Hi Entropy--

Good post. I will only take issue with you on an aspect of the rational actor approach/model. This is, as Graham Allison pointed out in his classic Essence of Decision, the realist model of international relations that has long dominated the field (Thucydides through Morgenthau and the Military decision Making Model). It tends to explain and predict better than any other single model as long as (1) the analysis is rigorous and (2) the analyst has a solid understanding of the explicit goals of the target. For example, if one had read Hitler's Mein Kampf and assumed that Hitler believed what he said in the book then all his subsequent actions were a rational strategy to achieve some essentially irrational goals. Use of the model would, under those conditions, have been an effective predictive tool - as it was for Churchill (who used it implicitly). Like Adam Smith's economic theory (which has been expanded but never overturned) the rational actor model assumes that individuals rationally seek to satisfy their interests. This works in the aggregate in economics. In IR/intel/policy it depends on a little more before the whole thing comes together. Again, Allison showed that much of what the rational actor model does not explain/predict can be explained by 2 other models: (1) organization theory and (2) an individual political model. But what he does not do is to connect the 3 models and show how they mesh in the way that Adam Smith did. For Smith the individual rationally sought to maximize his economic interest. He and his successors added the notion of the firm doing the same thing. The result was the entire economy rationally maximizing its economic interest moved "as if by an invisible hand." Realist IR theory historically starts with the state and never moves down. Allison made the move downward. The final step (and why the rational actor model explains/predicts better than any other single approach) is to bring it back up - individuals acting rationally in organizations tend to move the state into rational policies (with the caveat noted above in the Hitler example). So, the danger you note is not inherent in the model but rather in the way the analyst uses it - or misuses it, as the case may be. One other caveat - in some (few) cases what is rational for theindividual or organization is not rational for the state (or the economic system as a whole - hence the need for regulation).

The only other comment I have is related to what technology can do. Your thoughts on that express most of the dilemmas and positive results very well. (I left the intel analyst business before the advent of the PC so I only experienced deluges of paper.) But what computer technolgy can do for the analyst is to call up all reporting on a given subject. Much of what we got from Humint was F6 (old term for "source has never reported before - reliability unknown - and validity of info unknown"). this stuff was often discarded unless the analyst saw it being reported again from a different source - in which case he could/should upgrade the source and the info. But given paper files, it essentially depended on the analyst to remember. Now a click of the mouse can bring ups all reports on the subject or from the source for comparison. A good capability of technogy, I think, as long as we know enough to use it.

Cheers

JohnT