Strategic Intelligence in an age of Polarization, Politicization and Fake News

Abstract

Strategic Intelligence in an Age of Polarization, Politicization and Fake News

Michael Andregg, University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN, USA, mmandregg@stthomas.edu For the ISA conference in Toronto, Canada, March 26-29, 2019

abstract

Strategic intelligence has always been a dwarf cousin to much larger tactical intelligence as measured by budgets, dedicated personnel, or policy-maker time. There are two fundamental reasons for this. First, political time horizons are notoriously short, while strategic intelligence looks over long periods of time. Second, attention of analysts and interest of policy makers skews toward secret intelligence, while strategic intelligence is almost all derived from open sources. One example would be the series of “Global Trends” forecasts produced by the US National Intelligence Council. These great interagency documents were much appreciated by scholars, but scarcely read (if at all) by active policy makers driven from one crisis to another. They typically seek immediate solutions to proximate problems. In war, for another example, there is typically great demand for tactical information to identify enemies and win battles, but relatively little attention is spent on why wars begin or how they can be prevented.

The current period increases these distortions by global proliferation of “news” sources and the ever-growing sophistication of propagandists exploiting social, alternative and even mainstream media. This problem is compounded by the flow of information over networks instead of on mediated, edited, and limited channels, that once were devoted to more or less “objective truths” (at least in theory). Donald Trump has exploited these trends quite successfully, and amplifies them by constant devotion to selling things indifferent to anything close to objective truth. He also commands obedience from the largest, and in some ways the most sophisticated intelligence community on this earth. Politicization and polarization are thus becoming US-IC norms at the same time that the meme “Fake News” tarnishes the products of every mainstream media source. This paper will develop these themes through examination of cases. Intelligence professionals must still try to find their way through the wilderness of mirrors and professional disinformation to the goal of evidence-based advice for leaders with real lives in their powerful hands. But the task is made much harder by advances in modern propaganda techniques enabled by the internet, while “strategic intelligence” falls ever further behind responses to the urgencies of each day