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Discussion question:
It’s a slow night in Lowell, you are hanging out at the Starbucks on campus and run into a few of your classmates. You all get to talk about your current studies. The conversation turns to intelligence, and you start talking about the intelligence cycle. A student who is not in this class asks you, “What phase of the intelligence cycle is the most important, and what phase is the least important according to your opinion?” Later in the conversation, another student friend asks you, “Also, do you think other phases need to be added to the intelligence cycle?”
Use the information below to answer the above discussion question:
• Chapter 4 Lowenthal
• Chapters 3 & 8 Clark
• Parts I & VII Krizan
• Week 4 Lecture Notes and review the websites embedded in it.
• Chapter 2 Hendrix
Lowenthal, Mark. 2020. Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy (9 th Ed.). Washington DC: CQ Press. • Hendrix, M. Patrick, and Major, James S. 2023. Communicating with Intelligence; Writing and Briefing for National Security (3rd Ed.). New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield. • Clark, Robert M. 2020. Intelligence Analysis; A Target-Centric Approach (7 th Ed.). Washington DC: CQ Press. • Krizan, Lisa. 1999. Intelligence Essentials for Everyone. Washington DC: Defense Intelligence College. (provided on course website)
This week we shall examine the intelligence cycle—an intelligence process. Remember always to use Lowenthal’s models to discern what type of intelligence you are dealing with: 1. An intelligence organization 2. An intelligence process 3. An intelligence product One way to remember these is that an intelligence organization deploys an intelligence process to create an intelligence product. So, what is the predominant intelligence process used globally? It is a process referred by most as the intelligence cycle. Intelligence Cycle–Not a Rigid Definition Here we go again. There is no standard federal or industry definition of the intelligence cycle. Lowenthal (Chapter 4) sets his concept of the cycle as: • Identifying Requirements • Collection of Information • Processing & Exploitation • Analysis & Production • Dissemination • Consumption • Feedback Krizan (Part 1) describes the process as a: “…cyclical process, a series of repeated and interrelated steps that add value to original inputs and create a substantially transformed product.” As you can see in Figure 4-1 below, most of the phases of the intelligence cycle are interdependent and through evaluation of all phases, feedback can be provided during most if not all phases.” 2 For the purposes of this class, the intelligence cycle will be considered to be the following six steps: • Planning & Direction (Requirements Development) • Collection • Processing & Exploitation • Analysis & Production • Dissemination • Consumption & Feedback Of note, since I have been working in the intelligence field, the phase(s) of consumption and feedback are new. In the late 1990s, there was a growing movement in all parts of the federal government to gather feedback from customers. This caused intelligence agencies, for the most part, to systematically collect feedback on their efforts in an attempt to improve service and products. Figure 4-1. DOD Intelligence Cycle. The ODNI describes its version of the cycle in this way (US National Intelligence Community: An Overview 2011, ODNI—See the optional reading material in this week’s folder for a copy.): ”The intelligence cycle is the process of developing raw information into finished intelligence for use by policy makers, military commanders and 3 other consumers in decision-making. This six-step cyclical process is highly dynamic, continuous, and never-ending. The sixth step, evaluation (which includes soliciting feedback from users) is conducted for each of the other five steps individually and for the cycle as a whole.” Sounds much like Krizan’s definition, doesn’t it? Let’s take a look at each phase: • Planning & Direction (Requirements): This is a crucial phase as consumers state their needs (requirements), and in turn the intelligence community plans and directs use of its resources to meet those needs. Intelligence requirements in the military are also known as “essential elements of information” (EEIs). The term “key intelligence questions” (KIQs) can also be used as well. We will look a bit deeper at EEIs next week when we learn about the intelligence consumer. • Collection: If the IC lacks the necessary information to analyze to satisfy a consumer’s requirements, then it will determine how to collect more information to feed into the intelligence cycle. One intelligence collection discipline or a set of them (depending on the challenges of collecting against a target) will be applied against the intelligence “gap.” Collection disciplines or “ints” are grouped into five major types: o HUMINT (human intelligence) o IMINT/GEOINT (imagery or geographic intelligence) o SIGINT (signals intelligence) o OSINT (open source intelligence) o MASINT (measurements & signatures intelligence) We will delve deeper into the collection disciplines during Week Six. • Processing & Exploitation: Much of the information gathered during the collection phase is considered to be “raw, unevaluated information” that requires processing (translation, decryption/decoding, databasing, etc.) before analysis can start. Over the past 20 years, the advances in information technology have radically decreased the time needed for processing. But still much collected information goes unprocessed or unexploited. It will be interesting to see how the IC harnesses the potential of artificial intelligence and machine learning to reduce the amount of unprocessed data over the next few years. • Analysis & Production: Once the collected information is put into a format available, or more important, useful for analysis, then the analysis and production phase will start. This phase’s goal is to produce finished intelligence to support policy and decision-makers and other consumers. 4 Analysis requires the integration of data and placing of evaluated information into proper context. Typically, this phase creates intelligence in one or more of the following categories (by use): o current intelligence; o estimative intelligence; o warning intelligence; o science & technical intelligence; o operational intelligence; and o research intelligence. A deeper exploration of these types of intelligence products will be conducted during Week Seven. 1 • Dissemination: Another key phase in which the intelligence product is delivered to consumers in any format they request (oral briefing, written assessment, database, annotated imagery, GIS, etc.). There are multiple channels for intelligence to disseminated and will be further discussed during Week Five. • Consumption & Feedback: For intelligence to be useful, it needs to be consumed, and based upon that consumption, feedback on its utility can be formed and provided back to the producer. As you can imagine, receiving feedback from your consumer is vitally important in improving your performance. Unfortunately, you cannot force consumption of intelligence, if a customer does not use it, that decision is out of your hands. Intelligence Cycle—Not a Perfect Process Former Boston University professor and National Intelligence Officer (NIO) Art Hulnick stated, “It is not really a very good description of the ways in which the intelligence process works. Additionally, it ignores two main parts of the intelligence work, counterintelligence and covert action.” We’ll look into those two topics later in the class during weeks dedicated to each of them. 1 Warning—this is the first mention of “intelligence products.” Remember the Lowenthal model of PPO (process, product, organization). “In this ‘intelligence cycle,’ much can go wrong…” Loch Johnson 5 While the intelligence cycle is not a perfect process, you should understand how the phases work with each other and depend on each other for the entire process to be successful. And when it is not, the price can be very high (Iraqi WMD, 9/11, 1968 Tet Offensive, 1973 Yon Kippur War, Pearl Harbor intelligence failures, etc.). Like many other process models, it provides you a starting point in which to examine the intelligence process. Intelligence Cycle in the Business World The Strategic and Competitive Professionals (SCIP) states that there is a competitive intelligence cycle that contains five stages, including: • planning and direction, • published information collection, • primary source collection, • analysis and production, and • report and inform. Much like government intelligence, this model also proposes that feedback should be utilized to improve future intelligence planning and that intelligence requirements are generated by end user needs. Learn more about competitive or business intelligence here online
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