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

Modeling Ourselves—How Can We Reorient Our Intelligence Processto Empower the Warning Analyst to Think Strategically?“Network-centric warfare is not about technology. It is an emergingtheory of war,” said U.S. Navy Vice Adm. (ret.) Arthur K. Cebrowski,director of the Pentagon’s force transformation office. “Power hasshifted to the network,” he said, and away from the Industrial-ageview that power is derived from mass. Information, access to it andhow fast it is delivered now determines combat power... “Net-centricwarfare is not about the technology,” an industry expert reaffirmed.“People would like to make it about technology, because it’s easier toget their hands around it. This is about the network itself—differentorganizations and cultures—things that make operations difficult. It’sabout process—how to get people to share information, and how tochange cultures. 39Once we have a methodology for strategic analysis and the computer tools tohelp automate it, we need to reorient our organizations to think cooperatively toprovide strategic warning. Much has been said about the shift to “net-centric warfare”and how it can potentially revolutionize the way we fight. This concept isanother way of verbalizing what we saw above: that in times of massive change anetwork is more effective than a hierarchy. But the current IC is based on Industrial-Agehierarchical models for information flow and leadership.In the Industrial Age, organizations developed to get things done collectivelyusing technology based on Newtonian models. The Newtonian paradigm concentratedon the operations part of the Decision Cycle (Decide and Act), and the currentnational infrastructure can act efficiently and almost instantaneously whendecisions are made.In the Information Age, organizations must be developed to make strategicplans aided by information technologies, but based on new models. The new paradigmmust concentrate on the intelligence part of the Decisions Cycle (Observeand Orient), so that the future national infrastructure can think effectively andcooperatively to provide the plans for making those decisions.Step 3 in building Warning Analysis for the Information Age is to “reorient thearrows” within the IC—both the information flow and leadership interactions—to39William B. Scott and David Hughes, “Nascent Net-Centric War Gains Pentagon Toehold”Aviation Week & Space Technology, 27 Jan 2003, 50, 53.83