Quote Originally Posted by Entropy View Post
BW,

Good and timely post. I'll try to provide some detailed thoughts later when I have some more time.

In my experience (EUCOM, CENTCOM), "strategic intelligence" at that level is closely tied to the strategic warning function, which is usually under-resourced. Most intel people are forced into current intelligence to support the crisis du jour, so don't have much opportunity to research and examine the things you list. If you haven't already, I recommend you go talk to the people (or person) in the strategic warning shop and see what they have to say.
Don't know if this is true but I heard a statistic that during the Cold War 75% of our intelligence professionals were focused on long term analysis with 25% on current intelligence production. However, in the post Cold War World the percentages are supposedly reversed. While those stats may be an exaggeration I would bet the concept is illustrative.

Part of the "problem" is the huge amount of information available and the proliferation of electronic media (both of the electronic storage kind but also of the broadcast kind - e.g., 24 hour news cycles). The real problem we have is when leaders say that they do not want to hear about it first on CNN or read about it first in the Washington Post. This drives our intel focus to current ops reporting so they do not get "scooped" by the news media. Again, this may be an exaggeration but I also think it is instructive. We need intel analysis that is useful not just immediately for targeting (the sexy stuff that Bob means, I think) but to allow for sound strategy development and effective campaign planning. We have to stop "chasing the shiny thing" (and there are good intelligence organizations that can do the targeting piece - but our theater level HQ, services, and national level leaders need good, thorough and useful analysis.

Dave