The rivalry between the united states and the ussr dominated the last half of the twentieth century, but there were other problems. The rest of the world had its own difficulties in dealing with issues such as modernization, as well as age-old disputes over land. Seeing such issues through a Cold War prism could sometimes lead to seriously misunderstanding them.

Many of these problems involved classic military issues of surprise and deception and the impact of new technology. Intelligence analysts also were grappling, however, with newer predicaments, such as limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons and assuring the flow of energy to industrialized economies.

There was also a sense that history was speeding up – events were unfolding at an accelerating pace. The gap between developed countries and the rest of the world was widening, as was the potential for major revolutions, discontinuities, and changes in traditional trends and patterns. Islamic fundamentalists responded to these changes and were willing to use terrorism to promote their agenda.

One of the main characteristics of the contemporary world is globalization, or that things all over the planet are connected in ways that might not be obvious at first and that offer both danger and opportunity.

Effective analytic techniques are useful not only in national security and law enforcement. Medical diagnosis and deciding what to prescribe, for example, are based on hypotheses, multiple sources of information, and evaluation of data, as well as the physician's skill and experience. The risks of misdiagnosis, as well as inappropriate medicines and procedures, also have to be taken into account. Physicians readily admit that this process is as much art as science, with intuition playing a major role.

In the business world, reliable information and context about factors such as supply and demand in the present and the future have always been important for the bottom line. Business functions such as market research, risk analysis, and protecting against industrial espionage have parallels in national security analysis. The implications of technological change are also a major concern. Companies, it turns out, can be as susceptible to surprise and uncertainty as are political leaders or military commanders, as demonstrated in the global economic crisis of 2008.

Although analysts working in national security, law enforcement, medicine, and business have much to learn from each other, there are also important differences.

In the 1980s, analysts observing trends in the international drug trade began to see that cocaine from South America was replacing heroin from Europe (the famous French Connection) as the main type of narcotic imported into the United States. Coca plants, the source of cocaine, could grow in a variety of areas, but the climate and geography of Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru provided the perfect conditions. The political and economic climate in this region, with weak, often corrupt governments and poor, small-scale farmers with few viable options for making a living, are also amenable to the coca plant. These circumstances have given rise to a trade in narcotics that, by the 1990s, was worth tens of billions of dollars a year, making it the largest, and most profitable, sector of global organized crime.

Taking on the formidable international trade in illegal drugs is a huge challenge for law enforcement. In addition to the resources of personnel, money, and equipment, effective countermeasures depend on an accurate and detailed understanding of not only the strengths, but also the vulnerabilities, of the process of producing and shipping drugs.

Colombia, which produces more than 75 percent of the world's cocaine, was one of the main centers of the illegal drug trade. Poor farmers in Colombia became interested in expanding the cultivation of coca in the 1980s and 1990s, after a decline in the price of coffee, which had previously been the country's largest export.

From march through april 2003, a u.s.-led coalition was involved in a large-scale conventional conflict with organized units of the Iraqi army, plus some irregular units. American military officers and civilian planners had been envisioning this kind of campaign for decades. Huge amounts of equipment, on land and in the air, would maneuver quickly over vast spaces. Forces would employ high volumes of accurate firepower using “smart” weapons that could be guided with precision directly to their targets. All of the vehicles, aircraft, artillery, and other machinery, as well as the people, would be tied together electronically by using the Internet and computers. Massive amounts of accurate information, constantly updated, would be made available to all levels of the chain of command, making it possible to respond rapidly to a fast-changing situation. This battle, and the intelligence that supported it, was at an entirely different level than what had been known previously.

Such an application of high-tech warfare quickly brought down Saddam Hussein's regime, but peace did not follow. Almost immediately, there was domestic resistance and terrorism, some of it supported by outsiders. During the spring and summer that followed the conventional military victory, some irregular pro-Saddam elements conducted direct attacks on coalition forces, especially in the Sunni areas of the country. They used a residual organizational structure based on Saddam's Baath Party, as well as weapons and funds that had been set aside in advance.

On august 6 and 9, 1945, the united states dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. Less than a month later, on September 2, Japan surrendered. The awesome power of atomic bombs had been decisive in bringing World War II to an end, and the fact that the United States was the only country that had atomic weapons was expected to be a decisive factor in shaping the postwar world.

A few days after the end of the war, on September 5, 1945, Igor Gouzenko (1919–82), a Chief Intelligence Directorate (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye; GRU) code clerk at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, Canada, defected. The documents that Gouzenko brought with him to support his story had the potential to undermine the U.S. monopoly of atomic weapons. He claimed that the intelligence agencies of the USSR, working through local communist parties, had built up an extensive network of informants in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. Moreover, he alleged that Soviet intelligence had successfully targeted the Manhattan Project, which had produced atomic weapons. Gouzenko was able to provide the name of at least one Canadian who had worked on the Manhattan project and had reported to the Soviets. He also alleged that there were Soviet spies in the U.S. government, but he had no names.

The Canadian government began a series of investigations based on Gouzenko's information. One of the persons whose name emerged as a suspect was Klaus Fuchs (1911–88).

In 1978, the american government was preoccupied with trying to arrange peace in the Middle East, to negotiate an arms control agreement with the USSR, and to normalize relations with communist China, among other things. Washington was not concerned about Iran under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1919–80), who had been on the throne since 1941, at least in part because of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-sponsored coup in 1953. At a time when the British were withdrawing their military and naval forces “east of Suez” and the United States was reluctant to take on more international commitments, Iran emerged as an important military ally of the United States. Among other things, a strong Iran would help to block Soviet expansion toward the oil-rich Middle East.

Energy was also an important issue, as prices had fluctuated widely, but usually in an upward direction, in the wake of the Arab oil embargo imposed after the Yom Kippur War. Iran exported approximately 5,000,000 barrels of oil a day (the second largest source in the world) at a time when U.S. demand for oil was outpacing domestic supply. The shah had pressed for higher prices, but he did not support Arab-inspired boycotts of exports to the West to punish support for Israel. Moreover, Iran spent much of its profits from oil on weapons from the United States. Arms sales went from just over $500 million in 1972 to almost $4 billion in 1974.

The automobile industry is a quintessentially american one, conjuring up images of prosperity, mobility, and technology. Although Americans did not invent the car, companies such as Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors mastered production and sales. These firms became huge and profitable leaders in the industry, not only in the United States, but throughout the world. In recent decades, however, Japanese automobile companies have steadily increased their share of sales in the U.S. domestic market, which was once dominated by the big three American companies. How have the Japanese managed to accomplish this?

As early as the 1950s, the Japanese car companies, working with analysts in their government, were studying a scenario for the future that would be shaped by likely trends in areas – such energy pricing, technology, and shipping – which they believed would be drivers of change over time. They also made an in-depth study of the car market in America. Their analysis convinced them that the American companies were unwilling to endanger their short-term profits by spending money on innovations or improvements in quality. Moreover, the Japanese believed that over the long term the price of oil would increase, leading American consumers to be more interested in vehicles that were more efficient, generated less pollution, and required less maintenance, while still selling for a reasonable price. The Japanese believed that there could be great opportunities for them in such a scenario and that greater efficiency would enable them to take advantage of those opportunities.

In 1950, communism was on the march around the world, and the Cold War was well underway. Between 1945 and 1948, Soviet-sponsored regimes had come to power throughout Eastern Europe. In Asia, Kim Il-Sung (1912–94) dominated politics in North Korea as early as 1946, and then proclaimed the founding of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north in 1948. In October 1949, Mao Zedong (1893–1976) took over China. These developments were made even more ominous when the Soviet Union successfully tested an atomic bomb in August 1949, ending the brief U.S. monopoly on this destructive weapon. If the global communist offensive had brought war, there would have been a high probability that the conflict would be of unprecedented scope and destructiveness.

In response to the Pearl Harbor disaster and the start of the Cold War, the United States undertook a major reorganization of its security apparatus, in which intelligence played a new and prominent role. The National Security Act, signed by President Harry Truman on July 26, 1947, established a new structure that included the National Security Council (NSC), a unified Department of Defense (DoD), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The leaders of this new security establishment saw the contest with Communism as a global challenge. Their main concern was in Europe, an area of great economic potential; the response there centered around the Marshall Plan to provide economic aid and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance to provide a defensive shield.

Airline tragedies, with their sudden loss of a considerable number of lives, are a great concern to a public that travels a great deal, and these incidents garner a great deal of attention from the media. People quickly ask: What could cause such a shocking event? Typically, proving the cause is a demanding procedure, because witnesses rarely survive. In addition, there are usually a number of possible answers, as the aircraft are complex mechanisms and, sadly, there are any number of people who could wish them harm.

On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103, a Boeing 747 jet traveling from London to New York, exploded thirty-seven minutes after takeoff at 31,000 feet, as it passed over the village of Lockerbie, Scotland. A total of 270 people died as a result of the crash, including 189 passengers from the United States, and 11 British subjects on the ground. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) immediately sent a team to work with British authorities to collect the approximately 10,000 pieces of debris scattered over almost 900 square miles (2,340 square kilometers) so that they could reconstruct the aircraft and try to uncover how it had been destroyed.

It quickly became obvious that a bomb had destroyed the plane. There had been no distress call, nor any indications of mechanical trouble; and many pieces of wreckage had the tell-tale warping that indicated that an explosion had taken place.

By 1940, joseph stalin (1879–1953) sat atop a totalitarian system that gave him unchallenged control of the Soviet Union. The ideological fervor and effort to spread the communist faith around the world during the first years after the revolution of 1917 had given way to consolidation of power at home and a foreign policy in which protection of national interests was the main priority. Brutal purges of the late 1930s had demonstrated the price of disloyalty, or even suspicion of disloyalty, to Stalin. As recently as July 1940, the head of military intelligence had been removed (and was later shot) after disagreeing with Stalin.

All of this had implications for the bureaucratic structure of intelligence that supported Stalin's decision making. There were two main intelligence organizations. The civilian service was reorganized multiple times and had several different names, but from the mid-1930s through the mid-1940s, it was usually referred to as the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del; NKVD). The military service was the Chief Intelligence Directorate (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye; GRU) of the General Staff. Both used sympathy for Communism and effective tradecraft to forge a system that was one of the best collectors of information in the world at that time. There were Soviet spies in crucial positions in the United States, Britain, and even Nazi Germany (although at least one of the Germans would turn out to be a double agent).

The middle east is a region of intense global interest because it is a source of much of the world's oil, as well as the home of three of the world's major religions. Israel sits in the heart of this important and volatile region. Because it is small and is surrounded by hostile, much larger, and more populous Arab neighbors, Israel puts a high priority on having effective intelligence collection and analysis. In June 1967, when intelligence suggested that Israel faced imminent attack, it launched a preemptive strike against three of those neighbors: Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Using their excellent knowledge of where enemy forces were located, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) wiped out most of the Egyptian air force in just three hours and went on to defeat all three of the rival armies in six days. This feat made Israel the dominant military power in the region. As a result, Israeli civilian and military leaders assumed that they had little to fear from their Arab neighbors and that they would be able to detect and deal with any future threat.

This assessment did not change after Anwar al-Sadat (1918–81) became president of Egypt in 1970. Israeli analysts saw Sadat's threats to retake the Sinai Peninsula (which had been lost in 1967) and to proclaim 1971 the “Year of Decision” as empty rhetoric, especially when nothing happened.

In the 1970s, the situation that had prevailed for several decades, during which only the members of the United Nations (UN) Security Council – Britain, China, France, the United States, and the USSR – had nuclear weapons was beginning to erode. India tested a device in 1974; a number of other countries, including Israel, South Africa, and Taiwan, were suspected of having active programs; and even more countries were interested in eventually having this ultimate power to destroy or deter. A world in which many countries had nuclear weapons would be a markedly more dangerous one. As a result, there was intense interest at the senior levels of the American government in monitoring nuclear weapons programs so that, if a country showed signs of making serious progress toward having nuclear weapons, efforts could be made to stop it.

At 3:00 a.m., Washington time, on September 22, 1979, a U.S. satellite detected an intense double flash of light in the southern hemisphere. Such a double flash was characteristic of a nuclear explosion, so there were immediately questions to intelligence analysts about whether there had been a nuclear explosion and, if so, who had been responsible. The satellite, however, had been launched more than a decade before, and its capabilities had deteriorated. Not enough data were generated by the satellite to confirm that the flash actually had been a nuclear explosion.

There are many definitions of intelligence analysis, often using as a starting point the views of Sherman Kent, the founder of the profession of intelligence analysis in the United States, who wrote that that it can be an organization, a process, or a product. Others see intelligence analysis as solving puzzles. Grappling with conundrums is part of what analysts do, but just finding a solution is not the main goal. Still others emphasize that dealing with secret and tightly controlled information, such as from spies or satellites, is what is important about intelligence analysis. This may have been true during the Cold War but is much less so in the age of the Internet, when vast amounts of data that could be useful are readily available. Moreover, many people in business and law enforcement use analytic techniques effectively without recourse to secret sources or methods.

The perspective in Challenges in Intelligence Analysis: Lessons from 1300 BCE to the Present, therefore, is that what is unique and important about intelligence analysis is that it supports decision making. This is especially the case when the decision maker is dealing with difficult problems, high stakes, and intense pressure to get it right. Although having quality data, including possibly secret data, is important, analyses can be effective without any secret input. What is really crucial about intelligence analysis is how one thinks about the problem, including factors such as the identifying the main issues, evaluating the evidence, and laying out the options and risks.

The challenge for president woodrow wilson (1856–1924) as world War I came to an end was to promote American interests in a unique environment. The United States was playing a much more active role in the international scene than it had previously. Moreover, it found itself in a position of great military, economic, and political power, and its resources of manpower, equipment, and money were being applied on an unprecedented, global scale.

Wilson believed that the contribution that he and the United States could make to a peace settlement was to bring a perspective that was enlightened, rational, and progressive. Wilson's Fourteen Points made clear his vision of a settlement based on openness, freedom, justice, self-determination, disarmament, and a League of Nations to settle future disputes. Not everyone agreed with these goals, but the principles, along with American power, framed the debate.

In 1917, only a few months after the United States entered the war, Wilson set up a semi-official commission, known as the Inquiry, to gather information that would be useful for supporting him in the eventual peace negotiations. Financial support for the commission came from a presidential national security contingency fund provided by Congress. This was one of the earliest examples of bureaucratic analytic support for a senior decision maker.

Drawing on his extensive experience in academia, including obtaining a doctorate in history and political science, as well as serving as president of Princeton University, Wilson took a decidedly academic approach to the work of the Inquiry.

Unfortunately, despite all of the sacrifices made in the most destructive war in history, the end of World War II did not bring an era of peace. Instead there was a tense rivalry between the superpowers – the United States and the Soviet Union – and their allies. For nearly half a century, these two coalitions maneuvered against each other on a global basis. This competition was exacerbated by ideological differences, with the Western powers mainly capitalist, and the Eastern bloc communist.

To cope with this new and more threatening environment, the government of the United States, under the 1947 National Security Act, carried out a major reorganization. The 1947 legislation created a unified Department of Defense to coordinate the air force, army, and navy; and it established the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct espionage, covert action, and analysis. To manage the entire structure the president would have a new National Security Council.

The risks in this Cold War struggle for power were greater than ever before because of the existence of nuclear weapons. For the first time, the survival of whole countries, or even the entire planet, was threatened because of the technology of warheads and missiles.

There was also a significant intelligence component to the rivalry between the superpowers. Both sides developed huge and expensive intelligence organizations, including high-technology collection systems. There was also extensive deception and espionage.

The exact dates of sun tzu's life are not known with certainty, although they are traditionally believed to be around the fifth century BCE. Some scholars are not even sure that Sun Tzu was a single individual: They believe instead that the classic work, The Art of War, may be a compendium of the work of several authors. In any event, The Art of War is a summary of the Chinese perspective on some of the longstanding issues in intelligence analysis, including deception, surprise, uncertainty, indicators, calculation of risk, and anticipation of events.

As was the case in the West, the earliest Chinese works on intelligence analysis are preoccupied with military issues. Sun Tzu wrote before the unification of China and during a time when governments had to deal with shifting alliances and constant conflict. Rulers often faced the prospect of defeat and perhaps the extinction of a dynasty or even the state itself. As a result, a high value was assigned to guidance that could lead to success in war. Sun Tzu's views are expressed in a series of pungent aphorisms, sometimes embodying paradox, such as how to win a battle without fighting. The Art of War addresses a wide range of strategic and tactical issues, but gives special attention to intelligence.

Julius caesar (100–44 bce) is one of the most famous and successful military commanders in history, and there are many reasons for his triumphs. He is well known for his persistence, ruthlessness, and personal courage, as well as for the careful planning and organization of his military operations. Caesar was also famous for the close ties with his troops, upon whom he lavished praise, plunder, and promotions. One of the things that was most striking to both his fellow Romans and his enemies was the speed of his decision making and action. Not least of his skills was that he had an uncanny ability to size up a situation and come up with an appropriate response; he was, in fact, an excellent analyst.

In the first century BCE, the expanding Roman Empire controlled most of the northern coast of the Mediterranean. One of the few areas that was close to the Italian heartland of the empire but not yet conquered was Gaul, which is now France, Belgium, and parts of the Netherlands and Switzerland. Roman merchants did business in the region and knew something about it, but the Roman army had never conducted operations there. For Caesar, who was looking for ways to enhance both Roman power and his personal glory, Gaul was a tempting target. What could be gained, however, and could it be achieved at reasonable cost? A key issue was, therefore, how to conduct successful military operations on unfamiliar terrain.

In the midst of world war ii, when it was far from clear who would win the conflict, analysts in Britain faced the especially difficult problem of how to find and understand something they had never seen before and determine the level of danger it represented. The challenge was, in the face of German denial and deception, to assess new weapons and to do so in time to produce countermeasures. It would be easiest to develop countermeasures early on during the design phase of a new weapon, but during that phase the nature of the threat is hard to detect because most of the work is done in someone's head or in an office. There is a greater chance of understanding a new weapon during its testing phase, when prototypes are out in the open – but is this too late? When the new weapon is actually operational, it is difficult to develop countermeasures.

During World War II, Hitler from time to time in his speeches mentioned new weapons that Germany was developing, but he gave no details. British and American intelligence analysts were aware that Germany was working on a number of projects, such as the atomic bomb and jet aircraft, that could be a serious threat. Could there be something else?

Starting in late 1942 operatives working on the European continent for the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) reported that the Germans were building a new long-range weapon, often referred to as a “rocket” (Rakete in German).

In january 2003, there was public panic in southern china in response to the rapid spread of a serious respiratory disease. People in large numbers were buying both modern medicines and traditional herbal cures, but nothing seemed to work. Local health officials came up with a diagnosis of what they termed “atypical pneumonia,” even though the disease did not respond to antibiotics that would normally have been effective against pneumonia. Provincial and national governments released little information beyond claiming that there had been only a handful of deaths and that the situation was under control, so the outside world had little sense of what was happening. In the months that followed, approximately 5,300 people in China became infected, 349 of whom died.

Over the winter, the situation continued to worsen, and by late February the disease had spread to Hong Kong. Officials there were already dealing with an outbreak of avian influenza and were worried that the new disease might be influenza. Symptoms, or indicators, of what they feared might be a new wave of influenza included fever, dry cough, and body aches, which were typical of several diseases such as pneumonia and influenza. The new ailment, however, was more serious, acted more quickly, and spread more rapidly. Hong Kong is, of course, a major transportation hub, and travelers passing through the city spread the disease to elsewhere in China, as well as to Canada, Singapore, and Vietnam.