Critical Thinking and Intelligence Analysis

Conclusion
Never before in our peacetime history have the stakes of
foreign policy been higher.
229 Kent, Strategic Intelligence, ix.
– 95 –
—Sherman Kent, 1949
This paper posed the intriguing question: “How can intelligence
analysts be ‘really good’” Critical thinking, if conceived and
employed by intelligence analysts as suggested here, appears capable
of leading analysts to adopt personal habits of thought appropriate
to the resolution of hard intelligence problems. The idea that
intelligence analysts are expected to bring to the table a capability to
draw reasoned and actionable conclusions from scant and conflicting
information distinguishes their charge from that of their academic
brethren. Thus, intelligence analysts in government or other applied
work environments may deserve the lavish budgets and technological
capabilities they often enjoy.
To earn their high level of resource support, analysts can take
advantage of a capability to redirect unique intelligence collection
capabilities. In doing so, they are perfectly positioned to apply critical
thinking methods to the hard problems. They can, for example,
order up special collection against targets that exhibit even fleeting
evidence that convincingly disconfirms one or more alternative
hypotheses about an impending threat. This is the nub of Ben-
Israel’s argument for a “logical” approach to intelligence analysis
for national security, and is an approach no doubt under-used by
those who do not systematically think about threats in the manner
developed in this paper.
Although most of the specific threats have changed since Sherman
Kent first wrote in 1949, his epigraph remains as true today as it
was then: the survival and prosperity of the United States remain at
stake; they depend on effective, informed foreign policy. 229
Critical
thinking brings with it an indispensable capability to inform a rational