Author Description

The degree of complexity and rate of change found in the global security environment is increasingly leaving senior policymakers surprised and US national interests potentially at risk. As a result, decision makers are increasingly faulting the Intelligence Community for failure to provide adequate warning. A review of professional and academic literature finds intelligence failures are not the result of not having the proper information. Instead, it identifies three primary causes for intelligence failures. First, the Intelligence Community structure prevents information from getting to the right analysts to identify a threat. Secondly, analysts have the necessary information but lack the creativity to "connect the dots" to identify the threat. Finally, analysts may identify the threat but fail to communicate with sufficient effectiveness to convince policymakers to take action. This paper proposes that complexity theory, and understanding of the characteristics of complex adaptive systems offer insights into how the Intelligence Community can address all three types of intelligence failure. It expounds this proposition by looking at, and applying complexity science to this problem, which is represented by a multidiscipline study of large networks comprised of interdependent variables; and then exploring the dominant features of complex systems, namely their lack of centralized control, ability to process information from the environment, and their ability to develop novel responses and adapt to indicate the sources of the problem.