monitoring

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DEFENSE SCIENCE BOARD | DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
example of both the pros and cons of crowdsourcing. 35 Using open source information for the
past several years—the Internet, local Chinese news reports, Google Earth and online photos
posted by Chinese citizens—the students have published a far‐reaching paper that challenges
assumptions made by the IC on China’s nuclear weapons capability. However, there is an
extensive debate on the accuracy of this report, compiled by untrained intelligence analysts
without access to classified data, which could have serious political and military implications.
Many nonproliferation experts question the veracity of the report, citing how a semifictionalized
Chinese TV series is used as one of the intelligence sources.
Whether the report is completely accurate or not, this event provides a “proof‐of‐concept” on
how crowd sourcing can be used to augment limited analytical capacity. The IC should establish
a process which codifies crowd sourcing as an additional area for research related to nuclear
treaty monitoring issues, and ensure that a non‐prejudicial process is established whereby open
source and mainstream intelligence assessments can be reconciled.
5.6.3. Iteration: Proliferation Monitoring Management
Figure 5‐1 illustrates the importance of integration and iteration in the access‐sense‐assess
cycle. The Task Force notes that this responsibility should fall to the DNI, who bears a special
responsibility for pursuing and integrating sensitive intelligence sources and methods, opensource
information, and data provided through arms control‐related information exchanges
and inspections. In carrying out this role, the DNI can draw upon the lessons and experiences
of the Intelligence Community’s Treaty Monitoring Manager.
At the height of arms control monitoring in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the position of
Treaty Monitoring Manager (TMM) was an effective vehicle for coordinating the work of
multiple organizations and collection activities. As noted earlier in this report, the number of
actors of both horizontal and vertical proliferation concern, and the increased geographic scope
of activities of concern, have become too large to understand and anticipate developments of
potential threat to the United States within treaty sanctioned regimes alone. The Task Force
believes the TMM model could be effectively adapted to a Proliferation Monitoring Manager
position with responsibilities to proactively orchestrate the collection, fusion, analysis, and
dissemination of information vital to understanding the overall horizontal and vertical
proliferation threats to the United States and its allies, as well as providing information relevant
to verification judgments about the compliance of state parties to international agreements.
This position, working with other National Intelligence Issue Managers, should explicitly act to
create synergies among collection modalities and information means and to disaggregate tough
overall monitoring problems into manageable problem sets. The Proliferation Monitoring
Manager, as the Treaty Monitoring Manager has historically done, would play the leading role
in the U.S. Government for orchestrating the timing and focus of the most sensitive intelligence
35 W. Wan, “Georgetown Students Shed Light on China’s Tunnel System for Nuclear Weapons,” Washington Post,
November 29, 2011
DSB TASK FORCE REPORT Chapter 5: Improve the Tools: Access, Sense, Assess | 62
Nuclear Treaty Monitoring Verification Technologies
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