Strategies and responses to intelligence failure : an organizational view

In the years following September 11th, the United States Intelligence Community has sought to understand the causes of intelligence failure that allowed such an attack to be carried out. The proposed causes of intelligence failure are myriad - from breakdowns in analytic independence, to a failure to appropriately prioritize threats. Understanding the causes of failure is critical to improving the process by which the Intelligence Community anticipates and responds to harmful actors. This paper reviews the extant literature on intelligence failure, and examines the the challenges most prioritized by the Intelligence Community, as reflected through the 2015 reorganization of the Central Intelligence Agency. The study breaks down the strategic and environmental perspective that is reflected in the new organizational structure at the Agency, and seeks to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the new structure. Finally, the study closes by introducing three analytic techniques that have been employed in limited use by the Intelligence Community, but hold promise for improving anticipatory analysis and preventing intelligence failure.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Rao-Chakravorti, Tarit

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ben Shields.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/117989

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/117989