Intelligence Failures and the Limits of Logic
Abstract
One of our prime cultural biases is the assumption that all things are knowable, and that we have only to get the numbers right to predict the sum of anything. In a universe where all is tacitly assumed to be knowable -- and we still retain that 19th-century conceit -- it seems obvious that someone must have failed when we choke on our morning coffee at the totally unexpected news reports just in from the Third World. No people can be truly known merely through the analysis of their gross national product, physical environment, political, military, and overt social establishments, and other relatively quantifiable aspects, since charts, graphs, and tables can neither encompass nor tether human desires. All of the above is indispensable, and yet it is nothing more than the requisite background information. I wish I could offer upbeat hopes for immediate progress. Unfortunately, current trends are more worrisome than they are encouraging. The intelligence community seems determined to find a formula for everything. Partly because so many of the nation's best minds are going to the private sector rather than into the government's various intelligence services, there is a nervous trend toward reducing intelligence analysis to a matter of quantifiables even more so than it is now. Yet, the qualities that are most lacking in our efforts refuse to be quantified. Perhaps, one day, Artificial Intelligence will master empathy, imagination, and mature intuition. Our desperate need is to achieve balance, recognizing that a properly integrated intelligence effort requires minds and talents both practical and imaginative. The penalty, if we continue to reduce intelligence more and more to a logic that is increasingly limited to expression in integers, is that we will experience not fewer but more intelligence "failures." I believe the United States intelligence community has, at least for the present, reached the limits of logic.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1987
- Accession Number
- ADA516634
Entities
People
- Ralph Peters