2008 DIA NDIC Multinational Intelligence Fellows

Briefings & Lectures, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public)
DIA NDIC Multinational Fellows
DIA NDIC Multinational Fellows

The International Intelligence Fellows Program, for senior officers (flag and bull colonel), is an example of where the future of intelligence must lie–in what the Swedes originated and I enhanced by adding sense-making:

Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisicplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2)

Review: Assessing the Tradecraft of Intelligence Analysis

3 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public)

TradecraftDisappointing, Some Value, October 22, 2008

Gregory F. Treverton

There are six (6) pages in this work that held my attention: pages 11-12 (Table 2.2 Analytic Concerns, by Frequency of Mention); page 14 (Figure 3.1, A Pyramid of Analytic Tasks); page 20 (Table 3.1, Wide Range of Analytical Tools and Skills Required); page 34 (Figure 5.1, Intelligence Analysis and Information Types), and page 35 (Table 5.1, Changing Tradecraft Characteristics). Print them off from the free PDF copy online (search for title).

My first review allotted two stars, on the second complete reading I decided that was a tad harsh because I *did* go through it twice, so I now raise it to three stars largely because pages 11-12 were interesting enough to warrant an hour of my time (see below). This work reinvents the wheel from 1986, 1988, 1992, etcetera, but the primary author is clearly ignorant of all that has happened before, and the senior author did not bother to bring him up to speed (I know Greg Treverton knows this stuff).

Among many other flaws, this light once over failed to do even the most cursory of either literature or unclassified agency publication (not even the party line rag, Studies in Intelligence). Any book on this topic that is clueless about Jack Davis and his collected memoranda on analytic tradecraft, or Diane Webb and her utterly brilliant definition of Computer Aided Tools for the Analysis of Science and Technology (CATALYST), is not worthy of being read by an all-source professional. I would also have expected Ruth Davis and Carol Dumaine to be mentioned here, but the lack of attribution is clearly a lack of awareness that I find very disturbing.

I looked over the bibliography carefully, and it confirmed my evaluation. This is another indication that RAND (a “think tank”) is getting very lazy and losing its analytic edge. In this day and age of online bibliography citation, the paucity of serious references in this work is troubling (I wax diplomatic).

Here are ten books–only one of mine (and all seven of mine are free online as well as at Amazon):

Informing Statecraft
Bombs, Bugs, Drugs, and Thugs: Intelligence and America's Quest for Security
Best Truth: Intelligence in the Information Age
Early Warning: Using Competitive Intelligence to Anticipate Market Shifts, Control Risk, and Create Powerful Strategies
The Art and Science of Business Intelligence Analysis (Advances in Applied Business Strategy,)
Analysis Without Paralysis: 10 Tools to Make Better Strategic Decisions
Strategic and Competitive Analysis: Methods and Techniques for Analyzing Business Competition
Lost Promise
Still Broken: A Recruit's Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, from Baghdad to the Pentagon
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption.

On the latter, look for “New Rules for the New Craft of Intelligence” that is free online as a separate document. Both Davis and Webb can be found online because I put them there in PDF form.

The one thing in this book that was useful, but badly presented, was the table of analyst concerns across nine issues that did not include tangible resources, multinational sense-making, or access to NSA OSINT.

Below is my “remix” of the table to put it into more useful form:

54% Quality of Intelligence
54% Tools of intelligence/analysis
43% Staffing
43% Intra-Community collaboration and data sharing
41% Collection Issues
38% Evaluation
32% Targeting Analysis
30% Value

Above are the categories with totals (first initial below connects to above). The top four validate the DNI's priorities and clearly need work.

32% T Targeting Analysis is important
30% V Redefine intelligence
30% Q Analysis too captive to current
30% To Directed R&D for analytic technology needed
27% T Targeting needs prioritization
27% S Analyst training important and insufficient
22% V Uniqueness
22% E PDB problematic as metric
22% To “Tools” of intelligence analysis are poor
22% To “Tools” limit analysis and limited by culture

The line items above are for me very significant. We still do priority based collection rather than gap-driven collection, something I raised on the FIRCAP and with Rick Shackleford in 1992. Our analysts (most of them less than 5 years in service) are clearly concerned about both a misdirection of collection and of analysis, and a lack of tools–this 22 years after Diane Webb identified the 18 needed functionalities and the Advanced Information Processing and Analysis Steering Group (AIPASG) found over 20 different *compartmented* projects, all with their own sweetheart vendor, trying to create “the” all-source fusion workstation.

19% C S&T underused, needs understanding
16% E Critical and needs improvement
14% E Assess performance qualitatively
14% Q Quality of analysis is a concern
14% Q Intelligence focus too narrow
14% S Language, culture, regional are big weaknesses
11% A Leadership
11% L Must be improved
11% Q Problem centric vice regional
11% Q Global coverage is important
11% C Open source critical, need new sources
11% I Lack of leadership and critical mass impair IC-wide
11% I IC information technology infrastructure needed
11% I Non-traditional source agencies need more input
8% V Unclear goals prevail
8% T Targetting analysis needs attn+
8% C Collection strategies/methods outdated
8% S Concern over lack of staff or surge capability
8% S Intelligence Community-wide curriculum desireable
8% I Should NOT pursue virtual wired network
8% I Security is a concern for virtual and sharing
5% E Evaluation not critical
5% Q Depth versus breadth an issue
5% Q Greater client context needed
5% C Law enforcement has high potential
5% S Analytic corps is highly trained better than ever
5% S Career track needs building
5% I Stovepiping is a problem, need more X-community
5% I Should pursue virtual organization and wired network
3% V Newsworthy not intelligence
3% L Radical transformation needed
3% E Metrics are not needed
3% E Evaluation is negative
3% E Audits are difficult
3% Q Long term shortfalls overstated
3% Q Global coverage too difficult
3% T Targeting can be left to collectors
3% C All source materially lacking
3% C Need to guard against evidence addiction
3% C Need to take into account “feedback”
3% S Should train stovepipe analysts not IC analysts
3% S Language and cultural a strength

For the rest, not now, but three at the bottom trouble me: the analysts do not have the appreciation for feedback; they do not understand how lacking they are in sources; and they don't know enough to realize that radical transformation is needed.

On balance, I found this book annoying, but two pages ultimately provocative.

2008 IJIC 21/3 The Open Source Program: Missing in Action

Articles & Chapters, History of Opposition, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public)
21.3 Fall 2008 DNI OSINT MIA
21/3 Fall 2008 DNI OSINT MIA

“The Open Source Program: Missing in Action”

Responds to Hamilton Bean's “The DNI's Open Source Center” in IJIC Summer 2007, a copy of which is available on this web site under References.  Click on Frog to go there.

Bean on OSC
Bean on OSC

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Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Dissent

00 Remixed Review Lists, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Information Society, Intelligence (Public), Philosophy, Politics, Worth A Look

Dissent

Review: Access Denied–The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering

Review: Gag Rule–On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy

Review: NOW Who Do We Blame?–Political Cartoons by Tom Toles (Paperback)

Review: Speaking Freely–Trials of the First Amendment (Paperback)

Review: Why Societies Need Dissent (Oliver Wendell Holmes Lectures)

Review: Open Source Information–The Missing Dimension of Intelligence

3 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public)

CSIS OSINT 2Marginal Across the Board–26 pages of pablum, July 5, 2008

Arnaud De Borchgrave

I went to the meeting at which this was handed out, and left when I realized that most of those in attendance were retirees or students, and this book managed to discuss a topic I and 749 others have been pioneering since 1988, without ever once mentioning anyone else's effort.

I am not easily outraged, but this “immaculate conception” is on the one hand, encouraging (it only took CSIS 20 years to catch up with the rest of us) and on the other, infuriating because the arrogance and myopia of those who put this booklet (note the page count–26 pages) forward is unbounded on the one hand and so narrow on the other as to be clinically blind.

NewsFlash: Singapore is the only country that listened to me when I did my world tour in 1994, and they are well on their way to being the first “smart nation” but they are making the common mistake of believing in technology as a substitute for creating the world brain with real humans. The Nordic countries are close behind, and have pioneered Multinational Multiagency Multidisciplinary Multidomain Information Sharing (M4IS) and public sense-making (24 of us are pioneering public intelligence in the public interest)

CSIS has enormous potential that is failing to contribute to the public dialog because they lack the discipline and humility to reach out to multi-cultural pioneers. Hubris is fatal.

In the comment I provide URLs to material superior to this lightweight endeavor, all free. Below I list a handful of books from true experts:
Early Warning: Using Competitive Intelligence to Anticipate Market Shifts, Control Risk, and Create Powerful Strategies
The New Competitor Intelligence: The Complete Resource for Finding, Analyzing, and Using Information about Your Competitors
The Secret Language of Competitive Intelligence: How to See Through and Stay Ahead of Business Disruptions, Distortions, Rumors, and Smoke Screens
Strategic and Competitive Analysis
Super Searchers Do Business: The Online Secrets of Top Business Researchers (Super Searchers, V. 1)
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption