re: US Intelligence Community Strengths and Weaknesses

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Yes but HUMINT can often give you a larger picture. And I don't want to focus solely on HUMINT in the traditional sense of running sources. Human/Cultural understanding of our friends and enemies(not really sure how to word this). Technical collections can get you a lot of tiny details but not the sentiment of a people or the mood of certain actors in interest. Hence my missing the forest for the trees remark

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We have fairly robust analytical efforts devoted to understanding individuals, groups, nations, etc within the IC, military, and diplomatic corps (think like the intel functions within DIME/PMESII. I take your point that we don't seem all that successful at reading and understanding what motivates and how to influence certain cultures. I don't know how to better crack that nut. It's not for lack of trying. We just can quite seem to grasp certain elements of the Oriental psyche.