The problem with “groupthink” is not the formal or ” official unwritten rule” requirement for everyone to march ideological lockstep. That characteristic is one easily recognized ( and cursed) by those participating within the system which enforces it. For relevant examples, read the historiography of Soviet Studies dealing with ” nomenklatura“, defectors and dissidents from Kravchenko forward, if not earlier. The real dilemma, the cognitive sticking point where the true damage is done, has to due with the institutional variety of what social historian Lawrence Goodwyn termed “the received culture“. Another useful but highly inexact set of terms might be “worldview” or “paradigm”, but writ small.

Any analytical journeymen who values his intellectual integrity is adept at spotting the ritual nonsense of their organization and compensating accordingly. A far more difficult task is self-awarenes in terms of discerning the implicit assumptions in which we have all been inculcated by experience and design. “The wisdom of crowds” functions primarily because anyone is able ( theoretically) to join the crowd at any moment. When that is no longer possible, the crowd grows increasingly stupid as the scenario upon which it is asked to pontificate, broadens and lengthens.

This has implications for America’s intelligence community. The Cold War has left a peculair counterintelligence legacy known as ” the background check”, if you aspire to certain positions in the national security, defense and intelligence communities. It is expensive and redundant and, in many cases, periodic. It served a purpose when the US squared off against the Eastern Bloc. Today, the economic effect of this CI legacy is to slow the velocity of ” new blood” into the IC and particular appointive positions to a crawl, which effectively ” dumbs down” the “crowd”, even in those instances in which the IC managerial hierarchy permits a “crowd” to function. Which, if you are a faithful reader of Haft of the Spear, you realize, ain’t much.

Here’s a wish, from a humble citizen out in flyover country, directed toward the uppermost G-somethings flitting around the new NDI: have someone with both real experience and political juice tackle revitalizing the creativity of the IC analytical process. I say ” process” because I do not see this as a ” people problem” but a bureaucratic one, the analysts have, as a group, good educations and fine brains.

Look for new ways to use them. Vigorously engage outsiders. Make the political case for novelty in methodology to both politicians and the public. Experimentation at this juncture beats cautious perfection.

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