Warning Analysis for the Information Age - Higgins Counterterrorism ...

When young children play soccer, they usually play “clusterball” where virtuallyall the players are in a tight group trying to kick the ball and only the goaliesand a few stray players picking flowers are found elsewhere. As the IC enters theInformation Age and data come in at an enormous rate, the IC also appears to beconstantly playing “clusterball.” The IC is sized to handle a single crisis in a singlenation. When there is no apparent crisis, the assets are spread everywhere at alevel to handle the pace of current intelligence and maybe a bit of warning. Whena crisis comes, most of the assets move to the crisis, and: (1) since there was littlewarning intelligence being done on the crisis area, the team attempts to do catchupon the warning that should have been ongoing in that area, and (2) everywhereoutside the crisis situation is then so understaffed that partial current intelligenceis being done and no warning at all. Should a crisis arise in a new area, the cyclerepeats but with less warning and context than before because the normal complementof analysts on the new crisis area is less by having been pulled off to theold crisis area. As the IC moves from crisis to crisis, the ability to do warningbecomes less and less. But somehow we must be able to get past this if we areever going to provide strategic warning.Furthermore, analysts have virtually no time to analyze information on threatsinvolving other than war or terrorist attack. Threats such as economic, technical,or political infrastructure remain unassessed. As we have seen, strategic analysisrequires integration of knowledge about the adversary’s infrastructure includinglogistics, politics, and technical issues.It is almost impossible to give too much stress to the importance ofthe most meticulous and exhaustive examination of all availableinformation prior to reaching warning judgments. It is erroneous topresume that all research will automatically be accomplished in a crisisor budding crisis situations, or that the organization and distributionof work within the office or offices involved is necessarilyadequate for the purpose... The inadequate examination of availableevidence has been a contributing cause to nearly every warning failureand in some cases should probably be considered the major causeof failure. 67Strategic warning must be proactive, actively building, testing, discarding andrebuilding hypotheses. The ultimate goal of strategic analysis is to be able to provideactionable guidance early enough so that the situation can be changed beforeit becomes a crisis.67 Grabo, 163.149