Of actionable and inactionable intelligence
[ by Charles Cameron — nutshell version: strategy should precede tactics as contemplation precedes action ]
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Let me grab a quick quote from page 4 of Dr. Rob Johnston‘s Analytic Culture in the US Intelligence Community: An Ethnographic Study, and launch from there:
Warner reviews and synthesizes a number of previous attempts to define the discipline of intelligence and comes to the conclusion that “Intelligence is secret state activity to understand or influence foreign entities.”
Warner’s synthesis seems to focus on strategic intelligence, but it is also logically similar to actionable intelligence (both tactical and operational) designed to influence the cognition or behavior of an adversary.
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Look, I’m an amateur reading professional materials, but what I sense here is a distinction between “actionable” and “strategic intelligence” — which for my purposes as a confirmed Taoist might semi-tongue-in-cheek be called “inactionable intelligence” and be done with it.
But of course while “inactionable intelligence” is certainly intelligence, it is by no means inactionable in any real sense. It is simply actionable at a different level or altitude, one more rareified if you will, closer to the needs of policy makers than those in the field, background hum to the vivid and pressing urgencies and exigencies of battle.
Let me take, from my reading when I began this post a week ago, and without giving them undue priority over a thousand such pieces that you or I might find, three headlines to illustrate my point:
American Conservative: COIN Is a Proven Failure; America risks shoveling more troops into Iraq to replicate a strategy that never worked in the first place EmptyWheel: Over $80 Billion Wasted in “Training” Iraqi, Afghan Forces: No Lessons Learned Informed Comment: Iraq Fail: Shiite Gov’t asks Sunni tribe to fight ISIL, but Sentences Politician from Tribe to Death
Agree or disagree with those three individual pieces as you may, each in turn depicts a situation where it is not the single raid or drone strike, firefight or rescue attempt, but the wider grasp of a war and its nth-order ramifications that is at stake. And while having a clear grasp of such things (seeing them in a coup d’oeuil, perhaps?) may not save or kill at the individual, small group, immediate tactical level, it can save tens or hundreds of thousands of lives, and perhaps even avert entire wars and their deranged after-effects, acting as what I’ll call “actionable wisdom” at higher altitude.
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So we have the proposition: true inactionable intelligence is insightful actionable wisdom.
Now here’s the thing: everyone knows that actionable intelligence is useful — it is almost something you can touch or see — it gives meaning to the view in a sniper’s scope, it is visceral, present, immediate, concrete, practical.
By comparison, the high contextual intelligence I am calling “actionable wisdom” is more remote, theoretical, abstract — less tangible, less, let’s face it, sexy than “actionable intelligence”.
Yet it has a wider and deeper reach, and the potential to offer far more positive outcomes and save far more lives.
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I often refer to Castoriadis‘ quote about how different philosophy would be if our paradigm for a “real object” in consiering what reality is was Mozart‘s Requiem rather than a kitchen table — a table seems more real than music, munitions more real than morale — but are they?
Or to put that another way — and I’m serious, if mildly metaphorical, in repurposing Stalin‘s quote — How many divisions has the Battle Hymn of the Republic?
As many as it brings courage to, would be my answer.
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Footnoting that McNamara quote: It’s from Robert S. McNamara in Conversations with History, starting from the question at the 11.21 mark onwards. Here’s a more detailed transcript:
At times I think there is a tension between what you call contemplation and action. But I think there’s less tension than most people believe, and I myself believe a person of action, or let’s say an administrator if you will, should put more weight on contemplation, what you call contemplation, should put more weight on establishing values in his mind, establishing goals and objectives, for himself, for his organization, and those he’s associated with. Let me phrase it very simplistically: I don’t believe there’s a contradiction between a soft heart and hard head. In a sense, I don’t believe there’s a contradiction between contemplation and action. Action should be founded on contemplation, and those of us who act don’t put enough time, don’t give enough emphasis, to contemplation.
After a discussion of his role introducing safety features in the 1950s auto industry, he continues:
There’s no contradiction between what I call a soft heart and a hard head, or there’s no contradiction between what I’ll call social values on the one hand and a firm’s financial strength and sustainability on the other – that’s really what I was first trying to prove to myself and then trying to prove to others.
December 14th, 2014 at 1:27 am
Charles, I’m having some problems with that first quote. In its first paragraph, it seems to me that intelligence might or might not be a secret activity. For example, Eliot Higgins and his crew are doing intelligence work on Twitter and otherwise and publishing it on a blog.
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The second paragraph simply doesn’t track. If “Warner’s synthesis” is “Intelligence is secret state activity to understand or influence foreign entities,” then I don’t get the author’s distinction (or similarity) between “strategic” and “actionable” intelligence. (I’m putting things in quotes to show they are the author’s words.)
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I have always understood “actionable intelligence” to be intelligence that can be acted upon. A reconnaissance patrol brings back the location of the enemy. That can be the basis for forming an attack, so it’s actionable intelligence. Not strategic.
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Further, the author describes “actionable intelligence (both tactical and operational)” as “designed to influence the cognition or behavior of an adversary.” The actions taken on the basis of intelligence might “influence the cognition or behavior of an adversary,” but the intelligence itself, probably not, particularly if, as in the first paragraph, it is secret. What is described there has been called “active measures” by the KGB.
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That’s awfully confusing, and I don’t think it invalidates most of what you’ve written afterwards. And I suspect my exposition is confusing too. But I think that first quote is a horrible mishmash.
December 14th, 2014 at 2:01 am
Hi Cheryl:
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It’s the second para of Johnston I wanted to quote & discuss as a jumping off point, and particularly the words “strategic intelligence .. similar to actionable intelligence (both tactical and operational)” — but felt I needed to include the first by way of explaining “Warner’s synthesis” at the start of para 2, since it would otherwise be an abrupt & unexplained opening. I should probably have put para 2, or perhaps just that one phrase, in italics for emphasis.
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For the purposes of this post, I’m not interested in secrecy, state activity or enemy cognition, just in situating what I call “unactionable intelligence” as, in fact, actionable, but in a less visceral and more cerebral part of the analysis to decision-making process..
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And as I say, I’m an amateur, so my language is probably a tad on the loose side.
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Does that clear things up?
December 14th, 2014 at 3:37 am
Nope. It’s the second paragraph that is really a hash. Without repeating what I said above, it just doesn’t make sense. I think that the author and the person he is quoting don’t understand what actionable intelligence is.
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As I say, it doesn’t necessarily make the rest of your post wrong, just confuses things in a way that I think is not necessary.
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I think what you’d like to say is that there may be a kind of intelligence that may not have immediate consequences, as actionable intelligence can, that could be called strategic intelligence or perhaps contemplation. I’ve got no problem with that, except that it’s not what that quote says.
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To take my example above, the reconnaissance unit brings back the actionable intelligence of the enemy’s location, but strategic intelligence would be whether the generals are following Clausewitz or Brodie. I don’t know that I’d use the term “inactionable intelligence.”
December 14th, 2014 at 4:03 am
Yes indeed, “a kind of intelligence that may not have immediate consequences, as actionable intelligence can, that could be called strategic intelligence or perhaps contemplation” is what I was getting at.
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As for my calling it “inactionable intelligence” — that’s down to my quirky sense of humor, the phrase “wei wu wei” and my affection for Chuang Tzu.
December 15th, 2014 at 3:32 am
“actionable” often means “tactical” – immediately useful to IC, military or law enforcement agents in the field but when the term is used by a politician rather than an IC field professional I suspect it takes grayer shades of meaning.
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We are terrible at strategic intelligence for the same reason we underinvest in clandestinity and influence operations – it does not comport with the hyperactive American short time frame which really gravitates to hourly or daily “reporting, but with secret sources” instead of deep, long term, understanding. Most consumers of intel do not know what they really want so they think they want a CIA as CNN
December 15th, 2014 at 12:40 pm
Follow zen here. “Actionable” would refer more to tactical situations with the assumption that the information is not just “intelligence information” but hard intelligence. This refers especially to SIGINT product since supposedly you are getting the information directly from the horse’s mouth in real time so to speak. This is why those with a SIGINT background have a different attitude towards intelligence collection than say those with a HUMINT background. There is also a sort of aura around SIGINT product, essentially that SIGINT is “truth” which explains why governments are so addicted to it. HUMINT collectors are much more sceptical about intelligence collection and its limits.
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Strategic HUMINT collection involves intelligence information taken from a human source going through the “intelligence process” of analysis and comparison with other sources. This takes time and would be “actionable” to the extent that the original source is considered reliable and accurate, so we see there are built in limitations here.
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During the 1980s and early 1990s the US had an extensive and capable HUMINT strategic collection capability, targeted mostly at the Warsaw Pact, but decided to go the high-tech and especially SIGINT route after 1992, disbanding most of the HUMINT expertise. There was also a corruption of the intelligence process by US political leaders who wished the analysts to tell the politicos what they wanted to hear for policy reasons. Liaison became more important than collection. Many of the big names in US intel got their positions by catering to exactly this . . .
December 17th, 2014 at 5:23 pm
Thanks to you both for clarifying things & giving me better ways to express myself. I find myself, to the limits of my own understanding, in agreement. The “inactionable” intelligence I am trying to promote is indeed liable to be strategic rather than tactical, and HUMINT rather than SIGINT, and the “’intelligence process’ of analysis and comparison with other sources” is indeed where my interest is focused, my wish being to support reasoning by analogy within that context, subject to the same sorts of critical thinking embodied in “analysis of competing hypotheses” etc.
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Seydlitz, your “aura” around SIGINT seems to me to be both a part of the more general aura surrounding high-tech (and high-budget?) and a result of Zen’s “hyperactive American short time frame” — which has the glow of immediate gratification to enhance its appeal.
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Sadly, short term gratification often contains the seeds of long term failure, just as an immediate tactical success can form part of a strategic failure — as in “winning a battle but losing the war”.
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Zen, that whole phrase, “hyperactive American short time frame which really gravitates to hourly or daily ‘reporting, but with secret sources’ instead of deep, long term, understanding” hits home for me. The need for “deep, long term, understanding” seems to me to be the “fulcrum” (cf Donella Meadows’ concept of Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System) with the greatest potential for real change.
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[I’d originally written point d’appui, intending the meaning point of application, but now see that point d’appui has a technical meaning in military contexts, which is not the one I intended.]
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In any case, I’ll be better able to express myself thanks to your guidance. My thanks.
December 19th, 2014 at 12:45 am
Charles-
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Regarding “strategic” are you thinking in terms of intelligence collection, or rather essentially operations, that is operating on intelligence/intelligence information in an attempt for strategic effect?
December 19th, 2014 at 7:28 pm
Hi Seydlitz:
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It’s the contextual interpretation of intelligence in the upward stream to decision-makers that I’m concerned about — whatever the strategic equivalent of the “human terrain team” at the tactical level would be?
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Does that make enough sense?