re: US Intelligence Community Strengths and Weaknesses

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When we talked to those people, we always began with the assumption that everything they said was a lie, and worked from there. It didn't matter if they had been paid, if they had been threatened, or anything else. They'll lie just to do it.

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Do they really lie just to do it? Surely there is some sort of motivation. There is valuable intel in just knowing their reasons for lying. I guess know those motivations are what you'd call "atmospheric" information.

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Intel gained from technology is far superior. While it's true that subjective analysis is introduced, the data doesn't rely on people and isn't politically driven.

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I'd say that technology driven intel is superior in detail but not in overall substance. Data that is politically driven is useful if you can understand the politics that drive it.

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Obviously a big issue. The reason behind it I think is that our culture/media/politics, and therefore our intelligence priorities and techniques, are on a 4 year election cycle. Our enemies think in terms of generations while we focus on the present and immediate future.

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Certainly true, especially when we compare our system to competitors like Russia, Iran, and China. they operate on a generational timeline. we operate on the news cycle

I absolutely agree. In addition to the politically driven "leadership" you have lower-level officers and senior enlisted that are more concerned about advancing their careers by kissing the right side of government arse than doing their jobs. It's so fricking backwards.

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Do they really lie just to do it?

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No, that was just a bit of hyperbole to stress my point that they all lie to some degree.

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Surely there is some sort of motivation. There is valuable intel in just knowing their reasons for lying. I guess know those motivations are what you'd call "atmospheric" information.

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Absolutely, and that's part of the degradation of HUMINT. We spent too much time trying to figure out if our sources were being truthful. Don't get me wrong, it's certainly valuable. I'm just relating my experiences, and keep in mind, I wasn't a HET guy.

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I'd say that technology driven intel is superior in detail but not in overall substance.

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That depends on the data, the analysis conducted, how it's used, etc. In today's environment, technology-driven intelligence carries the day.

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To be successful in cyber you need a very unstructured organization with little regard for who you hire and how much you incentivize them to be successful.

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What do you mean by unstructured? I think I probably agree with you, just wanted to know what you think about that.

Wanted to cover your original post before I dove in on some of the responses.

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The US has never been the world's preeminent espionage player. We may not be the worst but others certainly do it better and for a long time.

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I believe that the reason this is true is that America has been the wealthiest super power in the history of the world. Money and equipment is no object for us, and because full retaliation against the US is simply not on the table for other government, we can pretty much just invade and shift shite around how we please. The willingness of our population to re-elect politicians who launch large scale wars is the only real limitation of the USG ability to literally kill anything that disagrees with it.

That kind of environment does not lend itself to an exceptional espionage capability. Even the USSR at its peak was operating on fumes. Thier shite socialist nightmare economy and constant need for expansion (and failures in doing so) kept them bluffing the US for almost their entire reign. Their access to east Germany, Europe, and the US through well designed propaganda and recruitment programs allowed them to piggy back on US technological advances, disrupt American allies in places where the US had key economic relationships, and be a general thorn in our side in Cuba, Turkey, Hungary, and all of latin America (it seems). The Russians were playing small ball with America all throughout the 50s well into the 80s. Their sponsorship of the castro brothers and Che in Cuba coupled with their influence with the not-so-hidden marxists in the US and Europe cost America billions of dollars and one massively failed interdiction (bay of pigs).

The cold war would be America's golden era of espionage, and our success in that era was paltry compared to what China, Iran and the USSR achieved in that time. One thing all three had/have in common: They are forced to achieve more with less, which lends itself to irregular warfare capabilities and espionage. In a way, we should be thankful that it wasn't a necessity to have the premier espionage element during that era, because it would have been almost impossible to achieve given our circumstances and the nature of government.

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HUMINT is probably our biggest weakness. I think there are several reasons for this. One obvious reason is the conscious decision to divest from human intelligence and rely more on different forms of technology(SIGINT/Imagery/ELINT/Cyber). I think the reason for this shift was two fold. 1. It's less risky. Politicians and by extension political appointees that run the intelligence community are risk averse by nature. 2. We can afford to do the high tech type of espionage allowing us to be lazy with HUMINT. We're a rich nation and can buy/develop any type of satellite or computer system or surveillance equipment our heart desires.

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HUMINT is a huge weakness for us. Much of the reason for that is the 4 year leadership cycles, which are honestly abbreviated because the last 18 months are about getting re-elected, thus risk aversion increases.

Our Cabinet positions are politically appointed and have almost ZERO autonomy of decision making. There are advantages and disadvantages of this. I certainly don't advocate for the kinds of systems the Iran, Russia, and China utilize, because that implies something far more authoritarian and nothing close to constitutional.

I would never advocate for one type of intel over all others, but I will say that I tend to believe HUMINT is the most versatile of the collection methods, and while it is difficult, time consuming, and resource intensive, it can provide the critical "context" or "atmospherics" where all the other methods struggle in that regard. Most of my experience is in the HUMINT world, and I am quite familiar with the limitations of that speciality. Displaced_Buckeye mentioned leadership, and I think that without a question leadership is the most important factor in having solid HUMINT. I'm talking about all the way up to the POTUS. WHAT we are collecting on (Collection requirements or PIR) are CRUCIAL in forming an effective collection system in the HUMINT world. You can't just suck it all into a computer and sort it out later. In many cases you have limited windows. Sources die, get bored, change sides, retire, lose access etc... Having a constantly rotating national objective (COIN in Iraq AFG, or WMDs, or Force PRO Etc.. kills momentum and development of HUMINT assets. Which brings up another leadership issue: The CIA is far too diverse in its efforts, and its focus on operations vice intel collection is highly detrimental to our national collection strategy. The big boy agencies have been down playing in the fricking mud with our DOD for 15 years, in what I can only describe as glory hunting and careerist minded bullshite. they claim to be interested in strategic level information, but my years of experience tell me that's just a load of shite. they are interested in getting their names out there, being patted on the head, and above all else, protecting their politically appointed chief so they can all get that desk they always wanted. Their organization is one of the most cut-throat that I have ever seen. The amount of lying and fabrication that goes on the get that pat on the head is astonishing. There is no "greater team" concept with them and that is a massive leadership problem. Unfortunately they are the nations keeper of the realm for HUMINT, and all collection tactics and approvals go through them (and the Chief of mission) in all areas not specifically exempt from such an arrangement such as Iraq was from 2003-2011. that's enough railing on them for now, because really they are just a symptom of the greater problem, which is a far too ambitious and destructive foreign policy.

the USG tries to do far too much in far too many places. We have massive manning issues, we lose our best because they get burned out or tired of working around the cut-throat careerist types who inevitably rise up the ranks. We can't keep our people operating in the same environments for 10 or 15 years like so many other countries do. We have people who have deployed or worked in dozens of countries in their careers, learning almost nothing about any of them. We change alliances in our small wards virtually overnight with no warning whatsoever, which destroys our ability to build meaningful, peaceful relationships with indigenous partners in those countries. Partnerships that help prevent 9-11 style attacks, or that warn us when ISIL is about to be a problem. Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and a dozen other countries should be premier performers in terms of early warning and atmospherics. They aren't, because everyone is chasing that shiny object and not unified around a singular objective: Identifying legitimate threats to US national security. I could talk about this for years. Ill just leave it there for now. To be continued

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Another reason we're weak in HUMINT are cultural limitations. I think this one is the biggest reason for our weakness and also the most overlooked. The US is far removed from all of our enemies. We have none that border us or threaten us directly in any and never really have since the early 1800's. Very few Americans are bilingual. Very few grew up in foreign countries or frequently travel. Our ability to identify or relate to potential human sources just isn't part of our DNA as a nation. I would guess that most of the time we do run sources it's because we've just opened up the checkbook. This doesn't just affect our ability to run sources, our ability to understand other cultures just isn't where it needs to be. We often miss the forest for the trees when it comes to intel analysis of a geopolitical event because our analysts don't understand the people involved.

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We are far removed because at some point virtually everyone has been our enemy. the US takes an adversarial stance on anyone who disagrees with us. Our state department think in terms of "molding" the middle east and southeast asia instead of how to access information vital to our national security. We are constantly looking for way to bend other nation states to our will instead of working by with and through them to gather intelligence that protects the US. "X country is bad, we should do something about it" is the dumbest foreign policy mentality to have, but it is the predominate one for reasons that are entirely political. People like HRC would not blink at overthrowing Muamar Ghadaffi in order to build their CINC cred as a presidential candidate. You know what that resulted in? A total disruption of US collection capabilities in the region. Not just in Libya. The region.

We have plenty of people who truly understand the atmospherics from these middle eastern countries, but they spend all their time at the tactical level, never getting promoted and thus never getting heard. Their atmospheric reporting gets thrown to the bottom of the heap as the new foreign policy direction takes hold and the collection requirements shift to support the next dumbass invasion or regime change. Nobody wants to hear the guy that's saying "hey maybe we shouldn't do this, because all the guys that strong enough to put up a fight with Asaad are tied to AQ and ISI from the Iraq battles from 2003-2011". Nope. President said overthrow Asaad, that report doesn't help me, so go write a new one that does.

Again, our lack of cultural or atmospheric understanding is not a tactical level failure, it goes all the way to the misguided FP adventures of the highest level leaders.


We have SOF guys, and agency guys that can hop a flight anywhere in the middle east, find some friends, and start learning and analyzing what is happening. But none of that matters, because the inputs for decision making are coming from arrogant dipshits who operate on election and news cycles and need political point NOW. They aren't using tactical level input to make decision, they are dictating tactical level input to justify their decisions.

EDIT: and yes, "open up the checkbook" is exactly what happens, because our schizophrenia doesn't lend itself to anyone aligning themselves with the US for longer than that paycheck lasts. They get what they can, while they can, and they move the frick on.

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I would, for obvious reasons.

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To be successful in cyber you need a very unstructured organization with little regard for who you hire and how much you incentivize them to be successful.

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So I am probably going to take this in a different direction that what you meant, but here is my take.

States like Iran, Russia, and China who have effective Cyber warfare capabilities have at least part of these programs decentralized. They will pay civilians on the street for access to hacked information. They will pay by the hour to have hundreds of black hat types to hack away on their own computers. They don't have to pass PT test, background checks, learn how to salute, or even really give a frick about their government. They just need to produce results. This is incredibly hard to counter, because these efforts are indirectly related to the state. In many cases, these hacker might not even know for certain who they work for, as corporate and government espionage can look almost identical.

This is also a reason why the "evidence" that the Us has tying russia to the podesta hacks isn't necessarily implausible. It is entirely possible that those two ID they have are people who are 5 levels removed from the Russian state, and are using their own computers, software, and real estate to hack whoever they think looks important. They might not be state employees at all, but are unwittingly working for the state.

That is decentralized cyber strategy. It can be risky, but when you are resource constrained, those kinds of approaches are quite enticing. The US will never adopt that strategy, because we are resource rich, totally centralized, politicized to the core, and decision making for even the most absurd things are tied directly to the CINC.

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Too often, at least in my time, our leadership wasn't even intel

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It's astonishing isn't it?

Our MI guys in the army are among the worst utilized MOS' in the service. Army Intel has always had that reputation though.

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It pissed me off to end when my team and I were treated the same as the supply or admin shops.

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I was about to say the same thing haha. Our intel guys were "do" boys and janitors of the hallways. they did almost ZERO collection, and their analytical skills (if they had any) were vastly under utilized. Essentially, they served to "google" stuff for us. Sad.