Thinking Critcly:Intel Policy

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Juris Doctor

One of the hallmarks of intelligence is that it provides and supports clean, clear thinking. Thinking Critically About Intelligence and Policy will enhance critical thinking, argumentation, and presentation skills, providing tools for School of Foreign Service (SFS) students to evaluate complex challenges and make stronger, more compelling cases for issues they are passionate about. Highly appropriate for future analysts, this course will be useful for any students who aspire to use intelligence or information in decision-making. The goal is to enable students to be thought leaders and—just as importantly—to see when they are being misled. Key elements of a critical approach are asking the right questions, gathering the best data, using proper methods, and ensuring the provided answer is the best answer to the question—all making sense in context. Guiding principles are that more information is not necessarily better, not all information is created equal, and the easiest information to get is rarely the best to use. Also, tools and techniques are important, but the human element— including expertise—is essential. In this spirit, this course will provide students a series of applied analytic tools and techniques of increasing complexity, starting with classical logic and leading to discussion of analysis using large data sets. Tools will include classic analytic methods for top-down deduction, bottom-up induction, and qualitative techniques for determining causality. We will identify limitations of Aristotelian logic, introduce basic principles of probabilistic reasoning, and demonstrate the power of model updating through Bayes’ theorem. Identifying logical fallacies, methodological errors, and holes in data will be emphasized over in-depth application of specific quantitative tools. The class emphasizes rigorous logic, but it is not a math class; no quantitative skill is necessary, and there are no prerequisites. Students will use these tools and techniques in the context of studying intelligence collection, analysis, counterintelligence, and covert action, with a focus on how decision-makers use these intelligence tools. The course will include some discussion of the place of intelligence in a democratic society, including the issues of intelligence oversight and public debate over intelligence issues. Throughout the course, students will uncover and examine explicit and implicit assumptions about intelligence and policy and will develop ever more rigorous arguments about those assumptions and their implications. Course discussions will draw from case studies on the use of intelligence by the United States and other actors from WWII through the current debates about secrecy and covert influence. The course will include a critical examination of intelligence in the run-up to the September 2001 terrorist attacks and Operation Iraqi Freedom, matters which afford excellent case studies on every facet of intelligence in a policy context. The course will address relevant current events as appropriate. By the end of the semester, students will have an enhanced ability to examine intelligence and information and to weigh the merits of arguments on the basis of logic, data, methodology, and argumentation. Students also will have developed an informed appreciation of the capabilities and limitations of national intelligence. Whether writing an intelligence brief or discerning “fake” from “real” news, concepts covered in the course will be useful professionally to students who will produce or use intelligence in their careers in both the public and private sectors. Class formats will include lectures and seminar discussions and may draw on guest speakers. Course requirements include reading responses, an intelligence report, an oral briefing, and a final paper. Both writing assignments will include graded peer editing elements. Students will also be graded on class participation. This is a demanding course; many students have found it a challenging experience, though also a highly rewarding one. No professional experience is required, though the instructors expect that Intelligence Concentrators will draw on their past course and/or professional work to enrich the class’ experience and their own course products. The instructors will provide clear context for non-concentrators or new concentrators who need resources on key vocabulary or basic concepts; in some cases, the instructors may recommend short additional background reading as needed.