Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2018 | Page 37

Global Security and Intelligence Studies
how to improve intelligence analysis and, by inference, prevent strategic surprise.
As Jack Davis of the CIA’s Sherman Kent School, which trains intelligence analysts,
stated in 2003, “The central mission of intelligence analysis is to warn US
officials about dangers to national security interests and to alert them to perceived
openings to advance US policy objectives. Thus, the bulk of analysts’ written and
oral deliverables points directly or indirectly to the existence, characteristics, and
implications of threats to and opportunities for US national security” (2003, 3).
Davis (and others) argue that in strategic warning, surprise is inevitable (Honig
2008; Betts 2010). However, education and training of intelligence analysts plays
an important role in preparing the intelligence community, which can influence
how the nation responds to new threats as they emerge.
In the last 15 years, there have been a number of colleges and universities
which have developed undergraduate intelligence studies programs, with the intent
that many of their graduates would pursue careers in the intelligence community.
Yet, there is a wide divergence in the structure and design of these programs,
to include traditional security studies in a single discipline liberal arts department
(political science, etc.); multidiscipline programs which include liberal arts, sciences
and technology; and more practitioner-based approaches in professional
schools (Campbell 2011; Coulthart and Crosston 2015). Most of these programs
include courses in intelligence analysis, but tailored to their particular program
requirements.
The purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which these undergraduate
degree programs are providing students the requisite knowledge, skills,
and abilities to become intelligence analysts who may eventually be involved in
producing strategic warning assessments. The methodology consists of conducting
content analysis of syllabi from schools offering courses in intelligence analysis
to compare and contrast student learning outcomes, pedagogy, assessment, use of
analytic tools and processes (such as structured analytical techniques, simulations,
and exercises), and other instructional methodologies. It also includes assessing
the results of interviewing faculty teaching in these programs, as well as interviewing
intelligence analysts currently working in the intelligence community and
instructors at the professional schools which train intelligence analysts within the
IC. This article assesses the extent to which undergraduate education in intelligence
analysis does or does not provide the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities
for analysts working in the IC, in order to be better equipped to do strategic
warning and anticipate strategic surprise. As a result of the research conducted,
this article argues that while undergraduate education in intelligence analysis does
a good job in exposing students to the unique challenges intelligence analysts face
in assessing threats and providing strategic warning, an overemphasis on using
structured analytical techniques in some of these courses may not be providing
students with the critical thinking skills necessary to become intelligence analysts
who are able to anticipate strategic surprise.
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