U.S. Intelligence
U.S. Intelligence
In the past years, the main test of the quality of U.S. intelligence community was their capacity to gauge the capabilities and intentions of the Soviet Union and the terrorists. However, so far the overall performance of U.S. intelligence has not done well at detecting Soviet military forces other than those positioned for a nuclear strike against the United States (Greenberg and Haass, 1996). They have failed mostly in forecasting accurately what the Soviet government and terrorist intends to do in the future. This is so because the minority in the intelligence community tends to overrule the better judgement of its majority. For instance, this is what happened with the decision the invade Afghanistan. Similarly, the agencies’ leaders fail to recognize or trust information already in their hands just like in the case of 9/11. This makes them fail to use complexity theory to analyze inevitable uncertainties efficiently
The most controversial weakness in the United States intelligence is in the area of mass destruction. It has proved hard to locate and analyze the data the war makes available based on Iraq’s history of proliferation, domestic programs, its capabilities during the Iraq war, its goal and objective. It was clear that the U.S. government had only a weak understanding of the threat they experienced from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and was unable to recognize the Iraqi intention which was described as the main motive for the conflict. It is also clear that the U.S. intelligence had little knowledge of WMD programs and war fighting capabilities of the Iraq.
Despite its weakness in the U.S. intelligence has offered the world the greatest security and hope of having peace. This is so because issues such as social instability of disintegrating powers, failed governments like the case of Syria and other terrorist activities requires U.S. intelligence. This is so because the United States intelligence has the ability to see profoundly and beyond superficial signs. For instance, the most remarkable success of the U.S. intelligence is a reduction of terrorist attacks after killing the founder of al-Qaeda Osama. In order to achieve its mission, U.S. intelligence need understanding of the political, social and economic dynamics of their target. For instance, the U.S. intelligence community needs to understand the situation in Syria before any attack.
The U.S. intelligence is effectively trying to design intelligent systems to address complex nuclear engineering issues. The challenging part of an intelligent system is to handle real world uncertainties that cannot be eliminated. These uncertainties include sensor imprecision, instrumentation and unpredictable environmental factors among others. These uncertainties result in the lack of the complete and precise knowledge of the intelligence system.
So far, the computational intelligent systems based on the soft computing techniques have shown great potential to solve these demanding, real world problems that exist in the uncertain and unpredictable environment. The example of intelligent systems that should be implemented effectively in the U.S. intelligence community includes fuzzy logic, neural networks, genetic algorithms (Simon and Pappas, 2012). These technologies have created the foundation for intelligent systems in the U.S. intelligence community that has helped in handling terrorist attacks.
Therefore, the United States intelligence needs to be improved qualitatively by focusing on coordination of the organization. This requires competing centers of analysis and logical efforts to enhance the development of rebel views and reporting of uncertainty and risk. The US intelligence has managed to fight proliferation after the 9/11 attack. The intelligence system has helped US intelligence to hack accounts of terrorists, which indicate they have tried to act in accord with sound intelligence in a timely manner.
References
Greenberg, M., Haass, R. (1996). Making intelligence smarter: The future of U.S. intelligence : report of an independent task force. New York: The Council.
Simon, J., Pappas, A. (2012). The Intelligence Community: 2001-2015 — Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved March 15, 2014, from https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the- study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol46no1/article05.html
