Just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, an extremely high level U.S. officer spoke off the record to a Triangle audience about U.S. invasion planning. While much of his talk now seems quite dated (remember "shock and awe"?), one of his remarks spoke to a major problem now facing U.S. intelligence agencies. Outlining his ideal intelligence reporting system, this officer suggested that the websites for on-line investors or the heads-up displays on U.S. fighter planes were good models for how intelligence ought to be passed from its producers to its consumers. In both cases consumers select which information to consider and analyze, and rely little on expert judgments.
The consequences of this way of consuming intelligence for the way it is produced have been revealed by a report issued by the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence. "Analytic Culture in the U.S. Intelligence Community" is a study of the work of civilian and military intelligence analysts in the post-9/11 world, based on documentary research, participant observation, focus groups, and 345 interviews of analysts. Its findings suggest that this officer's views are now widespread among high-level intelligence consumers, and that they are having a substantial impact on the daily work of analysts. Analysts report that they are spending more of their time functioning merely as reporters. Experienced respondents commonly reported significant declines in the proportion of their workday devoted to considering the meaning of information or setting events in context. Most analysts regardless of rank reported considerable pressure to report material that would be suitable for inclusion in the President's Daily Brief, and noted that their own career success was tied to doing so.
The problem with this is that the Brief and intelligence reports like it are by their nature unlikely to expose their readers to assessments of the larger meaning of events. They seldom highlight patterns in events, or discuss events that are not spectacular enough to make it into the Brief, but that accumulate to yield major shifts in world politics. The Brief and similar reports are described by one analyst as "USA Today with spies - bullet points, short paragraphs, the occasional picture. You know, short and simple." Another described the analysts' current work environment as "like working at CNN, only we're CNN with secrets. Actually, it's more like Headline News." Such viewpoints are common among analysts.
The effects of demands from consumers for Intelligence Lite are magnified by changes in the production of intelligence. One does not have to be an intelligence professional to know that the volume of information about economic, political, or military events is enormous and continues to grow. Computers can screen and sort information that is machine-readable, but clearly much of it is not. Analysts who report being asked to cope with this flood of information also say that they are relying less and less on various analytic techniques and more and more on their own subjective judgments. They often report not having the time to learn how to cope with the material in any other way, or to investigate how well other methods of analyzing the data would work. By their own accounts, most of the training that they receive is on-the-job, and most of that focuses on relatively narrow technical or operational questions. Some report receiving no training at all.
To its credit, the report presents some good ideas for addressing the problems on the supply side -- through strengthening what the report terms the "infrastructure" of research and analysis, making the evaluation of analysis much more systematic, and institutionalizing a process of learning from mistakes. Unfortunately, the intelligence agencies can do little about the demand side. They are in no position to teach their consumers that they should be asking for a different kind of intelligence product. That will only come about when voters elect leaders who have an interest in analysis that goes beyond short term tactical considerations, and who are willing to listen to points of view that they might not like to hear.