Question

How might you change the intelligence cycle to reflect, more precisely, intelligence as it exists in the real world?

(Introduction to Intelligence)

Answer 1

Our current embrace of network-centric targeting must be expanded to incorporate economic, social, and political context. We must force qualitative, granular detail into the intelligence cycle at the tactical level in a structured, methodologically consistent fashion. We must develop a three-dimensional view of the enemy from the bottom upwards, which captures a network’s connectivity to local environment. From this knowledge, we can attack not only the nodes and linkages within the enemy’s network, but also the network’s linkages to locality. Technology and data have vital roles to play in this process, but they cannot deliver the needed insights by themselves. This will require contextual inputs and structural direction from a cadre of highly skilled front-line personnel who can leverage technology as a force multiplier of human expertise. Elements of this capability will be tech-centric, as we continue to reap the extraordinary tactical advantages provided by technological innovation. Yet our work must be executed with an ethnographer’s ear for meaning, and a historian’s eye for context and situated in an organizational culture where the collectors, producers, and consumers of intelligence possess a shared understanding of the limitations of quantitative data.