Information Age Intelligence

[jya@pipeline.com (John Young)]

   Foreign Policy, Summer 1996: 
 
   "Information Age Intelligence." by Bruce D. Berkowitz, 
   a former CIA analyst and staff member for the Senate 
   Intelllgence Committee. Excerpts of 14-page essay: 
 
      During most of this century, the intelligence 
      community led the world in developing information 
      technology. Intelligence organizations were deeply 
      involved in the development of telegraph and 
      telephone networks, modern computers, and 
      space-based communications and surveillance 
      systems. The intelligence community also 
      established new forms of analysis and areas of 
      expertise. 
 
      Yet several signs suggest that the intelligence 
      community is no longer the leader in the 
      information world, and it may have fallen behind 
      significantly in some respects. The underlying 
      problem is that the intelligence community has 
      failed to keep up with changes in how modern 
      society uses information and how information 
      technology develops in modern society. As a 
      result, our model for intelligence is out-of-date. 
      This reality is what current efforts at 
      intelligence reform are failing to recognize. 
 
      The intelligence community needs to move as fast 
      as information businesses do to capture markets, 
      but the traditional organization is not up to the 
      task. Today's model for intelligence -- how it is 
      organized and how it operates -- is an artifact 
      from an earlier age. Even the name "Central 
      Intelligence Agency" is reminiscent of the New 
      Deal era, when large, powerful, national 
      bureaucracies were the accepted way of getting 
      things done efficiently. It makes less sense in a 
      world moving toward fluid, distributed, networked 
      information organizations. 
 
      As the capabilities of the private sector improve, 
      the intelligence community will need to move on to 
      the next frontier of technology or expertise that 
      the private sector has yet to fill. While one 
      challenge for intelligence reform is to keep up 
      with these changes, fundamentally the greater 
      challenge will be to establish an organization 
      that can adapt with the times. 
 
      One reason why the intelligence community cannot 
      deal effectively with the Information Revolution 
      is that intelligence requirements and the 
      intelligence community's comparative advantage are 
      both fluid, but the traditional intelligence 
      bureaucracy remains static. In addition, 
      organizations responsible for developing and 
      applying technology, such as the National 
      Reconnaissance Office (NRC)) and the National 
      Security Agency (NSA), have created organizational 
      dogma, and dogma always resist change. Once such 
      organizations carve out a place for themselves 
      (and their technologies) in the budget, they can 
      be difficult to dislodge. The fact that these 
      organizations often operate at a classified level 
      further insulates them. As a result, the 
      intelligence community often locks into specific 
      technologies, even when new and possibly better 
      ideas have come along. 
 
   http://pwp.usa.pipeline.com/~jya/fpintel.htm 
 
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