Conclusion

This book argues that intelligence is secretly generated wisdom beyond the limits of formal reasoning that makes uncertain estimates less uncertain, and that consequently generates political, strategic and operational advantages over adversaries. However, an acknowledgement of intelligence as art and the use of critical rationalism cannot solve the problem of induction. It only reduces the problem, since humans can never free themselves from their own history and experiences. Critical rationalism can therefore be understood as critical induction, and hence illustrates how thinking, and therefore decisions, are shaped by each person’s history and experiences. It is in this spirit of humility and self-awareness that intelligence as art must be understood. Intelligence is not static. It cannot provide facts, and it cannot increase certainty. Intelligence can only make uncertain estimates less uncertain, and can therefore only decrease uncertainty. It is this understanding of the limitations of intelligence that constitutes the strengths of intelligence, ensuring an understanding of intelligence as the art that seeks to comprehend and describe threats that appear in new variations and thus beyond the limits of inductive logic.

Intelligence and Discourse Failure

Intelligence as an activity and practice is an extremely complex process. It is this complexity that needs to be understood if intelligence institutions are to hope to diminish the force of discourse failure. The essence of intelligence needs to be acknowledged, and intelligence operatives need proper education and training. Intelligence is a highly demanding profession that is identified by the twelve images that will be described in this chapter. These images also serve as reminders of the challenges of intelligence. Intelligence is method, it is a phenomenon and it is science and knowledge. It constantly deals with uncertainty, and its ultimate objective is to make uncertainty less uncertain through its estimation about the future. It is arguably tempting for many to close cognition, overlook the challenging and displace those factors that do not fit with orthodox beliefs and political assumptions.

On Action and Decisions by the Intelligence Consumer

This chapter demonstrates how the nature of the threat, the political situation during the Clinton years, the problem of induction and the fact that intelligence as a phenomenon was not properly understood combined to create a cognitive climate in which the threat became increasingly challenging to comprehend within the limits of inductive logic. This situation could develop because the interplay between the threat and the problem of induction facilitated cognitive closure, and it was when the consequence of this interplay interacted with secrecy and intelligence tribal language that discourse failure evolved. The final result was that the decision-makers did not manage to analyse the situation and the threat properly, and they thus did not have a language that was sophisticated and precise enough to communicate the complexity of the threat from al Qaeda. The Clinton and Bush administrations therefore became cognitively and politically handicapped and could thus not implement effective policy.

On Collection

Blind belief in the force of history make intelligence operatives think that history repeats itself. But history, of course, never repeats itself. Nor do threats repeat themselves. However, they do appear in new forms and varieties, and these may easily be misjudged as historical echoes. This may lead to orthodox beliefs that fuel a classic threat discourse that easily misleads. The US intelligence community thus failed to capitalise on the collected material they already had, and they were therefore not able to identify the change that had occurred on their threat radar. This chapter demonstrates how the US intelligence community’s focus on Afghanistan and bin Laden indicates that bin Laden in practice operated as his own diversion and scapegoat, since he managed to have the US intelligence community focusing more on him than on his organisation and on the threat evolving on American soil. Whether it was intentional or not is unknown, but the focus of US intelligence on bin Laden and al Qaeda in Afghanistan led them away from the terrorists in the US. It led the focus of US intelligence away from al Qaeda’s real target; New York and Washington.

On Dissemination

This chapter argues that threats in general, and terrorist threats as such, are complex in their structures and dynamics. They are hard to comprehend and foresee, and therefore highly challenging to communicate and disseminate. Intellectual courage is therefore called for, since intelligence is useless unless the intelligence producer at some point delivers a product that reduces uncertainty to the decision-maker. Intelligence institutions should therefore replace the need-to-share principle with a courage-to-share strategy. The courage-to-share strategy facilitates and stimulates the intelligence operators’ willingness and ability to believe in their own assessments, and therefore also their cognitive capability to approach complex threats. Intelligence is, in its essence, the bearer of uncertainty and complexity. Threats and the future are by their nature dubious and intelligence institutions should not try to present them as some- thing else.

Cognition

Intelligence institutions that want to increase the quality of their work must ensure their intelligence operatives are given a chance to develop their minds. They must be given freedom and oppor- tunities to develop their creativity and as such their integrity, and intelligence organisations, intelligence operatives and consumers therefore need to be attentive, alert, aware and sensitive to the reality of the holistic complexity of threats. The comprehension of this oneness and totality may help intelligence communities to analyse threat structures deeply and understand their order. Ideology, organisation, leadership, manning, funding, supporters and potential breeding grounds for threats are all factors needing exploration. This chapter will give special attention to the relation and structure of these factors and argues that they must never be understood separately. This chapter thus highlights that it is the interplay of the holistic complexity of threats that needs to be acknowledged, the challenge this complexity creates for the brain and how intelligence institutions can reduce this challenge.

On Analysis

The understanding and acknowledgement of the problem of induction and its negative force on discourse failure bring intelligence studies towards a new theory of intelligence. The understanding of discourse failure opens a window to intelligence failure as a circular problem that intensifies itself by the human tendency to displace and redirect new knowledge that threatens orthodoxies, political assumptions and a uniform belief in nature. The result is that threats appearing in new variations will not easily be acknowledged or accepted, since they exist outside the normative threat paradigms and outside the existing language available to communicate threats that exist outside the possibilities of induction. The acknowledgement of this phenomenon discloses the problems that arise because intelligence has lacked a proper intelligence theory. It illustrates that if intelligence institutions want to reduce the damaging effect of the problem of induction and discourse fail- ure, and produce qualitative intelligence, they must probe beyond the limits of induction. A deep acknowledgement of the discourse failure theory therefore explains the reciprocal nature of intelli- gence, as well as capturing and identifying the circular dynamic between threats, threat perception and intelligence failure. This chapter examines how this phenomenon shapes intelligence analysis.

Secrecy and Intelligence Tribal Language

This chapter argues that psychological phenomena, and thus intelligence tribal language, are difficult and challenging to comprehend. Intelligence tribal language is a phenomenon that arises and develops in closed, secretive and often self-referring cultures. This fuels the language as a communication form that can only be fully understood by those who belong to these specific cultures. The language creates a sense of pride and fellow feeling, but it also, and more importantly, develops intellectual isolation and consequently discourse failure between different agencies and their consumers. Each agency probably has its own specific language that increases simultaneously with a changing and increasingly complex threat, since intelligence tribal language develops in the battlefield that arises between the human fear of freedom and the complexities offered by prediction. The communication between the intelligence communities prior to 9/11 was thus significantly hampered. A complex threat that fused with ‘product protection’ and a ‘need-to-know’ culture, and a rooted self-referring intelligence tribal language, seriously decreased discourse between intelligence operators and between intelligence institutions – but most importantly, and consequently most devastatingly, between the intelligence institutions and the intelligence consumer.

Introduction

The iron curtain and cold war that used to divide Europe have been replaced by transnational threats, nonlinear war, digideceptionalisation, and state-sponsored digital subversion. The threats reach beyond and transcend the boundaries given by history, and thus challenge traditional methods of intelligence. The ultimate objective of modern intelligence is thus the cleverness and ability to divide truth from falsehood, the willingness to accept the inconceivable and the courage to share information beyond the boundaries of experience and tradition. Intelligence must therefore be built on intellectual courage, solid theory, commonly understood definitions and scientific doubt. However, this book argues that there exists neither a proper conceptual or descriptive theory of intelligence, nor any adequate definition than can shape a cohesive appreciation of what intelligence is. The lack of a rigorous understanding of intelligence has arguably increased the problem of induction and discourse failure. The book will thus explore and illustrate how the lack of a descriptive intelligence theory has increased the problem of induction and discourse failure, and how an appreciation of intelligence as art can diminish this problem.