--- title: Intelligence in an Insecure World author: Ben type: quotes date: 2019-11-22T15:24:18+00:00 url: /quotes/intelligence-in-an-insecure-world/ categories: - Uncategorised --- > …intelligence is more art than science and, like art, is about nuance. Politicians distrust nuance. > Here, the relation between knowledge and power is like that of lamppost and drunk: to provide support not illumination. > Secrecy is one form of resistance: attempts to maintain personal privacy or business confidentiality are forms of resistance to the efforts of others to collect information. But if privacy fails then lying and deception are other forms of resistance. > Ironically, perhaps, our endeavours to understand security networks mirror those facing intelligence analysts when they map criminal or terrorist networks. > [Intelligence is] the mainly secret activities—targeting, collection, analysis, dissemination and action—intended to enhance security and/or maintain power relative to competitors by forewarning of threats and opportunities. Para-states – p 70 https://fas.org/irp/world/para/index.html SIGINT process – p 93 nsa.gov/sigint/index.cfm > We have already made the distinction between information and intelligence, identifying the former with material (documents, maps, photos, taped conversations, computer files) that may be donated, found or collected and hte latter with what is produced after analysis—the process of evaluation of the information. > The very sophistication of the modern information gathering system…[produces the problem of overload. Intelligence systems may demand ever more data in the empirical illusion that more data will solve the mysteries and secrets—rather, they are likely to suffer the fate of the thirsty individual who tries to drink from a fire hose. > Kent’s classification of three main forms in which strategic intelligence was produced: basic descriptive, current reportorial and speculative-evaluative. > There is a time element to this: with strategic intelligence, time may not be so crucial and it will be easier to observe how intelligence affects policy, whether the latter is pursued overtly or covertly, or…how policy affects intelligence. But where time is of the essence the distinction may disappear: counterinsurgency doctrine talks of F3EA, Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, Analyse, in which Finish is not only aimed at the kill or capture of a target but also at seizing documents and computers (collection), as special forces seek to establish a continuous battle-rhythm for the intelligence/operations cycle. Thus intelligence is operations. > The drone programme has implications for our understanding of intelligence, and in particular represents a further challenge to the concept of the intelligence cycle. Within the drone programme, and within a broad remit, intelligence officers are taking decisions on action arising out of intelligence, and the time-frame within which this occurs is highly compressed. In the case of the Predator, individuals are _targeted_ and information is _collected_ by the officers remotely piloting the drone and watching the real-time footage it relays; the _analysis_ is undertaken immediately by the same people involved in the collection; and the _response_ (action) follows immediately from the analysis (to launch or not to launch a Hellcat missile with the intention to kill). There is no need for any wider _dissemination_. Analysis and action are so closely linked in this case as to be inseperable. > …it is clear from both the regularity and costs of intelligence failures, includign at the ethical level, that intelligence is too important to be left to the spooks. > …one of several paradoxes of intelligence is that the more collection problems are solved, the worse analytical problems become.