Article Entry
29 Jul 2009
Comments:8
Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Intelligence?
Added by USGIF Category: Daily Intelligence Brief, General
We all know that the key to actionable intelligence is information. Knowledge is power, right? But, is there such a thing as too much information in the intelligence community? According to a recent study, for the many branches of the military, the glut of information produced by intelligence gathering is so overwhelming that much of it is never properly analyzed.
A report from December of 2008 called Data Analysis Challenges was provided recently after a Freedom of Information Act request, the report was originally withheld from the public.
According to InformationWeek, the report was written by a DoD advising group known as JASON in conjunction with a non-profit company MITRE Corporation. Huge amounts of data being collected by the myriad of sensors and imagery devices the military uses today is becoming increasingly difficult to store, analyze, and integrate into defense systems, according to the report.
What do you all think about this? Is our military on “information overload”? And, do we have the right tools for sifting through all of this intelligence?
Tags: GEOINT, IC, Intelligence and the Military, Intelligence Community, JASON, MITRE, Too Much Intelligence, USGIF
From Linked-In:
hummm…that’s sort of like asking if a soldier ever has enough ammo….they’ll eventually get through it all, just my humble analogy….answer really is to high more or automate analysis to identify core objectives for the analysts to examine….
From Linked-In:
It seems to me that there is often a problem of the improper focus of intelligence. I’m not sure that many collectors/producers of strategic intelligence completely understand what is important to those engaged on the ground. I’m not sure that many collectors/producers of tactical intelligence completely understand what is important to the policy makers. If I were in the White House, I may want to know about the other guy’s five year economic plan. If I’m in the battle, I may want to know about the bad guy behind the nearest bush. What is “actionable” for the policy maker is not necessarily “actionable ” for the guy on the ground..
From Linked-In:
Perhaps it comes down to better training. Not all information is worthy of being called “intelligence”. Perhaps the collectors have the “more is better” philosophy, and need to dig a little deeper. Perhaps it comes down to advancement; which goes hand in hand with the second “perhaps”. Perhaps they’re overworked, maybe extending tours isn’t such a good idea after all. I do think it comes down to all of the above, with better training leading the list for both collectors and analysts.
From Linked-In:
In addition to having too much intel, I think we are becoming too reliant on intel. I retired from the Army in 2006. This is anecdotal, but I thought I started to see commanders starting to hesitate, waiting for that last piece of information to come in or be analyzed before they acted (to avoid an incorrect tactical decision, fratricide, collateral damage, etc). Sort of a “ready-aim-aim-aim…” syndrome. There was a hesitancy to “fire!”
You don’t need to look further than ancient battle commanders to see examples of information overload. You can have that by having just too large of a staff. In 1945 Vannavar Bush pointed out that our ability to gather data had overcome our ability to analyze it. The whole point of the defense industry spending billions on document exploitation systems to see efforts are being made to create the ability to leverage a small intelligence analysis staff and to provide a clear intelligence operating system(s).
I differentiate between finished intelligence and raw data here. A good commander knows how to act by evaluating the quality and confidence they have in the finished analysis.
Intelligence drives everything.
From Linked-In:
My experience has been that common sense may not prevail when there is information overload especially when all the cultures collide.
An example of this is I travelled the Middle East in the 80′s, I was in Kuwait and the weather looked like fog but I had a cough. I then asked some friends and they told me it was the “toz” which was a fine dust that came in from the desert during certain times of the year.
Now what do you bet this was never considered in military equipment design, etc.? How many problems with equipment did we have in Iraq due to this? Again, just a common sense mistake. No amount of students at MIT will be on this.
From Linked-In:
It is an organization problem not a quantity problem. The question is never “is there too much intelligence?” The question is always “how do we organize the intelligence we have so that it is meaningful?” The only way that this can be done is to drill down into the questioning process and structure the requests for information in a better more understandable way. The military knows how to do this and they are very good at it. Additionally they have established another parallel internet that isn’t nearly so clogged with all of the detritus that we have to put up with. Lastly their fuzzy logic is better than our fuzzy logic and the responses they get to their questions are better – more concise- than the responses we get our questions.
Data fitness and fit for purpose data!
Data deluge has always been an issue, since the first time mankind engaged each other. How much is too much?!
We have failed to train and develop our personnel in using the correct type of data for the level of decision required; and failed to develop our ISR capabilities in conjunction with our data fitness. How do we respond? We need GEOINT Stewardship- a responsibility to use our GEOINT data resources correctly for decision makers.