Intelligence reform: The logic of information sharing

Abstract

A cornerstone of US intelligence reform is ‘information sharing’ as a means of adapting to contemporary security challenges. It was a central recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, reflected in the wide-ranging ‘Information Sharing Environment’ mandated by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. Yet the underlying logic of information sharing for intelligence reform has received little attention. Drawing on information and communications theory, this paper critiques the logic by highlighting problems of sense-making and interpretation overlooked amid the scholarly enthusiasm for an intelligence ‘culture of sharing’. With their impersonal, technical, and highly bureaucratic approach, today's reforms may favor the flow of information and its sheer volume at the expense of the context and analytic tradecraft that render it meaningful, actionable intelligence. For effective information sharing, the paper suggests reformers pay more attention to the socio-technical environment of analysis when interpreting ambiguous, uncertain information.

Notes

1 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States: Official Government Edition (Washington, DC: U.S. G.P.O. 2004) p.87.

2 Ibid. p.399.

3 For these excerpts, see information sharing recommendations in ibid. pp.416–19.

4 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, Title I, § 1016(a)–(f).

5 Ibid (d)(3).

6 See, for example, the following two edited volumes of scholarly reactions to the reforms: Jennifer E. Sims and Burton Gerber (eds.) Transforming U.S. Intelligence (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press 2005) and Peter Berkowitz (Ed.), The Future of American Intelligence (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press 2005). Judge Richard Posner has also criticized the Commission's embrace of greater centralization in Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11 (Stanford, CA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2005).

7 See, for example, Gregory Treverton, ‘Reshaping Intelligence to Share with “Ourselves”’, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Commentary, No.82, 16 July 2003; and Michael Herman, ‘Counter-Terrorism, Information Technology and Intelligence Change’, Intelligence and National Security 18/4 (2003) pp.41–58.

8 See the Markle Foundation Task Force reports, Creating a Trusted Information Network for Homeland Security (New York, NY: Markle Foundation, 2003) and Protecting America's Freedom in the Information Age (New York, NY: Markle Foundation, 2002).

9 Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1962).

10 See Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor and Loch Johnson, Secret Agencies: U.S. Intelligence in a Hostile World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1996).

11 See Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2003) p.249; Abram Schulsky and Gary Schmitt, Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence (Dulles: Brassey's, Inc. 2002) pp.162–4; and Wilmoore Kendall, ‘The Function of Intelligence’, World Politics 1 (1949) pp.549–50.

12 Sherman Kent, Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1949) p.39. Because of his considerable influence over how intelligence was conceptualized in these early years, Kent is considered one of the US intelligence community's intellectual ‘founding fathers’. His key role is reflected in the CIA's official training body for analysts, the Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis. A veteran of the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA, and history professor at Yale University, Kent promoted a conceptual framework for intelligence that has remained a powerful and far-reaching, if not unchallenged, authority on the subject.

13 Ibid. p.13.

14 Ibid. p.17.

15 Ibid. p.14.

16 For this comment and those that follow, see Wilmoore Kendall, ‘The Function of Intelligence’, World Politics 1 (1949) pp.549–50.

17 Bruce Berkowitz and Allan Goodman, Best Truth: Intelligence in the Information Age (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2000) p.x.

18 Ibid. pp.82, 63.

19 Gregory Treverton, Reshaping Intelligence for an Age of Information (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001) p.17.

20 John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt (eds.) Networks and Netwars (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 2001).

21 Robert Steele, On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (Oakton, VA: OSS International Press 2001).

22 See Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age reports (note 8).

23 9/11 Commission Report, p.91.

24 Ibid. p.80.

25 Ibid. p.417.

26 Michael Reddy, ‘The Conduit Metaphor: A Case of Frame Conflict in our Language about Language’ in Andrew Ortony (ed.) Metaphor and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993) p.164.

27 See Warren Weaver, ‘Some Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Communication’ in Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, Mathematical Theory of Communication (Urbana: University of Illinois Press 1964) p.16.

28 While concepts such as the subjective interpreter and role of context are emphasized in various traditions, Reddy's contribution was to show how embedded the conduit metaphor is in our language and thinking, and warn of its influence over the design and management of information and communications technologies.

29 Markle Foundation Task Force, Creating a Trusted Information Network, p.24. The report rightly highlights the difficulties in making sense of vast amounts of information. Unlike the Commission, it anticipates that broader information sharing could overwhelm analysts, and recommends some technical tools to assist them in this respect.

30 Of course, there is a tension between the need for multiple and competing centers of analysis to generate diverse interpretations of ambiguous intelligence – requiring broader information sharing – and analysis positioned close to collection so the information analyzed is contextualized and meaningful. However, requiring the immediate distribution of information in its ‘most shareable’ form, likely to be decontextualized and hard to grasp, into a vast network of untested users will probably not enhance analysis at any of these centers.

31 For these excerpts from the report, see information sharing recommendations in 9/11 Commission Report, pp.416–19.

32 Ibid. p.272.

33 Ibid. pp.269–73, 355.

34 Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor, p.226.

35 Ibid. p.131.

36 Geoffrey Nunberg, ‘Farewell to the Information Age’ in Geoffrey Nunberg (ed.) The Future of the Book (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1996).

37 Ibid. p.107.

38 John Perry Barlow, ‘The Economy of Ideas’, Wired Magazine 2.03 (1994).

39 Nunberg, ‘Farewell to the Information Age’, p.107.

40 Ibid. p.113.

41 9/11 Commission Report, p.416.

42 Kendall, ‘The Function of Intelligence’, p.549.

43 There is a large literature devoted to these problems and socio-technical solutions in the fields of information retrieval and human-computer interaction. See, for example, F.W. Furnas, T.K. Landauer, L.M. Gomez and S.T. Dumais, ‘The Vocabulary Problem in Human-System Communication’, Communications of the ACM 30 (1987) p.964.

44 9/11 Commission Report, p.344.

45 United States Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report to the President of the United States: Official Government Edition (Washington, DC: U.S. G.P.O. 2005).

46 Richard J. Heuer, Jr., ‘Do You Really Need More Information?’, Studies in Intelligence 23/1 (1979) pp.15–25.

47 Robert Jervis has also emphasized this approach to alleviate problems of misperception in making political decisions, in ‘Hypotheses on Misperception’, World Politics 20/3 (1968) pp.454–79. And Karl Popper, of course, is well known for his emphasis on proof by falsification in empirical work, ruling out false hypotheses rather than attempting to prove the truth of any one hypothesis.

48 See 9/11 Commission Report, p.419.

49 Berkowitz and Goodman, Best Truth, pp.74, 82.

50 Markle Foundation Task Force, Creating a Trusted Information Network, p.15.

51 See, for example, John Sealy Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press 2000) and Richard K. Lester and Michael J. Piore, Innovation: The Missing Dimension (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2004).

52 In addition to the references in note 51, see Marcie J. Tyre and Eric von Hippel, ‘The Situated Nature of Adaptive Learning in Organizations’, Organization Science 8/1 (1997) pp.71–83; Daniel Beunza and David Stark, ‘Tools of the Trade: The Socio-technology of Arbitrage in a Wall Street Trading Room’, Industrial and Corporate Change 13/2 (2004) pp.369–400; and AnnaLee Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1994).

53 9/11 Commission Report, p.344.

54 Beunza and Stark, ‘Tools of the trade: the socio-technology of arbitrage in a Wall Street trading room.’

55 Gene I. Rochlin, Todd R. La Porte and Karlene H. Roberts, ‘The Self-Designing High-Reliability Organization: Aircraft Carrier Flight Operations at Sea’, Naval War College Review 40/4 (1998) pp.76–91.

56 See 9/11 Commission Report, pp.266–72.

57 The search was, however, labeled ‘routine’ and proceeded very slowly. Although the Commission indicates that the FBI analyst ‘Mary’, working with the CIA, understood the significance of this information (p.270), it also indicates that the FBI as a whole did not and ‘and thus did not take adequate action’ (p.356).

58 See, for example, Kevin M. O'Connell, ‘The Role of Science and Technology in Transforming American Intelligence’ in Peter Berkowitz (ed.) The Future of American Intelligence (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press 2005) pp.139–74; and James R. Gosler, ‘The Digital Dimension’ in Jennifer E. Sims and Burton Gerber (eds.) Transforming U.S. Intelligence (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press 2005) pp.96–114; Alan Dupont, ‘Intelligence for the Twenty-First Century’, Intelligence and National Security 18/4 (2003) pp.15–39; and the Markle Foundation Task Force reports.

59 Kent, Strategic Intelligence, p.184.

60 9/11 Commission Report, p.417.

61 Ibid. p.399.

62 Mark Mazzetti, ‘CIA Closes Unit Focused on Capture of Bin Laden’, New York Times, 4 July 2006.

63 On the uncertainty over how much hierarchical control Al Qaeda's remaining leadership is able to exercise – operationally, logistically, and ideologically – see Kenneth Katzman, ‘Al Qaeda: Profile and Threat Assessment’, CRS Report for Congress (2005); Randy Borum and Michael Gelles, ‘Al-Qaeda's Operational Evolution: Behavioral and Organizational Perspectives’, Behavioral Sciences and the Law 23 (2005), pp.467–83; and Daniel L. Byman, ‘Al-Qaeda as an Adversary: Do We Understand Our Enemy?’, World Politics 56 (2003), pp.139–63.

64 Michael Scheuer, ‘The New York Plot: The Impact of Bin Laden's Campaign to Inspire Jihad’, Terrorism Focus 3/28 (2006) pp.6–7.

65 See, for example, Calvert Jones, ‘Al Qaeda's Innovative Improvisers: Learning in a Diffuse Transnational Network’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 19/4 (2006) pp.555–69, for more discussion of this image and the assumptions underlying it, in particular regarding the supposed agility and flexibility of networked non-state threats in comparison to states.