by Heath Breneman

Created on: January 09, 2009

The recruitment and development of human assets in the intelligence community is key to preserving the security of the United States. Collecting intelligence has always fundamentally been an activity of operatives interacting with sources and relaying and judging information. In the twentieth century the use of computers and electronic forms of surveillance allowed the accumulation of far more raw data than at any other time in history, and as the new century dawns, the sophistication and subtlety of these technologies to gather and collate data will only increase. This accumulation of data is essential, but it is only the feedstock of intelligence, not intelligence itself.

The weakness of all surveillance technologies to date is their inability to render judgment. Intelligence data is of no use if it cannot be synthesized into evidence upon which to base policy or action. Only humans are sophisticated enough to survey the massive amounts of data and derive useful intelligence from them. The clarity of a satellite image or the fine resolution of an electronic listening post only extend the human senses; they do not in themselves comprise the knowledge needed to make decisions.

Intelligence technologies are all various forms of passive intelligence, to which human operatives and technicians may apply their intellect, but even these only go so far. The highest quality of information is that which relays the intentions of our counterparts in other nations. While technology can play a limited role, e.g., accessing secure communications, human agents remain our most effective source for the acquisition of high-quality intelligence and creating a genuine understanding of the state of the world.

While some of the failures of the intelligence community to generate reliable intelligence can be ascribed to inaction by policymakers (or more recently, the willful falsification of intelligence and manipulation of the intelligence community), much of the failure of the Untied States to generate good intelligence is the result of understaffing and poor training. Infamous recent examples include the post 9-11 CIA Head of Station in the Middle East who had no training in Arabic, and the more well-known post 9-11 purge of Arabic language specialists from military intelligence on the grounds of homosexuality. These sorts of actions seriously degrade our policymakers' ability to glean actionable intelligence, and increase our reliance on technological data-gathering without the concomitant comprehension necessary to accurately judge the data and interpret reasonable conclusions.

The fewer human agents the United States deploys, the more vulnerable she will be to errors or misinformation from solitary sources, and the manipulation of data which may be of massive quantities but limited quality. The more intelligence agents employed in the field, conversely, the greater in-depth understanding the United States will be able to construct of the world, and determine a feasible and realistic course of policy. Technological tools continue to play a vital role in the accumulation and aggregation of data, but the most robust system still cannot discern true from false, determine causality, divine intentions, or interpret incongruities. Only human agents embedded and engaged in the field can render a deep understanding of the forces (military, political, cultural, etc.) arrayed throughout the world, the manner and likelihood of their deployment, or the intentions and passions which drive nations and leaders.

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