Models of Intelligence and Information
The intelligence cycle is only a model. Budgetary and policy direction are hierarchically above it. In reality, it is not a cycle, but a series of parallel activities. "Collection and analysis, which are supposed to work in tandem, in fact work more properly in parallel. Finally, the idea that decision makers wait for the delivery of intelligence before making policy decisions is equally incorrect. In the modern era, policy officials seem to want intelligence to support policy rather than to inform it. The Intelligence Cycle also fails to consider either counter-intelligence or covert action." The OODA loop developed by John Boyd, discussed in the context of the Intelligence Cycle below, may come somewhat closer, as OODA is action-oriented and spiraling, rather than a continuing circle.
In principle, within the cycle, "intelligence agencies are faced with the task of determining intelligence priorities, a process known as threat assessment. Experts and policymakers gather periodically to evaluate the perils that confront the United States and establish a ladder of priorities from the most dangerous (Tiers 1A and 1B) to the least (Tier 4). Bias and guesswork enter the picture, along with the limitations caused by the uncertainty that surrounds the future. Where should one place China in the threat assessment? What about Russia, or Cuba? The outcome of these debates shapes the priorities for some $44 billion worth of intelligence spending each year. It also determines the areas U.S. spies will infiltrate, sets the orbits for surveillance satellites, and establishes the flight patterns of reconnaissance aircraft. To improve the threat assessment process, the United States has undertaken nine major inquiries into its intelligence apparatus since the end of the Cold War. Each has found a failure to clearly delineate priorities .
Read more about this topic: Intelligence Cycle Management
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—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective positions of the beings which compose it, if moreover this intelligence were vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in the same formula both the movements of the largest bodies in the universe and those of the lightest atom; to it nothing would be uncertain, and the future as the past would be present to its eyes.”
—Pierre Simon De Laplace (1749–1827)
“Many more children observe attitudes, values and ways different from or in conflict with those of their families, social networks, and institutions. Yet today’s young people are no more mature or capable of handling the increased conflicting and often stimulating information they receive than were young people of the past, who received the information and had more adult control of and advice about the information they did receive.”
—James P. Comer (20th century)