Question

Discuss your perspective on the top three Intelligence priority issues facing the Intelligence Community over the next 25 years. It does not necessarily need to be problem-focused, but those issues that could impact the nation’s security and must be addressed by the Intelligence Community.

Answer 1

The U.S. Intelligence community faces a altering panorama. Here is a blueprint for the way it can high-quality harness the expertise of technology. One key: foster risk-taking.

The united states has long trusted its potential to increase and use technology for gathering and inspecting intelligence so as to guard national protection. Indeed, the intelligence community has a splendid record in R&D. Among its achievements, it has pioneered digital desktops; a number of advanced aircraft, such because the excessive-altitude U-2 and its Mach 3 successor, the A-12; one of the earliest satellites; electro-optical sensors and the processing systems to aid them; and, more recently, robotics.

However is U.S. Intelligence ready to use technology with ease at some point? The quick reply is, yes, however. The intelligence community faces two challenges.

First, threats to the united states are altering, and so intelligence ambitions are changing. Additionally to usual army competitors and rogue states, the U.S. Now ought to additionally fear extra about weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and transnational terror networks. Amassing and examining intelligence about many of these new targets requires new systems and for that reason new applied sciences.

2nd, the sector of technology is itself changing. When the intelligence group was headquartered, most R&D took situation in the us, and the federal government funded most of that. At present, the opposite is right: Most R&D is taking situation overseas; and even within the us, most of it is funded via industrial and other nongovernment corporations.

These two tendencies changes in the chance and changes on this planet of R&D outline the two foremost motives U.S. Intelligence have got to maintain to hold its

technological know-how facet.

Landscape OF INTELLIGENCE

to higher realise the problems that R&D for intelligence faces, it first helps to bear in mind the subject of intelligence technology from a couple of perspectives. You'll believe concerning the varieties of science that intelligence organizations use, the forms of intelligence these technical methods produce, and the corporations which can be in charge for developing intelligence science and operating technical intelligence methods.

Most intelligence technologies match into four general categories:

Sensors optical, digital, chemical, acoustic, nuclear, seismic, and geospatial that acquire information.
Platforms manned or robotic aircraft, ships, submarines, and satellites that elevate sensors the place they have got to be.
Computers, networks, and software that procedure, collect, collate, and provide knowledge and finished intelligence.
Enabling gadgets covert communications, miniaturized cameras, hidden containers, and lock-deciding on instruments that make ordinary espionage operations feasible.
Traditionally, the applied sciences that the intelligence group uses are not that a lot extraordinary from what is known in the external world, and the intelligence community relies more than ever on the R&D base that everybody else draws from. The diversities lie in their specialised aspects and how quickly they are delivered into operation relative to the traditional p.C. Of science progress.

Intelligence science additionally can be broken down into what experts call INTs, or intelligence disciplines. This categorization is priceless seeing that every self-discipline entails distinctive coaching, tradition, and, sometimes, technological know-how; much like clinical specialties or engineering, which can be mechanical, chemical, or electrical. These intelligence disciplines include:

alerts intelligence (SIGINT), which entails intercepts, and more often than not decryption, of electronic communications. These modes of verbal exchange can be spoken phrase, text, or facsimile but in addition can include telemetry from missile or aircraft exams and even mechanical control data.
Imagery intelligence (IMINT), which involves literal photographic, digital, or radar photos of targets.
Geospatial intelligence (GEOINT), which is the knowledge derived by analyzing, manipulating, and combining such data, usually digitally, and most of the time in reference to their position relative to one another or Earths surface.
Dimension and signatures intelligence (MASINT), which involves nuclear, acoustic, or spectral knowledge used to observe the presence or characteristics of a goal.
Apart from these technical INTs, intelligence accrued by human beings (called, logically adequate, HUMINT) also remains foremost. Certainly, on the grounds that intelligence technological know-how and HUMINT are so most commonly elegant on every other in these days, it is hard to talk about one without regarding the opposite.

As of late, intelligence specialists even have begun to refer some thing called OSINT, for open source technology intelligence. This grouping, which entails public media and databases, can also be gathered either by means of technological know-how (for instance, being attentive to overseas language announces) or by means of humans (for instance, by way of in my opinion analyzing unclassified studies from scholars and journalists).

A further solution to think about intelligence technologies is via the firms responsible for them. This categorization is most important due to the fact it's these companies that recruit and coach people, manipulate current programs, and advocate new ones. The significant five are:

The countrywide security agency, which is liable for many alerts intelligence.
The national Reconnaissance place of work, which builds and operates most intelligence satellites.
The national Geospatial Intelligence agency, which is responsible for imagery databases and processing techniques.
The more than a few technical army intelligence applications that operate below the direction of the defense Intelligence agency; these packages comprise seaborne and airborne platforms that the navy services operate and specified measurement and signatures intelligence systems, similar to tremendous radar and sonar methods.
The relevant Intelligence agency, which has been worried in all of those applied sciences, certainly when they have got worried usual espionage or required funding outside of typical channels.
In addition, the division of energy develops applied sciences related to amassing intelligence about nuclear weapons. This pastime, headquartered notably at country wide laboratories, is much smaller in phrases of individuals and dollars than the huge 5 events but is undoubtedly important. Also, most organizations with analytic services are dependable for the technologies they use to manage databases and to support analysts in dealing with and imparting understanding.

Technology is for that reason woven for the period of the intelligence group, and several businesses owe their existence to the value of targeted types of technology. Even so, prior to now no group has had R&D as its essential accountability. Also, no institution has had as its major accountability guaranteeing that these technologies work collectively quite simply.

This lack has routinely prompted issues. When embedded in operating firms, R&D have got to compete immediately with current programs for dollars. Officers have handiest so much time and political capital, and it might probably take as so much effort to protect a $5 million R&D mission as a $5 billion acquisition program. R&D can for that reason get lost in the tussle of everyday planning and politics.

Also, seeing that the organizations that operate systems have been the very ones liable for establishing the technology these methods use, the intelligence group has normally neglected possibilities wherein two or more applied sciences could work well in blend; for illustration, detecting the presence of radar in a region with alerts intelligence and then pinpointing its unique location with imagery intelligence.

To be definite, intelligence corporations do collaborate (Allied forces used SIGINT to cue IMINT even in World conflict II), but without any one dependable for championing collaboration, R&D on multi-intelligence tactics is not the norm. Every organization has mainly fascinated with find out how to resolve an intelligence difficulty with its possess science, as an alternative than since collaboration on the commencing of the R&D system, when the latitude for outlining a collection notion is greatest.

Most intelligence professionals and legislators who oversee the intelligence group fully grasp these problems. This used to be one purpose why Congress in its 2004 intelligence reform laws created a director of science and technological know-how to be liable for developing a long-term strategy for scientific advances within the subject of intelligence. Such awareness additionally normally led President Bush's commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the us concerning Weapons of Mass Destruction to endorse in 2005 that the intelligence group create an authority responsible for managing and overseeing progressive applied sciences. This later emerged because the Intelligence advanced study project undertaking (IARPA), announced in 2006 and formally situated in 2007.

IARPA was meant in the equal spirit as the defense advanced research tasks company (DARPA), which had been created in 1962. Most experts look to agree that DARPA is a success. It has delivered technology that has modified U.S. Army operations. It may declare much of the credit for the internet, the worldwide Positioning approach, and the stealth science that makes aircraft and other objects virtually invisible to radar, sonar, or other similar detection methods. The hope among officers is that IARPA will show in a similar fashion triumphant.

However, with ease replicating DARPA is probably not sufficient. Due to the fact intelligence corporations have certain challenges in coping with the changing threats and the changing R&D atmosphere, a brand new mannequin is needed.

Moving INTELLIGENCE ambitions

today's intelligence group and the science it uses had been initially designed generally to watch the Soviet Union. The chief concerns throughout the cold battle have been a strategic nuclear attack towards the united states or a army invasion of Western Europe. So the fundamental intelligence targets have been the Soviet Union's nuclear forces, its mechanized armies, the tremendous industrial problematic that produced these weapons, and the enormously centralized executive that managed them all.

These goals occurred to lend themselves to technical observation. Soviet bomber bases and missile silos, for example, had been colossal motionless objects that might be with ease counted and analyzed with overhead imagery, as had been the Soviet Union's mechanized military items and defense industries. So once one solved the challenge of constructing an aircraft such because the U-2 or a satellite reminiscent of CORONA to collect the imagery, solving the intelligence situation was easy.

Other stipulations unusual to the Soviet goal also facilitated a technological strategy to intelligence issues. For illustration, in view that the Soviet landmass was once so sizeable and elaborate to traverse, Soviet leaders relied on lengthy-distance radio hyperlinks and marine cables laid around its coasts to communicate with outlying regions. These constraints funneled Soviet communications into a manageable number of channels that U.S. Intelligence could tap. Favorable geography also made it viable to intercept telemetry from Soviet missile checks.

Via the Eighties, though, strategic weapons have been becoming smaller and extra cellular. Higher know-how science enabled the Soviets to encrypt their communications and telemetry extra readily and extra without difficulty. It used to be inevitable that technical intelligence collection would grow to be more difficult, and these barriers might have emerge as apparent had it no longer been for palms control. The SALT, start, and INF agreements all contained provisions peculiarly intended to allow each and every countys intelligence services to depend its opponents weapons with countrywide technical manner a treaty term invented to consult alerts intelligence and imagery intelligence. Both superpowers approved these measures due to the fact that they desired an arms control agreement.

Sincerely, the best way U-2 imagery swiftly dispelled the bomber hole of the Nineteen Fifties and CORONA imagery dispelled the missile hole of the Sixties and Seventies have been specified cases. Weapons are not often as effortless to depend as had been bombers or missile silos during those previous periods. Using technologies comprising countrywide technical way to watch arms control (in outcomes, where one nation helps another country to secret agent on it) was much more exotic. Probably adversaries do whatever they can to confound their opponents intelligence.

At present, the arena is returning to the ancient norm within the relationship between looking and hiding intelligence goals, the place technical intelligence (like most intelligence) is in general valuable, however there are few giant intelligence problems that can be solved decisively and reliably by means of single intelligence disciplines. The pursuits of greatest hindrance small dispersed terrorist cells and clandestine programs to develop WMD are inherently problematic to watch via any manner, technical or or else. A technological silver bullet is not likely. Technical intelligence collection will extra most commonly provide best fragments of information. Some fragments could prove very most important, however most will be incomplete and filled with uncertainty.

For instance, recall a record of national protection missions that the intelligence community have to support in these days. It would mostly include detecting hidden services for manufacturing nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons; settling on clandestine transnational terrorist networks; assessing foreign military forces, in general designed for operations exclusive from those planned through U.S. Forces; analyzing international criminal trafficking; and preserving border security in opposition to international intruders.

In each case, it is effortless to believe of how technical intelligence maybe valuable however rough to feel of how any of these problems might be solved by way of a single technology or by way of technological know-how by myself. These are all intricate standards, calling for using a number of technical assortment methods in combo, as good as analytic aid to target the collection and bring together data, and possibly aid from human intelligence, to acquire access. For illustration, if a overseas army or terrorist group used a cell conversation approach, an IMINT analyst might find the node most susceptible to attack, a HUMINT case officer would recruit any individual with access to the process, and a SIGINT technical proficient would design a computer virus tailored for the particular network.

R&D for the science a part of this sort of combined effort requires scientists and engineers to work more intently than ever with intelligence operators and analysts. Extra main, whereas in the past companies would collaborate with personnel and applied sciences that that they had already developed, someday it'll be more essential to collaborate when the science is being chosen, designed, and developed. Starting a venue wherein all these authorities can work collectively at an early stage is relevant.

CHALLENGES OF GLOBALIZATION

Funding for R&D in the united states has grown practically 10-fold throughout the five a long time in which the countrywide Science foundation has published statistics. Adjusting for inflation and utilising at presents dollars, complete annual funding for R&D rose from about $35 billion in 1953 to about $310 billion in 2006.

That is spectacular progress, however alterations within the composition of R&D funding are even more massive. In 1953, the government provided 55% of all funding for R&D in the united states. During the Nineteen Sixties, executive funding accounted for up to two-thirds of all R&D, reflecting the distance race and the Vietnam-era army buildup. The distribution returned to a close-even split between executive and the exclusive sector within the Nineteen Eighties. Then commercial R&D funding started out a period of amazing growth, in order that today nongovernment businesses provide sixty five to 70% of all U.S. R&D funding.

To be certain, govt funding for R&D rose through about 440% in inflation-adjusted dollars between 1953 and 2006. Presently, two-thirds of that is navy funding, though this reflects a post-9/11 uptick; the peacetime norm for federally funded R&D is a 50-50 cut up between army and non-navy R&D. Yet as fast as govt-funded R&D funding grew, nongovernment funding grew more than thrice rapid, from $sixteen billion to $220 billion, an develop of practically 1,400%. Microsoft alone spends about $6.5 billion each 12 months on R&D, or about twice DARPA's complete annual funds.

Whilst, more R&D is taking position outside the united states. Within the early 1950s, the USA and Canada on the whole accounted for no less than half of of the sectors R&D funding (special figures were unavailable then for far of the arena). Today, forty% of all R&D is undertaken in Asia, when compared with 37% within the Americas and 23% in Europe. R&D funding, of course, measures simplest enter, but if one measures output, the results are very nearly the equal. For illustration, Asia leads in numbers of triadic patents (patents filed concurrently in the united states, Europe, and Japan) with 36% of the world whole. North the us money owed for 34% and Europe for rather not up to 30%.

In addition, the U.S. Is also outsourcing an increasing quantity of its R&D. In these days, that figure stands at 10%. Britain and Germany currently acquire the most important shares of this funding, though work outsourced to China and India has been growing quickly in the course of the prior decade.

These tendencies have been inevitable. The progress in nongovernment R&D displays U.S. Fiscal growth and the burgeoning exclusive sector. Additionally, because the rest of the arena modernized, it was usual for the USA to lose market share in R&D, exceptionally on the grounds that the population of Asia is 10 instances greater.