Virtual intelligence
Part II: Why Don't We Know What We Need to Know?
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Part II: Why Don't We Know What We Need to Know? The policymaker today suffers from a triple liability: an intelligence community optimized for processing secrets out of context (without adequate access to open and especially multi-lingual sources of information); a government information handling system unable to deal with the flood of unfiltered and unanalyzed information directed at the policymaker from hundreds of international advocacy sources all pressing their own agenda; and a policy process which is inherently focused on domestic political decision criteria acted upon with little time for reflection. No person who really understands the roots of the intelligence function in support of policy can fail to be dismayed by the existing situation. Both the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), relative newcomers to the global intelligence community, were created to carry out strategic intelligence analysis and to coordinate inter-agency information and intelligence assessments. Both were intended on inception and into the future to rely predominantly on open sources. Unfortunately, the allure of clandestine operations and then the failure of these same clandestine operations against the Soviet Union, led the United States to invest very heavily in narrowly focused satellite technology, to the detriment of both its clandestine human intelligence collection capability, and its severely degraded analysis capability. In general terms, the U.S. Intelligence Community fails to meet the needs of the policymakers because: 1. It is optimized for secrecy and does not have adequate access to the substantive, contextual, and culturally critical information available from open sources-it cannot claim, with credibility, to be "all source" because of its gaps in access to multi-lingual open sources. 2. It is extremely dependent on overhead satellite collection assets and severely lacking in commensurate investments in data processing, human clandestine collection, and human analysis capabilities. 3. It is completely isolated from the larger worlds of government and private sector information and intelligence-by inclination in terms of management and culture, and by design in terms of budgets and technology. 4. It persists in using a priorities-driven requirements system in which repetitive collection against generically monitored high-priority targets (e.g. Russia, China, Iraq) consistently eliminates the possibility of even the most cursory coverage of specific aspects of Third World and other lower-priority targets. 5. It lacks a model of analysis and a process of analysis. Consider this table: Quick Looks Direction Collection Analysis Dissemination Strategic Customers: 1. Policymakers 2. Coalition Download 384.47 Kb. Share with your friends:
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