ABSTRACT
Intelligence collection is the critical node of intelligence production. Effective leadership over collection processes, both within agencies and across intelligence communities (IC), has always been vital to good intelligence outcomes—at tactical, operational, or strategic levels. This chapter focuses on several collection methodologies, which grew in prominence towards the end of the Cold War and into the current post-9/11 period. It discusses data mining and machine learning, social media, the internet of things, and the dark web, including the challenges that surround each of these collection platforms and associated methodologies. The dark web is the last example of methodological challenges that is discussed before turning our attention to the governance issues IC leaders will face in building sustainable and effective intelligence collection platforms and processes. In addition to some of the technical collection challenges leaders will face, a second set of issues relate to what kinds of organisational design within and across ICs best optimise collection capabilities.
