In the article “Thinking straight and talking straight: problems of intelligence analysis” authors Douglas Hart and Steven Simon make a clear point that the concept of the US intelligence should be reformed in the close future due to a number of objective reasons, which appeared after 9/11 2001. Authors write that despite general success of CIA and performance of US intelligence in general, today it experiences a number of serious problems in different aspects of organization and work. Hart and Simon write that current realities demand more serious and flexible CIA professionals who will be distinguished by outstanding critical thinking abilities and analytical mind. Besides, authors mention that CIA traditional methods of analysis and detection of emergency situations turn to be outdated in the era of globalization and rapid penetration of informational technologies. Authors describe existing weaknesses of intelligence organization in details making analytical comparisons with current realities and abilities of intelligence services.
Hart and Simon make a clear point that one of the most difficult tasks of the intelligence service today is to hire right people, who will be distinguished by critical thinking abilities and who will have wide outlook and encyclopedical knowledge. Today, when the demand for intelligence specialists is growing the problem has turned into a more serious one, due to a lack of prospective specialists. Intelligence specialists on the hand with good critical thinking abilities should have a wide outlook, should be acquainted with different cultures and should have an experience of living overseas in order to think critically in situations which have relation to foreign affairs and intelligence practices. Combination of these requirements is very rare, in fact, as general higher education tendencies have not changed in years it’s very difficult to recruit more of such prospective intelligence workers as the demand doesn’t respond to supply. Authors mention that another very important requirement for prospective intelligence specialists is a deep comparative background in world history on advanced level, not just history background provided by standard undergraduate courses. Today, it’s not typical for Americans to take advanced courses in world history and especially in modern world history, which in case with intelligence training requires more time to prepare candidates for objective analysis of current world situation. Hart and Simon note that because quite a considerable percentage of the US universities is religiously affiliated, American graduates may posses subjective and diverged views about the current world politics and have subjective and false attitudes about other religious cultures, Islam in particular. Another problem for intelligence recruiters is lack of interest in learning non-Latin foreign languages among students, which creates extra expenses and time for training. By estimations of scientists it takes about 4, 5 years to reach average level of non Latin language for an average beginner, a program which can not be widely afforded by intelligence training. The main obstacle according to article’s authors is in educational system of the US institutions of higher learning, as it’s argued that American education poses qualities of anti-intellectualism: “the rise of evangelical religion, the emergence of business-oriented education, and the periodic prominence of the populist political style. Religion condemned relativism, business disdained regulatory expertise, populism derided the idea that specialized knowledge merited respect.” Nevertheless, it’s obvious that the whole educational system can not be changed quickly in order to eliminate these deficiencies, but at the same time it’s possible to introduce more advanced and secular courses in languages, history, world culture and politics which would be taught not from the perspective of official ideology, but dialectically, from common sense point. Even though that authors mention that poor critical history analysis abilities are common for nearly all American graduates, it’ll impossible to change radically university programs in order to hire suitable prospective personnel, as spending would be more considerable for such purposes due to a rather limited number of intelligence recruited professionals compared to a wide poll of prospective candidates.
Besides considerable problems with hiring new personnel, for which demand had grown dramatically after 9/11, Hart and Simon propose that the concept of intelligence activity should be changed from a traditional reporting of emergencies, to forecasting, modeling and predicting different types of situations and working on the possible solutions for each type of them. Such activities require deep research and analysis of existing correlations in world politics, economy, international relations, trade relations and globalization. To prove the need of such practices in anti-terrorist activities, authors give evidence of numbers of emergencies which had a direct threat to national security of the US in the past and which could be predicted by intelligence specialists if such practices were in the doctrine of the US intelligence. If such activities were not encouraged in the past, then today they should form the basis of intelligence work, as a concept of reporting has shown its bankruptcy after 9/11. Hart and Simon also make a point about the importance of Internet monitoring, as it lately had turned into the main mean of communication not only for young audience, but also for adult audience. As the word “Al Qaida” has a meaning ‘cell’ or a network of independent terrorist organizations, it means that interaction between such “cells” could exist only via Internet and other modern and secure means of telecommunications: informational portals, blogs, personal diaries, etc. Internet and informational technologies open new horizons for intelligence as monitoring network activity of Internet users may allow to establish links between different terrorist organizations and can lead to the discovery of the most widely spread and organized terrorist networks.
References
Hart, Douglas Simon, Steven Thinking Straight and Talking Straight: Problems of Intelligence Analysis.