Reconsidering the Science and Semantics of Intelligence Analysis

Abstract

Intelligence analysis can benefit from a rigorous application of scientific method and the borrowing of frameworks from the social sciences, but it cannot be defined entirely in such terms that are extrinsic to the field. There is a process of “sense-making,” involving the production and negotiation of meaning through the exchange of signs and their signification, as the analyst mediates between the world of the target set and the world of the policymaker. That process is fundamentally and irreducibly subjective, intrinsic to the human experience that is deeply embedded in analysis, and it takes place primarily within the medium of verbal language. A semiotic approach would be better suited for understanding the ways that analysts navigate the layers of meaning that accrue to events within their local contexts, the grammar or rhetoric of tropes that shape analytical lines, and the socially constructed rules that guide policy debates.