https://www.cia.gov/library/center-...1no2/the-state-of-strategic-intelligence.html
A long but very interesting read on the state of strategic intelligence. Please note that it links directly to the CIA's website, if that matters to you.
Some excerpts:
A long but very interesting read on the state of strategic intelligence. Please note that it links directly to the CIA's website, if that matters to you.
Some excerpts:
.as the security act's architects would have approved of a published national strategy, they would, I believe, be greatly surprised, perhaps even incensed, by today's neglect of strategic intelligence in the Intelligence Community. Strategic intelligence collection and analysis is a capability they took pains to preserve; we are perilously close to losing it. The reasons are complicated, but they deserve our examination and discussion in this anniversary year.
strategic intelligence is that intelligence necessary to create and implement a strategy, typically a grand strategy, what officialdom calls a national strategy. A strategy is not really a plan but the logic driving a plan.
At CIA in particular, General Michael Hayden told Congress last year that for every 10 CIA analysts with less than four years of experience, only one analyst has more than 10 years of experience. "This is the least experienced analytic workforce in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency," he said.10 One result, warned Carl W. Ford Jr., a former assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, is that "we haven't done strategic intelligence for so long that most of our analysts don't know how to do it anymore."
Another reason strategic intelligence "isn't done" is that among today's intelligence consumers, urgency is pushing tactical thinking. To stop terrorists, I need this specific piece of tactical intelligence--right now.Consequently, by default, those analytical topics that feel somehow too grand, or too distant in time and place to matter immediately, tend to get ignored