Intelligence analysis
Intelligence analysis
Intelligence analysis is the process of taking known information about situations and entities of strategic, operational, or tactical importance, characterizing the known, and, with appropriate statements of probability, the future actions in those situations and by those entities. The descriptions are drawn from what may only be available in the form of deliberately deceptive information; the analyst must correlate the similarities among deceptions and extract a common truth. Although its practice is found in its purest form inside intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the United States or the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, MI6) in the UK, its methods are also applicable in fields such as business intelligence or competitive intelligence.
Contents
1 Overview
2 Analytic tradecraft
2.1 Setting goals for an intelligence analysis
2.1.1 Be bold and honest
2.1.2 Agreement on content
2.1.3 Orienting oneself to the consumers
2.1.4 Orienting yourself to peers
2.2 Organizing what you have
3 The nature of analysis
3.1 Types of reasoning
3.1.1 Induction: seeking causality
3.1.2 Deduction: applying the general
3.1.3 Trained intuition
3.1.4 Scientific method
3.2 Methods of analysis
3.2.1 Opportunity analysis
3.2.2 Linchpin analysis
3.2.3 Analysis of competing hypotheses
3.2.4 Analogy
4 The analytic process
4.1 Define the problem
4.2 Generate hypotheses
4.3 Determine information needs & gather information
4.4 Evaluate sources
4.5 Evaluate (test) hypotheses
4.6 Production and packaging
4.7 Peer review
4.8 Customer feedback and production evaluation
5 Never forget the end user
6 See also
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links
Overview
Intelligence analysis is a way of reducing the ambiguity of highly ambiguous situations, with the ambiguity often very deliberately created by highly intelligent people with mindsets very different from the analyst's. Many analysts prefer
Intelligence analysis is the process of taking known information about situations and entities of strategic, operational, or tactical importance, characterizing the known, and, with appropriate statements of probability, the future actions in those situations and by those entities. The descriptions are drawn from what may only be available in the form of deliberately deceptive information; the analyst must correlate the similarities among deceptions and extract a common truth. Although its practice is found in its purest form inside intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the United States or the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, MI6) in the UK, its methods are also applicable in fields such as business intelligence or competitive intelligence.
Contents
1 Overview
2 Analytic tradecraft
2.1 Setting goals for an intelligence analysis
2.1.1 Be bold and honest
2.1.2 Agreement on content
2.1.3 Orienting oneself to the consumers
2.1.4 Orienting yourself to peers
2.2 Organizing what you have
3 The nature of analysis
3.1 Types of reasoning
3.1.1 Induction: seeking causality
3.1.2 Deduction: applying the general
3.1.3 Trained intuition
3.1.4 Scientific method
3.2 Methods of analysis
3.2.1 Opportunity analysis
3.2.2 Linchpin analysis
3.2.3 Analysis of competing hypotheses
3.2.4 Analogy
4 The analytic process
4.1 Define the problem
4.2 Generate hypotheses
4.3 Determine information needs & gather information
4.4 Evaluate sources
4.5 Evaluate (test) hypotheses
4.6 Production and packaging
4.7 Peer review
4.8 Customer feedback and production evaluation
5 Never forget the end user
6 See also
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links
Overview
Intelligence analysis is a way of reducing the ambiguity of highly ambiguous situations, with the ambiguity often very deliberately created by highly intelligent people with mindsets very different from the analyst's. Many analysts prefer