Summary and Final Tasks
We had a lot of reading this week. Understanding the basics about the US intelligence community is an important foundation so you can ultimately understand where geospatial intelligence fits into the intelligence community and contributes to national security. Our six chapters covered:
- The definition of intelligence as articulated by Lowenthal.
- The evolution of the US intelligence system.
- The layout of the US intelligence community and the functions of the major agencies.
- The intelligence process of: requirements, collection, processing and exploitation, analysis and consumption, and feedback.
- The bedrock of intelligence-collection.
- The mainstay of the process-analysis.
Remember that what you read was written by a national security insider who is a veteran of the CIA. His personal history and experience give him a particular cultural filter. Your challenge as a critical thinker is to recognize from where he comes, consider alternative approaches, and keep an open mind. Nevertheless, the US national security intelligence community is the most sophisticated, best funded, and far reaching intelligence establishment on the planet. Thus is does rate our careful study and understanding even as we focus in on geospatial intelligence in both national security and other applications.
Your last challenge this week is to take Lesson 04 - GRADED Quiz (#2) on this week's readings.
Looking Ahead
I hope you like Lowenthal's book because our next lesson is another reading week. Now that we understand the basics of how the US intelligence community works, in our next lesson we are going to consider:
- The role of the policy maker.
- The legacy of the Cold War.
- The new intelligence agenda.
- Ethical and moral issues in intelligence.
- Intelligence Reform
But first you have to get through the Lesson 04 - GRADED Quiz (#2) successfully. Good Luck!