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Intelligence, Bureaucracy, and the "War on Error."
[Notes on Understanding the New World
Disorder is a non-partisan public affairs forum published on the Gold Canyon Website
to stimulate public debate on important international affairs issues.]
by
Guntram Werther, Ph.D.
Gold Canyon, Arizona, USA
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Within this brief note, I want to draw your attention not to the "War on
Terror" - which is in my view getting far too much press at the expense of
other emerging problems that can harm the USA much more (both internationally
and at home) - but rather, to our "War on Error."
The "War on Error" is necessary because as a nation we routinely
prepare for "this" and entirely fail to see "that". We (over)fund
for the old news and fail to understand what is coming down the lane. Over the
years, I have lectured and written extensively about this.
Now that the vaunted 9-11 Commission Report and several other government
sponsored analyses (US Army, CIA internal reviews, etc.) of intelligence agency
capabilities are common knowledge, the view that the USA is not very good at
predicting things international has reached the level of a common understanding
and a national concensus: The intelligence agencies are to blame.
One Congressional critic called the CIA a "stilted bureaucracy incapable of
the smallest degree of success"; which is even worse than my 1999 published
comment that most of the people in international relations studies
"couldn't predict Summertime in July." (Note: I was in a very bad mood
that day; "Werther, G., "The Crisis of Business Intelligence: On the
Necessity of Training Reform." Thunderbird International Business Review,
Vol. 41 (3), May-June 1999).
Both comments are in a sense unfair, as is blaming the diverse intelligence
communities (business and/or government) for their "failures", because
they ARE MERELY DOING WHAT WE TRAINED THEM TO DO, and SEEING AS WE TRAINED THEM
TO SEE.
The universities are to blame, society is to blame; we set this
"failure" up long ago in policy and in performance. I made this point
more generally in the above referenced article saying:
"One can probably misjudge or misunderstand more critical history-making
international events, patterns, and trends than contemporary intelligence
analysts have, but it is hard to imagine how. The crisis of intelligence is part
of the larger crisis of incompetence within the social sciences generally. It is
a systemic problem involving, as an internal CIA review says, an inability to
think "how the other guy thought," a chronic failure of imagination
and personnel, and flaws in information gathering, training, and analysis."
(Werther 1999, 287).
Yet again in another article, "We are in the midst of a public 'crisis of
competence' regarding our country's inability to correctly judge international
trends and events....(Werther, G.. "Profiling 'Change Processes' as a
Strategic Analysis Tool". Competitive Intelligence Magazine, Vol. 3, No 1,
Jan-March 2000). I suggested some solutions.
We have known about this problem for a very long time. Senator Moynihan told us
so in his excellent book "Secrecy." Summing his main point, we are too
bureaucratic. For which the main 9-11 Commission proposed solution is a national
intelligence director in the White House (more bureaucracy) and a reshuffle and
expansion of the existing bureaucracy (more bureaucracy). I predict roughly the
same success as we have had with the energy czar (ca. 1970's to solve the USA
energy crisis), the drug czar (to solve the crisis of illicit drugs importation
and its domestic abuse), and the education czar (to solve the crisis of
underperforming USA schools). Got a problem, call a bureaucrat!
Generally - in my various lectures and essays over many decades- I have seen the
problem of getting more effective and "intelligent" international
analysis (and its potential solution) differently. In another published article
I said:
"Possibly the problem is a short supply of innovation, insight, mental
flexibility, and dedication to the demands imposed by the discipline of
effective analysis." I introduced the phrase "Thinking within
Bias" as opposed to eliminating bias as the thing that we ought to be
teaching and doing (Werther, G. "Beyond the Blocking Tree: Improving
Performance in Future-Oriented Analysis." Competitive Intelligence Review,
Vol. 3, No 4, Oct-Dec 2000). The idea is to teach and do critical thinking from
the perspective of the "other." This understanding requires entirely
new ways of educating, training, and eventually supporting / using people on the
job.
The most focussed question asked in this "Beyond the Blocking Tree..."
article was "Will we be more accurate in judging future outcomes by
focussing on the qualities of analytical methods,...or on improving the
qualities of the analyst?" (Werther, G. 2000b, 43).
You cannot fix what is broken on the "inside" by rearranging the
outside. Consequently, I have long ago turned my primary attention to how we
train people within the university with respect to the needed characteristics of
fostering flexibility, innovation, and insight. These institutions do not at
present do this very well.
One major finding of the 9-11 Commission involved "group think"
at all levels - interconnected, multi-agency and multi-function "group
think" really.
Elsewhere I have commented on what happens to truly independent thinkers within
modern bureaucracies; and also on the broader mutually reinforcing nature of
giant education bureaucracies (universities), giant foreign affairs
bureaucracies (intelligence, military, national police, etc.), and the various
research funding bureaucracies with respect to true innovation and insight. The
picture is not pretty.
I close with Senator Moynihan's unanswered question: If markets are best for
wealth creation, what makes bureaucracy and secrecy best for idea creation?
Here is the core battle in the "War on Error" in my view. It begins
long before anyone ever gets hired and tasked within the intelligence services.
Copyright Guntram Werther Ph.D. 2004. - You may
reproduce this note for non-commercial purposes providing attribution of
authorship is given.
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