INTRODUCTION Structured responses to the limited capacity of both organisations and individuals to deal with ambiguity that is inherent to intelligence analysis are necessary to strengthen the ‘chains of inference’ or maximise the rigor of judgements. This essay will focus on overcoming cognitive and to a lesser extent, personal and organisational bias and limitations. Organisational issues that affect the quality of analysis such as analyst training are outside the scope of this short essay. Moreover, many of the high profile intelligence failures are attributable less to organisational obstacles than political or psychological barriers , . The human mind is necessarily vulnerable to cognitive bias in order to distil complexity for …show more content…
Internal organisational pressures for expediency and decisiveness can lead to haste and its attendant problems , . CONCLUDING SENTENCE LEADING INTO NEXT PARAGRAPH ABOUT SPECIFIC PROBLEMS “It is the history of every great warning crisis that the post-mortems have turned up numerous relevant facts or pieces of information which were available but which, for one reason or another, were not considered in making assessments at the time” . The reasons for missing critical information in forming accurate judgements include cognitive and institutional bias. ‘Groupthink’ paralyses synthesis by imposing accepted mindsets on the organisation. ‘Mindlessness’ refers to the routine approach analysts may take with each issue that can result in absorbing new information into rigid mind-sets rather than challenging long-held assumptions . Resistance to alter mindsets increases with the length of time the mindset has been held and requires greater amounts of less ambiguous information to change than to form in the first place , . Moreover, individuals perceive the expected . Perception issues and a lack of ability to see issues from alternate perspectives is at the heart of ‘mirror imaging’ where an analyst projects their own mindset on the adversary’s situation . Likewise for ‘clientism’, a problem for analysts who are so familiar with their subject, they lose the ability to evaluate the topic critically . These are among the many biases that may affect individual
IPL has little universal consensus of its definition. To fully and comprehensively define IPL there are some considerations to account for as well as an understanding of its history. The core component of IPL is ‘intelligence and Warner claims ‘intelligence’ definitions are deficient because they often do not consider the interchangeability of intelligence within the field, it is used because ‘intelligence’ not only covers what intelligence personnel do but also the product of their work. ‘Intelligence’ and
From the analysis, the crisis arose from a series of biased or irrational individual and organizational behaviors. To avoid the catastrophic effect, each individual and organization must change their behaviors.
) The “Tradecraft Primer,” lays out three primary intelligence analysis techniques. They are, “[1] diagnostic techniques are primarily aimed at making analytic arguments, assumptions, or intelligence gaps more transparent; [2] contrarian techniques explicitly challenge current thinking; and [3] imaginative thinking techniques aim at developing new insights, different perspectives and/or develop alternative outcomes.”
Information – business intelligence – is no longer the exclusive domain of IT or research departments. From marketing and finance to management and operations, intelligence is applied strategically throughout the enterprise. And professionals who know how to gather and leverage it are the ones who will lead organizations, control decisions, and be relied upon to steer their companies.
In organizational decision making, many individuals should be involved in order to ensure that everyone involved or touched by organizational activities in one way or another is not affected negatively by the decisions made and arrived at by decision makers. Consulting widely before making a decision enables decision makers in the organization make all-round and informed decisions, and decisions that satisfy anyone who is in any way connected to the organization (Donna, 2012). In an organization, clients are the ones who are served by the organization. The
The challenge to an intelligence analyst, as mentioned by Dougherty and Pfaltzgraff, is the lack of experimental, independent testing within a controlled environment. That does not necessarily mean that the intelligence analysis process lacks a formal process or is absent scientific methodologies. Based on Knight (2010), intelligence research identifies patterns through observation so that an analyst can develop a hypothesis to predict future events the very premise of the scientific method. However, the IC has acknowledged a scientific gap and has been migrating towards a more ?coherent scientific discipline? based on the need to improve performance of intelligence analysis (Johnston, ). Furthermore, intelligence analysts are provided with scientific methodologies at their disposal that they can use to strengthen their estimates. In the analyst?s toolkit there are a variety of techniques that can be used to strengthen processes and conform to more valid scientific methods. Heuer (1999), the author of Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH), use ACH as an eight-step procedure using basic insights from cognitive psychology, decision analysis, and the scientific method. According to Bruce, ACH attempts to eliminate cognitive bias and provide other explanations with possible outcomes through testing hypotheses in an attempt to refute or ?disconfirm? them (Bruce, 2008, p. 175). After all, the challenge to inductive inference is not in supporting a study?s conclusions, but refuting them through scientific means. Heuer?s ACH methodology attempts to reconcile this weakness and has become a recognized advancement towards this goal. In Bruce?s essay (2008), he acknowledges that had the 2002 Iraq NIE utilized this methodology, the estimate?s weighty findings should have exposed the
According to Robert Jervis, “Policymakers say they need and want good intelligence. They do need it, but often they do not like it, and are prone to believe that when intelligence is not out to get them, it is incompetent.” In order for intelligence to be
Introduction: Throughout the intelligence cycle there are five different phases of gathering information and making decisions on your analysis. The intelligence cycle contains 5 different phases that being planning, collection, processing exploitation, analysis, and dissemination. In the intelligence cycle we dive deep into articles pulling out every viable piece of information that may be useful in a case and do whatever it takes to get that information “no matter how it is obtained”. In the analysis of the intelligence cycle there are many different procedures that agencies follow for gathering information.
The United States Intelligence community draws on advanced technology and analytical techniques. An intelligence process that sets objectives, collects, analyzes, and report findings, with feedback loops integrated throughout. Explicitly, the intelligence community advantages technology and tradecraft within a proscribed process. However, estimation of threats and decision-making are outcomes of human thinking. Analysts and policymakers create mental models, or short cuts to manage complex, changing environments. In other words, to make sense of ambiguous or uncertain situations, humans form cognitive biases. Informed because of personal experience, education, and specifically applied to intelligence analysis, Davis
In most cases these INTs community compete among each other to provide needed intelligence information to policy makers to justify their budgetary allocations (Lowenthal, 2014). However, intelligence collection can be divided into five main categories referred to as “intelligence collection disciplines” or the “INTs”. These include Human Intelligence (HUMINT), Signals Intelligence
What kind of tribe is the Eneon? We do not have much information about this tribe as the anthropologists had just found out their existence. We only have limited information we received from the anthropologists. The information are based on the environment and climate they live in, the food they eat, their family and children, books and arts and their social aspect and attitudes toward war that the Eneon tribe are live in.
A second large explosion occurred on November 24thand all hope was lost that anybody remained alive. “Based on the expert evidence that I’ve been
According to Mike Collier, the approaches analysts can use to reduce cognitive and perceptual biases are found in the two books of former CIA analysts, Morgan Jones and Richards Heuer. Collier points out that although these books were out prior to the 9/11 terror attacks, very little people if any took head to their study and findings. Prior to these events, there was such a dependency on the unaided judgment concept, which are influenced by data that is directly related to the findings. This inductive approach to reasoning is heavily based on analysis of the evidence available, the historical routine, reasoning through similarities, case-study, and the analyst’s critical thinking skills. Collier identifies several problems with this approach.
Authoritative epistemology occurs when an analyst relies on another person’s authority to make a judgement. Their “basis of knowledge resides in a reference to something more
The analysis is then given to consumers and policy makers, once it is checked by the analyst supervisor and peers. The analyst should also be ready to give a briefing on short notice. But both the analyst and the policy maker or consumer have to be aware of at all times, is that the intelligence field does not know everything. “On any given subject, the intelligence community faces what is in effect a field of rocks, and it lacks the resources to turn over every one to see what threats to national security may lurk underneath” (Pillar).