ABSTRACT

Indications and warning intelligence is an important and time-tested methodology employed by intelligence analysts to warn military officers and policymakers about changes in an opponent’s operational “posture,” which indicate that the likelihood of dangerous or aggressive activity is increasing. In recent times, it has fallen out of fashion because policymakers and the public alike have come to expect that the intelligence community will be able to provide “specific event predictions” of an opponent’s future actions. In other words, people tend to believe that intelligence analysts should be able to state who is about to undertake some unwanted activity, as well as where, how, when and why the action will unfold. There is also an expectation that these specific event predictions will be offered early enough so that policymakers and operators can take effective action to prevent the occurrence of some nefarious act or attack. Specific event prediction is indeed the “holy grail” of intelligence analysis and sometimes analysts do manage to warn of specific events before they unfold. Naval intelligence analysts predicted the Japanese attack on Midway. The intelligence community detected Soviet efforts to place medium range missiles in Cuba before these actions became a fait accompli.1 But for theoretical, bureaucratic, and cognitive reasons, specific event prediction is extraordinarily difficult to achieve in practice. Success tends to be the exception, not the norm.