Intelligence Analysis And Policy Making

Canada is a key member of the world's most important international intelligence-sharing partnership, the Five Eyes, along with the US, the UK, New Zealand, and Australia. Until now, few scholars have looked beyond the US to study how effectively intelligence analysts support policy makers, who rely on timely, forward-thinking insights to shape high-level foreign, national security, and defense policy. Intelligence Analysis and Policy Making provides the first in-depth look at the relationship between intelligence and policy in Canada. Thomas Juneau and Stephanie Carvin, both former analysts in the Canadian national security sector, conducted seventy in-depth interviews with serving and retired policy and intelligence practitioners, at a time when Canada's intelligence community underwent sweeping institutional changes. Juneau and Carvin provide critical recommendations for improving intelligence performance in supporting policy—with implications for other countries that, like Canada, are not superpowers but small or mid-sized countries in need of intelligence that supports their unique interests.

The enormous spread of devices gives access to virtual networks and to cyberspace areas where continuous flows of data and information are exchanged, increasing the risk of information warfare, cyber-espionage, cybercrime, and identity hacking. The number of individuals and companies that suffer data breaches has increased vertically with serious reputational and economic damage internationally. Thus, the protection of personal data and intellectual property has become a priority for many governments. Political Decision-Making and Security Intelligence: Recent Techniques and Technological Developments is an essential scholarly publication that aims to explore perspectives and approaches to intelligence analysis and performance and combines theoretical underpinnings with practical relevance in order to sensitize insights into training activities to manage uncertainty and risks in the decision-making process. Featuring a range of topics such as crisis management, policy making, and risk analysis, this book is ideal for managers, analysts, politicians, IT specialists, data scientists, policymakers, government officials, researchers, academicians, professionals, and security experts.

This book examines intelligence analysis in the digital age and demonstrates how intelligence has entered a new era. While intelligence is an ancient activity, the digital age is a relatively new phenomenon. This volume uses the concept of the "digital age" to highlight the increased change, complexity, and pace of information that is now circulated, as new technology has reduced the time it takes to spread news to almost nothing. These factors mean that decision-makers face an increasingly challenging threat environment, which in turn increases the demand for timely, relevant, and reliable intelligence to support policymaking. In this context, the book demonstrates that intelligence places greater demands on analysis work, as the traditional intelligence cycle is no longer adequate as a process description. In the digital age, it is not enough to accumulate as much information as possible to gain a better understanding of the world. To meet customers’ needs, the intelligence process must be centred around the analysis work – which in turn has increased the demand for analysts. Assessments, not least predictions, are now just as important as revealing someone else’s secrets. This volume will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, security studies, and international relations.

The U.S. intelligence community (IC) is a complex human enterprise whose success depends on how well the people in it perform their work. Although often aided by sophisticated technologies, these people ultimately rely on their own intellect to identify, synthesize, and communicate the information on which the nation's security depends. The IC's success depends on having trained, motivated, and thoughtful people working within organizations able to understand, value, and coordinate their capabilities. Intelligence Analysis provides up-to-date scientific guidance for the intelligence community (IC) so that it might improve individual and group judgments, communication between analysts, and analytic processes. The papers in this volume provide the detailed evidentiary base for the National Research Council's report, Intelligence Analysis for Tomorrow: Advances from the Behavioral and Social Sciences. The opening chapter focuses on the structure, missions, operations, and characteristics of the IC while the following 12 papers provide in-depth reviews of key topics in three areas: analytic methods, analysts, and organizations. Informed by the IC's unique missions and constraints, each paper documents the latest advancements of the relevant science and is a stand-alone resource for the IC's leadership and workforce. The collection allows readers to focus on one area of interest (analytic methods, analysts, or organizations) or even one particular aspect of a category. As a collection, the volume provides a broad perspective of the issues involved in making difficult decisions, which is at the heart of intelligence analysis.

In their Second Edition of Cases in Intelligence Analysis: Structured Analytic Techniques in Action, accomplished instructors and intelligence practitioners Sarah Miller Beebe and Randolph H. Pherson offer robust, class-tested cases studies of events in foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, terrorism, homeland security, law enforcement, and decision-making support. Designed to give analysts-in-training an opportunity to apply structured analytic techniques and tackle real-life problems, each turnkey case delivers a captivating narrative, discussion questions, recommended readings, and a series of engaging analytic exercises.

These essays cover: assessment systems now in place in Britain, the USA, Germany and Australia; the bureaucratic dynamics of analysis and assessment; the changing ground in intelligence; and the impact of new technologies and modes of communication on intelligence gathering and analysis.

"Drawing on the unusually extensive official documentation that has emerged through multiple inquiries on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as insider accounts of CIA deliberations, the contributors to this volume offer careful and insightful analyses of the national security decision-making process, the foreign policy roles of the President and Prime Minister, the roles of Congress and Parliament, the management and limits of intelligence, the shaping of public opinion, and the ethics of humanitarian military intervention. The book also discusses the dilemmas faced by Australia, a junior ally in the War on Terror, and their implications for Australian intelligence."--BOOK JACKET.

This book describes what Intelligence Community (IC) analysts do, how they do it, and how they are affected by the political context that shapes, uses, and sometimes abuses their output. It is written by a 25-year intelligence professional.