Intelligence Analysis: How to Think in Complex Environments (Praeger Security International)

458 Pages·2009·1.51 MB·English

by  Wayne Michael Hall

INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS
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INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS
HOW TO THINK IN COMPLEX ENVIRONMENTS
Wayne Michael Hall, Brigadier General (Retired), U.S. Army
and Gary Citrenbaum, Ph.D.
Foreword by Patrick M. Hughes, Lieutenant General (Retired), U.S. Army
An AUSA Book
PRAEGER SECURITY INTERNATIONAL
An Imprint of ABC-CLIO,LLC
Copyright © 2010 by Wayne Michael Hall
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion
of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from
the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hall, Wayne Michael.
Intelligence analysis : how to think in complex environments / Wayne Michael
Hall and Gary Citrenbaum ; foreword by Patrick M. Hughes.
p. cm. — (An AUSA book)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-313-38265-9 (alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-38266-6 (ebook)
1. Intelligence service—Methodology. I. Citrenbaum, Gary. II. Title.
JF1525.I6H347 2010
327.12—dc22 2009045757
14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5
This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook.
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This book is printed on acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
Copyright Acknowledgment
The authors and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission for use of the
following material:
Peter Paret, On War.© 1976 Princeton University Press, 2004 renewed PUP.
Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.
Contents
Foreword by Patrick M. Hughes, Lieutenant General (Retired),
U.S. Army vii
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
Part I: The Continuous War of Wits
1. The Operational Environment 9
2. The Problem 17
3. Solutions 29
4. Setting the Stage for Advanced Analysis 48
Part II: Advanced Analysis—In Detail
5. Decomposition 77
6. Critical Thinking 93
7. Link Analysis 121
8. Pattern Analysis 139
9. Trend Analysis 155
vi Contents
10. Anticipatory Analysis 167
11. Technical Analysis 186
12. Tendency Analysis 205
13. Anomaly Analysis 218
14. Cultural Analysis 235
15. Semiotics Analysis 255
16. Aggregation Analysis 277
17. Recomposition 299
18. Synthesis 314
19. Technology for Advanced Analysis 332
Part III: System of Thought
20. On a System of Thought 383
21. Closing Thoughts 406
Notes 415
Select Bibliography 427
Index 431
Foreword
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and
leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Brigadier General Wayne M. “Mike” Hall (U.S. Army, Retired) has fol-
lowed the literal and spiritual advice of Emerson; this book represents
breadcrumbs and footprints, broken branches and turned rocks, and spots
of blood along a newly blazed trail of intelligence knowledge. All you, dear
reader, have to do is follow the signs and discern the portents.
Those of us who have engaged in the function of “analysis”—working
to determine the nature and imminence of threats to our nation and to our
forces and capabilities that go in harm’s way—know that the quality of
thought and the application of sound reasoning applied to the complex and
dynamic conditions we encounter are the most important variables in the
work of describing, characterizing, anticipating, and forecasting what has
happened and will happen next. A quotation from an uncertain source
points up the challenge: “Forecasting is risky business, especially about the
future.” To paraphrase this thought: Training people to think in the crucible
of contemporary warfare and the alleyways of terrorism is very demanding
indeed, especially when the enemy does not cooperate.
Brigadier General (U.S. Army, retired) Wayne M. “Mike” Hall, the
principal author, and Dr. Gary Citrenbaum, his collaborator, have met this
challenge head on, through the noble endeavor of communicating
viii Foreword
knowledge borne of direct personal experience and vicarious study. Their
work is a template for analytic action and cognitive success. Their effort
provides a set of ideas and principles that any practitioner of analysis can
apply in their own way. It also provides room for both immutable standards
and freedom to conceive and imagine. In short, this is a handbook for
understanding that which might otherwise seem incomprehensible. You can
see and know the enemy through the intellectual and perceptive prism they
have provided.
After reading this epic work on “advanced analysis,” a deep and sweep-
ing look at the disciplines of observing, thinking, interpreting, describing,
and finding meaning and import—we can readily imagine the authors, each
tormented by contemporary challenges and shortcomings, spilling their best
thoughts and impressive experience onto the professional canvas of intelli-
gence analysis in the hope of enhancing (and perhaps fundamentally chang-
ing) the work that analysts perform.
This book is filled with glittering gems of insight, like the fact that
“links decay,” and the idea that “anticipation is the essential aspect of ini-
tiative.” One chapter is impressively titled “Solutions.” Another chapter on
“Critical Thinking” concludes with a most unusual admonition: “If done
correctly, critical thinking is a powerful force. But, to engage in critical
thinking fully, the intelligence analyst has to be humble and introspective.
They must also see and take on constructive criticism and improve their
cognitive performance.” This is very human work.
What Mike Hall has done is something many others have aspired to do,
but few have accomplished: he has set forth an impressive collection of
ideas and concepts, and the mechanical detail of how to undertake the
attendant functions—in a way that resembles the kind of enduring thought
and wisdom that is the stuff of “principles,” those dependable enduring
precepts that guide us through our endeavors.
These fungible “principles of analysis” may not be perfect, but they are
clearly better than anything else that currently exists in one accessible vol-
ume (or anywhere else for that matter). This is one of the important aspects
of Mike Hall’s effort. He has put the full scope of analysis in a single vol-
ume in a way that flows from beginning to end as an interconnected and
synergistic set of innovative methods, procedures, and concepts. This work
has no functional limit—it can be applied in part or in its entirety as a vital
source of direct information and motivational ideas. It can be used to do the
work—now and in the future—that analysts do, at any level: national,
strategic, operational, tactical, and individual.
His work is encyclopedic—and provides both gritty detail and broad
substance for the art and science that we call “analysis.” He provides a
framework for “critical thinking” that is brilliant. He deals with the idea of
“complexity”—a construct that contemporary conditions and circum-
stances compel us to come to grips with—in a realistic and utilitarian way.
Foreword ix
He discusses “analytic conditions” with rare candor and insight, and one
immediately understands that he has “been there and done that.”
He develops the elements of “risk management” and “uncertainty” in
the context of decision-making in a way that will clearly assist the inexpe-
rienced and the expert. He speaks intimately to analysts ... using the old
but well-proven dictum to “know your enemy.” He recognizes the fact that
a single human mind cannot possibly deal adequately with all the informa-
tion available now from our sensors, sources, and methods, advocating the
need for a “virtual knowledge environment,” to assist in the cognitive and
collaborative challenges of the modern complex operational environment.
One of the best aspects of this book is the presentation and explanation
of sometimes obscure, esoteric, and arcane terms—but terms every analyst
must know and come to use nonetheless. This book is a dictionary and a
lexicon, a thesaurus, a workbook, a glossary, and an intellectual map
through the wasteland of failed thought and vapid misperception. It pro-
vides a cognitive toolkit of words that reflect meaning and ideas, which
empower the reader to undertake insightful thought and deliberate reason,
using a common set of terms. Without something like this book, we are col-
lectively a tower of analytic Babel. With it we have something like a com-
bination of the Rosetta stone, the compass, the flashlight, and the
microscope, connected to the best minds (the analysts) to aid them in
achieving the singular goal of coherence.
To what purpose will the “advanced analysts” of the future put these
tools and this knowledge? This book is a learning (and teaching) journey—
a wormhole—into the future culture and context of “military intelligence,”
and it is fundamentally about providing the information necessary to defeat
the enemy. That’s the right focus, but it is important to note, as the book
does, that the “enemy” has changed and the application of intelligence,
including that derived from and by military intelligence capabilities, can
often be applied to other conditions and circumstances that threaten global
stability, transnational security, and regional interests of the United States
and our allies ... and the domestic security of our nation.
The book moves from thinking, planning, and preparing, to gathering
and amalgamation, to analysis, and finally to synthesis (the essence of
analysis) and delivery in a way that gives every analyst a utility map of their
discipline. In order to apply this imaginative cognitive pathway we must
consider the context in which it occurs.
Technology has empowered much of the discipline and most of the
functions of military intelligence; concurrently technology has become a
dynamic component of threat and presents a challenge to our intelligence
and operational efforts. Human terrain—the culture, society, and human
condition in which we act—has become a critical component of our war
fighting and our stabilizing functions. Signatures, reflections, emissions,
anomalies against the ambient background, events outside the norm, and