Paper Example on Intelligence Community

Introduction

In the world today, there are many threats that are related to the security of the nations. One of the main roles of the Intelligence Community is to monitor the threats and give timely information that can be used to avoid the negative impacts of these threats before they happen. The threat environment in the 21st century includes several types of threat that are of great danger to the world. The first and most obvious is the increased rate of terrorism and organized terrorist groups across the world. The Intelligence Community uses the skills and resources provided by the government to provide the government with the information about the formation, growth, and plans of the terrorist groups across the world. The threat of domestic terrorism and jihadists are some of the specific issues that the US Intelligence community deals with (Richelson, 2018). The other major threat is the increased cyber threats which lead to loss of trust in governance and the norms in the society. Cyberspace is used to create fear, unpredictable attacks, and distortion of the government operations (Coates, 2017). The homegrown violent extremists is also a challenge that the US Intelligence Community has to observe and analyze the way it develops and how to increase the prediction. The Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS) is also an example of the international terrorist groups that the US IC has to monitor and analyze keenly as it poses a challenge in most of the countries across the world, among many other groups.

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Warning and its Process and Value

The warning refers to the activities that are meant to discover and monitor any time-sensitive intelligence information that relates to the foreign and local developments that are a forewarning of the threats that can harm the country in future. It is the analysis of the foreign threats which is based on the three major pillars; the first one is who the main threats depending on their threats are. The second one is the intentions they have and the last one is their capability to act as suspected. The warning process starts with the analysis of the questions, suspicions, allegations, experience, feedback, assumptions and detected facts about the threats. The second step is the creation of a hypothesis and the other step is a collection of facts. Once all facts have been documented, the other step is synthesis and analysis of these facts and this is followed by judgments and assessment of the data and lastly reporting of the warning to the relevant authorities (Schmidt, 2015). The process allows the intelligence to compile all data about the threats and to report it in an organized manner. The main value of the warning is to predict the possible actions of the enemies and the best solution to prevent the adverse situations that are likely to be created.

Challenges Faced By US Intelligence Community

The US Intelligence Community faces several challenges that are related to the changes in the threats and the nature of threats that the community has to deal with. The first one is the increased complexity of the threats. The threats have changed and most of them become more complex each time. The threats are complex and unpredictable and this affects the ability to manage them and to give reliable information that can be used to meet the goals of controlling it. The increased use of technology increases the complexity of the risks and threats. For example, terrorists use the internet and social media to communicate in a way that the intelligence community may not detect. The other challenge is political influence, whereby the community is used by some of the powerful politicians for their own gains. In this way, the integrity of the agency is compromised and most of the data collected by the intelligence officers are used to give these politicians the political mileage they require. The other challenge is the bureaucracy in the government which affects the implementation of the information they find and this hinders the collection of data from the key suspects (Coates, 2017). For example, the community may not have a direct access to the data held in the websites of some of the suspicious agencies that fund terrorism.

Key Academic Points by Grabo

The work of Cynthia Grabo in the book called the Handbook of Intelligence Warning shows several ways in which the intelligence warning works. The book starts by explaining what the warning is and why it is important. Grabo explains the view that people have about intelligence warning and how the attack on the Pearl Harbor affected the way the public thinks about the intelligence warnings. The attack created an image that intelligence warning is about failure and it may not be of any benefits to the country and the public. The author also notes that most of the successful intelligence warnings go unnoticed by the public and they take it to be a normal thing for the government to be proactive and to prevent attacks before they happen. One of the main comparisons is that the author explained the oil crisis of 1973 and how such challenges can be avoided using the warning intelligence (Grabo, 2010). In a different way, the work of Venn (2016) shows that's the oil crisis in 1973 was as a result of some planned activities by the oil-producing countries with the aim of creating the crisis for their own gains.

The other comparison is the way the author explains the Cuban Missile Crisis that occurred in 1962. The missile crisis was as a result of deceitful Soviet Union leader who promised not to undertake destructive military activities in Cuba and Latin America but went ahead to install missiles in Cuba. According to Grabo (2010), the case of the missiles in Cuba is one of the ways to analyze the importance and the necessity to have intelligence warning and to use the warning and indication tactics to advise the country on the international threats. Similar views are explained by Jervis (2015), which explains the failures of the Intelligence Community and how the inaccuracy of the intelligence warning can lead to dangerous outcomes. The key academic points in the comparisons are that intelligence warning has been in existence for many years and that there are many benefits associated with it. However, the differences are that Grabo's work explains the warnings only and how the warnings can be improved and why they fail. The rest of the authors have a wider analysis and they include the historical state of the warnings. The comparison between Grabo's work and that of Jervis shows that the two authors had several similarities and differences as indicated below.

The work by Grabo explains the way the system functions and why the intelligence warning is necessary for the government to face the challenges and threats in the world. The analysis of the operations of the government helps to understand the intentions of having accurate information about the international threats. Grabo also analyzed the integration of political and military operations and knowledge to meet the targets of the intelligence warning. The information contained in the work of Grabo is based on what the warnings have helped the governments to achieve in the past and why they matter. The work also analyzed the problems and hazards of the analysis of the data collected in the process of intelligence warning. The challenges are analyzed in full and the author gave a thorough description that can be used in future research.

In the work of Jervis, the author explains the way the missile crisis happened in Cuba and how the Intelligence Community gave reports about the activities of the Soviet Union in Cuba. The main difference between the two authors is that Grubo discussed the warning intelligence widely and did not focus on one event. S for Jervis, the main focus was the missile crisis and how it started and ended. It is more about how the crisis was discovered and solved. The other difference is that the work of Grabo discusses the challenges that face the warning process in general but the work of Jervis is about the way the intelligence community gave inaccurate data and not how the challenges associated with the warning intelligence affected the warning process. The two authors used valid examples to expound on their points and to create a vivid image of the issues that matter most to the intelligence community.

References

Richelson, J. T. (2018). The US intelligence community. Routledge.

Coates, D. R. (2017). Statement for the record: Worldwide threat assessment of the US intelligence community. Director of National Intelligence Testimony, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Schmidt, J. M. (2015). Intelligence, strategic warning, and foresight: completing the package for decision-makers. Journal of Intelligence Analysis, 22(2).

Grabo, C. (2010). Handbook of warning intelligence: Assessing the threat to National Security (Vol. 12). Scarecrow Press.

Jervis, R. (2015). The Cuban Missile Crisis: What can we know, why did it start, and how did it end?. In The Cuban Missile Crisis (pp. 19-57). Routledge.

Venn, F. (2016). The oil crisis. Routledge.