Intro

I'm stuck halway through a masters program in Intelligence Studies (spy, not IQ). Last year I shared some work that I had done. I'm not really sure where I left off, so I'm restarting to publish this work at the end of the first course. I'll start the next course from here.

I'm likely not to publish much more than this. I am sure you are all tired of hearing about my stupit arm

The elephant in the room

I doubt there is anybody left in the country that has any trust at all in the IC. I certainly dont, and that sometimes show up in my work. otoh, I;m not adding pics like the one here to my classwork.

I do think there is still value to you the reader here. Espionage is like informationwar or a gun. it is a tool to use when necessary. While the every day Hiver doesnt have a tax-filled bag of taxpayer money to support their own agency, there has been a lot of education that is valuable to me (and I think to you(. Pasrt that if you can explain where the IC has fallen from whee it should be, your arguments against it, or for its reform or foe its disbandment will carry more weight.

Anf on to the show

what do you believe the most critical future challenges within the next five years? Your recommended challenge can come from IC structure, focus, strategy or any other relevant topic. Remember the IC and its' national structure is an element of national power.

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I am going to limit my discussion to the two most important challenges in my opinion, for the are the challenges from which the other challenges can spring. We’ll be able to see that we take a short overview of the challenges the IC faces in the future. We can also see that these challenges are often interlaced with each other. The Aspen Institute video, Mission Accomplished, (2013) notes the problem of balancing privacy, security, budgeting, and effectiveness.

The two most important are politics and critical thinking (not to be confused with “critical studies”, which are the exact opposite of critical thinking), but there are a myriad of challenges to consider:

• The constant need to reform/re-organize the IC...perhaps we should rename the intelligence cycle to the “reformation cycle”. I think we can see how politics has affected this in our discussions in Weeks, 1,4,5, and 6.
• Related to politics are the cluster of theories regarding organizational failure through rent-seeking (growth complex/burrocratic politics/ “the iron law of burrocracy”); when organizations seek to advance the organization instead of advancing the mission they were created to achieve.
• The prior two challenges are linked to issues of legislative oversight.
• Media coverage is definitely related to politics, and affects legislative oversight. This is due to a problem that Ormad (2012) raises, that “spying” as a business has a bad public image in the first place.
• The danger of abuse in domestic security will always be a prime example of a challenge in balancing several threats. Go too far and you violate the Constitution, or attempt a coup...go too little and get another 9/11. This is an inherently political problem.
• Privatization of the IC is a major challenge. Looked at cynically, this is a problem caused by politics, or in it’s best light, a failure of critical thinking in foreseeing the consequences of heavy reliance on private contractors.
• Fallibility of the analytic process (Hammond, 2010); this is a critical thinking issue that can often be associated with cognitive bias. Agrell (2012) quotes Andrew, “there has been a widespread assumption that the experience of all previous generations is irrelevant to present policy. Institutions, like individuals, however, diminish their effectiveness if they fail to reflect on past successes and failures.”
• Specifically speaking, the “Black Swan” phenomena is based on a limitation of threat analysis to “conventional” threats, or those threats that have already caused damage, as opposed to the idea of understanding all potential threats.
• Technology is going to impact the future of how the IC operates. Warner (2012) notes that “technology’s impact on intelligence has been incompletely examined.” However, Agrell (2012) argues that technology has been misused as a “universal solution”. I would argue that this is a case of a failure in critical thinking in how we view our IC organization and management.
• Studies of the intelligence field will identify, create, and (possibly) resolve challenges in the future. Warner (2102) discusses the potential here, but as we discussed in Week 2, there is the potential for fundamentally bad theory such as postmodern “thought” to be included in the design of operations or organization. This can be looked at the result of heavy leftist influence in academia (“critical” studies, tc.), and can also seen as both an example of politics and the failure of critical thinking.
• The ever present threat of insider leaks is a challenge to consider as well.

References:
Agrell, W. (2012). The Next 100 Years? Reflections on the Future of Intelligence. Intelligence and National Security, 27(1), 118–132. https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2012.621601

Hammond, T. H. (2010). Intelligence Organizations and the Organization of Intelligence. International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 23(4), 680–724. https://doi.org/10.1080/08850601003780987

Mission Accomplished? Has the Intelligence Community Connected All the Dots? (2013). Retrieved from

Omand, S. D. (2012). Into the Future: A Comment on Agrell and Warner. Intelligence and National Security, 27(1), 154–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2012.621610

Warner, M. (2012). Reflections on Technology and Intelligence Systems. Intelligence and National Security, 27(1), 133–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2012.621604

WEEK 8: Future Challenges within the IC - Lesson Overview.(n.d.). Retrieved November 27, 2019, from https://edge.apus.edu

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I agree that DNI should have full budgetary control over the IC...with the exception of the DOD components.
Information gathered through DOD agencies should always be processed up to ODNI,and all information that does not compromise means and sources should be passed onto the DOD components; and of course, that intel can be shared when it becomes a matter of threat for the DOD's area of responsibility.
This goes beyond Title 10/Title 50 considerations, however. The military has a significantly different mission and toolset than the other agencies.
On the other hand, the State Department's INR should be rolled into the ODNI as a liaison service to coordinate State's needs and collection efforts with the IC.
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You chose a great subject to discuss. Considering China's use of soft power (including the funding of influence centers on a number of American college campuses), it's informationwar capabilities, and it's likely compromise of American politicians, the challenge the IC faces in dealing with the Chinese threat is huge.
And there is a certain point where informationwar melds with cyber operations. Instead of looking at each mode of warfare separately, we should look at them as points on a continuum, from conventional war (and nuclear/WMD at the extreme) to the use of soft power at the other end. The middle of the continuum contains a large expanse of covert/clandestine activity, including cyber operations.

"emerging challenges and enduring challenges "
That is a good way to look at threats; hopefully the use of that model could mitigate some of the "Black Swan" events from coming as such a surprise. It is impossible to prevent some of those events from occurring, but knowing about the threat in advance could improve the reaction to those events.
And as far as coming off unnaturely, it is common for many people dealing with online communication to feel that way. We are missing a lot of nonverbal communication through this process, which tends to make us feel there is something "off".
On the bright side, I have read two different studies that argue this mode of grad school discussion is superior to traditional means. I agree with that, and would say that writing is the basis of all other communication skills.