Intelligence is critical to ensuring national security, especially with asymmetric threats making up most of the new challenges. Knowledge, rather than power, is the only weapon that can prevail in a complex and uncertain environment awash with asymmetric threats, some known, many currently unknown. This book shows how such a changing national security environment has had profound implications for the strategic intelligence requirements of states in the 21st century.The book shows up the fallacy underlying the age-old assumption that intelligence agencies must do a better job of connecting the dots and avoiding future failures. It argues that this cannot and will not happen for a variety of reasons. Instead of seeking to predict discrete future events, the strategic intelligence community must focus rather on risk-based anticipatory warnings concerning the nature and impact of a range of potential threats. In this respect, the book argues for a full and creative exploitation of technology to support — but not supplant — the work of the strategic intelligence community, and illustrates this ideal with reference to Singapore's path-breaking Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning (RAHS) program./a

John A. Gentry and Joseph S. Gordon update our understanding of strategic warning intelligence analysis for the twenty-first century. Strategic warning—the process of long-range analysis to alert senior leaders to trending threats and opportunities that require action—is a critical intelligence function. It also is frequently misunderstood and underappreciated. Gentry and Gordon draw on both their practitioner and academic backgrounds to present a history of the strategic warning function in the US intelligence community. In doing so, they outline the capabilities of analytic methods, explain why strategic warning analysis is so hard, and discuss the special challenges strategic warning encounters from senior decision-makers. They also compare how strategic warning functions in other countries, evaluate why the United States has in recent years emphasized current intelligence instead of strategic warning, and recommend warning-related structural and procedural improvements in the US intelligence community. The authors examine historical case studies, including postmortems of warning failures, to provide examples of the analytic points they make. Strategic Warning Intelligence will interest scholars and practitioners and will be an ideal teaching text for intermediate and advanced students.

Embracing the theory and practice of strategic foresight and illuminating how different schools of thought regard its role in policy making, Tuomo Kuosa describes how something not traditionally considered an independent discipline, is steadily becoming one. In The Evolution of Strategic Foresight he explains how the practice of strategic foresight has long been closely associated with the military and politics. Linking strategic thinking more broadly to futurology, however, it is quite new. Since strategic foresight refers to the practice of generating analyses of alternative futures and strategies, based on available intelligence and foreknowledge, the practice can and should be applied to companies, business sectors, national and trans-national agencies of all descriptions, and to all aspects of public policy making. The author explains its practice in terms of structure, process, and knowledge domains, and examines its methodologies and systems, along with how strategic foresight can be used to produce better knowledge and be more effectively linked to policy making. Using examples from 30 different countries and with access to interviews and workshops involving key experts, The Evolution of Strategic Foresight will be valuable to scholars, educators, students engaged in strategy and future studies, long-range, public policy and urban planners, analysts; risk assessment experts, and consultants, managers and decision makers in many organisations, public and private.

The amount of publicly and often freely available information is staggering. Yet, the intelligence community still continues to collect and use information in the same manner as during WWII, when the OSS set out to learn as much as possible about Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan by scrutinizing encyclopedias, guide books, and short-wave radio. Today, the supply of information is greater than any possible demand, and anyone can provide information. In effect, intelligence analysts are drowning in information. The book explains how to navigate this rising flood and make best use of these new, rich sources of information. Written by a pioneer in the field, it explores the potential uses of digitized data and the impact of the new means of creating and transmitting data, recommending to the intelligence community new ways of collecting and processing information. This comprehensive overview of the world of open source intelligence will appeal not only to practitioners and students of intelligence, but also to anyone interested in communication and the challenges posed by the information age.

Covers the various controversies about wiretapping.

Conflict Analysis: Understanding Causes, Unlocking Solutions is a guide for practitioners seeking to prevent deadly conflict or mitigate political instability. This handbook integrates theory and practice and emphasizes the importance of analyzing the causes of peace as well as the causes of conflict. It stresses that conflict analysis is a social as well as an intellectual process, helping practitioners translate analysis into effective action.

Intelligence is critical to ensuring national security, especially with asymmetric threats making up most of the new challenges. Knowledge, rather than power, is the only weapon that can prevail in a complex and uncertain environment awash with asymmetric threats, some known, many currently unknown. This book shows how such a changing national security environment has had profound implications for the strategic intelligence requirements of states in the 21st century.The book shows up the fallacy underlying the age-old assumption that intelligence agencies must do a better job of connecting the dots and avoiding future failures. It argues that this cannot and will not happen for a variety of reasons. Instead of seeking to predict discrete future events, the strategic intelligence community must focus rather on risk-based anticipatory warnings concerning the nature and impact of a range of potential threats. In this respect, the book argues for a full and creative exploitation of technology to support ? but not supplant ? the work of the strategic intelligence community, and illustrates this ideal with reference to Singapore's path-breaking Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning (RAHS) program.

Intelligence is critical to ensuring national security, especially with asymmetric threats making up most of the new challenges. Knowledge, rather than power, is the only weapon that can prevail in a complex and uncertain environment awash with asymmetric threats, some known, many currently unknown.This book shows how such a changing national security environment has had profound implications for the strategic intelligence requirements of states in the 21st century. The book shows up the fallacy underlying the age-old assumption that intelligence agencies must do a better job of connecting the dots and avoiding future failures. It argues that this cannot and will not happen for a variety of reasons. Instead of seeking to predict discrete future events, the strategic intelligence community must focus rather on risk-based anticipatory warnings concerning the nature and impact of a range of potential threats. In this respect, the book argues for a full and creative exploitation of technology to support - but not supplant - the work of the strategic intelligence community, and illustrates this ideal with reference to Singapore's path-breaking Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning (RAHS) program.