Critical Thinking and Intelligence Analysis

analytic populations. 182
Stanley Feder recounts how a tipping point
began to apply to a political analysis method at the CIA in the 1970s
and 1980s. The method involved two estimative tools known as
Factions and Policon that were used by the “Intelligence Directorate
and the National Intelligence Council’s Analysis Group to analyze
scores of policy and instability issues in over 30 countries.” 183
The
reasons for the adoption of these tools remain the same: “Forecasts
and analyses…have proved to be significantly more precise and
detailed than traditional analyses.” 184
Writing about the method in
1987, Feder predicted that its use would continue to expand. 185 The
method is still in use 19 years after Feder’s article was published.
However, expanded use failed – perhaps because the tool was on a
computer platform that ceased to be supported by the Agency. The
recent transfer of the tool to a new suite of programs corresponds
with observations that its use is once again expanding. 186
Non-intelligence-related transformational stories can be applied
in the Intelligence Community to facilitate the spread of new ways
182 Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big
Difference (Boston, MA: Little Brown and Company, 2000), 15–29. Gladwell shows
how “social epidemics” can infect a variety of domains.
183 Stanley Feder, “Factions and Policon: New Ways to Analyze Politics,”
in H. Bradford Westerfield, ed., Inside CIA’s Private World: Declassified Articles from the
Agency’s Internal Journal, 1955–1992 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995),
275. Cited hereafter as Feder, “Factions and Policon.”
184 Feder, “Factions and Policon,” 292.
185 Feder, “Factions and Policon,” 292. Feder was wrong about its sustained
popular growth.
186 This story is not an isolated instance. In the author’s experience, initial
implementation and popularization are often followed by a gradually reduced
user-base. Certain organizations find the tools useful and they tend to continue
to use them even though any underlying technology may be obsolete. In the
case of Factions and Policon, the tools were maintained on an aged Macintosh
computer. They were updated in 2006 as part of the work of an intelligence
research firm in New Mexico. The Factions tool was rewritten and included in
Landscape Decision®, a suite of modeling and simulation tools developed under
a research contract with the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research and
Development Activity (ARDA). The updated technology was reinserted into the
tasking organization. Other technology transfers are pending.
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