Wrong? Revisiting the Intelligence Debate of 1949
Zachery Tyson Brown, War on the Rocks
One of Kent’s contemporaries noted in 1962 that most policy decisions were made without any input from intelligence — something Kent himself begrudgingly acknowledged and that has since been confirmed again, again, and again. Even when policymakers do make use of intelligence, it is often only insofar as it supports their preordained conclusions, a pathology evinced on both sides of the political aisle. There is no evidence to support the naïve assumption that policymakers will change their minds when presented with one of Kent’s “stubborn facts.”
Instead of seeing intelligence as a mere product used by decision-makers, they should view intelligence officers themselves as the product — trustworthy professionals, experts at problem-framing and decision facilitation, whose service is expanding a user’s mental map of the world and helping the user to navigate it more easily. . . .
The next generation of policymakers will accept nothing less. They expect more — more access, more transparency, more collaboration. We need a model of intelligence service that gives them all of these things and that takes advantage of everything we have learned in the last three-quarters of a century about how people think, learn, and collaborate. Rather than seeking merely to provide input into a policymaker’s decisions, intelligence officers should instead seek to actively help them make better ones.
ROBERT STEELE: Almost nothing being written about the craft of intelligence today merits my attention. This article has three really excellent paragraphs, provided above, and I recommend it be read in its entirety.
The author gets one big thing right: intelligence officers need to be embedded in the policy (and budget) offices so that we get the requirements right, understand the prevailing biases, can support counterintelligence on a day to day basis, and ultimately know how to deliver decision support to frantic individuals with the attention span of a gerbil that needs to pee.
His ideas, while good in isolation, will never be implemented nor if implemented would they be effective, without a radical renaissance and reconstruction of every aspect of intelligence and counterintelligence as well as a complete purge of all traitors in the three branches of government.
I think of the cancer of covert action, trade in women and children and drugs, domestic blackmail and mind-control , drone assassination, and more; he also misses the fact that we process 1% of what we collect, ignore 90% of what we need that is open source in 33+ languages we don't speak or read; have no sense-making tools; provide less than 4% of what the top decision makers need (General Tony Zinni said this, to which I add and nothing for everyone else) and we do not do holistic analytics, true cost economics, or Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE) for #MAGA and for export — OSEE can and should be our answer to the One Belt One Road strategic success that China has most ably implemented. We have nothing that comes close at this time.
The author does not address the reality that policy and budget will never be honest until we purge Congress of all traitors and implement #UNRIG election reform that creates a 100% proportionally representative Congress that makes evidence-based decisions in the public interest and that cannot be bribed or blackmailed by the Zionists or any other Deep State element. It goes without saying that an Open Source Agency (OSA) that also funds a Presidential public information network and truth channel that in turn guide the reinvention of education and reinstatement of civics; and an absolutely ruthless pervasive counterintelligence with 100% processing support from NSA, are the book-ends for getting all source secret intelligence right and in time; and therefore getting evidence-based policy and balanced budget right.
There is a need for a new Presidential Decision Memorandum, The Role of Intelligence & Counterintelligence in Making America Great Again.
My sub-text is that the time has come to eliminate the National Security Council that is the Deep State's best vehicle for penetrating and controlling policy and budget; the restored DCI should be the President's primary advisor while demanding that the IC & CI produce holistic decision support rooted in true cost economics and deep ethics. ODNI can be made an extension of the DCI and instead of cutting 70% of the IC as originally envisioned, we should redirect one third to Global Coverage/Third World and one third to domestic decision support for Made in America self-sustainment and total competitiveness in every domain.
The billets and office spaces now occupied by NSC can be converted to create a mix of inteliigence, policy, and budget requirements & performance monitoring positions in support of the President, Vice President, and three Deputy Vice Presidents. The media should be ejected from the White House, and that space repurposed as shown below, inclusive of a Grand Strategy Staff.
Selected References:
Steele, Robert and Cynthia Ann McKinney, #UNRIG: Election Reform Act of 2020: A Citizen’s Guide to Achieving Democracy with Integrity (Trump Revolution Book 54) (Amazon CreateSpace, Earth Intelligence Network, 2020)
Steele, Robert, Memorandum for the President: The Resurrection of the USA — Your Legacy, 200 Years, Must Be Systemic (Amazon CreateSpace, Earth Intelligence Network, 2020)
Steele, Robert, NATO 2040: Intelligence (Decision-Support) as Root for Transformation (Amazon CreateSpace, Earth Intelligence Network, 2020)
Steele, Robert, REINVENTING ENGINEERING: The Ultimate Hack — Creating a Prosperous World at Peace with Open Source Everything (Amazon CreateSpace, Earth Intelligence Network, 2020).
Steele, Robert, REINVENTING INTELLIGENCE: 30 Years in the Wilderness (Trump Revolution 46) (Amazon CreateSpace, Earth Intelligence Network, 2019).
Steele, Robert, REINVENTING NATIONAL SECURITY: Grand Strategy, Global Reality, and the U.S. Army — Everything Our President Is Not Being Told (Trump Revolution 45) (Amazon CreateSpace, Earth Intelligence Network, November 2019).
Steele, Robert. “Augmented Intelligence with Human-Machine Integrity: Future-Oriented Hybrid Governance Integrating Holistic Analytics, True Cost Economics, and Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE),” in Daniel Araya. Augmented Intelligence: Smart Systems and the Future of Work and Learning. Bern, CH: Peter Lang Publishing., 2018.
Steele, Robert, “Intelligence at a Cross Roads: To Be Or Not To Be (Review of Principled Spying by David Omand and Mark Phythian),” American Herald Tribune, 25 June 2018. PBI BackUp
Steele, Robert. “Review Essay: UNHINGED: drone assassination – American suicide,” Intelligence and National Security, 33/1, March 2017, pp. 145-150.
Steele, Robert. “Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE) – Creating the Academy, Economy, Government, and Society of the Future,” Phi Beta Iota Public Intelligence Blog, 5 April 2016.
Steele, Robert. “Book Reviews: Rebutttal-Lies Presented as Truth; BROKEN – The Truth as Fiction,” Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Volume 18, Number 2, 2016, pp. 163-166.
Steele, Robert. “Foreword,” in Stephen E. Arnold, CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access, Harrods Creek, KY: Arnold Information Technology, 2015.
Steele, Robert. “On Defense Intelligence: Seven Strikes,” CounterPunch, 2 July 2014.
Steele, Robert. “The Evolving Craft of Intelligence,” in Robert Dover, Michael Goodman, and Claudia Hillebrand (eds.). Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies, Oxford, UK: Routledge, July 31, 2013.
Steele, Robert. “The Ultimate Hack: Re-Inventing Intelligence to Re-Engineer Earth,” in U. K. Wiil (ed.), Counterterrorism and Open-Source Intelligence, Lecture Notes in Social Networks 2, Springer-Verlag/Wien, 2011.
Steele, Robert. Human Intelligence: All Humans, All Minds, All the Time, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Press, June 3, 2010.
Steele, Robert. “Creating a Smart Nation” in Mark Tovey (ed.), Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace, Oakton, VA: Earth Intelligence Network, 2008, pp 107-130.
Steele, Robert. “Open Source Intelligence (Strategic),” in Loch Johnson (ed.), Strategic Intelligence: The Intelligence Cycle, Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, Chapter 6, pp. 96-122.
Steele, Robert. Information Operations: Putting the “I” Back Into DIME, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Press, February 1, 2006.
Steele, Robert. The New Craft of Intelligence: Achieving Asymmetric Advantage in the Face of Nontraditional Threats, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Press, February 1, 2002.
RELATED:
Matt Pottinger, Michael T. Flynn and Paul D. Batchelor, Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan (CNAS, 4 January 2010).
