The United States today faces new kinds of adversaries, armed with an array of sinister weapons and capable of communicating and coordinating actions around the globe with unprecedented ease. As The Future of American Intelligence demonstrates, this dangerous new world requires changes in how the United States collects and analyzes intelligence and translates it into policy.
These essays from a diverse group of distinguished contributors deepen our understanding of the new national security threats posed by terrorism, by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and by the spread of Islamic extremism. They examine the obstacles—intellectual, governmental, bureaucratic, military, and technological—to making U.S. intelligence more effective and offer thoughtful recommendations for reform.
Approaching the problem from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, the authors stress how it is critical that the intelligence community revise its deeply entrenched assumptions and ideas about how to collect and analyze intelligence. They reveal how those assumptions led the United States to overlook the gravity of the threat posed by bin Laden and be dead wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—and how they generally stifle creative thinking and independent judgment within intelligence agencies. Their recommendations include suggestions for reforming the management style and the organizational structure of the intelligence services as well as establishing more effective procedures for taking advantage of both current and future technological advances.
Peter Berkowitz teaches at George Mason University School of Law and is a fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Contributor Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, and a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly.
Contributor Gary J. Schmitt is the director of the American Enterprise Institute's Program on Advanced Strategic Studies and a resident scholar at AEI.
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