Contents

Acknowledgements

DIA WORKFORCE OF THE FUTURE: 

CREATING THE FUTURE OF THE 

DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

May 15, 2003

This White Paper was prepared by

Toffler Associates®

Jeff Barnett

Ian Bramson

Dr. Jae Engelbrecht

Dennis Kirk

Alexander Shartsis

Dick Szafranski

and

Dove Consulting

John Theriault

With the assistance of the

Defense Intelligence Agency Workforce Planning Project Team

Drew Bewick

Diana Bradham

Marty Emory

Frank Esquivel

Dan Hooton
Contents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .....................................................................................................................1

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 1

Competition ......................................................................................................................................................................... 1

The Future Environment ...................................................................................................................................................... 1

Technology .......................................................................................................................................................................... 2

Explosive Growth: Get Real .................................................................................................................................................. 4

Precision Intelligence ........................................................................................................................................................... 5

Process ................................................................................................................................................................................ 5

Timely and Timeless Business Ideas .................................................................................................................................... 5

Structure .............................................................................................................................................................................. 5

Attachés ............................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Partnerships ........................................................................................................................................................................ 7

People .................................................................................................................................................................................. 7

The Beginning of the Workforce of the Future .....................................................................................................................7

Intelligence for Cause and Effects ........................................................................................................................................ 8

Strategy ............................................................................................................................................................................... 8

Successful Transformation: According to the General Accounting Office ............................................................................9

The Not-So-New Strategy of Prevention ..............................................................................................................................9

Summary and Recommendations: Getting to the Future with a Sense of Urgency ..............................................................9

Begin Building a Cadre of Experts ...................................................................................................................................... 10

INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................................................................11

Everything Is Changing Simultaneously .............................................................................................................................12

Creating the Future Demands Insight and Integrated Strategic Movement ........................................................................12

“The Reformer Has Enemies in All Those Who Profit by the Old Order” ............................................................................13

And Even If You Do It All Right, It Could Turn Out All Wrong .............................................................................................15

THE FUTURE ENVIRONMENT ...................................................................................................17

A New World ...................................................................................................................................................................... 18

The Globalizing Information Economy ...............................................................................................................................19

The Hyper-Empowered ...................................................................................................................................................... 19

The Emerging Information Age Redefines Value ................................................................................................................21

The Future Budget Environment Will Challenge Us ............................................................................................................22

TECHNOLOGY ..................................................................................................................................25

Vectors in Information Technology Continue Upward ........................................................................................................27

Ramifications to Technology Projections ...........................................................................................................................28

Vectors in Biology Will Continue to Converge With Information Technology .....................................................................31

Biology Will Continue To Be Weaponized ...........................................................................................................................31

Vectors in Conventional Weapons Remain Important ........................................................................................................33

Precision Weapons Will Increasingly Dominate .................................................................................................................33

Sensors Increase in Quantity and Quality ..........................................................................................................................34

Stealth Aircraft and Electronic Countermeasures Rise in Importance ................................................................................34

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Increase in Numbers and Capabilities ..........................................................................34

Hyper-Empowered Warriors .............................................................................................................................................. 35

Projecting the Impacts of Global Persistent Surveillance ...................................................................................................35

Summary: It’s the Convergences That We Need To Watch .................................................................................................37

PROCESS ...............................................................................................................................................39

Information Overload Means Competing for Attention .......................................................................................................40

1. Newness: Tell Me Something I Don’t Know ...................................................................................................................41

2. Compelling: Tell Me Why I Should Pay Attention ...........................................................................................................41

3. Aggregated: Tell Me Everything at Once ........................................................................................................................42

4. Quality: Tell Me I Can Trust You ..................................................................................................................................... 43
Contents

5. Customization: Tell Me In My Own Way .........................................................................................................................44

The Process of Developing Processes ...............................................................................................................................44

Developing Results Oriented Processes ............................................................................................................................45

Processes Occur on Two Levels: In Action and in the Mind ...............................................................................................46

Scenario Planning to Identify and Mitigate Risk ................................................................................................................46

Social Network Optimization to Support Innovation ..........................................................................................................47

Structure And Processes: Form Follows Function .............................................................................................................48

Networked Processes Need Strong Project and Information Management ........................................................................48

Continuous Customer Focus Helps Assure Value ..............................................................................................................48

STRUCTURE ........................................................................................................................................ 51

Today’s Challenges Drive Tomorrow’s Structure ................................................................................................................51

Some Businesses Model New Approaches ........................................................................................................................53

Structure Is Not an “Either-Or” Decision ............................................................................................................................55

Structure Leads to the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Excellence ......................................................................................56

Toward a More Vigilant Structure ...................................................................................................................................... 57

Audacious Operating Goals Encourage Achievement of Measurable Effects ......................................................................59

A Revitalized Advisory Board Provides Fresh Ideas And Continuity ...................................................................................59

The Director Serves a Five Year Term ................................................................................................................................60

The Organization and the IT Structure Mutually Reinforce Each Other ..............................................................................60

The Defense Intelligence Agency Can Lead the Intelligence Community ............................................................................60

PEOPLE ..................................................................................................................................................63

Redefine the Workforce ..................................................................................................................................................... 65

Specialists ......................................................................................................................................................................... 66

Generalists ......................................................................................................................................................................... 67

Contingent ......................................................................................................................................................................... 67

Workforce Design Objective: Small Core, Large Flexibility .................................................................................................69

Workforce Attributes .......................................................................................................................................................... 69

Attribute Development: Four Levels of Progress ................................................................................................................72

The New Diversity: Cognitive Diversity ..............................................................................................................................72

An Open Market Culture Fosters Imagination ....................................................................................................................73

Future Training and Development Includes Structured Experiences ..................................................................................74

The Human Resource Function Changes With the New Workforce Design ........................................................................75

Continuous Development of Technological Expertise .........................................................................................................78

Using JMIC to Advance a Broader People Strategy ...........................................................................................................78

The Way Forward ............................................................................................................................................................... 79

STRATEGY ............................................................................................................................................ 81

Step One: Articulate a Compelling Vision ...........................................................................................................................82

Step Two: Craft An Engaging Strategy ...............................................................................................................................83

Step Three: Align or Fail ..................................................................................................................................................... 85

Step Four: Execute With Discipline .................................................................................................................................... 85

Step Five: Ensure Durability ............................................................................................................................................... 85

Step Six: Measuring Results Speeds Renewal ...................................................................................................................86

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS.................................................................................89

Plan Changes to Occur Epoch-By-Epoch ...........................................................................................................................89

Epoch 1: Build the Infrastructure For Good Growth ...........................................................................................................89

There Are Low-Hanging Fruit in the Technology and Process Arenas ................................................................................91

Epoch 2: Prototype the Analyst of the Future .....................................................................................................................92

Epoch 3: Structure for Strategic Effect ..............................................................................................................................92

Epoch 4: The New DIA ....................................................................................................................................................... 92

Epoch 5: New End State ..................................................................................................................................................... 92
Contents

Success Begins With Implementing These Recommendations ..........................................................................................92

Hire the Best, Inspire and Test, Retire the Rest ..................................................................................................................93

Recognize and Reward New Behaviors, Dissuade Old Ones ..............................................................................................93

Make Hiring “Decentralized Competitive” and “Centralized Supported” .............................................................................94

Focus on the Building of Technology Skills and Technology Capability ..............................................................................94

Begin Building a Cadre Of Experts ..................................................................................................................................... 95

Summary: We Are Behind .................................................................................................................................................. 95

Appendix 1..........................................................................................................................................97

Appendix 2..........................................................................................................................................99

Appendix 3........................................................................................................................................105

endnotes..........................................................................................................................................115
1

Executive Summary

Introduction

This paper describes a vision of a Workforce of the Future for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The Introduction asserts that both the future and the workforce that the Defense Intelligence

Agency requires to remain vital in that future emerge from the complex interactions of technology, process changes, changes in competitive behavior, organizational structures, people, and

strategy ... all interwoven to create the future operating environment. The paper depicts the

future operating environment for the Agency and the salient technologies that will help create

the capabilities, opportunities, and threats of the future. 

The Introduction makes five warnings. First, it warns that the Defense Intelligence Agency must

change now. Second, it counsels that change must be strategic; driven by transformational goals

and supported by companion changes in Agency structure and intelligence community policy.

Third, it argues for introducing change as a well-orchestrated and continuous series of small

projects that progressively move the Agency toward achieving its strategic ambition. Fourth, it

cautions that making fundamental changes will be far more difficult than contemplating such

changes. It asserts that the proof of strategy is outcome. Finally, the Introduction illuminates

likely sources and manifestations of resistance to change ... along with remedies ... and the

need for alignment and funding to create the workforce of the future. Unless the Department of

Defense and the Congress express an authentic and material commitment to change, and unless

Agency changes are harmonious with broader changes required in the intelligence community,

change efforts in the Defense Intelligence Agency could be for naught. 

Competition

A sidebar on “Competition” underscores the importance of a revitalized Defense Intelligence

Agency and the urgency of its need to change, given the persistence and complexity of competition ... including mortal competition ... in the future. The paper asserts that history has not

ended, that the state structure is not obsolete, that geography, ethnicity, and culture remain

important, and that large-scale state-to-state conflict in the future is possible, even while increasingly unlikely. As technology creates new tools and new weapons, and as rivals, adversaries, and

enemies better understand the sources of our strength, they will compete with us in ways we cannot expect today. An organization with the capacity to know that which an enemy wishes to hide

in order to anticipate and checkmate competitive surprise is critical to our survival. 

The Future Environment

The Workforce of the Future will exist in a future that it helps create. That future will be unlike

the past. Witness a recent change: in ways remarkable for their depth and breadth, the United

States has gained a position of extraordinary power and influence among the world’s nations. It

is the global leader in economics, culture, technology and weaponry, among others. This leadership will continue for the near future. No country or group of countries has demonstrated the

willingness and capability to surmount American advantages in any of these areas — never mind

all of them simultaneously. 
2

Today’s challenge is to do more than simply maintain this inheritance. Rather, the need is to

exploit America’s unique position to shape international change in ways consistent with America’s enduring values and goals. 

A New World Victory in the Cold War changed the world leadership role of the United States. No

longer just the coalition leader of the free world, the United States is now the de factoguarantor of

international order throughout the world. Unfortunately, in a world engulfed by change, there is

no international consensus as to either the vector or the velocity of change or in America’s role in

setting that vector or velocity. As a result, America’s post-Cold War leadership position has made

it both an ill-defined umpire for the uncertain and a target for the dissatisfied. 

The Globalizing Information Economy The information revolution continues to unseat centralized

hierarchies, supplanting them with decentralized networks. The resulting globalization of economics, finance, business, culture, technology and force is driving societal shifts analogous to

the industrial revolution. One destabilizing result is that domestic hierarchies are losing some of

their monopolies on power. 

The Hyper-Empowered The events of 9/11 demonstrated the potential of hyper-empowered individuals. Small groups are gaining powers previously reserved for states. They include the disenfranchised of the less-developed world, who, paradoxically, are empowered by the same forces

of globalization they seek to destroy. 

At the same time, the growing power of individuals and groups does not make conventional conflict obsolete. Traditional threats will remain a concern; North Korea is one example. What has

changed is the level of risk plus the dynamics of response. We are entering an era where the

Cold War strategy of deterrence is giving way to the post-9/11 strategy of preemption. 

The Emerging Information Age Redefines Value Today’s information-based, post-industrial age has

made knowledge the number one factor in the creation of wealth. Physical products increasingly

appear more like commodities than competitive advantages. The overwhelming premium is on

knowledge, speedily applied. 

For the intelligence community, redefining value means delivering information that is fast, integrated and anticipatory. Fast means quickly getting intelligence to the right decision makers in

an easily understood form. Integrated means fusing all sources, including open sources, to

speed and improve the quality of decision-making. Anticipatory means anticipating requests;

waiting for formal tasking only makes many responses late. These aspects of the speed imperative, which apply throughout modern business and government, pertain directly to the Defense

Intelligence Agency. 

The Future Budget Environment Will Be Challenging The fast, integrated and anticipatory Defense

Intelligence Agency of the future will face severe budget pressures. We should anticipate that all

federal budgets will come under increasing strain as the “Baby Boom” generation enters the eligibility window for Social Security beginning in 2011.

Technology

Although threats can grow independent of technology, the magnitude of most threats remains

dependent on technology. It is a dominant driver of transformation, creating entire capabilities,

undercutting established bureaucracies and defining new concepts of operation. Therefore, by

appreciating the scope of future technology we can outline the potential of most future threats. 

Reasonable projections of future technologies include the following:

■ Advances in data compression, processing, frequency management, miniaturization and

sensors will allow data networks to move voice, data and images at speeds 50 times

greater than today. 
3

■ The combination of multi-spectral miniature sensors and automatic target recognition

algorithms will allow a greater degree of autonomous weapons.

■ Sophisticated encryption protocols.

■ Sophisticated computer viruses.

■ Advances in processing and software will allow accurate data fusion at rates 104 times

faster. 

■ Miniaturization will allow data storage capabilities of 103 times greater than today.

■ Practically “unlimited bandwidth,” the result of advances in wireless infrastructure, fiber

and satellites.

■ Systems on a chip.

These technologies will enable:

■ Cheap information. The value of information will reside less in its existence and more in its

analysis and integration.

■ Accurate, protected information within open access systems.

■ Near real time (NRT) information from multiple sources to tactical decision makers. 

■ Massive amounts of data accessible by all echelons of command.

■ Pertinent information while filtering out unnecessary data.

■ Persistent surveillance (augmented by coherent change detection).

■ Real-time communication between customers and analysts.

None of these projections, taken individually,

appear strange or disruptive. All spring from

current developments, continuing a pace of

progress we have almost come to assume.

The ramifications of these combined projections, however, are a different matter. When

each of these advances comes to fruition,

whether that is in 10 or 15 or 20 years, they

will recombine to forge new possibilities and

products. Their whole will be greater than

the sum of their parts, with possible ramifications in four general areas.

First, most workers are already overwhelmed

with present levels of technology. We should

expect heightened resistance to new capabilities that require additional human interaction. Only those technologies that simplify

workloads by employing machines as the

interfacing tool (e.g., machine-to-machine

interfaces) will find broad acceptance in the

mid term. 

Second, a combination of reliable encryption, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage and high

performance personal computers would demassify many intelligence analyses. Technology will

allow more distributed analyses, enabling the Defense Intelligence Agency to bring a variety of

people to bear on current issues. 

Third, the United States is surging ahead of other countries in terms of embracing the information age. The digital divide between the U.S. and target countries is widening. Analysts of the

future will need concentrated training to surmount this additional cultural divide.

Software

Data Fusion

Compression

Miniaturization

Systems on a Chip

Multi-Spectral Sensors

Frequency Management

Automatic Target Recognition

Coherent Change Detection

“Unlimited” Bandwidth

“Unlimited” Storage

Computer Viruses

Processing

Encryption

Wireless

Fiber

INFORMATION

Cheap

Accurate

Persistent

Near Real Time

Multiple Sources

Distributed

Protected

Pertinent

Massive

The New Face of Information
4

Fourth, because one of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s tasks is to identify threats to

U.S. interests before they occur, analysts

need knowledge of possible targets. These

targets will look increasingly less like those of

the past — and more aligned with the emerging technologies of the information age. To

identify threats to these nodes, Defense Intelligence Agency analysts will need specific

training to understand their importance.

Weaponization of Biology From an intelligence

perspective, the most important development

may be the weaponization of biology and its

convergent fields. 

Bioterrorism meets most of the criteria for

what constitutes a dangerous threat. Individuals or groups can surreptitiously produce

bioweapons and deliver them without signature. They have the potential to affect an

entire nation for an extended time, which

would lead to chaotic developments. Such

weapons may already be available and could be cheap to produce. For these reasons, bioterrorism augers a new an unfamiliar arena of war, one for which a new defense paradigm will be

needed. 

Vectors in Conventional Weapons Remain Important When forecasting weapons of the future, it is

important to remember the weapons of the past-the Defense Intelligence Agency will need to

factor advances in legacy systems into its technological future. This is especially true in four

general areas: precision weapons; networked sensors; Unmanned Aerial Vehicles; and, signature reduction. 

Projecting the Impacts of Global Persistent Surveillance Multi-spectral sensors deployed on satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), aircraft, ground stations and underwater will soon provide 24/7, all-weather global coverage. This global sensor network, combined with the global

communications network and the intense “flashlights” of public media will reveal — and quickly

transmit — unprecedented amounts of information on the actions of even the most reclusive

nations. 

The emerging opportunity for the Defense Intelligence Agency is to operationalize global persistent surveillance. Technology will afford the Agency the ability to orchestrate collection, reporting and publicity to do more than inform combatant commanders and the acquisition

community. It will afford the power of observation to operationally affect the behavior of targets

who may give up without ever resorting to untoward actions. The challenge for the Agency will

be to organize, conceptualize and equip to take advantage of the manipulation mission. No one

has yet developed the doctrine and methods of this weapon, nor is there a consensus with the

defense community as to how to employ it. Developing the doctrine, methods and organization

for this emerging weapon will become a major initiative.

Explosive Growth: Get Real

Harmonizing the human structure with the information technology structure will be a massive

undertaking. Today, over 3 billion email messages ... over 1 billion of these relating to business

... connect a growing 400 million Internet users. The sidebar relates that “Second generation

Participants

Range

Time Signature

Cost

Impact

Most

Dangerous

Alliance

Nation

Group

Individual

Region

Nation

Operation

Target

Chaotic

Persistent

Mid-Term

Short Inventory

Production

Development

Possible

Cheap

Dual-Use

Expensive

Prohibitive

None

Suspect

Probable

Traceable

Obvious

Dimensions of WMD Threat
5

systems being deployed now — based on untangling presence and messaging services —

support integration into existing applications, like portals, sales force apps, help desk, supply

chain and so on. But the next generation, based on the emergence of reformulated enterprise

architecture stacks, will drive an enormous transformation at every level of the enterprise architecture.” The Defense Intelligence Agency information architecture appears unprepared for the

technology future. 

Precision Intelligence

Precision weapons change warfare in many ways: they allow us to render the key node inoperative; they reduce unintended effects ... today called “collateral damage” ... and unnecessary

physical damage; and they reduce the logistics tail required to support the engagement tooth.

Such weapons are precise only to the degree that intelligence makes them precise. Precision

intelligence is the prerequisite for deterrence and for the precise application of force ... kinetic,

non-kinetic, electronic, and diplomatic ... should deterrence fail. To maximize the contribution

precision weapons can make to deterrence and conflict resolution, the Defense Intelligence

Agency must create precision intelligence analysts. 

Process

Technology and acquired knowledge allow changes in how the Defense Intelligence Agency produces knowledge. Process is the manifestation of an organization’s strategy the means by which

it achieves its ends. While today the Defense Intelligence Agency may have some strength in its

processes; today’s strengths are contextual. Given the context of the future, current capabilities,

the core competence of present success, will become disabilities and the basis for future incompetence the next context. 

In the future, capturing customers’ attention and preserving their trust help differentiate the

Agency from other multi-source information providers. Each Defense Intelligence Agency process must focus on producing a strategic end. We envision that the Agency will design and

improve processes to meet its customers’ needs and its strategic ambition. Organizing in crossfunctional teams, using scenarios to stress-test processes, social network optimization, and

closer relationships with customers will help the Agency acquire and refine the competencies

the future demands.

Timely and Timeless Business Ideas

A sidebar relates the five best business insights of 2003. They are: (1) Know where you are in the

business cycle—and be ready to get out; (2) New processes will be less linear than the ones they

replace; (3) A critical leadership competency—emotional intelligence; (4) Leadership is a group

activity; and (5) Know the tangible and intangible assets and liabilities of the organization.

Structure

Structure follows strategy and form follows function in an effective organization. As the environment changes, strategies change and functions evolve, and the functions grow, diminish, or disappear. Thus, effective organizations place a premium on agility and adaptability. Having the right

people organized in the right basic structure is critical to maintaining the advantage. Teams are the

right structures to create knowledge networks for the future. The paper proposes cross-functional

teams to manage functional areas or issue areas ... such as Weapons of Mass Destruction, Terrorism, Life Sciences ... in the context of geographical regions, such as China, the Americas, and so

forth. The paper asserts that a capstone team, Global Warning, synthesizes the most pressing

threats across the regions and across the functional areas and envisions where future dangers are

likely to emerge and what they might be. Audacious goals drive both the Agency and the teams.

Adjuncts to the structure are a revitalized Advisory Board of “outsiders” serving a Director with a
6

five-year controlled tour. The paper asserts that even in the fast-paced future, persistence requires

the stability to do such things as harmonizing the silicon elements of structure ... information

technology and applications ... with the human carbon elements.

Attachés

Given explosive growth in technology and communications, and given that adversaries will learn

to “hide in plain sight” from persistent surveillance, human intelligence (HUMINT) becomes

Culturally Intuitive

Identifies Patterns

Global Thinker

Imagining

Multi-Disciplined

Questions Assumptions

Calculated Risk Taking

Interaction Oriented

Networked

Real-Time Collaboration

Story Telling

Scenario Writing

Presents Context

Technology and

Science

Shapes Technology

Anticipatory, Proactive

Customer Focused

Outcome Oriented

Producing

Technically Proficient

Identifies Issues

Parochial

Assessing

Core Competence

Accepts Judgment

Risk Averse

Computer Oriented

Insular

Information via Reports

Explanation

Report Writing

Presents Occurrences

Technology or Social

Science

Accepts Technology

Responsive, Reactive

Role Focused

Product Oriented

Thinking Provide insight to customer and peers; considers a

range of possibilities; innovative and creative

Permeates “hearts and minds’ of target; nuanced thinking

Draw connections between non-linear events and occurrences,

considers possibility of low probability — high impact events

Understands global operationg environment; sees implications

in a connected series of diplomatic and economic contexts

Can formulate highly original concepts and prospectives

Brings a range of ideas to group discussions and issues

Guards against the development of “group think”

Offers predictive intelligence which inherently carries risk

Communicates “live” with customer; conversational manner

Seeks out experts with a diverse array of knowledge sources

and keeps them at the ready.

Adapts to new technologies and customer’s desire for speed

Uses narratives to allow understanding of complexity

Ability to develop scenarios based on facts and intuition

Provides on-going, additive perspective to the customer

Understands something about both disciplines; is aware of

both technological and social science issues/impacts/solutions

Highly adept at identifying, selecting, and tailoring technology

solutions for the demands of the work

Seeks to understand and constantly anticipate client needs

Works to ensure data is useable and overall client success

Seeks tangible mission outcomes from the work conducted

Cognitive Attributes

Second

Wave Attribute

Third

Wave Attribute

Value to the Defense

Intelligence Agency

Role Attributes

Technical Attributes

Communication Attributes

Judgement Attributes
7

more important. Just as there is persistent technological surveillance, the paper argues for persistent human surveillance: five year-controlled tours for attachés, with retired senior officers

becoming the preferred source for future defense attachés. 

Partnerships

Security risks the creation of insularity. Those isolated from the outside world lose touch with

the world and its developments, diversity, and emerging dangers. Facility in creating transitory

and expedient partnerships ... teaming to solve problems ... is a beginning. Teamwork in an

internal network is more difficult. Partnerships of shared equities, risks, and rewards are more

difficult still. Even so, partnerships, in concert with the creation of an internally-networked

organization, will be a critical factor in the future success of the Defense Intelligence Agency and

the intelligence community.

People

Given the challenges and missions that Defense Intelligence Agency will face in the future,

building a wide-ranging network of expert resources is critically important. The future Agency

will employ a relatively small core of its people internally — it will enlist the services of many at

think tanks, companies, NGOs, universities and other organizations. In the future, generalists,

specialists, and a “contingent workforce” will comprise the Agency workforce. The “contingent

workforce” will be larger than the Defense Intelligence Agency full-time employee base.

The future demands employees selected for attributes, rather than merely skills. New screening

tools help screen for these attributes as do new recruiting methods that cast the net wider to

acquire applicants. The table above summarizes the required attributes.

As the workforce changes, the human resources (HR) function changes in parallel. We expect

that the human resource function, while maintaining a centralized administrative core of key

activities, will move significantly toward becoming a “distributed” function. Centralized recordkeeping, database maintenance, physical records, cross-Agency policies, and some training and

executive development will persist, although distributed functions will increase. Many of the

personnel normally assigned to a corporate HR office today will instead be “forward

deployed” — or distributed among their internal customers — to work more closely with the

business units they serve. An executive committee will oversee these distributed functions and,

with the advice of human resource policy professionals and the general counsel, make the

larger, strategic personnel decisions. 

As the Agency shifts and realigns in response to the operating environment, its support functions will do the same. This realignment will create a need for continuous planning and adjustment in every area of human capital investment, development, and utilization to ensure that the

workforce and its support systems remain on parallel tracks of evolution and development. This

section of the paper describes companion changes to human capital planning, recruitment, hiring, retention, compensation, training and development, leadership development and succession planning, technology skill development, and the role of the Joint Military Intelligence

College (JMIC) as a facilitator of these changes. 

The Beginning of The Workforce Of The Future 

A sidebar argues that in the future, recruiters will become “human capitalists”, spending most of

their time proactively seeking out and interviewing targeted candidates from around the world

for potential inclusion in the Agency’s talent pool. Applying sophisticated targeted marketing

and branding strategies — and the Defense Intelligence Agency’s compelling vision to attract

individuals from around the globe. 
8

To be successful, the human capitalist must

be “an extraordinary individual who wants

more than just a job,” someone with “superior intellectual ability, toughness of mind

and a high degree of personality” who can

work in “fast-moving, ambiguous and

unstructured situations.” In other words,

recruitment work will possess high similarity

to a case officer type of role, working both

formal and informal networks to land leads

to the best sources of candidates. Human

capitalists also move quickly. Human

resources business processes must support

the speed with which recruiters move.

The paper describes the characteristics of

the specialist, generalist, and contingent categories of workers and how to best develop

and compose them in adaptive, flexible, reconfigurable teams. The changes in the

workforce profile and composition, as

required by the future environment and the

transformation of the Defense Intelligence

Agency, will have the secondary affect of

placing new demands on training and development. The new requirement will be to

enhance resident attributes and cognition

versus discrete tactical skills. As such, the

emphasis will shift from imparting information to imparting experience, and preparing the

workforce to comprehend and respond to multi-dimensional complexity of the operating environment.

Intelligence for Cause and Effects

Future effects-based analysts will not be experts in the data of multiple disciplines; they will

apply the causal theories of different disciplines. Think of effects-based analysts as learners of

theory, not as subject matter experts.

Effects-based intelligence officers will also be risk-taking gamers. At the tactical level, in a world

of machine to machine interfaces, analysts will manage three dimensions simultaneously. First

is hypothesis negation or confirmation to confirm the right cause-effect relationship. Second is

Blue’s next desired effect and action. Third is the target’s reaction. Examining multiple scenarios

is key to anticipating. And effects-based analysts will artfully weave these situations into captivating stories to elicit the operator or statesman’s attention and real values. 

Future effects-based intelligence experts will be masters of new science and art.

Strategy

The paper argues that in the future, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s achievements will result

from a relentless focus on customers and a continual assessment of customers’ needs and the

quality of the services delivered to them. The keys to sustained strategic success begin with having a set of audacious aspirations expressed as a “vision” or “strategic ambition.” 

Sustained Strategic Success

Vision

Establish an audacious strategic

vision — to ensure information

dominance for the US military

1. Vision

5.Durability

2. Strategy

6.Renewal

3. Alignment

4. Execution

Strategy

Provide persistent

surveillance and context

Alignment

Align the organization to

seize the new vision. Crossconnect the verticals

Execution

Identify impediments to

implementation

Durability

Create new structures and

processes while eradicating

impediments

Create new products with

the new structures

Renewal

Complete the

fundamental change
9

Strategy follows directly from that vision, defined in terms of the measurable outcomes that

prove it. Given a strategy, the successful organization engineers vertical and horizontal alignment. Alignment throughout the enterprise is critical. Once the organization aligns to the strategy, the process of execution begins. Execution is a learning process as the organization refines

its processes to ensure that it repeatedly and predictably achieves success. Finally, the organization renews itself as it learns and as it senses or anticipates changes in the environment. 

A set of ambitious corporate strategic measure accompanies this cycle of activity. The measures

illuminate performance compared to aspiration and test every area of the organization’s capacity. 

Successful Transformation: According to the General Accounting Office

A sidebar details what General Accounting Office (GAO) research and analyses asserts are the

critical elements of a successful transformation effort. There is, as one should expect, high

fidelity between the findings, conclusions, and recommendations in this paper and the GAO’s

experience.

The Not-So-New Strategy of Prevention

The strategy of preventive war will demand new attributes from the Agency’s workforce. Cognitively, Agency analysts and attachés will have to be global thinkers, able to imagine surprising

permutations and reconstruct enemy plans. They must have sound judgment, and be able to

take the calculated risks necessary to disrupt enemy strategies. They must be communicators,

capable of real-time collaboration and facing their customers in person. They will have to shape

technology, and with it their future. And — above all else — they must be anticipatory and proactive, focusing not only on outcomes delivered to their customers but the outcomes which their

customers aim to achieve in their operations.

Summary and Recommendations: Getting to the Future with a Sense of Urgency 

The last section of the paper offers a roadmap for change implementation, suggesting a new and

more audacious end-state vision to propel the process. It asserts that once leadership affirms

Epoch 5:

New End State

2003

■ Know critical requirements for and attributes of the Analysts of the Future (AOTF)

■ Build the nformation infrastructure

■ Identify impediments for eradication

2004

■ Eliminate impediments

■ Create functional and regional teams to satisfy informational needs

■ Consolidate issues teams electronically

■ Publish initial annual Defense Intelligence Assessments from teams

2004-2005

■ Hire the best, inspire and text, retire the rest to become all-source with effect

■ Change the Defense Attaché system and school

2005-2006

Be a partnership of highly skilled people and leading edge technologies providing

warfighters, policy makers, and planners with assures access to required

intelligence.

2006-2007

Be a partnership of highly skilled teammates helping prevent destructive conflict

nfrom erupting, and helping predetermine the outcome of destructive conflict in

favor of the US.

Epoch 1:

Build the Infrastructure

for Good Growth

Epoch 2:

Prototype AOTF

Epoch 3:

Structure for

Strategic Effect

Epoch 4:

The New DIA
10

the vision and strategy, change should be “chunked” into smaller projects occurring continuously over four “epochs.” Since 2003 and 2004 are critical times, the leadership should focus on

tightly coupling its workforce initiatives with significant and much needed enhancements to its

core business processes of collection, analysis, and information management. 

The paper asserts that people ... the right people ... underpin the process of fundamental

change, and suggests that not all the present workforce will be up to the challenge. 

We suggest and detail five urgent actions to begin the process of fundamentally changing the

Defense Intelligence Agency by fundamentally changing the workforce: (1) Hire the Best, Inspire

and Test, Retire the Rest; (2) Recognize And Reward New Behaviors, Dissuade Old Ones; (3)

Make Hiring “Decentralized Competitive” And “Centralized Supported”; (4) Focus On The Building Of Technology Skills And Technology Capability; and (5) Use the hiring of a Chief Training

Officer and the redevelopment of training to institute a group and individual training program

that not only builds skills, but also builds the culture that the Defense Intelligence Agency

strives for in the future.

Begin Building A Cadre Of Experts

We conclude by asserting that if the Defense Intelligence Agency seizes the vision to “Be a partnership of highly skilled teammates helping prevent destructive conflict from erupting, and helping

predetermine the outcome of destructive conflict in favor of the United States,” as its end-state

vision, it will need a different cadre than a more modest vision would require. A more modest

vision ... “Be a partnership of highly skilled people and leading edge technologies providing warfighters, policymakers, and planners with assured access to required intelligence” ... if taken at face

value, risks merely fixing what is judged broken today. 

In summary, as you read this we are nearly halfway through 2003. If fundamental change is the

goal, our judgment is that the Defense Intelligence Agency is behind. Our opinion is that we can

... and should ... both catch up and get ahead.
11

INTRODUCTION

Time has run out for the old Defense Intelligence Agency.

“United States intelligence must be a community effort in fact as well as name, which means 

that effective coordination of intelligence as a truly national effort must be achieved. By far the 

preponderant part of U.S. intelligence in terms of manpower and money is that undertaken by 

the DoD. Great strides toward a more closely integrated community would result from 

improved intelligence coordination within the DoD.”

The President’s Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities

“It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things; for the reformer has 

enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who 

would profit by the new order; this lukewarmness arising partly from the incredulity of mankind 

who does not truly believe in anything new until they actually have experience of it.”

Nicolo Machiavelli

The Prince

he forces that converged to create the

Defense Intelligence Agency—geopolitical

reconfigurations, changes in the sources of

wealth and the distribution of power, new

threats to American security, the unacceptability

of corrosive interservice rivalries, and the need

for better integration and more rapid and accurate intelligence assessments—ought not to be

unfamiliar to us. Nor should we be surprised

that, in spite of the changes that have occurred

over the last 40 years, so little has changed. The

President’s Board of Consultants on Foreign

Intelligence Activities penned the first exhortation above 43 years ago this month.1 So little has

fundamentally changed because initiating

change, as Machiavelli observed, is both “difficult to carry out” and “dangerous to handle.”

Scores of interviews and hundreds of hours of

research forced the conclusion that time has

run out for the old Defense Intelligence

Agency. Like many other entities in the intelligence community2 , the Agency must change,

or it will lose its remaining vitality to more

aggressive, adaptive organizations. Numerous

policy makers and intelligence community

constituencies draw the same conclusion, and

like Admiral Jacoby, argue for fundamental

transformation. Appendix 2 provides a sampling of the criticism prior to and following

September 11, 2001. Given the Agency’s role

as the primary provider of intelligence for military operations, it must lead this change in the

community to ensure the security of forces

around the world and national security at

home.

There are, fortunately, major differences

between the drivers of change in 1960 and

the drivers today. These include the fact that

the Defense Intelligence Agency exists and

that the Defense Intelligence Agency, mindful

of the difficulties and dangers, intends to

recreate itself for the future. Another difference between today and 1960 is leadership:

the top-down commitment of the leaders of

the Department of Defense and of the

Defense Intelligence Agency to engineer

change by using the right human capital and

such tools obtainable now and those that

may become available to it in the future.

Thus, the Defense Intelligence Agency plans

on using these mechanisms — technology,

process improvements, and structural

T
12

changes — to craft a new and more adaptive

strategy, a strategy that allows the Defense

Intelligence Agency to create, develop, and

engage its future workforce to understand

and overcome whatever threats the future

poses. 

Everything Is Changing Simultaneously

There are perturbations in every element of

the Defense Intelligence Agency value chain

(Illustration 1). Customers are proliferating

and levying new demands. Logistics, operations, distribution channels, and supporting

functions are changing all at once. 

Strategy formulation in this environment

requires a comprehensive understanding of

how separate elements interact and their critical dependencies. It also requires control of

the timing of change, because production cannot stop during the progressive, epochal introduction of necessary changes. Thus, the first

requirement is self-awareness of what the

Defense Intelligence Agency is and how it

works. Changing the workforce — the “production units” — is a necessary first step, but

the Agency has to take that step strategically.

Creating the Future Demands Insight and

Integrated Strategic Movement

Strategy is key. “Organizations,” former Secretary of the Navy, the Honorable Richard Danzig, told us, “contain the fossil record of their

history.” Today’s Defense Intelligence Agency

workforce was formed by past strategies,

indoctrinated in what were proven processes,

trained in the technologies of its day, and

organized according the policies and rules that

governed its workforce epoch by epoch. To

stare at today’s workforce and try to understand it apart from the context that helped

create it invariably leads to error. To avoid

error, the leadership of the Defense Intelligence Agency knows that creating the workforce of the future is an outcome of the

The Intelligence Value Chain

Today, resource allocation is weighted more heavily toward collection.

Inbound

logistics

Operations Marketing

& Sales

Outbound

logistics

Fulfillment

Production

MASINT and

Technical

Collection HUMINT

Analysis

Intelligence

J2

External

Relations

Infrastructure

Human Resource

Management

Technology

Development

Procurement

Customer

Directorate

Staff

Information

Management

Administration

Future resource allocation is weighted more heavily toward the customer.

Mission Activities

(Creation of Product or Service)

Support Activities

(Creation of Product or Service)

G&A

R&D

Illustration 1: The Intelligence Value Chain
13

Defense Intelligence Agency’s strategy for the

future. And its future strategy to enhance the

value of its service to its stakeholders should

not be constrained — today or in the future by

its workforce. 

Although the central focus of this paper is the

human capital Defense Intelligence Agency

must acquire, develop, and nurture to serve

our country in the future, we know from experience that we cannot narrow our focus exclusively to human capital, to tinkering solely

with the mechanics of today’s personnel

administration systems. Among the interactive

and convergent elements that work together in

the environment to create the future are technology, processes, competitors, partners, and

organizational structures. These spheres

intertwine inextricably and none can be separated or safely ignored when envisioning a

future workforce. None of these can be

neglected in designing a strategy for the

future. 

While strategy is key and necessary, strategy

without implementation plans becomes daydreaming. Actually achie ving desir ed outcomes is the pr oof of strategy. Alignment

around a strategy, with implementation plans

that focus on achieving specific audacious

outcomes that support the strategy drives

organization success. Outcomes that are not

measured or measurable become vagaries victimized by chance. Since implementation is

critical, it must not be ignored. Attending to

strategy, planning, alignment, and implementation to assure achievement, success may still

elude the Defense Intelligence Agency. Change

is very difficult.

“The Reformer Has Enemies In All Those

Who Profit By The Old Order”

Introducing fundamental change is hard work.

In our experience, success is always — as

Wellington described his victory at

Waterloo — a near-run thing. There are five

reasons for this and five remedies. 

First, organizations are like living organisms.

They take in resources to create energy and

movement, expel waste, and reproduce their

competencies as they adapt to their environment. Change is about pre-adapting to the

future environment; crossing the chasm

between today and the future. Since the future

does not exist as an experienced environment,

but only as a mental construct, the organism

often senses cognitive dissonance during the

change process. Having a set of vivid, concrete

near-term outcomes that focus attention and

progressively shape or change the environment can prevent cognitive dissonance. Fundamental change succeeds if it becomes a

series of small, manageable changes. 

Second, change requires alignment around a

vision of the future end-state. The passionately held beliefs that the future state is superior to the present state, and that the

organization can shape its future, drive alignment. This passion must reside first and foremost in the leaders of the change coalition, but

it must also permeate the organization. The

individuals leading the guiding coalition may

depart before major elements of change have

been implemented. If sufficient energy and

passion depart with these human hosts, the

change process will falter. Turning key elements of change into policy and process, and

strategically creating a multi-tier coalition to

sustain the passion and energy for transformation will help ensure change is successful.

If there are changes at the top, the middle and

the bottom can continue, and have the tools of

policy and process to sustain them. Partners

help. If partners have shared equities in the

success of the change process, they can help

sustain it. But they must all align around a

unifying vision of the future.

Third, change requires not only intense focus

on an end-state, but also the willingness to

deviate from plan to accelerate change. When

opportunistic deviations occur, critics will

accuse the guiding coalition of uncertainty,

vacillation, or self-servingly creating change

“The past is done. Finished. The future does not exist. It must be created, microsecond by microsecond, by every living being and thing in the universe.”

Edward Teller
14

for change’s sake. The guiding coalition can

prevent this, however, by declaring at the outset that the broad outlines of the epochal path

to the end-state are accurate, but cannot be

precise in any way. The future, as Teller said,

is co-created “microsecond by microsecond.”

If the new plan maintains the end-state vision,

the deviation should not scuttle the process. 

Fourth, change requires surrendering the local

optimum to pursue a global optimum. It

requires exchanging the views, capabilities

and plans written by bureaucrats in small cubbyholes with their noses buried in their few

responsibilities for visionary, enterprise-wide

renaissance. Change, especially fundamental

change, is a risky process because some decrements in capability always occur, and those

responsible for those capabilities will cry out

and insist change is moving them backwards.

Leadership must understand and management

control must monitor the critical few performance measures that signal the potential precursors of unsatisfactory performance so that

it can remain confident that the changes they

make are positive, forward progress and not

simply action with no substance, or with negative substance. Simultaneously, they measure

progress against aspirational measures, indicators of movement toward the audacious

attainments of new global optima. 

Fifth, and finally, leadership must understand

that the nature of bureaucracies is to resist

change. “The staff,” one intelligence community general officer told us, “exists to protect

the organization from its boss.” Bureaucracies,

and especially hierarchical government

bureaucracies, have, over time, perfected

countervailing strategies to resist reformers.

Two of these dominate: the slow-roll, and the

end-run. 

The slow-roll is a strategy of delay. This strategy appreciates that rotation in and out of

government positions is a fact. For military

and political positions, this tour of duty length

is often predictable and usually too short to

allow leaders to affect significant change. A

signal of the slow-roll is paralysis by analysis.

Escalating demands for more information,

pressures for more analysis, broad searches

for more alternatives, or insistence on more

analysis of alternatives during the change process, indicate the presence of conscious or

subconscious slow-roll tactics. While the

slow-roll is an effective and passive strategy of

foot-dragging, a more active and aggressive

strategy usually accompanies it: the end-run. 

The end-run is a form of resistance that avoids

change by “going around” any new structures

or rules to capitalize on the apparent (or

alleged) confusion that fundamental change

causes. The end-run also can introduce the

resistance of others by stimulating customers

or partners to complain about the effects that

change is having on them. The end-run sometimes seeks to depart from the organization

and appeal to superiors to reverse or challenge

key elements of a change strategy. Sometimes

what alleges to be whistle-blowing accompanies the end-run. Even false allegations introduce delays and frustration. The end-run is

most crippling when used in conjunction with

the slow-roll. 

The remedies for these forms of resistance

range from effective communication to ensuring everyone understands the value of change,

to the warning or removal of those who resist.

Whether resistance is caused by parochial

self-interest, misunderstanding, lack of trust,

different assessments of the problem change

intends to solve, or different assessments of

the potential solutions, many people and

many organizations have low tolerance for

Illustration 2: John Kotter’s Eight Strategic Change Errors3

1. Allowing too much complacency.

2. Failing to create a suffiently powerful guiding coalition.

3. Underestimating the power of vision.

4. Under-communicating the vision by a factor of 10 (or 100,

or even 1000)

5. Permitting obstacles to block the new vision.

6. Failing to create short-term wins.

7. Declaring victory too soon.

8. Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the culture.

John Kotter’s Eight

Strategic Change Errors
15

change (see Illustration 2). Many change processes fail to answer the three key questions

posed by the workforce: (1) What’s in it for

me? (2) What’s in it for me? And (3) What’s in

it for me? This may be especially true for

change initiatives undertaken in government

bureaucracies. 

And Even If You Do It All Right, It Could

Turn Out All Wrong

Change initiatives in the Defense Intelligence

Agency could fail if there are not equally significant changes in the larger defense intelligence context. Greater sense of community

within the intelligence community (IC) will be

required, as will reform of the requirements

process and multi-billion dollar improvements to the all-source information infrastructure underpinning both the IC and its

customers. 

The entire intelligence community must work

together to create the future they collectively

envision. If they do not embrace the notion of

community, it is unlikely that change initiatives of the Defense Intelligence Agency will

succeed.4

Other changes are required. Two of these bear

emphasis: reforming the intelligence “requirements” system and the satisfying the need for

multi-billion dollar enhancements to the “allsource” information infrastructure. 

Today’s intelligence requirements process is

not outcome oriented. The process separates requests for specific pieces of information and the priority assigned to those

requests from the desired outcome or value

of possessing such information. Because it

accepts customer requests and customerassigned priorities almost at face value,

urgent and high priority requests can constipate the system, often creating the appearance that providers are unresponsive to

customers. Fundamental structural and procedural changes would improve this system

and indeed are necessary as technology

provides the wherewithal to move from

reconnaissance to persistent surveillance.

Knowing “something about everything all

the time” requires either that customers and

providers agree on “why” knowing is valuable and “what” it is that they need to know,

or that the provider be empowered to decide

the “what” based on knowing and appreciating the “why.” It would do little good to

create an “Analyst of the Future” or an

“Attaché of the Future” only to enslave him

or her to the requirements process of the

past. 

The Defense Intelligence Agency also may fail

in its change initiatives unless it has the information infrastructure to support and sustain

changes in its core business areas of collection, analysis, and information management.

Today, for example, no intelligence agency is

responsible for determining and enforcing data

and metadata standards, search and access

protocols, best applications, or best commercial practices for information management.

Consequently, content is unmanageable, and

all source content cannot be integrated for

rapid manipulation or display. Absent standards and processes for managing data across

the community, contemporary capabilities —

such as fusion — and future capabilities —

such as inductive analysis and visualization —

are unattainable. Unless there is commitment

from the Department of Defense and funding

from the Congress to support and introduce

fundamental change across every element of

the Defense Intelligence Agency value chain

(Illustration 1), creating the world’s most

effective and agile intelligence workforce may

be to no avail. 

Edmund Burke’s century-old advice remains

relevant because time has run out for the

Defense Intelligence Agency. It must change.

The fact that it must change liberates the

Defense Intelligence Agency from the burden

of choosing much beyond the sequence of

change activities. The timing of change — now

or never — has been determined already. What

remains is the hard work of change, of preadapting to the future. 

“Do Not Despair, But, If You Must, Work On In Despair.”
16

In the pages that follow, we focus the

Defense Intelligence Agency on the future.

For it is in creating and adapting to that

future that the workforce we describe will

flourish. Among the interactive and convergent elements that work together in the environment to create that future are technology,

processes, competitors, partners, and organizational structures. 

What do we know about each of those elements in that future? Read on. 

The graphic above illustrates the components of change that the 

Defense Intelligence Agency will consider as it embraces transformation. In the sections that follow, we discuss each component in 

turn, beginning with the Future Environment, progressing around 

the circle and ending with Recommendations.

Context for Change

Structure

People

Process

Stra

et gy

Technology

F u t u r e E n v i r o n m e n t
17

THE FUTURE ENVIRONMENT

Future security will depend upon preempting the violent enemies of the 

United States. Hyper-empowered individuals will be the primary generators of this threat, not nations or groups of nations. To thrive in this environment, the Defense Intelligence Agency provides key decision makers 

with fast, accurate, integrated and anticipatory information. This information, however, may have to be generated with resources far below 

today’s levels.

“Jody Williams won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for helping build an international coalition 

to bring about a treaty outlawing land mines. Although nearly 120 governments endorsed the 

treaty, it was opposed by Russia, China and the United States. When Jody Williams was asked, 

‘How did you do that? How did you organize one thousand different citizens’ groups and non 

governmental organizations on five continents to forge a treaty that was opposed by the major 

powers?’ she had a brief answer: ‘E-mail.’ Jody Williams used the networked world to superempower herself.”

Thomas Friedman, New York Times

“The days of net assessment — having one large enemy like the 

Soviet Union — are over.”5

Chief Scientist, Fortune 500 Company

n ways remarkable for their depth and

breadth, the United States has gained a

position of extraordinary power and influence among the world’s nations. This leadership will continue into the near future. No

country or group of countries has demonstrated the willingness or capability to surmount American advantages in any significant

area. If anything, the United States is poised to

lengthen its overall lead. Continuing American

investments in innovative research and development (both military and civilian) outpace

those of any competitor. 

Today, the United States has achieved

unprecedented levels of global leadership

across key aspects of national power.

Economically, the United States generates a

quarter of the world’s goods and services. This

percentage has been rising for a decade.

Culturally, American mass media (news, film,

music) reach practically every nation. Our

values are spread even deeper by the half

million foreign students who attend American

colleges and universities each year (half of all

students who study abroad). In technology, the

most important advances in biotechnology,

information processing and materials

manufacturing have either their genesis or their

leadership in the United States. And in military

operations, American weaponry and personnel

are insurmountable, with a generation of

combat-tested professionals wielding worldclass systems in every category. 

This enviable condition took years to build.

Previous generations of national leaders

bequeathed it to us. Today’s challenge is to

I
18

do more than simply maintain this inheritance; that would be too modest and static a

goal. The world is changing rapidly and the

United States must adjust. There is little

chance the economics, technology, culture

and military operations of today will extend

in a straight line indefinitely into the future.

We must continually refresh these tools in

order to protect America’s unique position in

the world and to shape international change

in ways consistent with America’s enduring

values and goals. 

Such shaping must start with an appreciation

of the emerging global environment. While

many trends seem consistent with those of

the past, they differ in fundamental ways,

and those differences are widening. As former

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote, we

are at “a defining juncture” in international

affairs.

A New World 

The end of the Cold War saw the reordering

of global politics and undermined the rationale for geopolitical relationships. National

minorities redrew borders while individual

states questioned the relevance of alliances.

Divisive forces continue to stress borders

and alliances as economic and technological changes irritate cultural and ethnic

schisms. 

Victory in the Cold War changed the world

leadership role of the United States. As

schisms abounded, groups and nations turned

to the United States to adjudicate. No longer

just the coalition leader of the free world, the

United States is now the de facto guarantor of

international order. 

Unfortunately, there is no international consensus as to either the vector or the velocity of

change or in America’s role in setting that vector or velocity. The world has no idea where or

by whom it should be led. Existing candidates,

such as the United Nations, have questionable

abilities and emerging candidates, such as the

European Union, have yet to demonstrate the

ability to lead. As a result, leadership has

defaulted to the United States. However,

because America’s post-Cold War leadership

status is far from unanimous, it has become an

ill-defined umpire for the uncertain and a target for the dissatisfied. 

Competition

“War is a nation’s way of eating.”

Tribes and clans, nations and states, governmental 

organizations and non-governmental ones, philanthropic and sinister groups, and good and malicious 

individuals have always populated the planet. There 

should be no doubt they will continue to populate it in 

2020. The future may see a shift in the relative power 

of the world’s competitive actors-economic city-states 

possessing the financial power of some states,6nongovernmental organizations rivaling some states in 

influence, or even a dramatic increase in the power of 

hyper-empowered individuals, but individuals, 

groups, and states most certainly will co-exist as 

competitors in the future. Appreciating that the forms 

that competition will take in the future may change; 

the nature of competition nonetheless will not 

change. The philosopher-historians Will and Ariel 

Durant observed that 

Our states, being ourselves multiplied, are what

we are; they write our natures in bolder type, and

do our good and evil on an elephantine scale.

We are acquisitive, greedy, and pugnacious

because our blood remembers millenniums

through which our forebears had to chase and

fight and kill in order to survive, and had to eat to

their gastric capacity for fear they should not

soon capture another feast. War is a nation’s way

of eating.”

States and nations are as unlikely to wither away in 

the future, as “history” is unlikely to end. In the future, 

the United States and the Defense Intelligence 

Agency must reckon with the facts of geography, ethnicity, culture, and nationalism. “Globalization” is an 

“There is not a country we need fear. Increasingly, the fear is of individuals.”8

Chief Scientist, Government Agency
19

The Globalizing Information Economy 

The information revolution continues to

unseat centralized hierarchies, supplanting

them with decentralized networks. Moore’s

Law (the number of integrated circuits on a

chip doubles every eighteen months) and Metcalfe’s Law (a network’s value is the square of

its members) iterate on a daily basis to produce exponential impacts on nearly every

aspect of society through the flow of global

information. 

The resulting globalization of economics,

finance, business, culture, technology and

force drives societal shifts analogous to the

industrial revolution. Wealth shifts among

regions, nations and constituencies, creating

unimagined opportunities for humankind. At

the same time, these shifts generate fear

among losers and overconfidence among winners. Those in the middle sway back and forth,

as divisions in both extremes preclude consensus and compromise. The lack of tools to

measure success or failure in this emerging era

confuses everyone. 

In this globalized environment, distinctions

between “domestic” and “foreign” are increasingly ambiguous. When networks are the center of society, whether fifty feet or fifty degrees

of longitude separate two terminals has little

relevance. Routine decisions on technology,

crime, justice, agriculture and taxation, once

considered “domestic” in nature, can have

major impacts abroad in a globalized system,

and vice versa. The changes transform the

notion of power in the future.

The Hyper-Empowered 

The events of 9/11 demonstrated the potential

of hyper-empowered individuals. Small groups

proved their ability to affect American sovereignty in ways their state havens could never

hope to do. Their potential calls into question

the Westphalian principles of sovereignty,

which held that individual citizens of each

important set of phenomena, but these signify the globalization of means, not the homogenization of ends. 

Thus, we believe that the acquisitive, greedy, and 

pugnacious will remain among us, but the ways that 

individuals, groups, and states choose to compete 

will change to take advantage of emerging tools to 

hurt their adversaries. Unlike natural evolutionary 

competition, competition may be revolutionary. Bruce 

D. Henderson writes in “The Origin of Strategy”:

Natural competition is wildly expedient in its

moment-to-moment interaction. But it is inherently conservative in the way it changes a species’ characteristic behavior. By contrast,

strategic commitment is deliberate, carefully considered, and tightly reasoned. But the consequences may well be radical change in a

relatively short period of time. Natural competition is evolutionary. Strategic competition is revolutionary.”9

What surprising new forms of competition will 

emerge? None can know for certain, but to prevent 

strategic surprise, to help prevent destructive conflict 

from erupting, and to predetermine the outcome of 

destructive conflict in favor of the United States, the 

Defense Intelligence Agency must be prepared for 

all. Advancements in science could offer the potential 

for new weapons. Improvements in manufacturing or 

logistics could signal a magnification in capability. 

Whether one accepts the all-inclusive construction of 

Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui depicted below,10 in 

Figure 3 “The Forms of Unrestricted Warfare,” or 

some more modest framework, the potential for revolutionary changes in the forms that competition takes 

is high. 

By 2010+, 18-35 Cohorts in Unstable Countries

Italy

Japan

Germany

UK

Russia

France

China Iran

India

Egypt

Sudan

Syria

Pakistan

Palestine

Nigeria

Zimbabwe

Uganda

Yemen

Somalia

USA

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Percentage of Population Under 14 in 2000

By 2010-2020, expect large 18-35 populations

The World’s 190 Nations

Illustration 3: By 2010+, 18-35 Cohorts in Unstable Countries
20

state were immune to interference by foreign

states. This most important tenet of the nation

state system, which has endured for 350

years, may be obsolete in an era of hyperempowered individuals. It may not survive our

era of stateless terrorism, criminality and

uncontrolled disease. 

The problem is that small groups, even individuals, are gaining powers previously

reserved for states. For example, a single currency speculator, George Soros, brought down

the Bank of England and had a large role in the

Asian financial panic of 1997. A profile in the

London Observer described him as “the only

U.S. citizen with his own foreign policy.”13

Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network

did more harm to the United States from their

base in Afghanistan than the Afghani government could ever have hoped to do. Israel has

more to fear from an organization like Lebanese Hizballah than it does from a state like

Egypt. To an unprecedented extent, small

groups now emerge as serious threats to world

order.

In a world where the integrating visions of

the Information Age replace the defining divisions of the Cold War, the enemies of integration pose the most serious threat to world

order. 

These enemies are seldom states; they are

individuals and groups. They include the

disenfranchised of the less-developed

world, who, paradoxically, are empowered

by the same forces of globalization they

seek to destroy. Countries with rapid urbanization and high birth rates combined with

poverty and political corruption are propagating dissatisfied young men, and demographic studies show that the most troubled

areas of the world contain disproportionate

numbers of young people (Illustration 3).

They can use the Internet as an incredible

force-multiplier to move money, communicate with cells and obtain intelligence.

Operating with little warning, they can use

technologies like GPS to build weapons with

devastating effects. In the age of the “suicide bomber,” these “hyper-empowered

individuals” pose an undeterrable threat to

national security and a major challenge for

intelligence agencies.

This challenge includes the threat of individual

terrorists and groups with weapons of mass

destruction. As noted by the President’s

“National Strategy For Combating Terrorism,” 

“The probability of a terrorist organization 

using a chemical, biological, radiological or 

nuclear weapon, or high-yield explosives, 

The role of the Defense Intelligence Agency cannot 

be restricted to an exclusive focus on what Qiao 

Liang and Wang Xiangsui describe as “military war” 

or even “beyond military war.” Serving policy-makers 

requires the ability to support the multi-dimensional 

approaches that policy-makers take. 

Twenty-five centuries ago, a Chinese warlord said, 

“In movement nothing is more important than the 

unexpected. In planning nothing is more important 

than not being knowable.”11 Persistence surveillance 

may become a fact in the future, but for the Defense 

Intelligence Agency, it may not be a pleasant fact. 

The “observed,” knowing that they are under surveillance, will invariably discover new ways to “hide in 

plain sight.” As the Under Secretary for Intelligence 

asserted, “We are looking to create intelligence capabilities that emphasize persistence and greater resistance to denial and deception.”12 To do that the 

Defense Intelligence Agency must have the workforce prepared for the denial and deception intended 

to mask destructive conflict in any of its potential 

manifestations.

Nuclear

Conventional

Bio-Chemical

Ecological

Space

Electronic

Guerrilla

Terrorism

Military War Beyond Military War Nonmilitary War

Diplomatic

Internet

Information Ops

Psychological

High Tech

Smuggling

Drug

Deterrence

Financial

Trade

Natural Resource

Economic Aid

Law and Regulation

Sanctions

Media

Ideological

Illustration 4: The Forms of “Unrestricted Warfare”
21

has increased significantly during the past 

decade. The availability of critical technologies, the willingness of some scientists and 

others to cooperate with terrorists, and the 

ease of intercontinental transportation enable 

terrorist organizations to more easily 

acquire, manufacture, deploy, and initiate a 

WMD attack either on U.S. soil or abroad.” 14

This undeterrable threat is driving the new

national strategy of preemption. The United

States has announced its intention of attacking

such threats as soon as the intelligence community identifies them. There is no willingness

to wait until a threat manifests itself. Rather,

the nation will now attack on warning. As

stated by Secretary Rumsfeld, if the Nation

waits to find a “smoking gun,” it will have

waited too long. 

The strategy of preemption is a major policy

shift for the United States. It is a reaction to

the new strategic environment evidenced by

9/11. 

Preemption dramatically increases the responsibility placed on the intelligence services. The

minimal signatures of some weapons, particularly biologicals, make them extremely difficult

to detect. At the same time, their potential

impacts — which could range into the millions

of casualties — make their detection a national

imperative. This detection imperative falls to

the intelligence community. 

The growing power of individuals and groups

does not make conventional conflict obsolete.

On the contrary, familiar threats will doubtless

continue. The military forces of specific states,

such as North Korea, will remain of interest.

Combatant commanders will need up to date

information on the command and control,

readiness and equipment of specific militaries.

This is especially true in cases where potential

enemies begin to understand the emerging era

of the hyper-empowered soldier. We discuss

this further in the Technology chapter “Vectors

In Conventional Weapons Remain Important”.

In areas where war can start without

warning — and an immediate U.S. response

would be required — traditional intelligence

requirements will remain valid. Similarly, current intelligence requirements will remain for

foreign missile and weapons of mass destruction developments. 

The level of risk posed by traditional threats,

however, has changed. Whether an event

might happen and the downside if it does,

combine into our single calculus of risk. From

this perspective, the risks posed by theater

conflicts to U.S. national sovereignty are far

less than what they were during the Cold War.

The days of “M-Day equals C-Day equals

D-Day” are thankfully over.15 

These factors, and their chaotic and iterative

side effects, are combining to shift the strategic

calculus of the global community. They are

driving an era where the Cold War strategy of

deterrence is giving way to the post-9/11 strategy of preemption—and where the engines

and measures of wealth are in flux, driving near

continuous adjustments in national power, both

real and perceived. Overlaying these dynamics

are the unique frictions and opportunities

offered by America’s leadership position in

practicμally every sphere of national power. 

The unique attributes of this emerging era

cannot help but redefine our institutions.

Greater changes are already on the table. 

The Emerging Information Age Redefines

Value 

Today’s information-based, post-industrial

age places a premium on knowledge. It has

become the number one factor in the creation

of wealth. While fiscal capital will always

remain important, the value of intellectual

capital is on the rise. With the right information at the right time, other resources become

less valuable. There is less need for capital,

time, labor, energy, materials and infrastructure when the right information is properly

applied. Intellectual capital, an inexhaustible

resource, becomes the principal determinant

of wealth and power. 

Information infrastructures worth hundreds of

billions of dollars stand ready to move knowledge, thanks to investments by business and

governments in fiber, satellites, servers, desktops and software. Information infrastructures

enable today’s key differentiator between
22

competitors: “economies of speed.” They supplanted industrial age “economies of scale” as

the most important metrics of value. 

The overall goal of leading businesses today is

to create a dynamic organization focused on

specific customers and optimized for speed.

Today’s companies treat physical products

more like commodities than as competitive

advantages. The overwhelming premium is on

knowledge, speedily applied. 

Leading institutions quickly integrate data

from structured (proprietary) and unstructured (external) sources and then customize

it for key decision makers. Rapidly fused

intellectual capital, accessed and applied in a

case-by-case basis, replaces the “one size fits

all” approach from the mass production age.

The intent is to speed each decision by facilitating integration and delivery. This track

requires highly specialized workers willing to

innovate to meet specialized demands. They

must also be willing to withstand constant

changes in organizational structure as customers, issues and infrastructure change. 

This premium on speed is obvious to military

professionals. As demonstrated during the

2001-2003 operations in Iraq and Afghanistan,

the modern imperative in military matters is

speed.17 From the kill chain to acquisition to

logistics, today’s decision makers demand

speed in every step of the process — with as

few processes as possible. Practically by definition, whatever accelerates or skips a process

is good; whatever slows or adds a process is

bad.

For the intelligence community, this means

delivering information that is fast, integrated

and anticipatory. Fast means quickly getting

intelligence to the right decision makers in an

easily understood form. Integrated means fusing all sources (including open sources), lest

decision makers be forced to delay while waiting to incorporate other facts.18 Anticipatory

means predicting requests, beginning to

answer questions before they are asked. Waiting for formal tasking only makes many

responses late. These aspects of the speed

imperative, which apply throughout modern

business and government, pertain directly to

the Defense Intelligence Agency. 

While previous generations of military decision makers also wanted “fast, integrated, and

anticipatory” intelligence, modern leaders

demand it to an unprecedented extent. Their

demands are rooted in the expectations of

modern society.

The Future Budget Environment Will

Challenge Us

The fast, integrated and anticipatory Defense

Intelligence Agency of the future will face

severe budget pressures. We should anticipate

that budgets to prosecute both traditional and

emerging missions will come under increasing

strain. 

The “Baby Boom” generation, which began in

1946, will enter the eligibility window for

Social Security beginning in 2011. When this

occurs, many boomers will shift from being

net contributors to the trust fund to a net

drain. As retirees, they will push less money

into the trust fund while, at the same time,

greatly increase withdrawals. As shown in

Illustration 5, they will also shift the ratio of

workers to retirees from the present five to one

(five workers for every retiree) to three to one

by 2025. 

Because current federal budget deficits would

be much larger without offsetting surpluses

provided by “loans” from the Social Security

trust fund, all federal discretionary programs,

“There’s pressure on government officials to make decisions much faster, so there’s 

pressure on us to produce answers in days, sometimes hours. Our tradition has 

been studies that take months.”16

Chief Information Officer, Government Agency
23

including defense, will come under pressure.

Due to the massive deficits this transition will

probably drive, leaders of the intelligence

community should prepare alternatives in case

severe budget cutbacks in the post 2011 timeframe become a reality.

Tomorrow’s premium will be on coaxing an

uncertain world towards preempting the violent enemies of the United States. Hyperempowered individuals will be the primary

generators of this threat, not nations or groups

of nations. To thrive in this environment, the

Defense Intelligence Agency will provide key

decision makers with fast, accurate, integrated

and anticipatory information. It will likely,

however, need to generate that information

with resources far below today’s levels. Said

another way, given fiscal forecasts, failing to

act today may preclude acting tomorrow. 

The Baby Boom Generation Will Stress

Federal Retirement Entitlements

2000

0

Millions

50

100

150

200

2025 2000 2025

US Working Age Population US Retiree Age Population

Ratio of Wokers to Retirees:

2000 — 5:1

2025 — 3:1

The Baby Boom Generation Will Stress

Federal Retirement Entitlements

2000

0

Millions

50

100

150

200

2025 2000 2025

US Working Age Population US Retiree Age Population

Ratio of Wokers to Retirees:

2000 — 5:1

2025 — 3:1

Illustration 5
25

TECHNOLOGY

s we seek to forecast the future operating environment for the Defense Intelligence Agency, the “great growling

engine of change” is technology. Technology

drives transformation, creates entire industries, undercuts established bureaucracies and

defines new cultures. George Orwell went so

far as to equate a generation’s value with the

technology it produced. 

By Orwell’s standard, our era has done well.

In our lifetimes, we have seen the integrated

circuit underwrite the information age,

revamping business and society. Nuclear

power redefined warfare and international

politics, creating new alliances and organizations. Biotechnology introduced enormous

social and cultural shifts. By any measure,

these and other technologies drove fundamental shifts in the ways of nations, groups

and individuals. They proved the historical tie

between technological advance and fundamental change in our political, social and

economic environments.

This is not to say that all change has a technological parent. Social, religious and emotional

factors also drive change. The political and

racial aspirations of Germany and Japan, for

example, contributed to the upheavals of

World War II. Adolph Hitler, Osama bin Laden,

Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein rose

from a mix of personal ego, social ideology

and nationalist fear.19 Technology was not

their genesis. Rather, their threats arose independent of technology. 

Having said that, these individuals used technology. The magnitude and character of each

threat had a strong technological base. Hitler

needed Panzers and Stukas to pose an international threat. Absent these weapons, Nazi

Germany’s menace to the international community would have been far less. One can say

the same for the Soviet Union with its missiles

and weapons of mass destruction.20 Bin Laden

exploited airliners, cell phones and the Internet. These and other villains turned technology to their own terrible ends. Whereas their

“bows” sprang from politics or ideology, technology formed their “arrows”. We can anticipate a parallel dynamic from their future

counterparts. 

From this perspective, the value of technological foresight is apparent. Although threat can

grow independent of technology, the magnitude

of most threats remains dependent on technology. Therefore, by appreciating the scope of

future technology we can outline the potential

of most future threats. While the personae of

future threats are inherently unknowable, we

can outline the weapons at their disposal in

advance. 

Over the next two decades, a series of technological advances will 

converge to drive a new Defense Intelligence Agency.

“Companies cannot see or read about a new technology today and deploy it tomorrow. It 

takes time to study it, to understand its significance, to conceptualize its potential uses, to 

sell those uses inside the company and to plan the deployment.”

Hammer and Champy, Reengineering the Corporation

A
26

“The encryption algorithms used today will be marginalized. Quantum encryption 

will emerge ten years or so into the future, but we will not turn off legacy systems. 

There’s a 10 — 15 year gestation system — that’s just the way things work”.21 

Chairman, U.S. Government Board

The same is true for forecasts of organizational change. While laws, markets and leadership regularly change, in many

organizations, it is also true that technology

changes the workplace. The web, PC, PDA,

email, fax and cable television are visible

examples of technological change in the

workplace. Less visible technologies, such as

servers, sensors, software, fiber optics, network switches, lasers and technical training

support these changes. The sum of these

technologies changed the modern workplace,

making it unrecognizable to those of a generation ago. 

In fact, our willingness to accept technology

may be the key limiting factor in forecasting

change in our workplaces. Managers have

substantial latitude over how they adopt

technology. They can dictate, within budget

constraints, how much of a new technology

they will employ, but usually take a conservative straight-line approach. They apply

new technologies only to perform traditional

tasks better, faster, or cheaper and neglect to

envision how technologies can help change

their business or industry. 

Fortunately, there is a time lag between a

technology’s introduction and its adoption.

Isaac Asimov observed that, “Science can

amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world.” It takes time to

engineer the science of the laboratory into

the tools of work and war. By understanding

the state of the current laboratory, we can

forecast the future operational environment.

We can forecast with some fidelity the future

technological tools available to organizations

such as the Defense Intelligence Agency and

to our nation’s adversaries. Accurate forecasts of trends in technology can help us

scope — at least in part — the tools of our

future environment. 

Historically, there is a lag between the laboratory and the workplace, between development and acceptance. In the past, we

usually measured that time lag in decades

(Illustration 6). 

Key drivers of technological change inched

their way into our every day lives. They did

not simply arise out of the ether and burst into

the Defense Intelligence Agency. They took

time to evolve. This time lag is significant. It

provides a reasonable starting point for projections of future technologies. We know much

of what will be available to managers ten years

from now because we know what is in development now. 

As a result, although the velocity and range

of technological change are unknowable, its

vectors are visible. There will be unexpected

breakthroughs and disappointments to be

sure, but we know enough about the future

to identify probable developments in technology. With this information, we can

project minimal steps needed to prepare

Illustration 6: Time Lag

Cable TV

Laser Guided Bomb

Internet (ARAPANET)

E-Mail

Personal Computer

GPS (Block 1)

Cell Phone

WWW

Linux System

PDA

1948

1964

1969

1971

1975

1978

1979

1991

1991

1993

The First ... Year
27

organizations for at least those developments. There are reasonable technological

vectors that conservative planners should

incorporate into their vision of the future

operating environment.

Vectors in Information Technology Continue Upward

Despite the dot-com meltdown of 2000-2002,

information technologies continue to progress.

Every day the journals report some type of

new breakthrough. Moore’s Law, which predicted the doubling of transistors per squareinch on integrated circuits every eighteen

months, continues to hold true — as it has for

almost four decades (Illustration 7). The consensus among experts is that Moore’s law will

continue to hold for the next two decades —

and probably beyond.

Over the past three years, worldwide Internet

usage has doubled. Half a billion people use

the Internet today.23 Information available via

the Internet doubles every six months. Transmissions (now via optical fiber networks) are

at rates 200 times faster than just five years

ago. Laboratories have demonstrated data

rates of 3 terabits per second.24

Supercomputers today reach speeds recently

considered science fiction. The latest Cray

supercomputer is capable of 52.4 teraflops, or

trillion mathematical calculations per second.

By 2010, Cray anticipates an “X1 system”

capable of a petaflop, or 1,000 trillion mathematical calculations per second.25

Reacting to this rate of technological advance,

defense intelligence professionals forecast

information-based systems far more capable

than today’s. Over the next 15 years, these

advances could include: 

■ Advances in data compression, processing, frequency management, miniaturization and sensors that will allow data

networks to move voice, data and images

at speeds 50 times greater than today. 

■ The combination of multi-spectral

miniature sensors and automatic target

recognition algorithms to allow a greater degree of autonomous weapons.

Moore’s Law

1970

4004

Transistors

1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000

100,000,000

10,000,000

1,000,000

100,000

10,000

1000

8008

8080

8086

286

386TM Processor

Source: Middlesex University School of Computing

486TM DX Processor

Pentium® Processor

Pentium® II Processor

Pentium® III Processor

Pentium® 4 Processor

Illustration 7

Software

Data Fusion

Compression

Miniaturization

Systems on a Chip

Multi-Spectral Sensors

Frequency Management

Automatic Target Recognition

Coherent Change Detection

“Unlimited” Bandwidth

“Unlimited” Storage

Computer Viruses

Processing

Encryption

Wireless

Fiber

INFORMATION

Cheap

Accurate

Persistent

Near Real Time

Multiple Sources

Distributed

Protected

Pertinent

Massive

The New Face of Information

Illustration 8

“Technology really becomes important when it fades into background-when we take 

it for granted”.22 

Vice President, Fortune 500 Corporation
28

■ Sophisticated encryption protocols.

■ Sophisticated computer viruses.

■ Advances in processing and software that

will allow accurate data fusion at rates

104 times faster than today.26

■ Miniaturization that will allow data storage capabilities of 103 times greater than

today.

■ Practically “unlimited bandwidth,” resulting from advances in wireless infrastructure, fiber and satellites.

■ Computer Application Systems on a chip.

These technologies will enable:

■ Cheap information. The value of information will reside less in its existence and

more in its analysis and integration.

■ Accurate, protected information within

open access systems.

■ Near real time (NRT) information from

multiple sources to tactical decision

makers. 

■ Massive amounts of data accessible by all

echelons of command.

■ Pertinent information while filtering out

unnecessary data.

■ Persistent surveillance (augmented by

coherent change detection).

■ Real-time communication among customers, collectors, analysts.

Ramifications to Technology Projections

There is a subtle point to note in technology

projections. Taken separately, few if any are

strange or disruptive. All spring from current

developments, continuing a pace of progress

we have almost come to assume. Many people with an eye to the future will be comfortable with aggressive projections of individual

technologies.

They might be less comfortable, however, with

the ramifications of these combined projections. When each of these advances comes to

fruition, whether that is in 10, 15, or 20 years,

they will recombine to forge new possibilities

and products. Illustration 9 depicts how these

forces act to give information new power.

Their whole will be greater than the sum of

their parts, with possible ramifications in four

general areas. 

First, most workers are already overwhelmed

with present levels of technology. Current

desktops offer capabilities beyond the comprehension of practically all of us. We have difficulties programming our VCRs, cable TVs,

Personal Data Assistant (PDAs)s and telephones. Voice recognition software and GPSenabled navigation systems now installed in

new cars remain a mystery to most; few features are actually used. So when someone

promises even faster, broader and more extensive IT products, the announcement often generates more fear and doubt than excitement.

People are increasingly wary of eating large

servings of new technology when they are still

digesting previous courses. 

As a result, we should expect heightened

resistance to new capabilities that require

additional human interaction. Only those

technologies that simplify workloads by

employing machines as the interfacing tool

(e.g., machine-to-machine interfaces) will find

broad acceptance in the mid term. 

“PKI is a certainty in the future. It will improve dissemination and cross talk among 

the agencies. However, progress is glacial.”28

SES, Intelligence Community Agency

“Our analysts are being given products from new sensors (e.g., hyperspectral and 

UGS), but few actually use them. They don’t understand them. If one analyst finds a 

new source that works for him/her, s/he spreads the word to others — and the new 

sensor actually gets used. But the process is slow. Only 10% of the guys [sic] actually use the new sensors”.27

SES, Intelligence Community Agency
29

Managers should therefore emphasize the

downloading of work from analysts. Some

Defense Intelligence Agency analysts do not

utilize data from some sensors due to unfamiliarity. With new technologies making even

more data available, it will be imperative for

managers to shift some data integration to

machines. In an era when analysts are

drowning in data, data management will go

hand in hand with personnel, task and budget

management. 

Second, the combination of reliable encryption,

unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage and

high performance personal computers will

demassify many intelligence analyses. There

will be less need to secure all analysts in a

common facility to enable classified interaction.

Rather, technology will allow more distributed

analyses, enabling the Defense Intelligence

Agency to bring a variety of people to bear on

current issues. Academicians, overseas residents, business people, retirees, contractors,

scientists, clerics—whatever expertise the

Agency needs—will have as much technical

connectivity to information from their home or

business as a current analyst has from his or

her workstation at the Defense Intelligence

Agency. The only impediment to accessing

these sources will be that which the Defense

Intelligence Agency imposes for security reasons. The Agency will continually question this

security impediment, as it will increasingly

need to access expertise on emerging issues

that resides outside the organization.

Lower tier countries are the spawning grounds

for modern conflict. Terrorism is more likely to

originate in Sudan, Afghanistan or Somalia

than it is one of our Cold War enemies.

Because the next threat may come from areas

outside specific Defense Intelligence Agency

focus areas, it makes sense for the Defense

Intelligence Agency to maintain the capability

to incorporate diverse knowledge into its dayto-day operations. Such day-to-day incorporation, which goes beyond mere access, would

allow the Defense Intelligence Agency to fuse

classified information with data from the private sector (generated by corporations and

non-governmental organizations). The new

networking technologies will enable this

fusion. 

Third, the United States is surging ahead of

other countries in terms of embracing the

information age. The U.S. leads the world in

personal computer (PC) use. Many supposed

competitors lag far behind in this important

metric (Illustration 10). Practically all leading

IT research and business development in the

world is concentrated in the U.S. Europe, for

example, has only two indigenous world class

IT firms (Nokia and Ericsson). Five former IBM

employees actually founded Europe’s top software firm, SAP. With the possible exception of

the UK, little improvement is perceptible on

the horizon. Systems based on industrial-age

architectures dominated by the politics of

aging populations slow change in Japan and

Europe. China and India, two nations often

cited as Third Wave rivals of the U.S., still have

90% of their populations engaged in First

Wave subsistence agriculture. For these reasons, it is entirely possible the United States

will find itself increasingly differentiated from

the rest of the world.

Illustration 9: Simultaneous Forces Act On Information Technology

Simultaneous Forces Act on Information Technology

I n f o rma t i o n

CHEAP ACCURATE

PERTINENT

MASSIVE

PERSISTENT

NRT

Ramifications

“Today’s target states of interest are changing so rapidly that DIA’s analysts are 

out of date.”29

Combat Arms Major General
30

If the U.S. does set itself apart, young people

brought into the Defense Intelligence Agency

may view military-technical developments in

target countries through a false prism.

Raised in the information age environment

of the U.S., where information technologies

are engines of wealth and power, they may

misinterpret change in rival nations that

retain an industrial age basis. This was not a

problem during the Cold War when many

measures of national power in the United

States and the Soviet Union were roughly

comparable (for example, natural resources,

industrial output and military force structure). Analysts raised in the American industrial age knew, for example, that steel

production was important and what it

entailed. As a result, they had a frame of reference when tasked to analyze steel production in the USSR or China. However, as our

nation increasingly diverges in terms of

economy and society from other major

nations, new personnel tasked to monitor

those nations will need to bridge an additional cultural divide, the digital divide. The

singular information age culture of the

United States will skew their biases for judging value in other systems. Analysts of the

future will need concentrated training to

surmount a growing technological and cultural divide.

Fourth, all Defense Intelligence Agency analysts, current and accessions, must understand new technologies in order to understand

American infrastructure. Other militaries will

certainly attempt to attack the United States.

That is a given; only the time and place are

unknown. When enemies attack, they will

strike sources of U.S. power. To the extent our

power depends on technology or advanced

engineering, future enemies may target those

nodes. Just as enemies in the past might target

shipping or railroad yards or banking centers,

future targets will include Internet nodes or

gene manipulation facilities. 

Because one of the Defense Intelligence

Agency’s tasks is to identify threats to U.S.

interests before they occur, analysts need

knowledge of all possible targets. These targets will increasingly look less like those of

the past — and will align more with the

emerging technologies of the information

age. To identify threats to these interests and

protect them, intelligence professionals will

“DIA’s biggest vulnerability is Information Security (INFOSEC). Information warfare 

is the most cost effective way to attack us. It is the principal weapon of the future.”30 

 SES, Intelligence Community Agency

Illustration 10: Worldwide personal computer availability

Personal Computers per 100 People (2001)

70

50

40

30

20

10

0

USA

60

Sweden

Australia

Korea

Germany

UK

Taiwan

Japan

France

Israel

Spain

Malaysia

Iran

South Africa

Brazil

Saudi Arabia

Turkey

Serbia

China

Egypt

Indonesia

India

Pakistan

Angola

Source: International Telecommunications Union, 2002

Illustration 11: Examples of Expected Technological Advances

■ Online ordering and configuration by customers

■ Moore’s Law continues

■ “Unlimited” bandwidth (including wireless)

■ “Unlimited” storage

■ Software lags hardware

■ More reliance on Internet

■ Progress in Artificial Intelligence

■ Progress in sense-making

■ Better data management tools

■ Persistent surveillence (with coherent change detection)

■ Awash with real time information

■ Expansion of MASINT capabilities

■ Expansion of sensors

■ Custom pharmaceuticals

Technological Expectations
31

need to understand their structures and

technologies.

Illustration 11 lists some of the technologies

that will be especially important to the business of intelligence in the future.

Vectors in Biology Will Continue to Converge With Information Technology

We are surrounded by tremendous advances

in biology. Advanced microscopy and imaging

deepen our understanding of nutrition and

health. New tools will fit inside the body to

speed repair and enhance performance. We

see advances in fields like microfluidics and

biohybrid technologies leading to major new

biosensors. Scientists, having sequenced the

human genome, are now working on its

expression in the proteome. The outcome will

enable the customization of pharmaceuticals

and nutriceuticals to individual patients. 

The digital revolution is just phase one in the

development of an entirely new information

age techno-economic system. In the first

phase of this wave, information technology

revolutionized biology. The Human Genome

Project is one example. Computers and networks allowed scientists to determine the DNA

sequence of the entire human genome. In the

next phase, biology will revolutionize information technology. Biological structures and processes will allow information transfers at

speeds and complexities unimagined today.

This revolution may be fifteen to twenty years

in the future. However, when we reach this

phase we will, once again, revolutionize economics, society and conflict. 

Convergence of sciences is not new. Other disciplines emerged at the intersections of wellestablished fields such as physics, chemistry

and mathematics (e.g., biophysics). More

recently, newer fields like computer science

blurred the lines separating them from older

pursuits like biology, as evidenced by the rapid

growth of the new bioinformatics field. In the

future, we can expect to see physical science

fields fusing more with social science fields.

Psychopharmacology, treating mental disorders with drugs, is one such well-known

fusion. It is possible that future mechanical

and computer chip implants in human beings

could stimulate new directions in anthropology and sociology. Such convergences of technologies offer potential advances far beyond

those of an individual technology exploited

alone.

Biology Will Continue To Be Weaponized 

From an intelligence perspective, the most

important development may be the weaponization of biology and its convergent

fields. The potential for abuse of any technology always exists, and biology is no

exception. In 2002 the White House

declared, “One of the most important missions we have as a Nation is to be prepared

for the threat of biological terrorism — the

deliberate use of disease as a weapon.” The

U.S. Food and Drug Administration reports,

“Preparedness for and response to an attack 

involving biological agents are complicated 

by the large number of potential agents (most 

of which are rarely encountered naturally), 

their sometimes long incubation periods and 

consequent delayed onset of disease and 

their potential for secondary transmission. In 

addition to naturally occurring pathogens, 

agents used by bioterrorists may be genetically engineered to resist current therapies 

and evade vaccine-induced immunity. Pathogens that have been identified as potential 

biological warfare agents include those that 

cause smallpox, anthrax, plague, botulism, 

tularemia and hemorrhagic fevers.”31

U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Unfortunately, this is not alarmist hyperbole.

Illustration 12 indicates the multiple dimensions to assess the threat of a weapon of mass

destruction. Bioterrorism meets most of the criteria for what constitutes a most dangerous

threat. Individuals or small groups could produce and subsequently deliver a bioweapon

with no signature. It could affect an entire

nation for an extended time, which would lead

to chaotic developments. Such weapons may

already be available and could be cheap to produce. For these reasons, bioterrorism augers a

new an unfamiliar arena of war, one for which a
32

new defense paradigm is needed. Further complicating this bioterror threat are several key

facts. 

First, bioterrorism is most effective when

directed against civilians. Although we could

conceivably protect military forces against a

biological attack (e.g., anthrax shots), the size

and nature of the American civilian population

makes it inherently vulnerable to attack by

biological weapons. There are simply too

many non-cooperative targets to defend

simultaneously, 24/7. 

Second, as the United States continues to

progress with its information age, knowledgebased economy, the rich-poor gap between

the United States and other nations will widen.

Such gaps have historically caused conflicts.

As evidenced by the two wars with Iraq, few

nations can hope to win a conflict by competing symmetrically with the United States military. Terrorism, the asymmetric response, has

traditionally been the weapon of the weak.

Among the weapons available to them, biological terrorism may emerge as an optimum

means of asymmetric competition.

Third, the line between peaceful biological

research and the weaponization of disease is

murky. It is difficult to definitively ascribe one

or the other to every specific facility. It is even

more difficult to identify every possible facility. A single laboratory at a single university

could produce a viral strain of catastrophic

effect. 

Fourth, unlike other weapons of mass destruction, bioterror weapons know no boundaries.

Nuclear weapons have a blast radius. Heat

and dispersion affect chemical weapons. However, in theory, a biological weapon such as a

virus or plague could put everyone on the

planet at risk. It would also put the perpetrator

at risk — but in an age of suicide bombers, that

is not a deterrent. 

Lastly, considerable expertise on biological

weapons exists outside the United States. As

shown in illustration 13, a third of the doctorate degrees in the biological sciences conferred by American universities go to foreign

citizens. Ten percent of them are citizens of

nations on the State Department watch list for

terrorism. When added to the educational

resources existent overseas, the open nature of

Illustration 12: Dimensions of WMD Threat

Participants

Range

Time Signature

Cost

Impact

Most

Dangerous

Alliance

Nation

Group

Individual

Region

Nation

Operation

Target

Chaotic

Persistent

Mid-Term

Short Inventory

Production

Development

Possible

Cheap

Dual-Use

Expensive

Prohibitive

None

Suspect

Probable

Traceable

Obvious

Dimensions of WMD Threat

http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf03300/pdf/secta.pdf

Illustration 13: U.S. Bioscience Doctorates

PhD Conferred in US 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001

Biological Sciences, Non-US 1,403 1,552 1,725 1,805 2,061 1,908 1,886 1,751 1,749 1,579

Biological Sciences, Total 4,799 5,092 5,203 5,375 5,724 5,789 5,846 5,583 5,849 5,678

% Non-US Citizens 29% 30% 33% 34% 36% 33% 32% 31% 30% 28%

US Bioscience Doctorates
33

most research material and the broadband

connectivity of millions of computers, it is fair

to say the genie will be out of the bottle on

potential biological weapons production. For

these reasons, the United States may find its

most serious threat in the realm of biological

science. 

The convergence of these facts is the key problem. Any one fact may be surmountable. Their

sum, however, is a different matter. The gap

between the weak and the United States will

continue to grow, and terrorism is the weapon

of the weak. The United States will remain

exposed to bioterror attack because perfect

defenses, whether active or passive, are

impractical. The expertise to build bioterror

weapons resides outside U.S. influence and

will continue. In theory, this expertise could

build the most powerful weapon in the history

of humankind. Finally, some group or nation

may believe they can develop such a weapon

in secret. For these reasons, in terms of future

threats to United States sovereignty, the bioterror threat may top the list.

Vectors in Conventional Weapons Remain

Important

When forecasting weapons of the future, it is

important to remember the weapons of the

past. The weapons of war, after all, are additive.

New weapons enter the present inventory, but

very seldom do we render old classes of weapons totally obsolete (cavalry, swords and sailing

ships are among the few examples of obsolete

weapons). In practically all cases, we keep old

weapons and concepts in the inventory, albeit

with lesser importance. We still teach soldiers to

fight with knives and dig foxholes; we still equip

ships and planes with guns. A significant percent of the bombs in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom were unguided (“dumb

bombs”). The point to remember is that even

when new types of weapons emerge to assume

dominant roles on the battlefield, the legacy

weapons of war remain. 

We must factor the capabilities of these legacy

systems, which we will improve, into the mix

for the Defense Intelligence Agency’s technological future. As noted in an earlier section,

the traditional conflicts of the past will continue (although the threats they pose will be

less critical to American sovereignty). There

will remain a need for the Agency to collect on

legacy systems, especially in terms of technological advances. 

From today’s perspective, improvements in

legacy systems will probably be concentrated

in four general areas: precision weapons; networked sensors; Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

(UAVs); and signature reduction. 

Precision Weapons Will Increasingly

Dominate 

In the 1990s, precision-guided munitions

(PGMs) emerged as the centerpiece of a revolutionary style of modern warfare. The clear

trend since the first Gulf War is that precisionguided weapons represent a steadily increasing

percentage of munitions delivered: about 8% in

Iraq, 30% in Kosovo and 60% in Afghanistan

and Iraq. Other significant trends include the

increasing number of PGMs delivered per sortie

and the rising percentage of PGMs delivered in

adverse weather (from 13% in the 1991 Gulf

War to almost 90% in the 2003 Iraq war).

Finally, trends suggest new capabilities stemming from increased payload fractionation

(larger loads of smaller guided weapons) and

mass precision (rapid delivery of large numbers

of PGMs in short time periods).

“Various technologies are enabling advances in MASINT — nano, miniaturization —

new ways of getting close access to sniff, to listen, all the other senses 

metaphors — mini-remote sensors will inform MASINT in a fundamentally different 

way than ever before.”32

Group Manager, Fortune 500 Corporation
34

Sensors Increase in Quantity and Quality 

We will see an explosion of new multi-modal

sensors, led by advances in airport security

and medical biosensors. These sensors will

underwrite the shift towards “network-centric warfare” by providing extensive situational awareness. Underpinning this promise

are technologies to create network-centric

architectures consisting of high-quality sensors and rapidly transmitted data streams.

The services and combatant commanders are

transforming command and control centers to

fuse and exploit this data. We can see parts

of this transformation in terms of better of

integration of communications, command,

control, computing intelligence, surveillance

and reconnaissance assets between the two

Gulf Wars. 

In the future, trends in sensor technology

toward less expensive, more capable and

lighter sensors will support intelligence-quality sensors networked around the battlefield.

Assuming that data streams from multiple

sources can be integrated in a timely

fashion — a tall order — future commanders

will enjoy even greater situational awareness

to employ their forces more effectively. 

Networks are one of the great advances in

industrial organization. Over the course of the

last half-century, the vertically integrated

company has given way to the networked

enterprise, an organizational structure characterized by greater agility and adaptability. Successful firms today intertwine layers of

information, raw materials, analytical data,

customer communication and service and network infrastructure — at unprecedented

speed — while maintaining countless secure

relationships with third-party organizations,

such as suppliers, technology outsourcers and

government regulators. They work within

stovepipes, such as marketing, but also fuse

networks of networks, such as marketing and

research, production and finance. Military

organizations that can parallel this private

sector performance will dominate the emerging environment.

Stealth Aircraft and Electronic Countermeasures Rise in Importance

From the first Gulf War to Kosovo and back to

the Gulf, joint commanders employed low

observable aircraft (such as the F-117 and B-2)

with remarkable success and revolutionary

impact. Low observable technologies allowed

combat aircraft to operate with relative impunity against sophisticated air defense systems.

The ability of stealth aircraft to operate independently reduced the requirement for large

strike packages laden with supporting escort

aircraft. At the same time, electronic warfare

assets were critical in enabling non-stealthy

aircraft — the mainstay of the current force

structure — to survive in non-permissive

threat environments. Continued emphasis on

airpower-centric campaign plans will ultimately demand renewed investment in the

twin pillars of stealth and electronic countermeasures. Intelligence systems should pay

particular attention to these twin enablers of

high tempo airpower-centric operations. 

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

Increase in Numbers and Capabilities

Since the 1950s, the U.S. has invested billions

to develop and field UAVs, primarily for ISR

(intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance)

missions. This investment produced unmanned

systems that demonstrated their operational

utility over the battlefield, enabled by advances

in satellite guidance and communications,

computerized flight control systems and sensor

technologies. Due in large part to improvements

in range, carriage, endurance, on-board sensors

“Coherent change detection is an area of major potential. By overlaying separate 

‘pictures’ of the same area, practically any disturbance, to include tire tracks, can 

be detected. This capability will probably be fielded in 10 years. However, this delay 

is solely due to funding priorities. The basic technology is known. It could be fielded 

right now if it was funded.”33

SES, Intelligence Community Agency
35

and data transmission, unmanned systems

continue their advance.

Used initially as decoys during the Gulf War,

by Operation Enduring Freedom (2001), UAVs

had evolved into sophisticated, air breathing,

hunter-killer platforms. For example, the Hellfire/Predator combination was a fusion of

fused ISR and shooter technologies. This

fusion is leading the way towards an ever

tighter kill chain. Decisions are moving to the

left in this kill chain, placing a higher premium

on accurate target data and compressing the

time available for intelligence analysis. 

It is worth noting that the price of some types

of UAVs is declining. The U.S. Navy has an

“Affordable Cruise Missile” in development

with an expected cost per unit of $40,000.34 If

the engineering advances for this cruise missile migrate to UAV developments, we might

see an era where ubiquitous UAVs blanket a

crisis area. If that happens, relatively cheap

cruise missiles may emerge as a dominant factor in future wars.

Hyper-Empowered Warriors

Progress in these key areas of technology (precision weapons, networked sensors, signature

reduction and UAVs) will give rise to the

hyper-empowered warrior of tomorrow. Small

groups of soldiers will project effects in ways

previously reserved for battalions and brigades. This is one of the lessons from the

2001/2003 battles in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Small special operations units, highly networked into a precision strike architecture and

using their inherent stealth while supported by

persistent surveillance, “defeated” conventional formations a hundred times their size.

Similarly equipped divisions defeated entire

armies defending their home ground. The lesson was clear. Just as hyper-empowered individuals will draw on advanced technologies to

affect entire societies, hyper-empowered soldiers will affect entire battlefields. The “Army

of One” is not just recruiting hyperbole. 

How potential enemies employ this emerging

concept should be a major collection requirement for the Agency. Once we detect integrated

progress in the precision weapons, networked

sensors, signature reductions and UAVs of a target military, the intelligence challenge should

move beyond the performance specifications of

these systems. Rather, the intelligence challenge

will be to assess the strengths and vulnerabilities of a robust, interoperable, synchronized

system of systems. 

Projecting the Impacts of Global Persistent Surveillance

The realm of possible knowledge will include

enemy fleets, logistics, industry, bases, command and control, armies, air forces and lines

of communication. There is every indication

that technology will magnify this exposure for

the foreseeable future. 

The emerging opportunity for the Defense

Intelligence Agency is to operationalize global

persistent surveillance. Technology will afford

the Agency the ability to orchestrate collection, reporting and publicity to do more than

inform combatant commanders and the acquisition community. Technology will afford the

power of observation to operationally affect

the behavior of targets. 

This concept is similar to the use of observation during the 1995 Dayton Accords and the

1962 Cuban Missile Crisis to influence negotiations and allied opinion, but on a daily, routine basis. Persistent surveillance operators

“Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be 

counted counts.”

Albert Einstein

“The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is 

known in this instant, and vice versa.”

Werner Heisenberg
36

can select the most opportune times to prompt

diplomatic discussions, publicize events, steer

the media, confirm media reports or share

intelligence with others. Target states will, of

course, know the U.S. has this ability; they will

take off-setting measures (such as concealment). However, they cannot hide all deployments and they cannot know exactly how

much the U.S. knows at a particular time, or

how the U.S. intends to exploit its information.

This uncertainty, in itself, will be a lever available to persistent surveillance operators. Enemies will modify their behavior based on

assumptions of American surveillance of their

moves. However, the main weapon will be the

ability to exploit the information gained

through persistent surveillance. 

While it is true that persistent surveillance will

allow the Agency to do present missions better, it is also true that persistent surveillance

will open up an entirely new opportunity for

the Agency. The challenge for the Agency will

be to organize, conceptualize and equip to

take advantage of the manipulation mission.

No one has yet built the doctrine and methods

of this weapon, nor is there a consensus with

in the defense community as to how to employ

it. Developing the doctrine, methods and organization for this emerging weapon should be a

major initiative. 

And persistent surveillance truly is a weapon.

In 1927, Werner Heisenberg introduced the

“uncertainty principle.” He theorized that it is

impossible to observe an atom without changing it. The mechanics of observation inevitably

affect the target of observation.35

Anyone who has shined a flashlight on bugs in

the basement understands this principle. As

soon as you shine the light, they start scurrying about. By observing them you change their

behavior.

This principle has implications for the emerging technologies of persistent surveillance.

Multi-spectral sensors deployed on satellites,

UAVs, aircraft, ground stations and underwater will soon provide 24/7, all-weather global

coverage. To some degree this has already

occurred. This global sensor network, combined with the global communications network and the intense “flashlights” of public

media will reveal — and quickly transmit —

unprecedented amounts of information on

the actions of even the most reclusive

nations. 

These technologies offer a unique opportunity.

The technologies of the information age offer

the potential to impose Heisenberg’s principle

on the behaviors of nations. If we observe each

nations’ every action, and if the very act of

observation can affect actions, then it follows

that skillfully applied observation can have a

dynamic effect on adversary nations. 

In essence, we can manipulate enemies

through skilled observation.

“The joint force must be able to take advantage of superior information converted 

to superior knowledge to achieve “decision superiority” — better decisions 

arrived at and implemented faster than an opponent can react, or in a noncombat 

situation, at a tempo that allows the force to shape the situation or react to 

changes and accomplish its mission. Decision superiority does not automatically 

result from information superiority. Organizational and doctrinal adaptation, relevant training and experience, and the proper command and control mechanisms 

and tools are equally necessary.”

Joint Vision 2020

“Microsoft is doing great work with service-based architectures. Once all our sectors use common code sets for like information, they can manipulate common functions across portfolios. Service-based architectures will also allow us to 

simultaneously update all architectures across the stovepipes.”36

Fortune 500 CTO
37

Summary: It’s the Convergences That We

Need To Watch 

In terms of technology, it is important to look

beyond advances in any single technology. That

they will only tell you part of the story. Rather,

it is more important to identify big convergences and convergences of convergences that

will eventually propel massive technological

change. These are the drivers of fundamental

advance. The Intel chip combined with

Microsoft’s DOS propelled the PC industry. The

PC plus the Internet plus fiber optics propelled

the networked IT advances of today, which

enabled the Human Genome Project. No single

technology moved these advances and, in turn,

affected economy and society. Rather these

fundamental advances resulted from convergences of convergences. 

Over the next two decades, a series of technologies will converge to drive a new Defense

Intelligence Agency. A partial list might include

the following:

■ Information will be cheap, accurate,

near real time, massive, pertinent and

persistent. 

■ It will flow via data networks that are 50

times faster than today’s, producing practically unlimited bandwidth. 

■ Encryption and viruses will proliferate. 

■ Data storage will also become a commodity, with practically no limits. 

■ We can also expect data fusion at rates

104 times faster than today.

The effects of these advances will directly

affect the Defense Intelligence Agency’s workforce. Personnel will be overwhelmed with

information unless the Agency moves to

greater dependence on machine-to-machine

data manipulation. Networks and robust databases will allow unprecedented levels of collaboration among analysts and subject matter

experts situated around the world, resulting in

dramatically improved predictive intelligence.

Networks will allow the Defense Intelligence

Agency to demassify intelligence, distributing

analysis to a broader array of vigilant customers seeking to reduce threat levels. These

threats may, unfortunately, multiply as the

technological gap between the U.S. and the

rest of the world widens, which will increase

cultural antagonisms.

These antagonisms may provoke attacks on

the U.S. information structure. They may also

provoke biological attacks. Either type of

attack would require specific expertise within

the Defense Intelligence Agency (and its network of experts) to anticipate and prevent.

Progress in conventional weapons may be the

easiest to foresee. There is considerable

momentum along four aspects of weaponry:

precision, sensors, stealth and UAVs. More

progress within these confines, centrally networked, is probable. The central challenge for

the Defense Intelligence Agency will be to produce analysis within the greatly accelerated

kill chain used for conventional weapons

employment. 

These and other technologies have the potential to converge in ways that will produce a

defense intelligence establishment of unparalleled impact. If George Orwell was correct,

emerging technologies will confer an extraordinarily high value and responsibility on the

Defense Intelligence Agency of the future. The

Agency, however, will require extensive adjustments to realize the full potential of convergent technologies. Although we do not know

the exact phenomenology of emerging technologies, we do see aspects of their inevitable

outline are visible. By recognizing these potentials in advance, the Defense Intelligence

Agency will create its future.

“Computing, storage and communications will be practically free.”37

Chief Scientist, U.S. Government Agency
39

PROCESS 

f the changes described in the preceding

sections, one in particular will have

direct and significant impact on the processes of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Rapid advances in technology will reduce

information to a commodity. It will become

even cheaper to produce, faster to deliver, and

in more abundant supply than it is today. 

The “commoditization” of information, driven

by technology, will redefine the value equation

between the Agency and its customers. While

information will be in abundant supply, the

attention of customers will not be. It will

become scarce, scattered, and competitively

sought after. Already, the Intelligence Community competes with the mass media on some

level for attention. Walk into any senior official’s office and see the television tuned to

CNN and a copy of Jane’s on the coffee table.

Outside sources bombard the Intelligence

Community customers with information on a

daily basis. Going forward, new systems will

add to this data flow, creating customers’

demands for increased speed, ease of use, and

mass customization. In short, customers will

demand “more, better, faster” customized

information in the future. 

This new definition of value will fundamentally change the way the Agency carries out

its processes. It will therefore require an

underlying change to the mindset that drives

new processes. In the quotation at the opening of this section, Dr. Christensen points out,

“The very processes and values that constitute an organization’s capabilities in one context, define its disabilities in the next.” This is

 Changing an organization’s processes can drive and sustain transformation, unleashing organizational potential. Processes express 

strategic intent, vision, and values manifest as actions— they are 

where the rubber meets the road.

“An organization’s capabilities reside in two places. The first is in its processes — the 

methods by which people have learned to transform inputs of labor, energy, materials, 

information, cash, and technology into outputs of higher value. The second is the organization’s values which `are the criteria that managers and employees use in the organization 

use when making prioritizing decisions... The very processes and values that constitute an 

organization’s capabilities in one context, define its disabilities in the next.”38

Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma

O

“In this new economy, capital, labor, information, and knowledge are all in plentiful 

supply...What’s in short supply is human attention. Telecommunications bandwidth 

is not a problem, but human bandwidth is. At one point, software magnates had the 

ambition to put “information at your fingertips”. Now we’ve got it, and in vast quantities. But no one will be informed by it, will learn from it, or will act on it”39

Thomas H. Davenport, The Attention Economy
40

why fundamental change is necessary: current capabilities, the core competence of

present success, will become disabilities in

the future. Incremental change is not a form

of evolution for the Defense Intelligence

Agency — it is devolution. 

In this section, we will examine a development

path for new thinking and processes, beginning with the environmental factors that are

driving these changes. 

Information Overload Means Competing

for Attention 

Already, we see the shortage of attention

becoming an important issue. Within the intelligence community, people speak of being

“awash in information” as the capability to

collect outpaces the capability to analyze. In

the business community, Davenport refers to

this phenomenon as the “assault of information,” with millions of e-mail and voice mail

messages sent each day requiring the constant

attention of executives. We are already wary of

it, as a recent survey of senior executives

revealed. It assessed potential demand for a

new in-flight e-mail and Internet access prodTimely — and Timeless —

Business Ideas from Harvard 

Business Review

Each year, the editors of the Harvard Business 

Review (HBR) release a list of contemporary business ideas they believe to be important at the 

moment. In an article released in the April 2003 edition, the editorial board chose five topics based on 

what they believe, “business executives should be 

thinking about as they look into the future”.54 The five 

ideas, reviewed in a synopsis below, provide relevant 

insights for the Defense Intelligence Agency as it 

embarks on a path of fundamental transformation. 

1. Know where you are in the business 

cycle — and be ready to get out 

Human nature instills in all of us a tendency to hold 

onto what we know, even if it’s outdated and outmoded. In business, however, this can be fatal. If a 

product or service is on the wane and customers are 

moving on, the company that holds on to it out of a 

misguided sense of security or identity will be on a 

slow march to extinction. 

For the Defense Intelligence Agency, the business of 

intelligence is rapidly evolving, primarily due to 

changes in the security environment, technology, 

and expectations of customers. In response, it needs 

to incorporate new capabilities, services, and processes. Equally important, however, is that organizations will need to divest old processes. The article 

refers to divesting as the “missing link” of strategy, 

because so many ignore it. The public sector tends 

to be especially guilty of this, lacking the financial 

pressure of shareholders, and regulated or manCustomers will continually ask providers to

“tell me something I don’t already know”.

Customers will increasingly want to know why

they should pay attention to something.

Customers will value those entities that can

effectively pull together disparate sources of

data into narratives that are easy to understand.

Customers will continually need to question

the quality of data and will value an

organization that can vet information

effectively.

Customers will increasingly desire information

to be presentedc in a way that is tailored to

their specific needs.

Newness

Compelling

Aggregated

Quality

Customized

The information paradigm for intelligence customers has

grown beyond the walls of the IC and now includes mass

media outlets such as CNN.

The need to provide the “why” as well as the “what” will

drive products and services to be ‘contextualized’ around

multiple dimensions.

The desire for aggrefated data will change the nature of

“all source” to include the culling of open source as part

of the context provided.

The desire for vetted, reliable information will drive the

continued resurgence of HUMINT along new and varied

roles.

The type of work J2 is currently doing by developing

different slices of information for various leaders is a

nascent example of what’s to come.

Challenge Customer Desire Implication

Illustration 14: Five dimensions of the “Attention Economy” as applied to the Defense Intelligence Agency 
41

uct. Surprisingly, a sizeable percentage of

those surveyed did not want in-flight Internet

access. Instead, they preferred to use their

flight time as an escape from the expectation

of being constantly accessible. They needed

downtime from information overload. As Davenport points out, human bandwidth is not

endlessly scaleable.

The endless flow of information pitted against

a limited supply of attention will create future

challenges for the Defense Intelligence Agency

as it reaches out to customers. We describe

some of these challenges in Illustration 14.

These challenges will require changes in the

processes by which the Agency collects, processes and disseminates information. We

examine these dynamics and the implications

for the Agency in detail below: 

1. Newness: Tell Me Something I Don’t Know

During the first Gulf War, CNN’s live coverage

became a potent factor in the decision-making

process. An outgrowth of this development was

a subtle change in how policy makers view the

set of information resources available to them.

It is now the norm to see a television in a policy

maker’s office tuned to CNN or similar news

organization. This is symbolic of the change in

reference. The immediacy, novelty and visual

appeal of television reporting has changed the

scale against which the intelligence community

is measured: 

“I have three tests I apply to intelligence. The 

first is The Economist test. If I can learn more 

about something from reading the Economist 

than I do from your brief, you fail. The second 

is the Jane’s test — same principle. The third 

is the much-dreaded CNN test. The difference 

with this test is that CNN doesn’t even have to 

get it right, but they have to get it fast. Did 

yours get to me fast? Few intelligence briefings pass these tests.”40

Intelligence Community Leader

In the future, the multiplicity of sources will

raise this bar for what constitutes “new”

information. One reason is the speed at which

open source vehicles such as CNN can deliver

information. Another is that sensors are

becoming increasingly cheaper to produce,

giving competitors access to their own

sources of primary data. The availability of

this type of information in the public domain

will beg the question of how and where

Defense Intelligence Agency will allocate collection and processing resources. We discuss

this further in the Aggregated and Quality

sections ahead.

2. Compelling: Tell Me Why I Should Pay

Attention

dated activities tend to keep outdated processes in 

place. 

2. New processes will be less linear than 

the ones they replace 

The speed and transparency of information, the 

capacity to build virtual networks quickly, and the 

ability for individuals to work as empowered “units of 

one”57 are colluding to change the conception and 

design of business processes. Many of the processes used in businesses today, the HBR editors 

argue, are a holdover from the manufacturing economy (Second Wave58), which required linear sequential processes — symbolized by the automobile 

production line. The editors believe that linear processes are a misfit with today’s networked economy 

(third wave), where information and resources can 

come from anywhere at anytime. 

In their view, linear processes limit an organization’s 

potential because they don’t allow for creativity or 

collaboration. New processes are more likely to be 

less structured, and possess a quality of “messiness” 

in contrast to the neat orderly flow of mass production. For the Defense Intelligence Agency, this has 

particular importance going forward for two reasons: 

a) the building of a contingent network as a component of the workforce will change the flow of work, 

and b) the redesign of the analytic process to take 

advantage of collaboration technologies and allsource will require a purposeful lack of rigidity. 

“...before we leap in with more controls and regulations, remember that messiness isn’t all

bad...Much like a Jackson Pollack painting, it can

be confusing and disorderly—defying conventional aesthetics—but at the same time pulsing

and vibrant”.59
42

In human nature, we look for signals as to

whether the data is valuable as one response

to information overload. The need to provide

customers with such signposts will set into a

motion a couple of important of processes

related implications: 

■ Products will become more anticipatory,

scenario driven, and predictive; production will require acceptance of risk and

new forms of ownership over the products. Analysts will have to publicly stand

behind their predictions as they present

them in person before decision makers. 

■ Analysts will provide more contextualized

information with cultural and functional

insight, including for example, economic,

political, military, humanitarian, and

infrastructure.41 Products will need to

postulate the likely secondary, tertiary

and lower level effects of an occurrence —

not just report current happenings.

■ The use of logical narratives and stories

will become important as customers seek

to place new data into their own frames

of reference. Customers will look for

information translated into stories and

experiences that are relevant for their

background. 

3. Aggregated: Tell Me Everything At

Once

The Google web site recently initiated a news

portal that uses algorithms to aggregate, prioritize and “continuously update” stories from

media sources all over the world. The company

states that the program scans 4,500 outlets.42

The sheer number of media sources available

today makes it impossible to track them other

than through such computerized algorithms,

which is Google’s value proposition. As these

types of technologies develop in the public

arena, they will change the information expectations from customers in the intelligence world. 

Intelligence customers will be looking for a

product that can deliver vetted all source

information to one location, in way that is

easy to use and customizable. And specific to

the military, as technology makes information

access possible from anywhere, this type of

product will have important uses in supporting

network centric operations: 

“As the brigade commander [issuing the] 

warning order, as I move into somewhere I 

want to be able to take out my computer map 

[on a hand held device], look at where we are 

using a light pen, and instantly understand 

how part of city operates. The computer gets 

every dimension. Everything the government 

knows about that area of the city — is available and piped to me instantly.”43

Interview with Bob Leonhard,

Author of Fighting by Minutes: Time and

the Art of War

3. A critical leadership competency —

emotional intelligence 

The concept of emotional intelligence, as developed 

by Daniel Goleman and collaborators, continues to 

hold weight within the management community. This 

is because organizational development professionals 

recognize a lack of people skills as a source of 

derailment for many executives on the fast track. The 

editors point out that executives often just don’t see 

the problem, which is why companies are increasingly turning to coaches and other means to help 

leaders develop in this area. 

For technical or analytical organizations, such as the 

Defense Intelligence Agency, this issue is particularly 

pertinent. Often highly skilled and valued technical or 

analytical employees have a difficult time transitioning to a supervising role. Without proper screening 

and development, these employees can prove to be 

a disaster in their new roles. The work the Defense 

Intelligence Agency has done in profiling technical 

managers is a positive step in this regard. The “People” section of this document discusses the concept 

of creating ’in place’ promotions for valued technical 

employees who either don’t display the necessary 

managerial attributes or simply don’t wish to 

progress in that direction. 

4. Leadership is a group activity 

Effective CEO’s are those that can build, empower, 

and motivate a first-rate executive team. Along with 

defining a clear and compelling vision, the ability to 

compose a high quality team and then optimize them 

is what sets truly effective leaders apart from the 

rest. The effectiveness of the team can drive change 

through the organization, which makes this important 

for the Defense Intelligence Agency. While the process of building an effective leadership team begins 
43

Leonhard’s quotation makes the point of saying everything the government knows. He is

including in this information from the Department of Commerce, Energy, State, Agriculture

and more. The objective of the Agency is not to

own all sources of information internally, but

to knowwhere they reside. This means building a wide-ranging network of experts and a

set of structures and processes that optimize

them. We discuss this idea of building an

extended network at great length in the Structure and People sections. 

Open Source This concept of “aggregation”

raises historic questions about the value of

open source information, a controversial subject in the intelligence community, where concerns about denial and deception exist. The

case for open source becomes more compelling, however, where the intelligence community has trouble collecting against new forms

of targets. As one academic familiar with intelligence said, “Open source becomes more

important as the nature of the threat changes,

and it is more difficult to collect against this

new kind of threat than our traditional ‘countries of concern.’ We don’t do very well against

Al Qaeda, and we’re collecting too much

against the threats we know.”44 The Agency

will need to acquire innovative new processes

for the assimilation and vetting of open source

intelligence. One example is outsourcing open

source production to an organization like

Jane’s or setting up less secure processing

centers that allow people with cultural and

functional knowledge to contribute even if

they cannot qualify for a security clearance

under current regulations. 

4. Quality: Tell Me I Can Trust You

To be an effective “all source” shop in the

future, customers will hold the Defense Intelligence Agency to a high standard of information

reliability and trust. This requirement for reliability will create a need to increase the capacity for independently collecting and vetting

information. The most effective means for the

Defense Intelligence Agency to establish this

reliability is to increase the size of its HUMINT

capability. This is also true in light of the

potential rise in encryption usage and the

increasing need to get at target “intent”.

with careful selection, it must continue with an 

equally careful development and alignment of activities. This cannot happen by default. 

The HBR editors warn leaders not to let their team 

fall into the trap of “unconscious collaboration,” where 

members just follow along without comment. Instead, 

they encourage a proactive, healthy debate to ensure 

real engagement and commitment. In their view, it is 

as important to have good “followership” as it is leadership. This idea interconnects with the previous concept of emotional intelligence, because both 

underscore the importance of interpersonal and 

communication skills required of effective leaders for 

today’s organizations. 

5. Know the tangible and intangible assets 

(and liabilities)

The tangible assets of any organization would 

appear to be obvious, but this topic is more nuanced 

than it first appears. The point made by the HBR editors here is to know which tangible and intangible 

assets are of value to customers— not the leaders. 

That isn’t always the obvious product or service —

many times, it’s the intangible piece (such as the 

convenience of a store’s location or the atmosphere 

of a restaurant). Assets that don’t provide value to 

customers are liabilities (because they require 

resources) and organizations should divest them. 

Gaining clarity around what customers want — both 

expressed and unexpressed — is critical for any 

organization, but particularly so for those going 

through transformation and reallocation of assets. 

In the future, as the Defense Intelligence Agency 

moves from a ‘product’ to a ‘product and service’ orientation, this will become increasingly more important. In a service environment, customers will value 

the intangible interaction as much as the tangible 

report. This will require new thinking about human 

“I don’t want you to think that our analysis doesn’t look at these other sources — but 

at the end of the day, we try to get vetted HUMINT that verifies anything we learn 

from another INT. Vetted HUMINT is first among equals in my view.”45

 Print Media Thought Leader
44

Determining what defines product quality is of

paramount importance for the Defense Intelligence Agency, and will require an understanding of customer needs (both expressed and

latent). It will also require anticipating needs

by living in the customer space (see “Recommendations” section regarding the installing of

attachés at customer sites), proactive customer education, and including customers at

the outset. 

Some urgency exists on this issue. During

interviews conducted for this project there was

a theme that customers are not as involved in

the process as they should be. One intelligence

community member remarked, “People have

lost confidence in [the Agency’s] product...As a

result, there’s not a lot of time that people

spend trying to establish connections [with the

Defense Intelligence Agency]....The issue is

quality of product. If you have a valuable

product people will look you up regardless of

how hard you are to find... the line to customer

will be shortened.”46 Said another, “Written

reports are usually void of any insights... As a

result, they are only useful long after the consensus has already moved to cover that area.

In essence, written DIA products are usually

void of relevant detail when it comes to emerging or controversial areas.”47

5. Customization: Tell Me In My Own

Way

The idea of ‘mass customization’ will take

hold as information technology allows those

providing or using products to tailor them.

“My Yahoo” and Amazon’s “My Store” are two

examples of customized Internet applications

in widespread use today. Both of these track

on-line activities and reformulate the customer’s view proactively recommending things

based on relational algorithms. 

As artificial intelligence and sense-making

improves, the opportunity for highly sophisticated customization and presentment

schemes will become available. For the

Defense Intelligence Agency, these technologies may be suitable for taking a “first pass”

at fulfilling lesser order of magnitude

requirements, running manipulations of data

to identify new patterns such as material

movements that could indicate weapons of

mass destruction (WMD), and lessening reliance on happenstance or synaptic

connections of analysts.

The Process of Developing Processes 

The point of departure in designing new processes is to understand that the environmental

factors present will impose significant impacts

upon the organization, its work, and its products. It must then understand how customer

demands will dramatically change expectations of what the organization is delivering.

and technical processes. For example, as analysts 

work in real time with customers, the need to build 

and manage positive external relationships will 

become critical. And as customers log-in to use an 

on-line service, they will want the ability to search 

using natural languages and to customize views to 

their needs. This changes the profile of the workforce, because certain attributes (such as the ability 

to anticipate customer needs) will become predominant. The workforce of the future attributes chart contained within the “People Section” of this document 

reflects this idea. 

The editors of HBR chose these five ideas because 

current technical and economic forces require business leaders to, “come to terms with their assumptions about business, leadership, and the people who 

make organizations work”.63 This is an apt description of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s current situation, since the Agency faces essentially wholesale 

changes in its operating environment. Forces will 

come in the form of increased market demand, volume, and velocity — creating an unprecedented set 

of circumstances that will require “major paradigm 

busting” as one senior leader stated. However, by 

knowing the organization’s real tangible and intangible assets, anticipating the customer’s needs and 

sense of value, divesting outmoded processes, and 

building a strong and capable future workforce the 

Defense Intelligence Agency will be on the right path 

to success. 
45

Both of these are present in the Defense Intelligence Agency’s operating environment. By

determining the key environmental factors

present, the organization’s leadership can

then determine the change imperatives, and

finally create a set of principles upon which to

build the actual processes (Illustration 15).

Developing Results Oriented Processes 

Understanding how the operating environment

and customers change the formation of future

processes, requires a logical path of inquiry.

This path begins by scanning the operating

environment to identify the factors most likely

to have significant impact on the organization,

its products, and services. It then marries this

data with relevant customer knowledge to create a set of change imperatives for which the

Agency will design new processes. 

Once the Agency knows the factors influencing

the environment, and determines imperatives

for changes in processes, it establishes a set of

guiding principles. These will form a set of doctrines upon which new processes will be developed, and as such, will serve as guidance to all

those involved in process making going forward.

The formation of such principles comes out of

the engineering disciplines, but is serviceable

and important for all types of processes. As an

outgrowth of the principles, it often makes sense

to determine the features desired in future processes as further guidance to the workforce. 

For the Defense Intelligence Agency, this path of

inquiry is an important step towards developing

processes it can sustain against the operating

environment and will deliver the outcomes

needed. Given what we know about both the

environment and customers, a notional view of

how the Agency would develop processes

appears in Illustration 15. 

Factors As the illustration indicates, the factors

identified would include any major impact on

■ Information 

dominance leading to

decision superiority 

is critical present and

future DoD advantage

■ Customers bring 

expectations for 

“more, better, faster”

information from 

external world

■ All-source intel 

composition 

demands integration

of systems for sensemaking

■ Knowledge 

usefulness requires 

linkages beween 

operator, exploiter, 

and analyst at outset

■ Balance of regional 

and functional 

threats/issues drives

cross-functional 

knowledge approach

■ Technology drives 

sharp increases in 

volume and speed of

information

■ Network centric 

warfare systems 

drive up information

demands

■ Shifts between war 

and peace missions 

change nature of 

information demands

quickly

■ Competition for 

leadership attention 

intensifies as media 

outlets increase and

as open/closed 

source information 

gap shrinks

■ Customer decision 

processes become 

increasingly real-time

based

Factors Imperatives Principles Features Results

■ Forward looking; 

imaginative and 

innovative, insightful

and predictive

■ Reduce and mitigate

ambiguity and 

uncertainty via 

dealing in plausibility

and possibilities

■ Drives for continual 

context by bringing 

together myriad of 

disparate data into 

logical narratives

■ Customer and 

outcome driven; 

modifies resources 

used to meet needs 

and continually 

reassess and refine

■ Opts for speed but 

balances with 

accuracy and 

usability by customer

■ Manages customer 

requirements

■ Collection based on 

operational needs

■ Leverages knowledge

technology for 1st 

pass

■ Networked across IC,

customers, experts

■ Robust workflow 

management for 

teams

■ Process sets the 

“what’ not the “how”

■ Decision making is 

driven down levels

■ Rules are minimal 

versus plentiful

■ Culture supports 

innovation/taking 

risks

■ Builds shared sense

of values/expectations

■ Intelligence cycles are

aligned around 

customers/outcomes

■ Concentration of 

resources/effort on 

areas of most value;

outsource of nonvalue added activities

to partners/vendors

■ Middle management

and product rules are

heavily divested; new

knowledge tools and

experts invested

■ Products become 

product and service

as interaction is 

valued as much as 

information

■ Innovation is 

introduced via crossfunctrional, diverse 

teams with multiple

frames of reference 

and scenario 

planning

Illustration 15: Elements of DIA’s Future Process Development
46

the organization, ranging from changes in military operations to the aforementioned lack of

customer attention. In essence, this effort

requires the leadership team or others developing a specific process to conduct a form of

scenario planning, bounded by the limits of

the process to identify and vet all the potential

factors. 

Imperatives The development of imperatives

requires the Agency to weight all the factors,

influences, and demands on the organization.

This assessment requires making a series of

strategic trade-offs about the specific environmental factors and customer expectations that

will be deemed important enough to warrant

attention (and eventually resources). In considering these, it will be equally important to

understand why something is notchosen as an

imperative as much as what is, since all factors possess some potential form of impact on

the organization. 

The items shown on the diagram above, while

notional, point to some key themes which will

become cornerstones of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s transformation, the most

important being the move from a hierarchal

structure to an agile networked organization.

Another theme describes the progression from

‘product’ to ‘product and service’ (e.g. live

interaction of analysts and customers). A third

theme moves from an individual practitioner

with an on-going focus to diverse, multi-perspective team based projects. The final theme

requires processes and products to be anticipatory, imaginative, scenario driven, and risk

embracing. 

Processes Occur on Two Levels: In Action

and In the Mind 

Processes designed to be anticipatory and

imaginative will perform successfully as

guides on two levels. First, they will guide

action— the allocation of resources and

activities — in a way that aligns with customer needs and expectation. This guidance

focuses action around outcomes and the

delivery of real value. Second, they will guide

cognition— the mental pathways by which

the mind will interpret objectives and the

processing of information. To achieve the

type of innovation referenced in the

“Results” section of Illustration 15, processes must have an understanding of the

culture that exists and stimulate thinking,

interaction, and the busting of individual and

mental paradigms. 

Scenario Planning to Identify and Mitigate Risk

The use of scenario planning has been in

place at major corporations for a number of

years, and with particular effectiveness at

companies that must deal with a high level of

risk and complexity. Royal Dutch Shell48, for

example, uses scenario planning to identify

and assess complex and inter-related energy,

economic, and geopolitical risks — very similar to the risks facing the Defense Intelligence

Agency. 

The use of scenario planning as a work process supports several of the principles outlined in Illustration 16 by being both forward

looking and risk mitigating. Scenario planning

accomplishes this by encouraging employees

to operate mentally outside of the limits of

their own experience and identity, and by taking advantage of the multiplicity of perspectives that it can gather in cross-functional,

Illustration 16: Scenario planning brings together perspectives to unleash creativity cognitively diverse teams. In addition, scePerspectives

Ambiguity

Imagination

Leadership Intent

Culture

Religion

Life Sciences

Low Probability

High Impact

Financial Markets

Technology

Military Strategy

Risk

Mitigation

Knowledge Uncertainty

Complexity

Conceived Possibilities Known Occurrences
47

nario planning increases the chances for

identification of new patterns and threats by

bringing together those with different sets of

information. 

The ultimate capability would be to conceive

events such as the low probability high

impact threats that seem irrational to Americans, but are completely rational to someone

waging asymmetric war against the United

States. The postulation of difficult, unpleasant, and pessimistic possibilities is something

that cognitive science tells us human beings

physiologically seek to avoid. The use of

structured group processes, underpinned by

a culture that supports innovation, will be an

important risk mitigation strategy in the

future. Among the largest risks the Agency

faces now and in the future is the failure to

take risks — to postulate and contemplate the

unthinkable, to move out the comfort zones

and into the area of unknown but not

unknowable. 

Social Network Optimization to Support

Innovation 

The Agency will design processes on an

awareness of the existing social network of the

organization. Analyzing and understanding

the existing network is not a tacit acceptance

of its continued dominance, but is the first step

in changing the existing “work network” as

social scientist Karen Stephenson calls it in

Illustration 17.49

The social network, which when layered

with attitudinal attributes forms the culture,

can either support change or become the

silent killer of transformation. Several concepts outlined in this paper depend on management the social network for effective

implementation and execution. For example,

the creation of cross-functional teams

depends on team composition. The idea of

the contingent workforce depends on relationships within the network and stationary

workforce. 

The work of Stephenson takes the concept so

far as to organize physical space around optimizing the social network. She creates a sort

of planned serendipity of contact among

employees by situating offices and pathways

so they will cause beneficial interactions. Further, she performs a ‘social network analysis’

to determine who is an information node in

the group, who is a connector, and who is a

generator of positive interaction. This takes

the Agency’s concept of co-location to a new

Work Network

Adated from a presentation by Karen

Stephenson at The Conference Board,

New York, May 2002

CEO

JOE DIANE STAN

Key

Executive

Administrative Staff

Managers

Professionals

Illustration 17: Notional ‘work network’ by social scientist Karen Stephenson50
48

level, and seeks to optimize it at both the individual and group level. 

Structure And Processes: Form Follows

Function 

The processes designed for a network organization are much different from those designed

for its hierarchal predecessor. In a pyramid

organization, Illustration 18, processes are linear and sequential, while in the network organization, Illustration 19, they are outcome

based and many run in any direction. One feature of a network organization’s process is that

the locus of decision-making authority moves

down the organization. It lies with those who

have first hand knowledge of the data, interact

with customers, and conduct collection activities. The intent is to “de-layer” processes in

order to speed them up. Another difference is

that the Agency can bring in customers early

and make them an on-going part of process

development to ensure value. 

A recent article from the Harvard Business

Review compares processes of the old and

new economy this way: 

“By its nature, work in a mass production economy imposes order and conformity. But work in 

today’s knowledge economy seeks variety and 

innovation. If the assembly line was the symbol 

of mass production, the messy desk is the icon 

of the information age. Furthermore, getting 

work done nowadays depends on getting 

employees to share information and make 

informed decisions—processes fraught with 

ambiguity and subjectivity.”51

Editors, Harvard Business Review

Networked Processes Need Strong Project

and Information Management 

Successful management of network-based

processes requires a strong project and information management function. The emphasis

of this function is not command and control, it

is the opposite: facilitating work flow, ensuring

the sharing of information, and the successful

composition of diverse teams. Network systems are typically more productive when middle management is de-layered as much as

possible and the norms encourage the sharing

of insights and ideas. This, of course, does not

reflect the current Defense Intelligence Agency

organization, as it does not reflect most of the

federal government. 

Continuous Customer Focus Helps Assure

Value

At the operating level, the Agency will focus

on proactive management of customer

requirements as the single most important

factor for aligning resources, outcomes, and

expectations. All successful businesses strive

for this alignment, but especially those with

intangible output. Unless they postulate and

refine the customer’s need, they waste

resources. In future processes, three forms of

requirement vetting will be available: 1) customers enter the process early and remain, 2)

putting an attaché type function in the customer space, and 3) making the process customer centric and continuously refining it to

Illustration 18: Pyramid OrganizationIllustration 19: Network Organization assure value. 

Pyramid Organization Network Organization

“The key is to change the culture of the leadership at top and change it at the bottom. Squeeze the middle level. This is where the biggest issue [of transformation] 

will be located. Mid-managers will hang on and will fight you tooth and nail. They’re 

the most invested in the status quo — others want it”.52 

Federal Law Enforcement Community Leader
49

In Dove Consulting’s organizational transformation work, the firm finds a clear link

between structure and process. The highest

resistance to change — including process

change — is normally in middle management.

This is why the idea of de-layering is so important. Change tends to penetrate the top of the

house quickly because top leaders recognize

the need for change and want to fulfill the

vision of their boss. At the bottom, where broken processes are a fact of day-to-day work,

the desire for change is strong as a vehicle for

pain reduction. However, for the middle tier

which has a high investment in the status quo,

reform presents a more significant challenge.

In the next section, we will examine future

structures in detail, and the opportunity to

use these as an impetus for change and

growth. 
51

STRUCTURE

n this section, we discuss the changing

environment in which government and the

Defense Intelligence Agency must function,

and the structures that will emerge to facilitate

their missions. Internal structures affect how

people and process work together, how they

gather and use information and how they

interact with customers. Structure similarly

facilitates or hinders external processes and

interactions-with partners, suppliers, and customers. Technology enables opportunities for

new kinds of structures, and properly applied,

greatly enhances organizational power. We

will consider the interrelationships of these

factors as we envision future structures of the

Defense Intelligence Agency.

Today’s Challenges Drive Tomorrow’s

Structure

The behest of the Secretary of Defense to

“know a little bit about everything” is by

implication, an organizing principle. It

requires both breadth and depth, and, within

the limited resources available, invites a constant tension between what we need to know

today, and what we’ll likely need to know

tomorrow. It must also be able to provide decision support in widely different time contextsproviding immediate data to the battlespace

occupants and decision makers, and the ability to provide thoughtful, considered context

built over many years of experience to planners and policy makers. 

Today’s and tomorrow’s challenges come from

rogue states and terrorists, and the greatest

danger lies at the crossroads of radicalism and

technology53. The structures of our national

security organizations must enable them to

preempt familiar and not yet familiar threats.

The critical question, then, is how to best organize the agencies we charge to mitigate those

threats. The ongoing war against terror triggered many reassessments of our approaches

to national security. By assessing how adversary organizations are structured and the

nature of information age violence, the Defense

Intelligence Agency and the U.S. government

can learn something about how to organize

themselves to defeat them.

Although there are over one hundred terrorist

groups on the national security radar screen,

Al Qaeda is a top concern. Al Qaeda is

regrouping after the death or capture of many

of its leaders and trained operatives and, the

Structure follows strategy and form follows function in an effective 

organization. As the environment changes, strategies change and 

functions evolve-the functions grow, diminish, or disappear. Thus, 

effective organizations place a premium on agility and adaptability. 

Having the right people organized in the right basic structure is critical to maintaining the advantage.

“The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and 

not in a closet.”

Lord Chesterfield

I
52

loss of support from the Afghan government.

Surviving members are negotiating deals and

alliances with other terrorist groups, and are

furiously searching for state support from

another government to replace that of the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

Although Al Qaeda is not a nation-state, and

has comparatively little in the way of capital

equipment or even in manpower and financing-it has been fairly successful in carrying

out high impact, attention-grabbing events. In

fact, their strength and the strength of similar

enterprises derives precisely from the fact they

are small, fast, flexible and flat structure, while

the American government is huge, slow, rigid

and pyramidal. 

Huge and pyramidal structures worked for

World War II. They worked in the Cold War

when the United States opposed an even more

bureaucratic foe. But attempting to fight the

deadly, fast-flitting, flea-sized terrorist enemy

with pyramidal bureaucracies is a blueprint for

failure.55 Recent economic history is full of

large bureaucratic institutions that were

defeated by new, smaller, quicker and more

agile competitors.

The Defense Intelligence Agency reflects the

dominant organization structure at the time of

its creation-a classic pyramidal bureaucracy.

Although restructured many times since then,

each iteration conforms to the classic government model that gathers information at the

lowest levels, filters it, and then transmits that

information through layers to the top where

decision making occurs. This happens at the

broad level of the organization as well as in

smaller organizational units. Those filters

compromise decision-making ability, and as

the volume of the data stream explodes, those

at the top are ill equipped to absorb and act on

it. The current hierarchical structure comes

from an industrial era facing a relatively

monolithic threat. That structure is not harmonious with today’s information environment and, without dramatic change, it will

obstruct the Agency’s primary mission of preventing surprise. 

Alvin and Heidi Toffler describe another problem that occurs in bureaucratic structures like

these: “When bureaucracies are forced to deal

with a problem that fits into no one’s existing

cubbyhole, they behave in certain stereotyped

ways. After some initial fencing, someone

inevitably suggests setting up a new unit...

This is instantly recognized for what it could

easily become: a budget-eating rival of the

older units...’’56 The result is a bureaucratic

battle that detracts from a focus on the threat.

Another problem that occurs is a lack of horizontal integration and communication

among departments and agencies engaged in

doing similar work. Historically, agencies

and operating units derived a degree of

Attachés

In the global war on terrorism, U.S. intelligence agencies work closely with internal security forces around 

the world. This cooperation is critically important. 

Internal security agencies have local knowledge and 

access far beyond what U.S. agencies can replicate, 

including large numbers of immediately available personnel. Fortunately, most foreign intelligence services 

share a common interest in the global war against terrorism and routinely cooperate with the United States. 

In many cases, U.S. military attachés are a primary 

link with foreign intelligence services. They convey 

specific intelligence requests and facilitate reciprocal 

questions. Attachés perform this and other intelligence 

functions in addition to their representational duties. 

In the emerging environment, the role of attachés in 

HUMINT (human intelligence), particularly their ties 

with foreign intelligence services, may prove their 

most critical function.74 It will often be through personal ties with an array of foreign intelligence forces, 

from police and militias to military intelligence and 

local nationals that will allow the U.S. to rapidly identify and preempt terrorist strikes.

Anyone who has lived abroad knows it takes time to 

build domestic ties. An attaché might build strong 

relationships with one or two military counterparts 

during a standard tour (two or three years), but that 

is not enough time to build ties with an array of local 

sources. Many countries have multiple intelligence 

services, not all of whom cooperate with each other. 

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), local 

media, the business community and individual military members are also potential allies in the war on 

terrorism. Such a wide array of human intelligence 

relationships requires time and expertise to 

develop.
53

power from “hoarding” information. In the

future, the agencies that share responsibility

for producing the intelligence policymakers

require to make better decisions, must collaborate, communicate, and freely share

their data and information. U.S. national

security is the beneficiary and maintains the

advantage.

The future Defense Intelligence Agency is sufficiently self-aware and confident that it

applies the right technology, processes, structures, and people to each potential threat.

Reconfiguration is a way of life.

Some Businesses Model New Approaches

Large corporations have long faced similar

problems and have devised partial solutions.

Governments are not the same as companies,

and intelligence agencies have special needs

for secrecy. Nevertheless, the experience of

business and the vast literature on the subject

by organization theorists and management

consultants can provide important lessons. 

For dots to be connected, someone has to synthesize the information and develop the big

picture. That is why bureaucracies also have

Because military career tracks preclude long (more 

than five-year) assignments, retired colonels/captains with intelligence experience may be a preferred 

source for defense attachés. They have the rank and 

stability to develop and exploit a range of relationships in specific situations. This source would 

expand the pool of personnel available to the Agency 

(beyond what the services nominate). Using retirees 

would require legal and policy changes, but these 

changes may produce more effective attachés in the 

war on terror.

Traditional Dynamic

Comparison of DIA Organization Structure to new Adversarial Structures

Defense Intelligence Agency Adversary Defense Intelligence Agency New Adversary

New Dynamic

Adversaries were traditionally a few, large

nation-states that mimicked the DIA and US

military hierarchy. Threats were obvious and

slow to change. Eventually the adversaries

could not sustain themselves and have

decreased in significance.

New adversaries use a different model, and

have molecularized into complex networks

that can quickly form and adjust. These

adversary networks are robust, flexible, far

reaching and can attack in surprising new

ways.

Illustration 20: Comparison of DIA organization structure to new adversarial structures
54

Smart firms have installed computers,

networks and management information

systems that make it possible for people

to communicate electronically across

horizontal lines and to skip echelons as

they send information up and down

channels, often bypassing the old

gatekeepers.

Companies have deliberately flattened

their hierarchies, by eliminating the

number of echelons between top leaders

and employees at the bottom.

To combat monolithic rigidity some

corporations break themselves into semiautonomous business units, “profit

centers,” with their own boards of

directors and instructions to act

entrepreneurially, much as though they

were small businesses. Unfortunately,

many of the profit centers are themselves

organized into pyramids — baby

bureaucracies hived from the mother

bureaucracy.

Large and small corporations increasingly

conduct business across national borders,

and in the Internet era, the lines between

domestic operations and foreign

operations continue to blur.

Ironically, compared with business, US

government agencies often have outdated

computers and networks. Although today,

the Defense Intelligence Agency has

recognized the dangers associated with

this lapse and is now upgrading its

systems.

Civil service bureaucracies, where

employees are unionized and pay scales

are linked to hierarchical level rather than

function or merit, offer resistance at the

very thought of flattening.

Bureaucracies typically organize around

permanent functions, fields or disciplines,

not projects. Even this kind of intermediate

structure offers advantages over

traditional government bureaucracy. The

CIA’s In-Q-Tel, which has evolved into a

venture funding enterprise, is a

government example of this kind of

restructuring.

The United States prohibits the CIA from

operating at home and only lately has

begun sending FBI operatives abroad as

it did during World War II.

Al Qaeda uses cheap commercial

communications technology to

communicate with trusted members.

It is unlikely that Al Qaeda has more than

three or four levels, and its terrorists don’

t belong to civil service unions.

Al Qaeda, by contrast, is project-oriented.

Each project is temporary and may involve

people from different “disciplines”—

bomb-making, money transfer, target

surveillance specialties. Project

participants either die — like the 9/11

terrorists — or move on to deadly new

projects.

Al Qaeda is said to have cells in 60

countries and moves its men, finances

and ideas across borders at will.

Business Approach Government Approach Al Qaeda Approach

The Tenets of Effective Future 

Partnerships For The Defense 

Intelligence Agency

Over the next twenty years, the selection, building, 

and maintenance of effective partnerships will play a 

significant role in the Defense Intelligence Agency’s 

success. 

The future operating environment will present many 

forms of complexity. Primary among the drivers of 

complexity will be technology, because of the sophistication of the technology itself and the increased volume, velocity and variety of information is enables. 

This environment argues against the centralization of 

strategic assets because to do so would make it 

nearly impossible to effectively house the range of 

knowledge and skills the Agency requires. In addition, as an all-source organization, the Agency 

becomes conversant in a wide rage of issues to military, policy makers, and other constituencies. 

These external drivers argue against centralization of 

technology and knowledge assets. They beg the 

question of how the Agency can best leverage its 

internal capabilities with external public and private 

resources. There are numerous strategic paths and 

organizational constructs, ranging from affiliation to 

outsourcing. However, every option—regardless of the 

terms of agreement—will require one thing: the effective building and sustaining of partnerships with organizations that possess different values and cultures. 

How then can the Agency assess and determine the 

appropriateness and fit of partnerships? It must 

begin by looking inward, before it focuses outward on 

potential partner organizations. Consider three 

Illustration 21: Compares Business, Government And Al Qaeda Approaches To Organization Structure6
55

vertical “channels.’’ At each level of the chain

of command, a manager collects information

from the cubbyhole controllers who report to

her or him and decide whether to send it up

through channels to the next higher authority.

For example, such filtering did not work in

2001, when an Arizona FBI agent warned

about potential terrorists enrolling in flight

schools.60

Supporting the notion of a turf issue, a

Defense Intelligence Agency executive noted,

”The intelligence community is structured by

its means, not its ends. Data is owned by the

means [e.g., NSA collects the SIGINT, and also

controls distribution].”61 The future Defense

Intelligence Agency has clear access to the

level of data it needs.

This list could go on, but it is enough to suggest the intelligence community faces considerable challenges as it contemplates its own

restructure. What, then, should the new structure look like?

Structure Is Not an “Either-Or” Decision

Some business consultants suggest that we

replace all bureaucracies with networks, and

discussions of organization tend polarize

around these two organizational forms. In

fact, it is possible to create flat networks

within hierarchical bureaucracies, and

bureaucratic units within networks. But there

are far more than just these two basic models

of organization. 

In hierarchical Japanese corporations, employees who join the firm in a given year often

form a cohort and maintain relations with one

another throughout their subsequent career.

Some might rise up the management ladder,

others not. Irrespective of formal position,

members of the cohort often dine together,

drink together and swap information from all

different positions in the firm, supplementing

the information that flows through the formal

chain of command. They share the real facts

here, minus any official “spin.’’ Which is why,

once a decision is made, Japanese firms are

quick off the mark. This dokika’ system may

be fading along with lifetime employment, but

it suggests the importance of cross-communication even within bureaucracies and not just

at the top. 

Some political institutions in Germany and

Austria are like a checkerboard, with a member of the majority party occupying the top

spot, a minority member in the second position, a majority member in the third, opposition in fourth, and so on through the

hierarchy, again assuring more sharing of

information at various levels. 

Then there are “skunkworks’’ — subordinate

units inside a firm or government that are

given a mission but kept free of the normal

points with respect to partnerships as part of the 

overall strategic planning process.

Determine the areas where it makes sense for the 

DIA to set up some form of partnership and where 

to “go it alone” (including both mission and support 

areas)

Consider a wide range of potential partnerships 

across the public and private sectors, including 

NGO’s, academia, and others who seek new 

relationships

Develop an order of magnitude for potential relationships, understanding that each partnership 

will require time, effort, and resources to maintain 

Once the Agency identifies a partnership need, the 

process for identifying and selecting potential suitors 

closely mirrors the approach companies use in executing mergers and acquisitions. The merger and 

acquisition process begins with “due diligence” 

which, given the extraordinary mission of DIA, must 

be part of the initial step in reviewing candidates. The 

due diligence normally identifies a range of candidates, evaluates them according to predetermined 

criteria, and then conducts a thorough investigation. 

As the range of potential suitors becomes more 

widespread, the due diligence process is increasingly important. 

As part of the evaluation process of mergers and 

acquisitions, companies must normally consider the 

full long term cost/benefit of a partnership in detail. 

This is a necessary practice for the Agency to adopt 

as well, since all the partnerships will require human 

and financial resources for long-term maintenance. 

Understanding the current and future value of a 

potential partnership to DIA’s customers, and weighing that against a detailed cost estimate allows the 
56

bureaucratic rules and formal organizational

constraints. A famous example was the forerunner of the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services headed by William “Wild Bill’’ Donovan

during World War II.64

These examples only begin to suggest the

diversity of possible arrangements that are

neither classically bureaucratic nor pure networks that need to be considered in any massive restructuring like that now under way in

the United States-or in corporate reorganizations. Networks and bureaucracies are not the

only options. It will take organizational creativity for countries to wage successful war

against future threats. 

Structure Leads to the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Excellence

The Defense Intelligence Agency must understand and respond to present threats while it

produces the capabilities required to checkmate emerging threats. Strategy harmonizes

and balances the needs of a threat-based orientation with the demands of a capabilitiesbased orientation. Threats are now urgent,

unrelenting, and voracious consumers of

resources. Capabilities are over the horizon,

reprogrammable, fungible, and unless

respected in the organization’s strategy, the

development of capabilities is always at risk.

The Defense Intelligence Agency’s success in

the future comes from its ability to align its

mission, vision and strategy. Several structural

moves facilitate that alignment. 

The Defense Intelligence Agency will clarify

and restructure its technological, social and

operational architectures to better align with

the characteristics of emerging threats. The

goal is to provide better-networked, more

responsive intelligence capable of surprising

and countering U.S. adversaries through persistent and relentless coverage and a set of

robust, resilient and hardened defense capabilities.65 Organizational connections and the

ways that the Defense Intelligence Agency

uses them helps drive organizational effectiveness. The leadership will incorporate the missing pieces, establish a timeline, project the

cost, obtain approval and execute. A staff

team, expert in planning and budgeting, and

familiar with the emerging operations issues

develops the plans and budget that align with

the strategy. 

The Agency evaluates and rewards the planning team’s effectiveness at anticipating and

articulating the Defense Intelligence Agency’s

needs.

One Defense Intelligence Agency interviewee

commented that there is already a positive

trend towards a flatter reporting structure. An

“Analyst’s Note” goes straight to the J2 and the

Director, Defense Intelligence Agency with no

coordination required. A reviewer may check it

Agency to assess relationships with full knowledge 

and credibility. 

Once the Agency selects a partner, it establishes 

understandable ground rules between the organizations. This helps the leadership negotiate some form 

of contract, and ensure that the parties’ expectations 

permeate both workforces. The downfall in most 

mergers and acquisitions happens after the agreement is complete: it is the integration of the organizations that fails. While a partnership does not require 

the full integration of a merger or acquisition, the two 

organizations must achieve some level of integration 

in order to succeed. 

Seven ground rules will serve the Defense Intelligence 

Agency well as it establishes future partnerships.

1. Begin from a position of “mutual win” by identifying 

what makes for a successful outcome for both DIA 

and its partner 

2. Establish a shared vision between Agency and 

partner that goes beyond tactical outcomes to 

include integrated values 

3. Define the roles between partners carefully, with 

contingencies that either identify issues in advance 

and/or offer a mechanism for quick resolution 

4. Establish expectations for trust, information flow, 

and security procedures — this will require a change 

in mindset that seeks to share rather than withhold 

information 

5. Assign relationship owners who are specifically 

assigned to make the partnership work within a prescribed time with metrics 

6. Seek to foster ‘organic’ connections between 

workforces by creating platforms for relationship creation via project design and social interaction 
57

for relevance, but these seldom short-circuit

an Analyst’s Note.66 Speed of information

becomes an even more critical success factor

for the future Defense Intelligence Agency.

Toward A More Vigilant Structure

Structure follows strategy and form follows

function in an effective organization. As the

environment changes, strategies change and

functions evolve—the functions grow, diminish, or disappear. Thus, effective organizations

place a premium on agility and adaptability.

Critical to adaptability are having the right

people organized in the right basic structure.

The Defense Intelligence Agency will find that

structure based on an assessment of the future

environment and an awareness of the capabilities it must possess to meet an expanded set

of missions. 

Given that states are not likely to wither away,

and that the power of great states—witness

the power applied by the United States in Iraqi

Freedom — will not diminish,67 the Defense

Intelligence Agency will continue to take a

geographical orientation in its mission. States

will continue to be an organizing principle for

competitive power, so culture and geography

will continue to matter. Defense attachés will

continue to serve in the venue of states, just as

Department of State ambassadors will continue to possess accreditation as the Chief

Executive’s emissary to states. 

However, geography and culture will not be

the only things that matter. Regions will matter. Potential military capabilities and other

forms of competitive advantage will matter.

“Jointness” and an increased emphasis on

understanding the employment of combined

arms will not move the Services toward unification, but will change the attributes the

Department of Defense seeks in military and

defense attachés. 

The Department of Defense and the Defense

Intelligence Agency will grow to appreciate

the advantages that accrue from using seasoned military professionals—retired general and flag officers and senior civil

servants—as attachés. These attachés will

serve longer in one country than they serve

today. Attachés in the future will also have

to work from their assigned states with an

orientation broader than they possess today.

They will have to understand the future’s

sources of competitive advantages that go

beyond conventional military forces. Thus,

the Defense Intelligence Agency must contrive an organizational structure that

improves its ability to rapidly sense, analyze, and forecast changes in the competitive environment, and that both serves and

capitalizes on a new view of attachés. This

structure will balance a regional focus with

a focus on the potential future sources of

competitive advantage. 

7. Regularly measure progress or success based on 

expected overall outcomes established at the outset 

These ground rules, based on the principles used in 

mergers and acquisitions, provide a basis for effective partnerships by identifying mutually—desired 

outcomes and the necessary elements of agreement 

at the outset. In the intelligence community, where 

trust and sharing of information are against cultural 

norms, such rules will serve as an important signal 

that a change in outcome requires a change in mindset. However, the complexity of a future driven by 

technology will demand new ways of approaching 

the mission. Partnerships, in concert with the creation of a networked organization, will be a critical 

factor in the future success of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Intelligence Community. 

In this case, the past is not prologue; for the new 

operating environment is unprecedented. 
58

Competitive advantage in the future will continue to reside in the ability to match ends and

means to create or exploit vulnerability in an

adversary. Such advantages will not appear

hostile, if done properly. They will be what we

call today “dual-use.” A danger in the future is

that the Defense Intelligence Agency takes a

narrow view of “defense” and overlooks or

fails to see that which could damage the

United States, our citizens, our interests, or

our friends. The question that everyone

involved in the production of intelligence

knowledge must answer every day is this:

“Why is the United States safer or less safe

than it was yesterday and what ought the

United States do in response to that change in

the environment?” 

A matrix organization with teams that reside

in the intersection of geographic regions and

potential sources of competitive advantage or

competitive danger is the optimal structure to

avoid surprise in the future. A matrix organization can rapidly sense, analyze, and forecast

changes in the competitive environment. 

Focused on understanding all the potential

sources of danger, such an organization is

best-equipped to help prevent destructive conflict or help ensure the outcome of destructive

conflicts that cannot be avoided are predecided in favor of the United States. Illustration 22 depicts such a notional organization. 

Note that we envision “functional teams” of

analysts—many of whom are not full-time

employees—organized as “global teams”

charged to develop and articulate a global point

of view in a particular issue area. (We describe

these collective points of view as the annual

Defense Intelligence Agency’s “Annual Report

to Stakeholders,” or an annual defense intelligence assessment.) Thus, the “WMD” functional team is composed of experts in every

aspect of weapons of mass destruction. Augmenting this functional team of experts are

teammates from each of the regional teams

who specialize in “weapons of mass destruction” for their assigned region of expertise. In

this construction, for example, we would expect

that there would be a greater number of WMD

regional experts in the “Russia” regional team

than there would be in the “Europe” regional

team. Regional Teams may have more linguists

than Functional Teams. Attachés report to both

Regional and to Functional Teams, since both

teams a have questions they need answered for

internal and external customers. 

The Defense Intelligence Agency will not

design the Functional Teams to be mutually

exclusive, collectively exhaustive, or orthogonal. Rather, the Defense Intelligence Agency

will come to view some degree of “messiness”

and overlap as beneficial. While overlap is

advantageous, gaps are not. Hence, the “Global Warning” team is the capstone team.68 Its

role is to envision over-the-horizon, complex,

and convergent dangers and probe issues and

hidden dangers potentially concealed in the

seams of the matrix structure. The Defense

Intelligence Agency will also add and refocus

Teams — functional or regional — as the environment demands. There may be a need, for

example, for a “Cuba” team or task force, or

an “Iran” team. The point is that the combined

strengths of geographic or cultural expertise

and subject matter expertise are infinitely

reconfigurable and flexible. 

A director of operations — or chief operating

officer — sets organizational priorities for production of knowledge and oversees the

attaches and the analysts. Analysts work on

issue teams with crosscutting product lines.

The analysts produce assessments and forecasts, supported as described above, by a contingent pool of subject matter experts. They

function much as a Contracting Officer’s Technical Representative (COTR) acquiring and

contracting with cleared expertise from

around the world, and they share in the

responsibility for the product. They draw from

their broad issue knowledge as well as from

the data reported by the attaches. Attachés

perform broad regional responsibilities as

described above, although some regions may

demand a particular kind of functional area

expertise.

This new structure requires a radically new

compensation structure to ensure its success. The Agency recognized that because

the attachés and analysts must function

together in multiple combinations of task
59

Issue Teams in a Matrix Structure

WMD

Crime & Terrorism

Space and Information

Telecommunications

Conventional Forces

Life Sciences

Infrastructure & Logistics

Energy

Financial Markets

Global Warning (Capstone)

Threats Regions Europe Africa and Middle East Russia Asia-Pacific

Americas

China and Korea

India and Pakistan

EU and NATO

groups, rewards need to encourage productivity from the entire group as a whole.

Group incentives for achieving established

goals accompany individual rewards for outstanding contribution. 

Audacious Operating Goals Encourage

Achievement of Measurable Effects

The role of the top management team is to

lead the implementation and development of

revolutionary innovations, enabling the organization to gain advantage over potential

adversaries. The leadership team advises the

director on the future vision of the organization and how to best achieve it. They direct the

development of a coherent strategic planning

process that accounts for greater ambiguity in

threats, and is capable of comparing risks

across time. The team ensures the timely flow

of quality information from sensor to analyst

to consumer, and makes continual adjustments to deliver quality and timeliness as

defined by their outcome based metrics. The

major difference from present day management is in this team’s constant focus on

importing new forward-looking, creative

approaches to radically transform the value of

intelligence to the consumer. Executives push

day-to-day management to lower-levels for

execution.

A Revitalized Advisory Board Provides

Fresh Ideas And Continuity

The Advisory Board has two primary roles.

The first provides the Defense Intelligence

Agency with connections to the world’s most

creative and innovative thought leaders, connecting it with innovative business knowledge

(Illustration 23); and the second is to serve as

the Agency’s “business brain” (Illustration 24).

The Advisory Board members, accomplished

executives in their own right, each bring with

them multiple connections with the world outside defense intelligence and import superb

management, technology, and socio-cultural

expertise to the Agency. 

These highly connected, successful executives serve on corporate boards or as government officials from defense and other

departments, and serve as NGO leaders —

they have led complex organizations through

transformations or import a wealth of critical

connections to the Defense Intelligence

Agency. The Board furthers the leaders’ strategic thinking through its strategic debates

and risk assessments on the external environment and advises on positioning the

Agency in a dynamic environment. This is the

crucial debate of the board. These decisions

are the future lifeblood of the organization.“70

In the corporate world, a small network of

powerful directors controls all major appointments and the direction of the Fortune 1000

companies. A similar network of alliances

determines success in the biotech and the

Illustration 22: Issue teams in a matrix structure.
60

Illustration 23: An executive advisory board, composed of six to twelve senior executives, imports new ideas and expertise from multiple subject areas to DIA leadership.

Illustration 24: The Advisory Board engages with leadership in strategic debate, monitors 

the external environment, and helps position the Agency69

Advisory Board

Technology

NGOs Finance

Academia

DoD

R&D

Services

Media

IC

Other

Advisory Board Contribution

DIA

Leadership

Simultaneous Forces Act on Information Technology

Policy Review Cycle

Accountability

Strategic Thinking

Supervising

Management

Policy Review Cycle

Business

Brain

■ To the Agency

■ To the Department of 

Defense

■ To regulators and 

legislators

■ To other stakeholders

■ Ensuring Directoral 

Audits

■ Stating Purpose

■ Creating Vision and value

■ Developing Climate and 

Culture

■ Monitoring External Environment

■ Positioning in 

changing environment

■ Setting Agency 

Direction

■ Reviewing and advising on key resources

■ Deciding on 

implementation 

process

■ Overseeing Management 

Performance

■ Monitoring Budgetary control

■ Reviewing Key Results

■ Assessing Agency capability

Strategy Review Cycle

Short Term Long Term Operation Review Cycle

Governance Review Cycle Internal External

motion picture industries. In the commercial

world, the structure of the network within and

among firms is responsible for the organization’s ability to adapt to rapidly changing

environmental or market conditions.71

The Director Serves a Five Year Term

A seasoned visionary with a demonstrated

ability to lead an information organization

requires more than three years to create significant organizational change. The incumbent’s five-year term of service provides the

time to implement the revolutionary change

that the future will demand. Due to military

progression, a longer tenure may require a

civilian incumbent.

The Advisory Board and the executive team

develop a broad web of trusted alliances, partners, and contingent staff to draw upon when

specific needs arise, such as unusual activity

or the need for surge capacity expertise in an

arcane skill or ability. The entire intelligence

community enhances its collective competitive

advantage by freely sharing their data among

trusted partners and allies through secure private networks.

The Organization and the IT Structure

Mutually Reinforce Each Other

Gaining decision and information advantage

requires an information and communications

structure available to users and consumers on

demand that they trust and depend on. The

information network is accessible from a variety of platforms and locations. It possesses the

correct levels of security and bandwidth relevant to its application.

To meet future needs for decision superiority,

the technology infrastructure provides seamless access to intelligence and continually

updated open source information. It contains

state of the art sensemaking ability, and innovative new ways to gain access to adversary

information.72 Finally, the future information

network is capable of conducting information

operations and aggressive counterintelligence

while collecting persistent, responsive, exquisite intelligence.73 All of these advances come

from a carefully planned transition involving

committed staff with an unblinking eye to customers’ needs. 

The Defense Intelligence Agency Can

Lead the Intelligence Community

The new environment manifests a new level

of cooperation between DoD and the intelli-
61

gence community — how they acquire,

mange, and execute the overall intelligence

program. New priorities in clandestine

activities, space intelligence, surveillance,

reconnaissance, and communications are

just a few examples where the Department

and the intelligence community collaborate

closely. The Defense Intelligence Agency

has risen to the challenge of leading the

transformation in intelligence. 

The technical, social and operational structures that the Defense Intelligence Agency

develops will never be static. Environmental

change requires constant reorientation that in

turn necessitates an ongoing strategic vision

and planning process that depict the outcomes

the Agency must achieve. The Agency’s new

structures enable new ways of working within

the Agency and with other agencies in the

intelligence community as well as with the

Department of Defense. Integration of national

power is especially critical for overcoming

unconventional adversaries. Military means

alone are insufficient. 
63

PEOPLE

s outlined in the Structure section, the

Agency of the future will move from

today’s pyramid design to one that contains matrix, network and hierarchical elements. Similar to the relationship between

service chiefs and combatant commanders,

where one provides trained/organized/

equipped forces for the other to use, tomorrow’s functional managers within the Defense

Intelligence Agency will build networks of

expertise then make them available to project

managers to meet changing demands. The

managers who recruit, train, discipline, motivate and assign the workforce will not be the

same people who employ it. A separate set of

project managers will draw from across the

organization for specific situations. As situations change, so will the project managers and

their teams. 

This future structure, highly relevant to the

Defense Intelligence Agency of the future, will

challenge the Defense Intelligence Agency of

the present. Despite its advantages, achieving

this structure will pose significant challenges. 

Matrix organizations are difficult to implement

and even more difficult to manage. They are

largely unproven in the public sector; no large

government agency reflects a matrixed structure across the board. They are also countercultural to hierarchical military organizations.

Split authorities conflict with the “unity of

command” valued by military leaders. For

these reasons, many managers prefer a pyramid structure that, like its namesake, is more

stable, with authority and accountability

clearly assigned. In a pyramid organization,

managers own both the mission and the personnel to accomplish that mission. Incentives

and training flow from this ownership. Fluidity

and agility—hallmarks of seasoned matrixed

organizations—are sacrificed for control. In

the control-oriented pyramid, there is seldom

a need to redefine offices and reassign

personnel — hallmarks of immature matrixed

organizations — which allows managers to

avoid an additional layer of friction.

Unfortunately, managers in the Defense Intelligence Agency do not have the option of

To meet tomorrow’s shadowy threats, the Defense Intelligence 

Agency will need a broad network of talent. The breadth and 

changing nature of this workforce will be beyond the means of 

any one organization. The new workforce will reside in DIA, 

other government agencies, NGO’s, think tanks, universities, 

corporations and individuals. This future “networked workforce” 

will require changes in the Agency’s workforce attributes and 

management skills. 

“The key competitive difference in the 21st century will be people. It will not be process. It 

will not be technology. It will be people.”

David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States

A
64

avoiding these added frictions. The post Cold

War, post 9/11, information age world has

shifted the mission of the Department of

Defense. Gone is the focused threat the Soviet

Union posed for a half century. Gone is the

specific threat that aligned fixed missions and

job descriptions. In its place are networks of

regional rogues and terrorist groups whose

changing nature requires constant adjustments. The inherent inflexibility of a pyramidal hierarchy makes the necessary

organizational adjustments difficult.

In fact, attempts to reorganize pyramids when

the missions constantly change often fail.

Today’s opportunities and threats change too

quickly and too often. By the time an agency

completes a reorganization — it is already

obsolete, generating another “re-org” on its

heels. The resulting change fatigue in the

workforce undercuts the credibility of senior

management. 

Constantly changing circumstances require a different management approach. The flexibilities

provided by matrixed structures, despite the

managerial difficulties they introduce, cut the

reorganization “do loop.” They acknowledge the

fact that rapid change in daily operations is a

given. Instead of constantly changing the organization, management organizes for change.

Because intellectual capital is the heart of the

Defense Intelligence Agency, there is little

chance the mission and structure of the Agency

can change absent fundamental change in the

Agency’s workforce. Organizations transform

not by redrawing the company wiring diagram

The Beginning of the Workforce 

of the Future

Over the next couple of decades, the majority of the 

Defense Intelligence Agency’s current knowledge 

workers will retire. In an environment where talented 

knowledge workers will be in universally high 

demand and equally short supply, recruiters will 

develop and apply unique candidate-centric 

approaches that enable the Defense Intelligence 

Agency to attract the elusive best and brightest. 

Future demographics and mission requirements will 

place enormous importance and focus on the recruiter 

position, as they will be the ones charged with the 

actual day-to-day building of the workforce of the 

future. Recruiters must understand their organization’s 

strengths, deficiencies, and aspirations to fully appreciate where they need to build capacity. They must 

also understand their organization’s knowledge base 

and how it works, since hiring will be a key factor in 

maintaining and growing the Defense Intelligence 

Agency’s knowledge capital, a precursor to ensuring 

information and decision superiority in the future. 

Recruiters Become Innovative “Human 

Capitalists” 

In the future, recruiters will become “human capitalists”, spending most of their time proactively seeking 

out and interviewing targeted candidates from 

around the world for potential inclusion in the 

Agency’s talent pool. Applying sophisticated targeted 

marketing and branding strategies and the Defense 

Intelligence Agency’s compelling vision to attract 

individuals from around the globe. 

To be successful, the human capitalist must be “an 

extraordinary individual who wants more than just a 

“In an age when terrorists move information at the speed of an email, money at the 

speed of a wire transfer, and people at the speed of a commercial jetliner, the 

Defense Department is bogged down in the bureaucratic processes of the industrial 

age-not the information age... The point is this: we are fighting the first wars of the 

21st century with a Defense Department that was fashioned to meet the challenges 

of the mid-20th century. We have an industrial age organization, yet we are living in 

an information age world, where new threats emerge suddenly, often without warning, to surprise us. We cannot afford not to change and rapidly, if we hope to live 

successfully in this new world... If the Department of Defense is to prepare for the 

security challenges of 21st century, we must transform not just our defense strategies, our military capabilities, and the way we deter and defend, but also the way 

we conduct our daily business.”

Secretary Rumsfeld testimony, 14 May 2003
65

but by changing the activities and behaviors of

their people. As noted by Bossidy and Charan,

“To put it simply and starkly: If you don’t get

the people process right, you will never fulfill

the potential of your business.”

Redefine the Workforce

The Defense Intelligence Agency will move

away from the idea of exclusive control of

intellectual talent to an inclusive model that

draws on the best talent available, wherever it

might be. This transition will redefine the concept of workforce within the Agency. 

When unpredictable threats can field practically every capability at any place and time,

hard requirements are difficult to establish.

The shift in U.S. national strategy from a

threat-based construct to a capabilitiesbased approach drives this transition. The

strategic shift poses a significant challenge

for the entire defense community. As thenUndersecretary for Acquisition Pete Aldridge

noted in 2002:

“The threat-based acquisition structure is 

obsolete against so unpredictable a threat, 

and incompatible with the groundbreaking 

technologies in play. Instead, we have gone 

to a “capabilities-based” acquisition. The difference... is that capabilities based acquisition results from assessments of the threat; of 

the available technology; and, based on 

those assessments, an appraisal of what can 

be built to do an acceptable job, rather than 

accommodate a hard requirement.” 75

Undersecretary Aldridge

The absence of “hard requirements” is a tipping point for the Agency. Given the breadth

of uncertain challenges the Defense Intelligence Agency will face in the future, it will be

important to cast a wide net in building

expertise and insight. The Agency can “own”

some of those resources internally, but the

scope of possible capabilities will be beyond

its capacity to totally own and develop. As a

result, the Agency will house more and more

of its expertise at think tanks, companies,

NGOs, universities, other government organizations and in individual professionals’

homes. The Agency will need to “rent” expertise as needed, and bring contingent employjob,” someone with “superior intellectual ability, 

toughness of mind and a high degree of personality” 

who can work in “fast-moving, ambiguous, and 

unstructured situations.” In other words, recruitment 

work will possess high similarity to a case officer 

role, working both formal and informal networks to 

land leads to the best sources of candidates. 

The recruiter needs robust network contacts, combined with knowledge of the organization’s issues 

and the psychology of team design, to develop 

innovative workforce solutions that ensure robust 

Agency intelligence capability. For example, if the 

Defense Intelligence Agency needs to understand 

Brazilian telecom alliances, the recruiter would not 

be limited to acquiring a Portuguese-speaking analyst or a South American regional expert. Instead, 

he or she could use a Korean-speaking analyst, 

since most of Brazil’s telecom alliances are with 

Korea.

Recruiters Will Consider Complex Team 

Dynamics Issues

In the future, when the Defense Intelligence Agency 

organization consists of a series of cross-matrix 

issues teams, recruiters will target individuals for 

potential hiring based on the anticipated need for 

specific capabilities on one or more issue teams. 

They will use HR staff planning and evaluation technologies, as well as apply knowledge of team 

dynamics, to complement existing team performance. They may also create new teams and select 

members tailored intellectually and behaviorally to 

the specific task. 

These new human capitalists will maintain a database of qualified candidates based on anticipated 

“Ever since the dawn of the industrial revolution, it has been the organizing principle of society — people are what they do, defined by their corporate labels. But the 

modern corporation has begun its death march. There are now 25 million free 

agents-entrepreneurs, independent contractors, free lancers, and temps.”

Daniel Pink, Free Agent Nation
66

ees in and out of functionally-based, matrix

teams. (Illustration 25.)

The Agency would pre-screen outside contingent staff who would routinely integrate with

the core workforce as specific tasks warranted,

such as:

■ The Agency needs routine infusions of

fresh perspectives.

■ Higher caliber (e.g., more experienced)

talent is available outside the Agency.

■ Staff is fully committed to current projects

and cannot retask without gapping

important coverage.

■ The Agency needs highly specialized

expertise.

■ The Agency needs specific expertise

quickly; there is no time to retrain staff or

wait for key personnel to become available. 

■ Because the Agency’s customers will tap

multiple sources for information and

advice, the Agency needs to incorporate

outside expertise in its deliverables. 

The Defense Intelligence Agency will continue

to have a strong permanent workforce in place

(see Specialists and Generalists, below). However, it will routinely broaden this base with a

wide ranging set of assets contained in a network that it could not (nor would it want to)

financially maintain on a full-time basis. Members of this three part workforce of the future

will serve on one or more cross-functional

teams (Illustration 26). 

Specialists

The Agency will always need specialists in a

broad number of fields. Expertise on highly technical areas, such as foreign air-to-air missiles or

biological weapon developments, may reside no

where else. If the Agency does not grow this

expertise, it may not exist when needed. Even

when it can find better expertise elsewhere, the

Agency will need to maintain experts in-house,

particularly for expertise that it needs on a near

daily basis.

needs of the organization for staffing. The database 

will contain candidates for both employee positions 

and the contingent workforce. The incentive comes 

from the Agency’s performance system which reward 

its recruiters based on the speed, cost efficiency and 

value of the effects they enable. 

Speed Rules: An example of 

‘human capitalism’ in action

The leader of the Global Warning team identifies a 

need for an individual with knowledge of chemical 

weapons and Russian organized crime to complement 

the team. The recruiter sends several pre-screened 

candidates to the prospective unit for interview and 

selection. Candidates may come from teams within the 

Agency, or may be “rented” or hired from outside. The 

process of moving the new member onto the team is 

streamlined and efficient—the hiring officer on the 

issue team extends an offer following the interview, and 

the new recruit begins to familiarize him or herself with 

the work immediately, while background investigators 

complete their work over the next two weeks. The 

accelerated process is the result of significant improvement and automation of the clearance and testing processes conducted in advance of the interview.

Because of their intimate knowledge of the organization, its goals, and the dynamics of the Agency’s 

extensive human and information networks, recruiters will play the critical role of advising on strategic 

structural features of the organization and will build 

workforce capacity at every level. In fact, of all of the 

human capital management capabilities, being able 

to attract and retain the people with the necessary 

attributes will be the highest and most critical. Hiring 

will be a key factor in increasing the organization’s 

knowledge capital, the essential precursor to 

enabling decision superiority. 

Adaptive Resources

DIA

Quantum

Physics

DIA

Project A Project B

Cultural

Anthropology

Military

History

Neuroscience

Artificial

Intelligence

Wearable Technology Theology

Other

Natural

language

questioning

Quantum

Physics

Cultural

Anthropology

Military

History

Neuroscience

Artificial

Intelligence

Wearable Technology Theology

Other

RFID and

Nanosensors

Natural

language

questioning

RFID and

Nanosensors

Illustraion 25: Ad Hoc Team Composition of Expertise
67

The Agency also needs its own stable of

experts to vet other experts. Because an Arab

scholar or nuclear engineer, for example, can

best evaluate the recommendations of his or

her own colleagues, the Agency will need inhouse experts across all disciplines. They

must stay current with the state of the art and

technology and access a wide circle of expertise when needed. 

In essence, the Agency will always need in-house

experts to cover unique areas, provide long-term

expertise and evaluate inputs from outside experts.

The specialist group should be smallest piece of

the future workforce, since the focus should be

on building expertise outside the core organization. The Agency would reserve this designation

for roles requiring intensity of focus, constancy

of demand, and/or unique expertise.

Specialists would seldom migrate to management positions. Their value to the Defense Intelligence Agency would remain in their technical

proficiency, the circle of outside experts they

build and their ability to work with matrixed

teams. Their incentives, both pay and non-pay,

would keep them on par with generalists but the

Agency would not necessarily expect them to

become generalists themselves.

Just as a brain surgeon does not need to

become a hospital administrator to progress in

the medical profession, certain specialists in

the Defense Intelligence Agency will be highly

valued solely for their functional expertise.

Though limited in number, these experts will

progress without the need to manage others. 

Generalists

The second and larger group would be a set of

generalists. These employees would be project

based moving across the organization and

adapting quickly to new issues and projects.

They must be quick learners, using knowledge

and fungible skills gained from previous situations in new and non-linear ways. They may

come from attaché positions, they be former

specialists who have acquired a variety of specialties. They must also understand customers, the interworkings of the Agency and team

building/leadership.

The generalist group would be the largest part

of the “owned” workforce of the Defense Intelligence Agency. They would be the core of the

cross-functional matrix team concept

described in the Structure section, and as

such, would act as the facilitators and nodes

among specialists, contingents and customers.

These employees would be on a management

trajectory, through a highly selective

evaluation and development process.

Contingent

The third group, and by far the largest, would

be the “on call” contingent workforce. This

group would be a wide-ranging network of

experts and uniquely skilled workers brought

into the Defense Intelligence Agency when

needed for a specific mission. They would

bring leading edge knowledge and a wealth of

external context to specific situations. 

This group most closely reflects the new

defense environment. Unlike the Cold War

era, when we knew the “who” and “where” of

the threat, and “how” was the major question, we don’t always know today’s enemies

far in advance. The United States cannot

forecast the “who” and “where” of the next

war or terrorist strike, conflict or mission.

Despite this lack of forewarning, military

decision makers may need immediate information on formerly obscure, but suddenly

Future Workforce Design

Specialists

Contingent

Project

B

Project

A

Generalists

Illustraion 26: Networked Workforce
68

vital issues. Serbian leadership, Afghan air

defenses and Yemeni terrorist cells provide

three recent examples. We see the areas of

interest to our national security becoming

continually more diverse and complex. American military leaders may receive immediate

taskings related to any of these areas, and

will turn to the Defense Intelligence Agency

for integrated information. 

The breadth and dynamism of this purview

exceeds the expertise of any agency. No one

can keep such expertise on the permanent

payroll. Fortunately, an alternative exists. High

quality expertise on practically every conceivable security issue resides among American

contractors, universities, NGOs, media, retirees and other government agencies. The

Agency needs a structured approach to incorporate this expertise. 

Similar to the traditional active-reserve relationship in the military, the Agency could build

internal-external teams ready for immediate

action across all relevant subjects. Experts

would be sought in advance of actual need

(the work flow system would have a significant

planning component) and interviewed as

though they were joining the Agency. The

Agency would interview external staff, place

them on a retainer (sliding scale according to

value) and expect them to keep up with leading edge issues and trends. They would also

interact regularly with permanent employees.

The Agency would provide incentives to internal workers to continually broaden their network while keeping a core of experts readily

available.

The model would go beyond today’s standard

consulting relationships. The Agency would

need vigorous interaction between employees

and contingent workers outside the bounds of

carefully defined projects. Security clearances

and communications networks would need

attention. However, these obstacles are surIntelligence for Cause and Effects

Al Qaeda and the U.S. Department of Defense both 

endorse “effects-based operations.” The U.S. military 

recognize their operating environment is too dynamic 

to plan for the next threat and that designing and executing an adaptive, capability-based system 

demands greater fidelity in the effects that political 

leaders expect. Al Qaeda recognizes that it can 

achieve social and economic disruption with unconventional suicide attacks. The implications for 21st 

Century intelligence are tectonic.

Anticipating effects requires exquisite knowledge of 

causes. Future intelligence analysis is thus driven 

from the domain of art... to the domain of science... 

and back again. Since the beginning, good intelligence analysis has been revered as an art, passed 

down from the master to the apprentice. Judgment 

and intuition remain friends of the great analysts. 

Technology and science help analysts manage everlarger volumes of data, but scientific principles for 

analysis remain underdeveloped. No more. Understanding the causes of effects, and anticipating outcomes demands scientific rigors. Not the rigor of one 

scientific discipline, but the rigors of many.

We are all shaped by the disciplines we learned in our 

youth. Physicists learn theories about mass and 

energy. Engineers learn basic steps—define the 

problem, list the givens, list the unknowns.... Social 

scientists learn theories of group dynamics, election 

voting, legislative voting, alliances, and band-wagoning. Psychologists learn about cognitive dissonance 

and human change. Painters learn about texture, 

color, and perspective. Each scientific discipline 

applies slightly different explanations of cause and 

effect. Depending on the context, one or combinations 

of scientific hypotheses explain that A causes B. To 

accurately explain effects based operations, analysts 

“We need an adaptable cadre of analysts, people who can adapt to changes in 

threat. We can’t know what threats will emerge (and disappear) in the future, so our 

analytical corps must be adaptable. Twenty years from now, “analyst” should be an 

obsolete term. Analyst-only is way too narrow. They must integrate other skill sets. 

Primarily, they must understand how to get intell, not just analyze it. By being better 

at retrieving information, they will help the IC drive collection priorities. They can’t 

just analyze the in-box. Rather, they must be aggressive operators of intelligence.”

Active Duty General/Flag Officer
69

mountable given the pay-off. The Agency

would gain the range of expertise needed to

operate in today’s era of “shadowy threats.”

Workforce Design Objective: Small Core,

Large Flexibility 

The combination of the three categories of

employee: specialists, generalists, and contingent workers will comprise the Defense Intelligence Agency workforce of the future. 

This workforce design parallels the general

direction of the military: a smaller active force

augmented by a robust reserve. The mix will

give the Defense Intelligence Agency the agile

workforce it needs in the emerging dynamic,

capabilities-based environment. 

The key operational factors and implications

involved with implementing this type of workforce design include: 

1. Building a ‘project mindset’ inside the generalist workforce from the Agency’s present

role based culture. Today the focus is shortterm, ad hoc and output based — versus

long-term and outcome based. 

2. Monitoring the number of specialist roles to

ensure they do not become more than onethird of the population. Such positions will

be easy to grow, but will eventually undermine the value of the contingent workforce. 

3. Implementing a highly effective set of management processes to ensure it deploys

generalists as current and future issues

demand and provides the constant care

necessary to maintain the contingent

workforce. 

Workforce Attributes 

The federal government has long sought to

improve its human resource systems by defining sets of core competencies for organizations and individual positions. While wellconceived understanding of the competencies

required will always be a valuable exercise, the

future workforce will need greater emphasis

on innate attributes. 

This change in emphasis springs from the recognition that a competency-centric personnel

system can produce a technically proficient

workforce — but not the generalist, multi-disciplined employee the Agency will increasingly

need in the future. It recognizes the danger of

tilting the reward structure towards predictable responsibilities, when the entire environment is becoming less predictable. A future

that requires an intellectually agile workforce

to adapt to changing circumstances demands

this shift in emphasis. 

Not all Agency personnel should become generalists, however. There will always remain the

must apply the right discipline, theories, and hypotheses. Future intelligence analysts must be scientists 

who predict B will result from A and that C, D, E, and F 

will not also occur. Chaos and complexity theory often 

elevate the analysis. Successful knowledge workers 

that we observe hedge their bets by learning other disciplines’ models or working in multi-disciplinary teams. 

Future effects-based analysts will not be experts in 

the data of multiple disciplines; they will apply the 

causal theories of different disciplines. Electrical 

engineering will predict a precision strike will cut 

power. Social theory suggests an organized military 

will fire up back-generators and produce new hot targets, while the theory expects the terrorists to operate without power. Think of effects-based analysts as 

learners of theory, not as subject matter experts.

Effects-based intelligence officers will also be risktaking gamers. At the tactical level, in a world of 

machine to machine interfaces, analysts will manage 

three dimensions simultaneously. First is hypothesis 

negation or confirmation to confirm the right causeeffect relationship. Second, is Blue’s next desired 

effect and action. Third is the target’s reaction. Since 

the effects assessment will be dynamic — which target, which weapon, which effect — won’t analysts 

hone their skills in video games? At the strategic 

level, analysts will want to test many hypothesized 

cause-effect links in low risk games with customers. 

Effects-based analysts will have an array of scientifically-suggested situations to game with warfighters. 

Examining multiple scenarios is key to anticipating. 

And effects-based analysts will artfully weave these 

situations into captivating stories to elicit the operator 

or statesman’s attention and real values. 

Future effects-based intelligence experts will be 

masters of new science and art.
70

need for detail-oriented experts who master

critical aspects of the intelligence system.

The Agency will recognize and reward an

evolving set of attributes that differ from those

with which it has been more familiar. As the

need for specific attributes changes, the incentive structure within the Agency will change in

parallel. 

We list some important attributes for the

future workforce of the Defense Intelligence

Agency (particularly analysts) in Illustration

27. 

The illustration shows the attributes as “bucketed” into five categories. The first is Cognitive

Attributes, which indicates an overall shift in

work emphasis from producing (e.g. writing

reports) to predicting (e.g., identifying unexpected patterns). The second category, Judgment Attributes, calls for analysts that make

many more judgment calls as their intelligence

product becomes more predictive. The third

category, Communication Attributes, emerges

from an increasing requirement for analysts to

communicate real-time directly with customers, the creation of quality teams to review

product and customers involved in initial collection decisions. The fourth category, Technical Attributes, reflects that technology will be a

key driver of both role change and overall mission success in the future. The need to supplement varied types of knowledge with an

understanding of technology will increase. The

fifth category, Role Attributes, which seeks to

match a person’s orientation with role design,

ensures the employee’s suitability to deliver

the outcomes sought by the customers. 

We do not prioritize the attributes in Illustration 27. Their individual importance will rise

and fall over time, and vary from analytical

challenge to challenge. At present, the highest

priority attributes include integrating social

and technical knowledge, willingness to take

risks, conduct the role in a more interactive

manner, identify patterns among disparate

knowledge and use imagination. These priorities reflect the need to change the conduct of

the analyst role as well as the need to think

differently about an asymmetric, adaptive

threat. In addition, a key factor in developing

these attributes requires building a culture

that is supportive, empowering, and serves as

an open market for the proactive sharing of

information and ideas. We discuss this in more

detail later in this section. 

The best private sector organizations already

balance the concepts of competencies and

attributes. As one of the thought leaders

interviewed for this project emphasized,

Southwest Airlines has used this type of technique in hiring for years. He notes, “They

have done very well by making personality

type a primary determinant of hiring. Their

view is we can train people to do all sorts of

things but we can’t make them a different

type of person. For them, it’s all about customer interaction — and they’ve recruited

people whose personalities are good at

that.”77 While Southwest Airlines certainly

needs technical proficiency among its workforce (e.g., pilots, mechanics), their incentives reward customer-focused attributes, not

just the completion of specific job competencies. Boeing, along with other leading companies, already uses this approach too. 

Of course, the Defense Intelligence Agency

cannot junk all competency-based job metrics.

Current employment regulations and practices, especially in the recruitment phase,

restrict the Agency’s ability to emphasize

attributes in the workforce incentive structure.

However, as new psychographic tools develop

(such as the use of video-game-like simulations) they will likely become more widely

accepted. In addition, the Agency has made

progress in the use of attributes today. For

example, the effort by the Directorate for Information Management to explicitly define the

profile of technical managers is an excellent

start. The objective in this case was to create a

“Because you just don’t get it,” Haw said. “I didn’t want to see it either, but now I 

realize they’re never going to put yesterday’s Cheese back. It’s time to find New 

Cheese.”

Spencer Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese?, 1998
71

“We didn’t have a failure of intelligence on September 11th. We had a failure of 

imagination.”76

Deputy Director of Signals Intelligence, NSA

Culturally Intuitive

Identifies Patterns

Global Thinker

Imagining

Multi-Disciplined

Questions Assumptions

Calculated Risk Taking

Interaction Oriented

Networked

Real-Time Collaboration

Story Telling

Scenario Writing

Presents Context

Technology and

Science

Shapes Technology

Anticipatory, Proactive

Customer Focused

Outcome Oriented

Producing

Technically Proficient

Identifies Issues

Parochial

Assessing

Core Competence

Accepts Judgment

Risk Averse

Computer Oriented

Insular

Information via Reports

Explanation

Report Writing

Presents Occurrences

Technology or Social

Science

Accepts Technology

Responsive, Reactive

Role Focused

Product Oriented

Thinking Provide insight to customer and peers; considers a

range of possibilities; innovative and creative

Permeates “hearts and minds’ of target; nuanced thinking

Draw connections between non-linear events and occurrences,

considers possibility of low probability — high impact events

Understands global operationg environment; sees implications

in a connected series of diplomatic and economic contexts

Can formulate highly original concepts and prospectives

Brings a range of ideas to group discussions and issues

Guards against the development of “group think”

Offers predictive intelligence which inherently carries risk

Communicates “live” with customer; conversational manner

Seeks out experts with a diverse array of knowledge sources

and keeps them at the ready.

Adapts to new technologies and customer’s desire for speed

Uses narratives to allow understanding of complexity

Ability to develop scenarios based on facts and intuition

Provides on-going, additive perspective to the customer

Understands something about both disciplines; is aware of

both technological and social science issues/impacts/solutions

Highly adept at identifying, selecting, and tailoring technology

solutions for the demands of the work

Seeks to understand and constantly anticipate client needs

Works to ensure data is useable and overall client success

Seeks tangible mission outcomes from the work conducted

Cognitive Attributes

Second

Wave Attribute

Third

Wave Attribute

Value to the Defense

Intelligence Agency

Role Attributes

Technical Attributes

Communication Attributes

Judgement Attributes

Illustration 27: Future Defense Intelligence Agency workforce attributes
72

hiring process that would screen candidates

for their interpersonal, teaming, and leadership abilities in addition to possessing technical knowledge. This type of approach to

building tomorrow’s workforce needs continued emphasis.

Attribute Development: Four Levels of

Progress

Here we discuss a process of employee development that presents a distinct departure from

the skills focus that characterizes most professional development today. The future Defense

Intelligence Agency will develop employees’

abilities to think— to become intuitive about

the work, to seek and integrate ideas, imagine

scenarios and identify patterns where only

pieces of information exist. 

The concept of workforce development in the

future is less about building first-rate proficiencies than it is building first rate minds. At

any given time, employees naturally display

different levels in their thinking capacity

based on attributes, work and educational

experience, and their opportunities for development. Looking across the workforce, a

“progression of thinking” begins to emerge.

The Agency can apply this progression as a

foundation of the design of its development

program, placing everyone on a similar trajectory of attribute and competency development. A highly notional example of this curve

follows in Illustration 28.

First Level Employees sift through the ocean of

information available. They may be able to

identify potential causal issues, but the team

does not expect them to raise larger intuitive

issues. 

Second Level Employees can identify causal

issues and represent them in a larger context,

but remain within their assigned area of

expertise. They do not take the initiative to

investigate asymmetric possibilities. 

Third Level Employees actively use attributes

such as intuition, imagination and pattern

integration on a periodic (but not consistent)

basis. These employees extrapolate the

underlying assumptions used by others and

may even question them on occasion. They

may also be able to create innovative scenarios from pieces of accrued information that

can imagine potential events or threats.

Fourth Level Employees use cognitive

attributes in a highly developed fashion and

employ them consistently. Employees mix

and match seemingly disparate pieces of

information from distant, unconnected

sources to create new sophisticated concepts,

causal relationships and solutions. Employees at this level often question the operating

assumptions of others to ensure they have

considered all aspects of an issue. They are

imaginative, and prod others to be equally

innovative.

By outlining this path, the Agency can identify

specific standards of proficiency, and then

align incentives with these standards. It allows

the Agency to move away from a primary

focus on technical proficiency and reward

attributes that are more important to success

in a dynamic operating environment. 

The New Diversity: Cognitive Diversity

During the 1960’s and 1970’s, the term “diversity” became shorthand for public mandates

to promote social equality. In the future, the

term will acquire additional meaning. The new

meaning will include diversity of the mind. 

Organizations that promote cognitive diversity, especially by combining people with

different attributes, temperaments, backgrounds and skills will instigate the creative

thinking needed to anticipate new opportunities and threats. For the intelligence community, it becomes a critical determinant of

success given the specter of asymmetric

challenges. Most importantly, cognitive

diversity within the workforce can lessen the

possibility of homogenous “group think,” or

what Richard Haver, the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, called a

“poverty of expectations.” Illustration 29

describes some notional examples of the

types of cognitive disciplines the Defense

Intelligence Agency will include in its workforce network.

Customer demand for intelligence from many

different dimensions and disciplines will also
73

increase as the Agency becomes involved in

planning more diverse military campaigns.

Planners will increasingly seek privileged information to ensure decision superiority and

leverage so-called smart weaponry. To meet

this demand, the Defense Intelligence Agency

will become increasingly involved at the planning stage, developing a more significant planning and audit role over time. As campaigns

become more joint-service and include both

destructive and constructive conflict, customers

will call upon the Defense Intelligence Agency

to provide context and planning support. And

as weapon systems become more and more

intelligence driven, the Agency will audit their

effectiveness. All of these point to the need for

developing a robust planning capacity within

the Agency that can support these activities

across a wide range of disciplines. 

The need for cognitive diversity will lead to

building a network based organizational

structure composed of ad hoc teams, although

some teams may remain in place for long periods. These teams will be multi-disciplined and

focused around issues, not functions, and will

use tools such as scenario planning techniques to derive new possibilities and solutions. However, the Agency will also recognize

that an important role will continue to exist for

the solo practitioner working outside a group

context (either by choice or necessity). Our

emphasis on interaction and group in this

paper highlights a change in balance and process towards matrixed teams, not an abandonment of individual research. 

An Open Market Culture Fosters 

Imagination 

To unleash the full capabilities of the organization, the Defense Intelligence Agency will

need a culture that supports and stimulates an

open exchange of ideas across the workforce. 

llustration 28 — Progressive Attribute Development

Progressive Attribute Development

Base Level

Sifting through Data

Tactical

Strategic

Value

Second Level

Identify Causal Issues

Third Level

Periodic Use of Traits

Fourth Level Consistent Use of Traits

Produce Think

Anthropology – cultural

Crime – organized

Economics – financial markets

History – military

Law

Public Health

Social Network Mapping

Theology – world religions

Artificial intelligence

Biochemistry

Earth and atmosphere

Energy – sources and markets

Quantum physics

Space – satellite technology

Telecommunications

Wearable technology

Social Sciences

Understand the target’s view of the world

Power center/organizing factor

Global economy impacts

Operational predispositions

Political/military interaction

Peacekeeping missions

Political power structures

Motivational factors/perceptions

Natural language queries

Future WMD threats

Surveillance and vigilance

Economic importance

Collection, cryptography, computing

Future battlespace

Key operational utility

HUMINT possibilities

Category Discipline Value Science and Technology

Illustration 29: Notional examples of disciplines in the future Defense Intelligence Agency network
74

The culture of every organization has a direct

impact on the product it produces. For the

Defense Intelligence Agency, culture determines

key interpersonal factors such as risk tolerance

and a dedication to quality and innovation. For

example, a sense of “safety” in the culture

about the ability to question assumptions could

have a direct impact on product content. Likewise, a culture of intense collaboration could

result in development of new cross-functional

processes, as well as support the sharing—

versus hoarding—of information.

According to several people interviewed, the

culture of today’s Defense Intelligence Agency

does not support and stimulate the open

exchange of ideas across the workforce. The

culture is one of risk avoidance and groupthink.

“Analysts tend to align their recommendations

with the institution’s consensus. If they know

what their boss wants and/or believes, they’re

much more likely to [gear their work] towards

that outcome. It’s an easier path than disagreement and potential confrontation”80, said one

person interviewed. While no organization can

fully remove itself from self-protective employee

behavior, it can lessen its pervasiveness. 

The Defense Intelligence Agency will need to

take highly visible steps to build a more open,

proactive culture. The most important of these

requires the leadership to “walk the walk.”

Leaders must lead by example, proactively

modeling the behaviors they want to see in the

workforce. Leadership by example sends a

strong message because there is a proven natural inclination by the workforce (particularly

by managers) to emulate what it sees — both

good and bad. In addition, the Agency can

support change by incentivizing collaboration

and innovation. Rewards should flow to those

who accept calculated risks, effectively work

with matrixed teams and contribute to the

open exchange of ideas. As an initial step,

leadership could invite authors, scenario writers and foreign leaders to address the workforce. They could challenge conventional

thinking and aid in “paradigm busting.” 

As one interviewee pointed out, “when you

have people who are not belted into particular

jobs by hierarchy but are encouraged organizationally (maybe by reward structures, but the

rewards are not simply monetary) you will see

people follow leads, inquire, build networks,

and make linkages that are not necessarily

apparent to others. These will be people who

are totally comfortable working at the edge of

chaos and who comprehend non-linearity.”81

As the Defense Intelligence Agency moves to

hire a more generalist population with new

and diverse attributes, and builds a culture

more congruent with its new mission, the

sense of change will occur more naturally and

become mutually supportive over time. 

Future Training and Development

Includes Structured Experiences

Many companies have long recognized that

training programs can also serve as a mechanism for cultural change. GE’s Jack Welch and

his use of the company’s Crotonville training

facility provide the quintessential example.

During the two decades he was CEO, Welch

met with each graduating class of managers,

using this opportunity to infuse his vision, values and priorities throughout the organization. Within a few years every important

manager in the corporation heard directly

from Welch what was important, and why.

These managers, in true network fashion,

spread the message to their subordinates.

Through this forum, Welch spread his personal message throughout the corporation’s

decision-making staff. 

As the Defense Intelligence Agency reconstitutes its training strategy, it can employ a similar strategy by using its extensive training

programs to drive cultural change. 

In fact, the Agency’s training community will

play a critical role in any possible cultural

shift. Imparting the new imperatives will

require more than speeches, memos and new

wiring diagrams. Personnel need new tools to

“We can’t think in terms of having a templated enemy.”78

Bob Leonhard, Fighting by Minutes: Time and the Art of War
75

perform in the new environment. The Agency’s

training system must help the workforce

develop new sets of key attributes: cultural

and cognitive diversity; teamwork; networked

collaboration; customer service; pattern recognition; risk-benefit analysis; and scenario

development. We outline several of those

changes in Illustration 30.

The training community will also need new

metrics to access success or failure. Since the

expanded aim of training programs goes far

beyond the teaching of specific skills, it will be

difficult to measure the effectiveness of developmental programs—particularly using current tactical measures such as training hours.

Thus, the training community needs to do more

than just develop programs to convey these

critical attributes. They must also devise outcome metrics for measuring their own effectiveness. Fortunately, such metrics emerge

naturally from effective curricula. If the curricula are right, the metrics are obvious. 

The Human Resource Function Changes

With The New Workforce Design 

The new design of the workforce shapes several changes within the human resource (HR)

function of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Most importantly, HR will move significantly

toward becoming more distributed. Activities

such as record-keeping, database maintenance, physical records, cross-Agency policies

and some recruiting, training and executive

development will continue to be centralized

(and possibly outsourced). However, many of

the personnel normally assigned to a corporate HR office today will instead be forward

deployed to work more closely with the business units they serve. 

Additionally, roles within the centralized HR

office will be transitional (versus permanent)

with “sunset clauses” to move more of the traditional human resource functions into the

business units. An executive committee will

oversee these distributed functions and, with

the advice of human resource policy professionals and general counsel, make the larger,

strategic personnel decisions. 

As the Agency continuously shifts and realigns

itself in response to the dynamic operating

environment, its support functions will do the

same. This will create a need for continuous

planning around every area of human capital

investment, development, and utilization to

ensure the workforce and its support systems

evolve on a parallel track. A high level outline

of the future forces at work and their anticipated impact on specific human resources

activities follows. Illustration 31.

Human Capital Planning The progress of the

Department of Homeland Security in its implementation of new approaches to human capital

issues bears watching. The Department begins

with a minimal number of job classifications,

which changes the structure, introduces a pay

for performance scheme to be more market oriented, and advances career specific developmental strategies for the workforce. These and

other innovations “change the workforce planning conversation” as the Office of Personnel

Management’s Ron Sanders put it recently in an

interview for this Paper.82 This effort will likely

provide numerous lessons that the Defense

Intelligence Agency and others in the federal

government will incorporate. 

The workforce of the future’s new design will

drive many changes in the Agency’s human

capital planning efforts. Each piece of the

workforce will have specific requirements. The

generalist workforce will require a robust and

sophisticated planning activity (linked to program management) that optimizes and develops staff across disciplines and projects. The

contingent workforce will require recruiting,

hiring, and maintenance activities not currently in existence. The specialist workforce

will require “care and feeding” to ensure workers feel valued in a competitive marketplace

for advanced technical skills. In short, the

planning activity will need to be strategic— to

“I hope the wild and crazy thinkers within the organization have a chance to thrive. 

You don’t want to do things that suppress the wild and crazy thinker.”79

Professor Daniel Hastings, MIT
76

ensure it anticipates the needs of the organization, tactical— to ensure it develops and

manages the workforce, and relationship

oriented— to ensure it retains the best and

brightest. 

All of this ensures the Agency’s access to the

right people, ready for deployment to the

areas of need on short notice.

On a high level, the human capital planning

efforts of the Defense Intelligence Agency will

need to harmonize with parallel functions

inside the Department of Defense to ensure

alignment and coordination. Without harmonizing with the Defense Department, the

Agency runs the risk of failing to consider

forces that will shape its future. It also runs

the risk of making it more difficult to attract

and retain top quality military personnel. 

Recruitment The development of a diverse,

multi-disciplined workforce in a competitive

recruiting marketplace will require recruiters

to become “human capitalists.” They will need

to be entrepreneurial, innovative and highly

skilled at the art of developing and maintaining an extended network. The role, which is

likely to be forward deployed into the business

units, will require the ability to function successfully in a myriad of worlds — from academia to business — building relationships

that will yield high quality candidates. A centralized administrative function manages the

databases and support necessary. 

Effective recruiting of military personnel will

also be a critical factor in mission success, and

therefore needs careful planning and nurturing. This would include cultivating relationships with those who help make decisions

regarding personnel assignments to the

Defense Intelligence Agency. The senior leadership of the military services must come to

understand that the quality of personnel

assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency

directly influences the quality of intelligence

provided in support of military missions.

Therefore, it is in the best interests of the services to ensure candidates are the best and

brightest available. 

Hiring During interviews conducted for this

project, a consistent theme emerged of the

need for greater speed in executing aspects of

the Agency’s intelligence mission. By extension, the same must be true for functions supporting the mission. This is particularly the

case for hiring, where speed often determines

whether the Agency wins or loses a valued

candidate, especially scientists and technologists. As competition for superior human talent increases, and technology advances, the

recruiting process must become leaner and

faster. 

The Defense Intelligence Agency will build its

future hiring process with a bias for speed. To

accomplish this, it will remove as many hiring

layers and hand-offs as possible. A single

point of contact can manage and close the

process of hiring candidates. Recruiters will

migrate into an account manager role, handling the process from inception to conclusion

(supported by a centralized back office team

handling administration). They would conduct

this process in tandem with the business unit,

ensuring that the offers extended meet the

Agency’s policies and the unit’s needs. 

Retention The drive for flexibility and agility,

reflected in the new workforce design, will

make retention a much more selective activity

in the future. We strongly believe that “hire the

best” extends into retention, and human capital planning must identify “critical need” positions into the future and plan to fill those

positions. Once hired, leaders will identify the

most valuable employees through use of social

network analysis and make decisions on

retention accordingly. For transitory, “oneoff,” or difficult to fill positions, the developIllustration 30: Change in emphasis in future workforce development programs 

Traditional

Information

Individual modus

Group composition is serendipitous

Uniform demographics

Data imparting

Fact based

Linear curriculum

Experience

Group modus

Group composition is considered

Multi-service, function, background

Action learning

Scenario based

Diverse curriculum

Current Development Future Development
77

ment and use of a contingent workforce allows

the strategic application of resources.

Retention will move from an effort to hold on to

the workforce as a whole to an effort aimed at

targeted parts and principal figures. The strategy becomes developing customized incentives

that range from bonuses to work design (such

as working from home), depending on the

needs of the employee. A career vision and

developmental plan that allow employees to

see future opportunities for growth support

these incentives, and help them understand

how they fit within the larger vision, strategy,

and values of the organization. The Agency will

form a relationship with the individual, giving

the employee a sense of importance, relevance,

and shared commitment. 

Performance Management The new workforce

design also affects performance management

processes. In the future, performance measurement will rely less on the boss-employee relationship, and make decisions based on

judgments of teammates and customers.

Project-based work and the contingent workforce will drive leaders to derive feedback from

teammates, subordinates, customers, etc. After

compiling regular feedback, the data becomes

one of the bases for promotion, along with

other mission-related outcomes. Contingent

workers would receive formal feedback which

would determine incentives. 

The driver for promotion will be the perceived

value of contributions by customers and colleagues, making it a highly outcome-based

approach. As the value of the contribution and

responsibility increases, position and compensation would follow. Consulting companies

and other service businesses often use this

model, which effectively aligns customer

needs and workforce behavior. It requires selfreliance on the employee’s part to take ownership of their career development, network

relationships, and knowledge base. The

Agency continues to offer a myriad of development activities as support, but ultimately the

responsibility for career development lies with

each individual. 

Compensation Over the last several decades,

the federal government has advanced a number of regimented compensation schemes.

These approaches have limited the government’s ability to be competitive in the marketplace, particularly when recruiting those with

advanced skills in science or technology.

While this is changing to some degree, the

Defense Intelligence Agency will need to

exploit available exceptions or pursue new

reforms that allow for increased flexibility in

compensation packages in the future. 

Achieving transformational change will require

moving away from the “billet” or “headcount”

approach and instead creating a flexible

“human talent” budget. For example, if an

operating unit decided it needed to hire a leading expert at a high price (versus moderately

priced employees that fit into a particular

grade) it would have the flexibility to do so. To

shape the workforce in a manner most advantageous to the future, the Agency will need to

have the flexibility to hire competitively in the

marketplace. 

Training and Development Achieving a balance

between competencies and attributes involves

changes in the conception and development of

future training programs. With the focus on

Illustration 31: Future hiring factors and their implications for the Agency 

Speed

Competition

Relationships

Compelling

Developmental

■ De-layer processes

■ Limit hand-offs

■ Pre-authorize offers

■ Faster clearance processes

■ Customized role and schedule

■ Work/life balance supportive

■ Offers leading edge work

■ Offers unique work experiences

■ Recruiters forward deployed

■ Single point of contact for process

■ Focus on key relationships

■ Field presence (e.g., Silicon Valley)

■ Leading edge technology & tools

■ Joint work with external partners

■ Intra-preneurial opportunities

■ Positive, supportive culture

■ Continual technology skills update

■ Multi-disciplined, stimulating offers

■ Offers lifelong employability

■ Leadership training (if appropriate)

Future Hiring Factors Business Implications
78

imparting experience over information, they

will become more behaviorally driven than

ever in the past. 

Discrete and opportunistic training interventions will evolve into lifelong training over the

continuum of one’s career. The Boeing Corporation, for example, looks at development as

providing life-long “employability” (not to be

confused with life-long employment which

they clearly state is up to the individual

employee to achieve based on performance).

This concept of the “Protean Career” drives

the change toward multi-disciplined development approaches that allows employees to

take on a variety of roles over the life of their

career. This would work in tandem with a

career vision and developmental plan and

require all the elements of a good future training and development program as outlined earlier in the People section. 

Two areas of training and development bear

particular examination as the Agency looks into

the future. These are Leadership Development

and Technology Skills De velopment. 

Leadership Development The future of the

Defense Intelligence Agency rests in large part

on the attributes and capabilities of its future

leaders. Identifying leaders early in the process, and grooming them based on a clear

development and succession plan is a critical

component of the Agency’s future. A haphazard succession plan jeopardizes mission. 

Based on our understanding of the future

operating environment discussed earlier, we

know that future leaders will need broadbased experiences to succeed. The platform

for leadership development will need to be

multi-disciplined and ensure exposure to

numerous social and technical, field and

support experiences. The installation of

cross-functional teams and a networked

organization will require leaders that are

relationship oriented and interactive. The

development platform will need to be group

based and contrive opportunities for interaction with a wide range of thinkers and practitioners. Finally, because leaders will need

to understand cultures and thought patterns

beyond their own, the platform should be

international. This would argue for ensuring

that leaders perform tours overseas in challenging assignments. 

Continuous Development Of Technological Expertise 

Because the Defense Intelligence Agency’s

future mission challenges will clearly be both

techno-centric and techno-dependent, the

Agency will need to develop a deep and robust

technological knowledge and skill set. During

interviews conducted by the Toffler Associates/Dove Consulting team, a variety of stakeholders expressed concern over the Defense

Intelligence Agency’s present level of technical

knowledge and skill and the ability to build

towards future strength. For example: 

The nature of Defense Intelligence Agency’s

mission and the manner in which it conducts

that mission inevitably ties people and technology. Failure in one negates success in the

other. The increased complexity of technological advances, and the knowledge required to

work with them, will be a competitive challenge for Defense Intelligence Agency. 

Using the Joint Military Intelligence College (JMIC) to Advance a Broader People

Strategy

While the JMIC clearly has a strong reputation

as a provider of graduate level education

within the intelligence community and military

services, it will need to reconsider its positioning, mission, and overall contribution in light

of the future operating environment and the

transformation of the Agency. 

“Analysts are being given products from new sensors, but few analysts actually use 

these products. They don’t understand them. If one analyst finds a new source that 

works, he or she spreads the word to others. But the process is slow. Only 10% of 

the guys actually use the new sensors.”83

Intelligence Community Thought Leader
79

The JMIC provides an important educational

service, but has the potential to deepen and

broaden its scope with respect to developing

the intelligence community leaders of tomorrow and dealing with some of the difficult

community issues of today: 

Research and Development (Non-Technical) As

JMIC sees itself in the vein of a small university embedded within the Defense Intelligence Agency, the development of a robust,

directed “research center” — e.g. developing

on-going, non-technical research and development to inform the future mission of

Defense Intelligence Agency — would not be

out of line with its vision. Closely focused

on and tethered to the mission of the

Defense Intelligence Agency, this has the

potential to be a unique and valuable asset

for ensuring the Agency continues to be forward looking in a thoughtful and considered

manner. 

Intelligence Community Platform The JMIC can

serve as a platform for bringing together a fractionalized Intelligence Community and military

service intelligence functions. The focus would

be around the sharing of information and ideas

that would move the overall community’s workforce effectiveness to a higher level (and support Congressional demands for increased

integration within the community). The JMIC is

in a unique position to do this given its illustrious alumni who are in positions of leadership

across the community. 

Issue Advocacy Highlighting critical strategic and

operational issues that are present in multiple

intelligence community organizations is a role

JMIC could fulfill well. The JMIC could serve as

a voice for the community around universal

issues that undermine effectiveness. These

include: clearance related issues, human

resource management, technology development, etc. The JMIC could provide a forum for

study, advocacy, and resolution of these on a

community-wide basis. 

The Way Forward

The Defense Intelligence Agency will not

undertake its transformation alone. The

Department of Defense, individual services,

the intelligence community, law enforcement

agencies and numerous public and private

sector organizations are all in the midst of

some form of “transformation.” This concurrency inevitably makes change even more

challenging. Successes and failures in one

area affect everyone. However, there is a silver lining. As Einstein observed, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” The

Agency’s leadership may be able to seize the

general commitment to transformation to

reposition the Agency. It should start by

articulating a new vision for defense intelligence for the decades to come. 

We believe that the Agency must prepare for

this future now by initiating a chain of events

that shapes all of the Agency’s human capital

systems, departments, and various support

apparatus to around two goals. First, hire,

develop and retain personnel with demonstrated attributes needed for the emerging environment. Second, realign the workforce around

“His [the Director’s] most pressing need, and the thing changing the fastest, is technology and the need for a workforce trained in...technologies. If you went through 

Defense Intelligence Agency today and asked what the chemical precursors to nerve 

gas are, not many would have any idea ...this is a potential threat.”84

“Historically we’ve just made technology available to the people in our organizations, we haven‘t made it integral and helped the users make it integral in what they 

do every day, and we need to do more.”85

 “We are working to promote a culture in the Defense Department that rewards 

unconventional thinking — a climate where people have the flexibility to take risks 

and try new things.”

Dr. David Chu, Undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness
80

“The attacks of September 11th make transforming the Department [of Defense] 

even more urgent because the military is not designed to fight the shadowy terrorist 

networks that operate with the support and assistance of terrorist states...”

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

specialists, generalists and contingents, with

the latter comprising the greatest number. 

The rest, in intelligence parlance, is just noise. 
81

Strategy

he scope of the threats the United States

faces in the global environment and the

requirements for neutralizing those

threats levy immense burdens on the Defense

Intelligence Agency. From a radically changing

environment, to the knowledge work the

Agency performs, to the products and services

and the decisions it enables in its expanding

customer set, the Defense Intelligence

Agency’s leadership will help change the

nature of world conflict. 

Since its formation in 1961, multiple intelligence community reorganizations notwithstanding, the Defense Intelligence Agency has

not had to significantly rethink its identity. The

features of the nation’s future require a fundamental shift in focus for the Defense Intelligence Agency. The Defense Intelligence

Agency of the future seizes upon the opportunity, identifies the articulated and implied

needs of its customers, and set out on a deliberate course of renovation. The Agency’s

external focus is broader, requiring new and

closer relationships with DoD, the intelligence

community, state and local law enforcement,

commercial enterprises, as well as international partners and allies. Internally, DoD has

rethought every aspect of operations to be

more customer-centered, divesting itself of

everything that does not provide tangible value

to customers—helping them to make better

decisions. Organizationally, it adopts a vigilant

matrix analytic structure to avoid surprise.

The objective of preserving national security

revolves around information superiority, and as

a result, intelligence demands will continue to

increase. Changes in the nature, number and

magnitude of global threats and the availability

of new sources of information place new

demands on the Defense Intelligence Agency’s

customers and ultimately on the Agency. 

The doctrine of preemption presents grave

responsibilities too. It presumes that American

intelligence can ferret out the most secret of

foreign science with near infallibility, doing so

not only to inform policy makers, but potentially to build a case for war. In effect, it posits

a crystal ball.

Robert Gates, former director of central intelligence, notes, “It’s not enough to say Iran is

developing nuclear weapons. You need information specific enough to give policy makers

options for acting against those programs. It’s

a very big challenge.”86

The National Security Strategy of the United

States, published in September 2002,

addresses the challenge saying, “The U.S. has

long maintained the option of preemptive

In the future, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s achievements 

will result from a relentless focus on customers and continually 

assessing customer’s needs and the quality of the services delivered to them.

“I’ve given up trying to be rigorous. All I’m concerned about is being right.”

Stephen Hawking

T
82

actions to counter a sufficient threat to our

national security. The greater the threat, the

greater is the risk of inaction-and the more

compelling the case for taking anticipatory

action to defend ourselves...” The United

States, as a result, will have to produce “better,

more integrated intelligence” to find hidden

threats and act against them and to address

threats inspired by foreign governments and

groups conducted inside the U.S, “we must

also ensure the proper fusion of information

between intelligence and law enforcement.”87

A self-renewing process (Illustration 32)

enables the Defense Intelligence Agency to

develop a strategy, and deliver intelligence that

is persistent (provides continual knowledge),

denial resistant (resists adversarial compromise) and exquisite (contains all the required

details necessary to checkmate an adversary) to

respond appropriately to future customer

needs.

Step One: Articulate a Compelling Vision

The strategy cycle begins with articulating an

audacious and compelling vision of how the

Agency accomplishes its mission and what it

can become-in order to ensure the commitment of attention, energy, and resources from

its many stakeholders. An audacious and compelling strategic ambition is an essential precursor to ensure the commitment of attention,

energy, and resources from a broadening set of

partners and allies. 

In a recent study, the General 

Accounting Office offered the following advice for successful 

transformation.

1. Ensure top leadership drives the transformation.

2. Establish a coherent mission and integrated strategic goals to guide the transformation.

3. Focus on a key set of principles and priorities at

the outset of the transformation.

4. Set implementation goals and a timeline to build

momentum and show progress from day one.

5. Dedicate an implementation team to manage the

transformation process.

6. Use the performance management system to

define responsibility and assure accountability for

change.

7. Establish a communication strategy to create

shared expectations and report related

progress.

8. Involve employees to obtain their ideas and gain

their ownership for transformation.

9. Build a world class organization.

From: “Highlights of a GAO Forum: Mergers and Transformation: 

Lessons Learned for a Department of Homeland Security and 

Other Federal Agencies,” General Accounting Office, November 

2002.

Illustration 32: The Strategy Cycle

Sustained Strategic Success

Vision

Establish an audacious strategic

vision — to ensure information

dominance for the US military

1. Vision

5.Durability

2. Strategy

6.Renewal

3. Alignment

4. Execution

Strategy

Provide persistent

surveillance and context

Alignment

Align the organization to

seize the new vision. Crossconnect the verticals

Execution

Identify impediments to

implementation

Durability

Create new structures and

processes while eradicating

impediments

Create new products with

the new structures

Renewal

Complete the

fundamental change
83

Step Two: Craft An Engaging Strategy

As much of the world continues to struggle

through industrial civilization into a knowledge

era civilization, conflict is inevitable. An ancient

Zulu proverb wisely observes, “War begins in

the head, and goes to the mouth.” That is, conflict begins when the unobservable “will”—the

head—becomes hostile. By understanding the

genesis of war, the Defense Intelligence Agency

prevents conflict from developing into destructive conflict. In a future where information is

the ultimate source of power, the U.S. can

maintain its security by making better decisions

through the development and application of

intelligence. An audacious and compelling strategic ambition is an essential precursor to

ensure the commitment of attention, energy,

and resources from a broadening set of partners and allies. It means that by aggressively

using and applying information, the Defense

Intelligence Agency will help policymakers and

human operators prevent most destructive conflicts and win those that they cannot prevent. In

so doing, the Defense Intelligence Agency will

render war a useless instrument of policy and

make the U.S. a safer and more secure place.

In the second step of the cycle, leadership creates a strategy to achieve that vision that provides persistent context for policymakers and

operators. In order to realize the vision of preventing destructive conflict, the Defense Intelligence Agency must ensure decision superiority

by providing customers with persistent surveillance and context. Novel challenges require

new ways of organizing and working, and serving a broadening array of customers with a tailored set of products and services. Future

customers will be more intimately involved at

every stage in producing the information they

require, and the Defense Intelligence Agency

must be able to provide access to the required

information in the right period. 

As discussed in detail in the Structure section,

a customer-focused analysis function

arranged in a matrix of regions and functional

threats covers known threats and positions the

teams to sense emerging threats. The regions

relate to the geography and culture and

demand an expert-area approach. The threat

component supplies expert knowledge and

imagination to assess how and why the geographies and cultures handle threat capabilities. The teams possess overlapping

capabilities designed to anticipate and prevent

threats from developing. The teams’ focus

areas shift as new threat areas emerge or

combine. Although the teams overlap in their

coverage, a “Global Warning” team articulates

a global point of view and monitors emerging

threats.

Defense Intelligence Agency executives lead

each of the teams, but members may be fulltime or part-time Defense Intelligence Agency

employees, government employees from other

Preemption: The Not-So-New 

Strategy of Prevention

There can be little doubt that “prevention” is a new 

strategy for the United States of America. However, it 

would be a mistake to think that such a strategy is in 

any respect “new”. From the beginning of politics 

through the end of the 20th century, adversaries 

have used prevention and preventive war to ensure 

security. But never before has prevention been the 

stated policy of a democratic nation. And never 

before has it demanded so much of the people who 

make it possible.

Sun Tzu counsels, “What is of supreme importance 

in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy.” Sun Tzu 

refers specifically to strategy — not army, not cities, 

but strategy — because by upsetting an enemy’s 

plans, the enemy cannot fight at all, and war will 

never occur. 

Indeed, what Sun Tzu advocated thousands of years 

ago is what the Defense Intelligence Agency and its 

customers aspire to do in the future. Pervasive intelligence will change the environment in which nations 

function. By pervasive observation, the United States 

will change the enlightened self-interest of its adversaries, possibly persuading them to rule out war as a 

rational option.

Not surprisingly, the strategy of preventive war will 

demand new attributes from the Agency’s workforce. 

Cognitively, Agency analysts and attachés will have 

to be global thinkers, able to imagine surprising permutations and reconstruct enemy plans. They must 

have sound judgment, and be able to take the calculated risks necessary to disrupt enemy strategies. 

They must be collaborative communicators, capable 

of real-time collaboration and facing their customer 
84

agencies, contingent staff from think tanks,

consultants, free-lancers, or academics or others. A smaller, more closely knit, Defense Intelligence Agency workforce may increase agility

and response as each team member’s responsibility level for tracking and reporting on threats

increases. The analyst of the future works in a

Contracting Officer’s Technical Representative

(COTR)-like role, contracting for or arranging

for the acquisition of precisely the capabilities

that his or team needs-and being accountable

and responsible for the team’s success. 

Based on customer demand, the teams produce reports in a variety of formats on a variety of platforms. In broad terms, analysts

produce two major categories of services:

short, news-like, customer-tailored reporting

for crisis support or for general information

and awareness; and more in-depth studies

that reflect deep understanding of potential

threats by global experts and intelligence in

each of the areas that enable customers to

make informed decisions. The analyst teams

continually update the in-depth studies as

new information becomes available. A Global

Warning team captures maintains global

vision to report on emerging threats and to

characterize current security risk and leads

writing the “Annual Report”.

The two broad categories of information benefit both of two broad categories of customerspolicymakers and operators (Illustration 33).

Customers include top Defense Department

and other executive branch officials who will

use the information to enhance their understanding and make better policy decisions

regarding potential sources of danger or conflict. The Defense Intelligence Agency’s knowledge of global cultures, technologies, and

dynamics provides the advice Pentagon planners require as they anticipate future systems

acquisitions. 

Military operators at all levels rely on the

information to enhance their own decisions

at a tactical level to prevent conflict or to

teammates in person. They will have to shape technology, and with it their future. And — above all 

else — they must be anticipatory and proactive, 

focusing not only on outcomes delivered to their customers, but the outcomes which their customers aim 

to achieve in their operations. Transformation is not 

about the changes the Agency makes for itself. 

Rather, transformation occurs when the Agency 

makes changes that allow its customers to transform 

their own operations.

The doctrine of prevention is not new, but it makes 

new demands. It must be executed seamlessly on 

the best intelligence to be successful. It demands 

that intelligence be both constant and pervasive. 

There is a mixed record for preventive war — some 

countries, such as the U.S.S.R. fared poorly by it, 

while others, such as Israel, used it to great effect. 

But preventive war results from the failure of a strategy of prevention.

One could argue that, in 1950, American national 

strategy was in a state of failure. Democratic Korea 

was in a dire situation. It was then that America considered preventive war: Secretary of the Navy Francis P. Matthews gave a speech in support of it late 

that August. At that time, American leadership 

judged that the nation was not capable of such a 

strategy, and summarily rejected it in favor of the 

strategy of containment. Now, they have judged differently. They have put their faith in those national 

capabilities upon which any preventive strategy must 

depend — intelligence and precision. The people of 

the Defense Intelligence Agency will not let them 

down.

Illustration 33: The issue teams provide quick reports and in-depth 

studies for operators and policymakers, tailored to each customer’s 

Customized Reports

Quick Reports

In-Depth Studies

Operators

Quick Reports

In-Depth Studies

Policy Makers

Feedback

Issue

Teams
85

prevail in existing conflict situations. The

operator includes commercial suppliers to

the Defense Department who use Defense

Intelligence information to improve the products and systems they deliver. The Defense

Intelligence Agency collaborates with customers at every level to understand their

emerging needs and to provide them with the

“persistent context” that anticipates their

information needs and continually supports

their ability to make better decisions.

Step Three: Align or Fail

Once the Agency creates the strategy — the

implementation plan for the vision — it must

educate the staff, align it with the processes,

structures and technologies required to execute the strategy, and achieve the vision.

This issue management structure functions

optimally with the support of a fully aligned

leadership. Agency leadership models a global

and intellectually diverse approach to intelligence. Operating executives work with the

issue teams to set appropriate measures, and

then apply those measures to continually

improve performance. Advisory Board members import their global connections and strategic thinking to advise the director on

innovative enhancements to Agency capabilities. The executive team ensures that the

Agency maintains forward-looking focus and

response to satisfying customer needs and

removes obstacles to performance while

adjusting the organization’s focus as the environment changes.

A key to proper alignment of the issue management function is to ensure that executives

fully support the model and communicate

that support throughout the organization.

New compensation programs focus attention

by rewarding increased interdisciplinary collaboration to deliver on the strategy. Future

threats will require an ability to focus on

multiple changing priorities and to reassign

priorities to respond to shifting environmental dynamics. Superior agility and adaptability allow the Defense Intelligence Agency to

seize the opportunity to retain a competitive

advantage over future national security

threats.

Step Four: Execute With Discipline

Execution, where the first three planning steps

result in tangible action, is arguably the most

critical link in this cycle. It depends on having

generated a commitment within the workforce to

implement the strategy and achieve the vision. 

An interviewee familiar with intelligence community strategies noted that although Defense

Intelligence Agency articulates an appropriate

vision, the Agency lacks a clear plan to execute

it: “I’ve seen briefing decks from the Agency,

they have good ideas, but they are not an

Agency plan, they are missing a statement of

the need for what technology is missing, and

what the costs are. They need to articulate how

the staff should be different in five years.”88 The

executive leadership team should be accountable and responsible for the planning, execution, and assessment of the Agency’s strategy.

The key to execution is careful planning, and

the future Defense Intelligence Agency will

have created a planning group that works

closely with the issue teams to understand

and map how the Agency must grow and

change to remain ahead of customer demands.

The challenge of execution is critical to the success of any strategic ambition and most often

the reason for failure. By methodically planning

the “chunks” of changes needed, and ensuring

broad understanding and engagement on the

part of those responsible for achieving them,

the Agency will deliver products that customers

value and actively seek. By streamlining the

core workforce and providing it with increased

responsibility and authority for performing top

quality detective work to uncover enemy secrets

the Defense Intelligence Agency will unleash

tremendous enthusiasm among its staff. No

longer constrained by rules and standardized

processes about every facet of work, employees

will apply logic and intuition-using left- and

right-brain-challenging and helping one

another to identify and neutralize security

threats before they imperil American civilian or

military personnel or assets.

Step Five: Ensure Durability

In step five, the Agency ensures the durability

of its vision, mission and processes to gener-
86

ate and sustain future value. As the Defense

Intelligence Agency matures, it will focus

increasingly on remaining agile in its approach

to changes in its operating environment-continually adapting its structure, processes,

products and services to the changing needs of

its customers. The recruiting and succession

processes will select for staff who demonstrate

agility and adaptability. At the same time, the

Agency will aggressively divest itself of those

things that customers no longer value.

Step Six: Measuring Results Speeds

Renewal 

To ensure congruence with customer needs, in

step six the Agency assesses value of work

performed and adjusts accordingly, using a

system of measurement and feedback. The

future Defense Intelligence Agency will engage

in continual assessment and renewal. The

process of renewal springs from awareness of

both the value the continually created by the

Agency and opportunities for expansion. By

measuring the value of its products and services, it will continually assess whether it is

executing its mission and evolving to accommodate changing customer needs.

Ambitious strategic goals (e.g., Illustration 34)

can indicate success and stimulate Agency

staff to transform and improve the quality provided to its customers. These illustrative measures assume that the items assessed are

significant, mission-relevant and demonstrate

customer value. The executive team is responsible for establishing goals in cooperation with

their areas of responsibility and for modifying

the factors as customers’ priorities change.

■ Defense Intelligence A gency Policy

Changes: Discovery leads to policy

changes that better align present behavior with emerging future requirements.

Transformation, “fundamental change,”

cannot occur without changes in policy. 

■ Introduction of Ne w Processes: As executives discover process inadequacies,

they rapidly introduce reformed processes. These processes might relate to

human resource activities across the life

cycle beginning with aptitude or skills

identification, and running through

recruiting, development, all the way to

retirement. Or, they might relate to some

element of product, service, production,

channel, or relationship. 

■ Introduction of Ne w Technologies:

Technologies that take time and work out

of production or management can

increase productivity, improve quality, or

enhance the workplace. Transformational application of technology can

reshape reality for the adversary and provide strategic advantage.

■ New Product or Mark et Identifi cation:

As the organization looks into the future

competitive environment, it identifies

opportunities for new products and new

markets. In an environment of fundamental change, such as the changes the

Defense Intelligence Community, is experiencing, every element in the value chain

is changing simultaneously. Every change

is an opportunity to grow in service. 

■ Community and Stak eholder Outr each:

When an organization possesses critical

intellectual property (new policies, new

processes, new technologies, or insight

into new markets) it owes the industry to

reach out and give the industry this discernment. The degree to which the

Defense Intelligence Agency becomes a

model for the Intelligence Community is a

measure of its success or failure. Knowing

that the Agency will produce an “Annual

Report to Stakeholders” helps motivate it

to serve better.

■ Salience and P ortability of R ecommendations: Discoveries made in one sector

can be so valuable that the Agency exports

them to other sectors, for the improvement

and benefit of the system as a whole. For

example, if a new approach works well for

the Defense Intelligence Agency, the

National Security Agency, the Department

of Homeland Security or the Federal

Bureau of Investigation could import it. 

■ Cost effi ciency (ROI): This is the degree

to which transformational efforts result in

financial benefits, or return on investment

in the form of positive effects produced

per dollar expended. 
87

■ Divestitures: As the Agency identifies mismatches between the current state and the

future state, it divests itself of low-value

activities, processes, projects, investments,

and structures. For example, administration, the management of the basic information technology architecture, or

administrative aspects of the human

resources function might all be outsourced.

With a clear path for creating, executing and

renewing its strategic direction, the Agency

will identify the critical strategies necessary

to make violent conflict unnecessary and to

prevail where force is required. It will

methodically assess and subsequently align

the capabilities of its technologies, processes, structure and people to support its

strategic ambition. By articulating an inspirational vision, planning a motivational

strategy, generating alignment across the

enterprise, the Agency will be prepared to

execute and overcome the expected resistance to major organizational change. 

Measures of Transformation

DIA Policy Changes

Introduction of new

 processes

Introduction of new

 technologies

New product or market

 identification

Community and stakeholder

 outreach

Salience and portability of

 product or services

Cost efficiency (ROI)

Divestitures

Criteria met Some criteria met Criteria not met

Illustration 34: Stoplight symbols will indicate the level of transformational achievement in 

each area, each month. For example, if a policy change enables the Agency to move away 

from a billet-system that stoplight would be green for that month.
89

Epoch 5:

New End State

2003

■ Know critical requirements for and attributes of the Analysts of the Future (AOTF)

■ Build the nformation infrastructure

■ Identify impediments for eradication

2004

■ Eliminate impediments

■ Create functional and regional teams to satisfy informational needs

■ Consolidate issues teams electronically

■ Publish initial annual Defense Intelligence Assessments from teams

2004-2005

■ Hire the best, inspire and text, retire the rest to become all-source with effect

■ Change the Defense Attaché system and school

2005-2006

Be a partnership of highly skilled people and leading edge technologies providing

warfighters, policy makers, and planners with assures access to required

intelligence.

2006-2007

Be a partnership of highly skilled teammates helping prevent destructive conflict

nfrom erupting, and helping predetermine the outcome of destructive conflict in

favor of the US.

Epoch 1:

Build the Infrastructure

for Good Growth

Epoch 2:

Prototype AOTF

Epoch 3:

Structure for

Strategic Effect

Epoch 4:

The New DIA

SUMMARY AND 

RECOMMENDATIONS 

Plan Changes To Occur Epoch-By-Epoch

Time has run out for the “old” Defense Intelligence Agency. The Defense Intelligence

Agency must pursue its re-invention immediately and earnestly, and finish the first increments of fundamental change before the end

of 2007. We envision that change will manifest

in five epochs, beginning in 2003 (Illustration

35), “The Epochs of Change” below, is a

depiction and summary of those epochs and

the focus of each. The focus is on work

intends to attain a near-term goal in support

of a longer-term goal. 

Epoch 1: Build The Infrastructure For

Good Growth

Epoch 1 has begun. The Defense Intelligence

Agency rightly counts on people-human talentto envision, implement, and master the necessary changes in end-state vision, strategy,

Be a partnership of highly skilled teammates helping prevent 

destructive conflict from erupting, and helping predetermine the 

outcome of destructive conflict in favor of the United States.

Illustration 35: Epochs of changes.
90

organizational alignment, technology, processes, and execution plans to usher in an era

of renewal. The urgency of the need to close the

gap between what the Defense Intelligence

Agency is and what it must become determines

what is necessary. The urgency of the need to

close the gap also determines the scope and

pace of change. For example, were the Defense

Intelligence Agency to determine it needed

more linguists, it might take the simplistic

approach of hiring more foreign language

speakers. On the other hand, it might take a

more audacious approach by infusing funds

into research and development for simultaneous translation systems. A third alternative

would be to hire a contingent workforce of parttime linguists while investing in translation

research and development. The urgency of the

need to close the gap would determine the

scope and pace of the response. 

In all cases, in order to close the gap, a first step

is self-awareness: base-lining the organization.

Simultaneously, the organization must envision potential future environments and how it

can best serve its customers and differentiate

itself in whatever becomes “the future.” This

White Paper postulates that future environment

and the strategies, process changes, technologies, structures, and people strategies necessary to command that future. Seeing the need to

close the gap between where the Defense Intelligence Agency is and where it must go is the

most difficult challenge in Epoch 1. 

Why? This is a challenge because change

impediments exist, and foremost among these

may be the perception that the Defense Intelligence Agency is already successful, but

understaffed. Policy, process, structure, technology, other organizations, and even the

Defense Intelligence Agency’s own people can

be impediments to realizing or moving toward

a different and more desirable future endstate. The less ambitious the end-state vision,

the less urgent seizing it becomes. 

Get The End-State Vision Right. We found little

awareness of an end-state vision among the

Agency workforce, and no awareness of one

among key Agency stakeholders. Given the

goal of fundamental change, and even appreciating how far the Defense Intelligence

Agency must travel, its beginning end-state

vision is modest: “Be a partnership of highly

skilled people and leading edge technologies

providing warfighters, policymakers, and

planners with assured access to required

intelligence.” As one human resources and

organizational development expert we interviewed put it, “No one will want to come to

work 10 minutes early or stay 10 minutes

late for a vision like that.” Said another way,

the present vision-however limited in its

deployment-is descriptive of what the

Defense Intelligence Agency should have

been in 1990 and not what it should aspire

to become at the end of the first decade of

the 21st century. 

Thus, to stimulate progress we offer a new

end-state vision, faithful to what we see in the

future: “Be a partnership of highly skilled teammates helping prevent destructive conflict from

erupting, and helping predetermine the outcome of

destructive conflict in favor of the United States.”

To meet this vision by 2007 demands a new set

of implementation strategies and actions that

are more aggressive. A new matrix team structure, a new vision of “the analyst of the future,”

a new way to think of attachés, new products,

and new services for new customers will

demand new technologies aimed at producing

an “all source knowledge overmatch.” Given the

requirement to create such knowledge, the

Defense Intelligence Agency will be able to provide the knowledge and warning that allows it

to help combatants and policy-makers preventto deter or preempt-conflict. It will have the

capacity both to get inside the head and under

the skin of potential adversaries. Should

destructive conflict arise, the foreknowledge

and analyses that the Defense Intelligence

Agency provides helps ensure that the United

States pre-decides contests in its favor. 

Determining “what it takes” to close the gaps

between the present and the future will consume much of Epoch 1. Doubtless, this phase

will include policy changes, technology investment and deployment, training, the definition

of customer-friendly and customer-demanded

products and services, process and partnership and changes, and organizational structure changes. Defining the specific changes
91

Illustration 36: Low-Hanging Technology and Process Fruit

Nine Immediate Opportunities

1. Begin shifting significant data integration to machine to avoid overloading analysts

with information.

2. Exploit networking and encryption technologies to expand the pool of experts DIA

can focus on emerging issues.

3. Focus conventional collection efforts on precision weapons, integrated sensor 

networks, stealth, and UAVs.

4. Educate DIA analysts on the newly emerging critical nodes in the American 

technological infrastructure.

5. Focus on bioterrorism as the most significant threat to US national sovereignty.

6. Increase HUMINT capability to ensure information superiority, warning capability,

vet open source data and differentiate from media; rethink the role and processes

of HUMINT personnel in the field regarding future information needs.

7. Rework the information classification system to increase sharing of information

and knowledge: if the new competitive advantage of the U.S. military is information

superiority or dominance, then that requires linked technology and sharing among

U.S. intelligence, military, and policy making actors.

8. Use the opportunity of the new space construction to begin redesigning processes

and interactions by creating a set of determined outcomes matched against the 

existing social network of the organization. For example, linking collection and 

analysis activities around customer requirements.

9. Create an Attaché in each customer space to vet requirements as a start to an 

aggressive set of actions aimed at proactively managing and prioritizing 

requirements, and use this as a means to link the overall transformation effort 

more closely to DOD’s transormation efforts.

and the integrated roadmap to affect them are

integral to Epoch 1. Also integral is the assignment of a handful of trusted advisor coaches

to the senior Defense Intelligence Agency

executives responsible for change. Such

coaches should have the actual experience of

having led and managed large, complex organizations during change. 

There Are Low-Hanging Fruit in the Technology and Process Arenas

Among the changes and attainments in the

spheres of technology and process we consider urgent in order to support creating the

workforce of the future are those listed in

Illustration 36, “Low-Hanging Technology and

Process Fruit,” above.

Collection, Analysis, And Information Management

Are The Core Businesses. In order to attain

these objectives, the Defense Intelligence

Agency must begin the process of identifying

and targeting policies to change and plan for

enhancements to each of its core business

areas: collection, analysis, and information

management. Simultaneously, it must support each of these by funded investments in

the infrastructure. 

Collection enhancements include the revitalization of Defense HUMINT capabilities and the

integration of counterintelligence with Defense

HUMINT, creation of better customer-provider

partnerships, integration of national-globaltheater capabilities to support the previously

unassigned missions of the U.S. Strategic Command, and the preliminary definition of a portfolio of prioritized future technical capabilities

and the direct liaison authority to work with

Service and Federal laboratories and defense

vendors to acquire and drive leading-edge

capabilities and equipment. 

Improvements to analysis includes identifying

specialist functions (such as human resources

administration, contracting, security, and

information technology management) and

regional expertise that can be “rented” from

outside sources to shift organic Defense

Intelligence Agency billets to the “Analyst of the

Future” and the “Attaché of the Future.” Other

enhancements would include an increased focus

on the carbon elements of future conflict (the

human mind, human will, brain science, psychopharmacology, and the human vulnerabilities in

decision-making) and the silicon elements

(emerging adversary or rival “net-centric”

capabilities, information operations at the

molecule-, code-, machine- and network-level,

and better understanding of the relationship

between commercial communications and space

capabilities and military communications and

space capabilities for future conflict). Finally,

improvements in access to data and control over

when and how it is processed will yield future

dividends.

To manage inf ormation better, the Defense

Intelligence Agency’s supporters must advocate

assigning the Defense Intelligence information

authority for information standards and protocols within Defense intelligence. As mentioned

earlier, no intelligence agency is responsible for

determining and enforcing data and metadata

standards, search and access protocols, best

applications, or best commercial practices for

information management. Absent standards and

processes for managing data across the commu-
92

nity, contemporary capabilities (such as fusion)

and future capabilities (such as inductive analysis, visualization, and animation) are unattainable. Until content is manageable across the

community, all source content cannot be integrated for rapid manipulation or display. Acquisition of access to continuous modeling and

simulation capabilities also is a requirement.

Epoch 2: Prototype the Analyst of the

Future

The demands of Epoch 2- beginning in 2003-

deliberately drive the attainments required in

Epoch 1. By the end of Epoch 2 in 2004, the

Defense Intelligence Agency will reorganize

into Regional and Functional Teams and use

the physically and electronically collocated

team structure to create a new family of predictive assessments. A contingent workforce of

analysts, linguists, geographical area and subject matter experts will allow the Defense

Intelligence Agency permanent workforce to

shrink. The assessments of its Global Warning

Team will begin to drive defense research and

development investment. 

Defining the first cadre of the “Analyst of the

Future” and “Attaché of the Future” in 2003 will

be critical to success in 2004. Selection for attitude, aptitude, and attributes will supplant

selecting new hires merely for their basic skill

sets. In addition to the polygraph, other measurement and screening tools will be necessary.89 The team setting and matrix

organization create “families” of crossconnected experts that help support the

Department of Defense’s top intelligence priorities. In order to create the first cadre in 2004,

some policies and human resources recruiting,

selection, accession, training, re-training, and

release processes must be in place in late 2003

or early 2004. Empowering the analysts must

be new technologies, and these must begin

arriving in late 2003 or early 2004. Thus, the

initiative shown in 2003 determines the success or failure of 2004. 

Epoch 3: Structure for Strategic Effect

Epoch 3 begins in 2004 and cascades in to

2005. During this phase the workforce mantra is

“Hire the best, inspire and test, retire the rest.”

in order for the Defense Intelligence Agency to

become both “all-source” and “all-source with

effect.” Anticipating that some changes take

longer than others do, changes to the defense

attaché system and school do not occur until

2004-2005.

Epoch 4: The New DIA

By 2005 and through 2006, the Defense Intelligence Agency is in Epoch 4 of change. The

alignment of vision, strategy, processes, technology, and the attributes and aptitude of its

workforce move toward an ambitious endstate vision. By the end of 2006, the Defense

Intelligence Agency will appreciate the more

modest initial vision of its end-state. It will be

a partnership of highly skilled people and

leading edge technologies providing warfighters, policymakers, and planners with assured

access to required intelligence. As products

serve customers better, as the workforce is

empowered to stretch its competence, as technologies help create foresight, the more ambitious vision of Epoch 5 moves within reach. 

Epoch 5: New End State

Epoch 5 consummates when the Defense

Intelligence Agency is a partnership of highly

skilled teammates helping prevent destructive

conflict from erupting, and helping predetermine the outcome of destructive conflict in

favor of the United States. 

Success Begins With Implementing

These Recommendations

Attaining the vision for the Agency’s more

ambitious end-state begins in 2003. Before the

end of 2003, implementation of the Workforce

of the Future must have begun. An implementation plan is required for each of these early

wins. Implementation plans should define the

objective of “the chunk,” the desired outcomes, and the success measures to attain the

desired outcome by the time specified. As long

as the Defense Intelligence Agency is alert to

change fatigue, it can undertake multiple

chunks at once. During this interval, the leadership of the Defense Intelligence Agency also

must remain acutely aware of the distinction
93

between “activity” and “progress.” They need

to recognize the occurrence of numerous

lower-value activities undertaken and disguised as progress. 

For example, the introduction of tools or applications for better workforce management is

progress to the degree that these activities support attainment of the future workforce or the

futureend-state. One must recall that in 1939, for

example, the U.S. Army research and development activity was pursuing creation of an effective but costly gas mask for horses. A

transformation in warfare, the German combined arms Blitz, consigned that research and

development to the category of “activity” while

the effective coupling of the radio, the tank, and

ground attack aircraft were authentic “progress.” 

The goal is to move forward with introducing

fundamental change in the attributes and capabilities of the Defense Intelligence Agency

workforce. The shoulders of the new workforce

will carry the weight of authentic and valuable

change. Figure 37, “Workforce of the Future

First Fruits,” identifies the progress possible in

2003. 

The following five initial major muscle movements in the human resources sphere will help

reshape the workforce so that it can envision,

anticipate, and master the intelligence problems of the future.

Hire the Best, Inspire and Test, Retire the

Rest

People — the right people — underpin the process of fundamental change. Not all the

present workforce will be up to the challenge.

Several years ago, we asked the leader of a

large and complex Federal organization to

assess what it would take to transform his

organization. He replied, “We are an analog

culture in a digital world. Figure out how I

could pay 85 percent of my employees to stay

in the parking lot and not come in the building

and I could transform this organization.”90

This was not and is not a solution. Rather, the

Defense Intelligence Agency must simultaneously hire the best and inspire the existing

workforce and test its members for their ability

to learn new things and work in new configurations.91 Those who are unable or unwilling

to be contributing members of the “new”

Defense Intelligence Agency should retire, or

be asked to leave to other endeavors. 

Recognize And Reward New Behaviors,

Dissuade Old Ones

Predictive and contextual intelligence requires

insight, opinions, and, most of all, risk.

Attaches gather and analysts assemble evidence to uncover knowledge of what adversaries are trying to hide. Expecting or demanding

that they make perfectly precise forecasts or

assessments is perfectly wrong. All hypothesis

making is intuition. Accuracy in intuition supported by evidence ought to be the goal. 

Scores of interviews show that today a form of

organizational paralysis permeates the

Defense Intelligence Agency. This paralysis

manifests in the form of fear of not going out

on a limb with analysis. Keen instinct and

sharp analytical insights are lost when managers over-work intelligence products, take

risk averse stances, or keep analysts separated

from customers. Production cannot stop during the change process. Dissuading managers

Illustration 37: Workforce of the Future First Fruits

1. Clearly articulate a more compelling end-state vision, durable and enduring core

values, mission, and core competencies that the Defense Intelligence Agency will

use to define its future.

2. Communicate and over-communicate the vision and the end-state to teammates,

partners, customers, and critics.

3. Identify core skills and organic core competencies and plan to outsource or

eliminate personnel requirements for obsolete skills.

4. Affirm the attributes required and identify a prototype cadre of Analysts of the

Future and Attaches’ of the Future and the training and development activities required

to create them.

5. Selectively recruit for attitude and aptitude using existing new screening tools.

6. Identyify all known impediments to creating the Workforce of the Future and

determine which impediments can be eliminated by policy changes.

7. Create an Advisory Board of “outsides’’–CEOs, COOs, Vice Presidents, and

mavericks – to help ensure openness in Defense Intelligence Agency leadership

thinking.

8. Create an Information and Content Panel as a subordinate “outsider” council of

advisors to the Advisory Board.

9. Enlarge the guiding coalition of change advocates into a diverse, multi-generational,

“all-ranks’’ Change Leadership Council.

10.Chunk the change process into small, manageable, short-duration projects that

lead progressively to the end-state.
94

from creating fear, while working with analysts to acquire better communications skills

and writing techniques, is a first step towards

stabilizing and improving the Defense Intelligence Agency product. 

Make Hiring “Decentralized Competitive” And “Centralized Supported” 

In this construct, functional areas, specialist

disciplines would have the authority and

resource to recruit key knowledge workers

from among those in the field with whom they

have long-term, strategic relationships. The

“masters” would select the “apprentices” and

“journeymen” for each “guild family.” The corporate human resources staff supports the

guilds with broad policy and guidance and

quick and flexible hiring processes that allow

the Defense Intelligence Agency to be competitive with public and private entities. Policy

changes should begin to move the Defense

Intelligence Agency to a “human talent budget,” and away from a “head count” and “head

room” budget. If the budget allowed the

Defense Intelligence Agency to hire more

Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service

and Defense Intelligence Senior Level positions

than present — and especially if these were

recruited from the “outside” — that would not

be undesirable. 

Focus on the Building Of Technology

Skills and Technology Capability

Among “knowledge organizations,” the Defense

Intelligence Agency is behind—both in terms of

the operational availability of technology and in

collection research and development. In the

technology realm, in terms of people and

equipment, we estimate that there is approximately a $2 billion shortfall between what the

Defense Intelligence Agency has and what it

needs to be an authentic “all-source” production engine. Technology shaped for specific

purposes demands a cadre of technophiles

within Defense Intelligence Agency passionate

about improving the production and prediction

capability of analysts and passionate about

improving the system-as-a-whole. Hiring a new

chief information officer would be a good first

step, but budget, quality staffing, and creation

of a network of experts are follow-on steps. We

propose an Information Technology and Content Management Panel as a sub-council of the

revitalized Advisory Board. This Panel would

introduce the leadership of the Defense Intelligence Agency to “state-of-the-practice” and

“over-the-horizon” technologies for information and content management. 

We also suggest that the Defense Intelligence

Agency begin to build relationships in knowledge centers as far apart as Silicon Valley and

Bangalore. Many knowledge workers —

especially more mature ones — are geography-insensitive. Opportunities for education

with industry should be seized. These could

provide an inspirational sabbatical for some

Defense Intelligence Agency employees, and it

is at least a network-extending initiative for

the Agency.

Use the hiring of a chief training officer and

the redevelopment of training to institute a

group and individual training program that not

only builds skills, but also builds the culture

that the Defense Intelligence Agency strives for

in the future. 

General Electrics’ “John F. Welch Leadership

Center,”92 in Ossining NY, also known as “The

Crotonville Experience”, and the 286-acre

campus of the 120-residential room “Boeing

Leadership Center” in Florissant, MO are fine

models Illustration 38). Each focuses on training, executive development, and a corporate

commitment to the lifelong learning that characterizes a learning organization. The Boeing

Leadership Center, for example, has and offers

training slots in most of its group development

courses to customers, including the U.S. government. Among these courses are Strategy,

The Strategic Mindset, Marketing, “Leading

From the Middle,” “Leading From Below,” and

Executive Development. 

Group development is essential to inculcate

the spirit and to create the culture of the

“new” Defense Intelligence Agency. Group

development links all staff to the mission —

from finance to human resources to contracting to analysts — so all have a sense of purpose, importance, and relevance to the

mission. Composing cross-functional, cross-
95

generational, Joint Service, and cognitively

diverse groups helps the “new” Defense Intelligence Agency in developing resident

attributes as well as discrete tactical skills. 

Begin Building A Cadre Of Experts

The Defense Intelligence Agency needs “signature” people and “flagship” products. If the

Defense Intelligence Agency seizes the vision to

“Be a partnership of highly skilled teammates

helping prevent destructive conflict from erupting, and helping predetermine the outcome of

destructive conflict in favor of the United States,”

it will need a different cadre than a more modest

vision would require. A more modest vision—

“Be a partnership of highly skilled people and

leading edge technologies providing warfighters,

policymakers, and planners with assured access

to required intelligence”—risks merely fixing

what is judged broken. 

Building the cadre begins with the identification of role models to mobilize the Advisory Board and the identification of a multitiered coalition of change advocates within

the Defense Intelligence Agency. These role

models — “signature people” — create

behavioral expectations. “Signature people” also create opportunities for a high

degree of interaction with operators, journalists, area experts, analysts, and other

staff throughout the organization. This is a

first step toward building the eventual contingent workforce that will magnify the

Defense Intelligence Agency’s capability.

(Illustration 39.)

Summary: We Are Behind

In summary, as you read this we are nearly

halfway through 2003. If fundamental change

is the goal, our judgment is that we are

behind. Our opinion is that we can — and

should — both catch up and get ahead. 

Illustration 38: “Harry’s Place”: The Two Hundred-Seat Dining 

Room of the Boeing Leadership Center

Illustration 39: Starting to Build the Workforce

■ Recognize and reward new behaviors. dissuade old.

■ Move hiring processes to be ‘decentralized competitive’

and ‘centralized supported.’

■ Focus on the building of technology skills and technology

 capability.

■ Use the opportunity of the hiring of Chief Training Officer

 and the redevelopment of training to create a training

 program that not only builds skills, but builds the culture

 through group training processes.

■ Begin building a cadre of experts. Start with the Advisory

 Board, but create expectations and opportunities analysts

 and other staff throughout the organization for a high

 degree of interaction with operators, journalists, regional

 experts, and others.
97

Appendix 1 

External Interviewees for DIA Workforce of the Future

George Apostolakis Director, MIT ESD Counter-Terrorism Program 

Peter Baxter Director, Jane’s Information Group

Paul Bergamo VP and CTO, Liberty Mutual

Brett Biddington Space Initiative Manager, Cisco Systems

Scott Bradner Senior Technical Consultant, Harvard University

Dennis Bushnell Chief Scientist, NASA Langley Research Center

Scott Charney Chief Security Strategist, Microsoft

Anthony Cicco Chief Mission Support Officer, GAO

Joseph Convery DIA Representative to NORTHCOM

MGen Dave Deptula USAF, ACC/XP

Darleen Druyun Deputy General Manager for Missile Defense Systems, Boeing

Carol Dumaine Director, Global Futures Partnership, CIA

Bran Ferren Co Chairman and Chief Creative Officer, Applied Minds

Jim FitzSimonds Naval War College

Daniel Hastings Professor, Department of Aeronautics, MIT

Rich Haver Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence

LtGen Daniel James, III Director, Air National Guard

Lt. General Jay W. Kelly (USAF, Ret.) Senior VP, National Security Solutions Group, ManTech Corporation

Penny Lehtola Outreach Director, ARDA

Bob Leonhard Military Theorist, Author, Fighting by Minutes

Wilson Lowery Executive Assistant Director, Administration, FBI

Dennis McLain Manager, Defense and Intelligence Operations, Sun Microsystems

David Moschella Author, Customer-Driven IT

Col Jon Noetzel OSD Air Force Military Assistant (Net Assessment)

Joseph Nye Dean Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government 

Michael Paige Professor, Former Center Director, Xerox PARC

John Palguta Vice President, Partnership for Public Service 

Gene Partlow Vice President, Boeing Corporation

Marsha Marsh Vice President, Partnership for Public Service 

Holger Mey President and CEO, Institut fur Strategische Analyses

Proctor Reid National Academy of Engineering

Sami Saydjari CEO, Cyber Defense Agency

Howard Schmidt Chair, President’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, White House

Jeff Starr Office of the Secretary of Defense, Special Operations Low-Intensity Conflict

Mike Tavik NORTHCOM/J25

Alvin Toffler Author, futurist

Craig Vroom Special Assistant to NORTHCOM J2

CAPT Stu Yaap Commander of the Combined Intelligence & Fusion Center

Stephen Younger Director, Defense Threat Reduction Agency
99

Appendix 2

Critics of the intelligence community have been vocal.

Date Publication Author Title Comment

June 6, 1995 The Project on Intelligence Reform John A. Gentry A Framework for 

Reform of the U.S. 

Intelligence Community 

The major reason for the nation to mandate reform of the Intelligence Community is that for many years it has not performed well. 

The reason is not the demise of the Soviet regime. Taxpayers have 

not been and are not getting their money’s worth from this part of 

government. And, if history is the good guide it usually is, some 

people in uniform will pay heavy prices in blood one day for the 

errors of the Intelligence Community and its elected masters in the 

Executive Branch and overseers in Congress unless major 

reforms are promulgated soon. The ravages of years of bad leadership will take years to undo under the best of circumstances.

Fall 1997 Foreign Policy John Deutch Think Again: 

Terrorism

No combination of imaginable or affordable measures will give 

complete protection from terrorist threats. Nor should this be 

expected; after all, large armies do not stop all war, and effective 

police departments do not detect all crimes before they are committed. But it is reasonable to ask what protection can be 

employed against the range of threats. Not so long ago, the world 

endured a seemingly unstoppable sequence of airplane hijackings. The international community sought common ground, 

improved airline security, and found it possible to deter and limit 

such terrorist incidents. A disciplined and sustained international 

effort by intelligence and law enforcement agencies worldwide is 

required to impede terrorist threats.

1997 CIA Studies in IntelligenceRuss Travers The Coming Intelligence FailureAny huge bureaucracy has problems in various aspects of its 

operation, but, in this case, the most serious is the diminished ability to get the facts straight and to use them as building blocks for 

high-quality analysis. We are far ahead of any other institution in 

the world in terms of the ability to collect sensitive information. 

Corporately, however, the IC is getting to the point where in many 

instances we do not even know what we do not know. Generally 

speaking, fewer analysts have less time to read more traffic and 

still fewer can keep up with their part of an increasingly complicated world; analysts have little opportunity for reflection, much 

less longer term research (2). Consequently, they stand little 

chance of putting whatever analysis they do into context — a 

recipe for irrelevance, if not outright failure. Within our overall analytic effort, a lack of fusion and a lack of objectivity will be principally responsible for the IC failing the nation. 

November/

December 1999

The Bulletin of 

Atomic Scientists 

Craig Eisendrath Needed: More 

intelligent intelligence

Assuming that Pickering’s summary of how the United States 

came to bomb the embassy of the world’s most populous nation 

was accurate, it was a jarring wake-up call. The bombing was simply one more destructive failure in a long string of U.S. intelligence 

failures. 

And again, it offered proof that the U.S. intelligence system is 

badly in need of reform. If the bombing had been an isolated incident, it could possibly have been considered merely a “mistake.” 

But it was not an isolated incident. It was the product of the systemic error that characterizes U.S. intelligence. 
100

1999 RAND John Arquilla, 

David Ronfeldt, 

and Michele 

Zanini

Countering the 

New Terrorism

The netwar perspective suggests that for the foreseeable future, 

various forms networked forms will emerge, coexisting with and 

influencing traditional organizations. Such organizational diversity 

implies the need for a counterterrorism strategy that recognizes 

the differences among organizational designs and seeks to target 

the weaknesses... 

Networked organizations rely on information flows to function, and 

disruption of flows cripples their ability to coordinate actions. 

2000 Best Truth: Intelligence in the Information Age Bruce Berkowitz Chapter One: Providing Intelligence 

in a Changing 

World 

Because the Soviet threat was predominant and enduring, intelligence planning became predictable and incremental. Intelligence 

questions involved issues with two or three decades of history 

behind them...In other words, questions were evolutionary, not revolutionary...The fundamentals of each field rarely, if ever, changed 

radically. The sources and methodologies for analysis changed 

incrementally too...much of the technology that is at the heart of 

the Information Revolution is already being adopted by the Intelligence Community. What has not occurred is the change in thinking that needs to take place in order to take full advantage of this 

technology. This thinking needs to consider both the technology 

itself and changes in the ways people consumer and interact with 

information today. 

February 15, 

2001

U.S. Commission on 

National Security 

Sen. Gary Hart 

and Sen. Warren Rudman 

Roadmap for 

National Security: 

Imperative for 

Change, Phase III 

Report 

...the U.S. Intelligence Community is adjusting only slowly to the 

changed circumstances of the post-Cold War era. While the economic and political components have statecraft have assumed great 

prominence, military imperatives still largely drive the collection and 

analysis of intelligence. Neither has America’s overseas presence 

been properly adapted to the new economic, social, political, and 

security realities of the 21st Century...it [the Intelligence Community] 

failed to warn of Indian nuclear tests or to anticipate the rapidity of 

missile developments in Iran and North Korea...Steep declines in 

human intelligence resources over the last decade have been forcing dangerous tradeoffs between coverage of important countries, 

regions, and functional challenges. Warfighters in the field are often 

frustrated because the granulated detail of intelligence that they 

need rarely gets to them, even though they know that it exists somewhere in the intelligence system. 

July/ August 

2001

Washington Monthly Loch Johnson The CIA’s Weakest 

Link

In the aftermath of the Cole bombing, former Secretary of the 

Navy John Lehman criticized “the obscene failure of intelligence” 

to anticipate the attack. He dismissed America’s intelligence 

efforts as a “$30-billion jobs program that takes the most wondrous products of space and electronic technology and turns them 

into useless mush.” 

This kind of criticism — along with the litany of disasters that preceded it — recently prompted President George W. Bush to order 

a comprehensive review of the nation’s intelligence capabilities. 

The review, due to arrive on the president’s desk by summer’s end, 

is designed to gauge how well equipped America’s secret agencies are to cope with the complex array of new and lingering challenges that confront the United States in the aftermath of the Cold 

War.To judge from their recent record, the answer may be: not too 

well.

September 27, 

2001

Jane’s Defence 

Weekly 

No Author Cited Where does US 

intelligence go 

from here — and 

were they really to 

blame? 

At the risk of stating the all-too-obvious, the terrorist attacks in 

New York and Washington are proof of very serious shortcomings 

in the operational methods and intelligence-gathering capabilities 

of the various US agencies...As one very well-informed source 

close to US intelligence told JID, “The main problem is not a lack of 

information — that comes in all the time — but that we simply don’t 

have sufficient skilled operatives capable of analysing the intelligence we receive in a timely manner and identifying those who 

pose a real risk to our interests.”

Date Publication Author Title Comment

Appendix 2 (Continued)
101

November 9, 

2001

Pacific Council on 

International Policy 

No Author Cited An exclusive interview with Dr. Gregory F. Treverton, 

Senior Fellow at 

the Pacific Council

Creativity is hard to legislate. But it seems to me we haven’t done 

enough hard and systematic thinking about very different adversaries. We need to do a lot more of what the military calls “red 

teaming,” in which you try to get inside the head of an opponent, 

imagine what the world looks like to him, imagine his operational 

codes, and then determine what tactics he might take. It also 

requires teams that bring to the task different specialties and different nationalities. I think we tend to treat adversaries as cardboard characters.

December 2001 National Defense 

Magazine 

John Stanton U.S. Intelligence 

Community 

Reaches Crossroads

The most widely voiced criticism of U.S. intelligence agencies is its 

over-reliance on high-tech surveillance, at the expense of human 

spying, known as HUMINT. Some critics observed that key U.S. 

intelligence agencies are organized under Cold War-era bureaucracies that no longer are suited to manage an asymmetric war 

against a worldwide network of nimble enemies. 

2001 PBS Frontline Interview Congressman 

Porter Goss (R, 

FL) House Permanent Select 

Committee on 

Intelligence 

Why Did U.S. Intelligence Fail on 

September 11th? 

We don’t have enough analysts. We are hopelessly underinvested 

in analysts. These are again, the language people, the people 

familiar with the culture, the people who have actually been on the 

street in Khartoum or wherever you want to go, who understand a 

little bit what this means. 

Sitting in a chair one way might mean something to one person; it 

might be unremarkable to somebody else. If you know the culture 

and see the way a person is gesturing with his hands or his feet or 

something, you get a message that you might not get if you don’t 

understand the culture. So it is critical that we have those people. 

We’re horrendously underinvested in them. ...

March 4, 2002 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 

Proliferation Report

Joseph CirincioneIntelligence Failure A major reason why the United States was so unprepared for the 

terrorist attacks of September 11 is that national threat assessments produced over the past few years have consistently pointed 

policy-makers in the wrong direction. Partisan political agendas 

distorted these assessments, and fundamentally misled and misdirected national security resources.

May 28, 2002 National Review 

Magazine Online

Mark Riebling The Real Intelligence FailureSpokesmen for both the FBI and CIA now insist the agencies are 

“communicating as never before.” But that’s what they say after 

every interagency snafu. And while they say it, our efforts to neutralize al Qaeda remain dangerously driven by attempts to both 

police and to spy. Unless Congress mandates one or the other 

approach, the road to future tragedies — as to so many intelligence failures in our past — will be paved with good but divided 

intentions.

September 20, 

2002

Congressional Joint 

Inquiry 

Eleanor Hill, 

Staff Director

The Intelligence 

Community’s 

Knowledge of the 

September 11 

Hijackers Prior to 

September 11, 

2001

Our review has confirmed that... there were missed opportunities 

by the Intelligence Community. In each area, there were indications of larger, systemic issues that, at least in part, drove those 

missed opportunities. And finally,...there were individuals within 

the Intelligence Community who recognized the importance of 

what was potentially at stake and tried, though ultimately without 

success, to get organizations within the Intelligence Community to 

do the same. 

September 25, 

2002

Op-Ed The Baltimore SunMelvin A. Goodman, Center for 

International Policy 

Intelligence Failure Demands a 

Shake-up

It turns out that [CIA] agents and operators in the field did their job, 

but that the bureaucrats at headquarters in Washington did virtually nothing. We had human and communications intelligence that 

linked the hijacking and weaponizing of aircraft and we had solid 

reporting from the field on Osama bin Laden’s modus operandi. 

But we lacked analytical assessments of the likelihood that terrorists would use airplanes as weapons.

Date Publication Author Title Comment

Appendix 2 (Continued)
102

October 8, 2002 Congressional Joint 

Inquiry

Eleanor Hill, 

Staff Director

Hearing on the 

Intelligence Community’s Response 

to Past Terrorist 

Attacks Against 

the United States 

from February 

1993 to September 2001

The main intelligence agencies often did not collaborate. In particular, 

the absence of an effective system for “hand offs” between the FBI, 

CIA, and NSA led to a gap in coverage with regard to international 

threats to the United States itself, and that should have received particular attention...the intelligence community made several impressive 

advances in fighting terrorism since the end of the Cold War, but may 

fundamental steps were not taken. Individual components of the 

Community scored impressive successes or strengthened their effort 

against terrorism, but important gaps remained...the Intelligence 

Community did not fully learn the lessons of past attacks. 

October 17, 

2002

Congressional Joint 

Inquiry 

Eleanor Hill, 

Staff Director 

Joint Inquiry Staff 

Statement 

While the specifics of the September 11th attacks were not known 

in advance, relevant information was available in the summer of 

2001. The collective significance of this information, was not, however recognized. Perhaps as a result, the information was not 

shared, in a timely and effective manner, both within the Intelligence Community and with other Federal Agencies. 

December 10, 

2002

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Senator Richard 

C. Shelby 

September 11 and 

the Imperative of 

Reform in the 

Intelligence 

Community —

Additional Views 

of Senator Richard 

C. Shelby 

As the Joint Inquiry Staff has noted in its presentations to the 

Committees, “despite the DCI’s declaration of war in 1998, there 

was no massive shift in budget or reassignment of personnel to 

counterterrorism until after September 11, 2001...

The IC’s methods of information-sharing before September 11 suffered from profound flaws, and in most respects still do. In order to 

overcome bureaucratic information-hoarding and empower analysts to do the work our national security requires them to do, we 

need to take decisive steps to reexamine the fundamental 

assumptions that have guided the IC’s approach to managing 

national security information. 

December 10, 

2002

Congressional Joint 

Inquiry 

Joint Inquiry 

Staff 

Final Report Although relevant information that is significant in retrospect 

regarding the attacks was available to the Intelligence Community 

prior to September 11, 2001, the Community too often failed to 

focus on that information and consider and appreciate its collective 

significance in terms of a probable terrorist attack. Neither did the 

Intelligence Community demonstrate sufficient initiative in coming 

to grips with the new transnational threats. Some significant 

pieces of information in the vast stream of data being collected 

were overlooked, some were not recognized as potentially significant at the time and therefore not disseminated, and some 

required additional action on the part of foreign governments 

before a direct connection to the hijackers could have been established. For all those reasons, the Intelligence Community failed to 

fully capitalize on available, and potentially important, information. 

January 26, 

2003

Washington Post Vernon Loeb When Hoarding 

Secrets Threatens 

National Security 

Intelligence reformers have argued for years that the CIA and 

other major intelligence agencies are obsessed with guarding 

“secrets” and thus miss real intelligence that’s all around them... 

The “all-source” analysts at the CIA weren’t really doing “allsource” work because their own brethren on the operations side, 

not to mention the FBI and the National Security Agency, were 

holding out on them. 

Some of the hoarding occurred because they didn’t have the technology to make sharing possible. Some took place because they 

didn’t even know what they had in their own cases files and on 

their intercept tapes. And some came because they thought certain secrets were too sensitive to share, either to protect sources 

and methods, or preserve their own unique standing in the intelligence pecking order.

Date Publication Author Title Comment

Appendix 2 (Continued)
103

2003 Cambridge University Press Gregory F. Treverton Reshaping 

National Intelligence for an Age 

of Information

Cold War intelligence lived in a world where information was 

scarce; it relied on secrets not otherwise available. Its business 

was those secrets. Now, though, it faces an era of information. 

Information and its sources are mushrooming, and so are the 

technologies for moving information rapidly around the globe. 

Given these circumstances, the business of intelligence is not 

longer just to provide secrets; rather its business is to provide 

high-quality understanding of the world using all resources. 

January 2003 US Naval Institute 

Proceedings 

Lieutenant Commander Mike 

Steadman, U.S. 

Navy

Pacific Faces Crisis in Intel Analysis

A fundamental problem of intelligence is that we do not exploit fully 

the body of material we collect. It is recognized widely all the way 

to the national intelligence level that we, the intelligence community, swallow far more data than we can digest. Valuable nuggets of 

information lay unprocessed on the cutting-room floor 

For military personnel at JICPAC, two years in one analyst job 

would be considered lengthy. Without historical references to consult, analysis tends to be based primarily on experiences during 

the tenure of the resident “expert.”

February 10, 

2003

Washington Post Vernon Loeb Rumsfeld’s Man 

on the Intelligence 

Front: Interview 

with Rich Haver 

“Current operations had received pretty much full funding... So the 

money was taken out of the future. We mortgaged the future to pay 

for the present. The only thing you [Cheney] should be surprised 

about in the next four years is if you’re not surprised,” Haver recalled.

Underfunding the Intelligence Community for most of the previous 

eight years — personnel had fallen 26 percent since 1991. The 

intelligence agencies lacked analytic depth, they were standing still 

technologically, and they were suffering from serious morale problems.

“If there was such a thing as an average person inside the intelligence community, in the year 2000, their attitude was, what they 

do isn’t as important as it used to be,” Haver said.

February 19, 

2003

Christian Science 

Monitor

Stansfield Turner Reforming IntelligenceIt confirmed a lack of adequate communication among the 14 

intelligence agencies that make up our intelligence community. 

None of us who have been associated with US intelligence were at 

all surprised that these agencies would place their parochial interests above those of the nation. Such inexcusably faulty performance cannot be risked again. All that has been done since Sept. 

11 is official exhortation to correct the situation. The new Homeland Security Bill does nothing to straighten this out. 

February 27, 

2003

Hearing. Senate 

Armed Services 

Committee

Dr. Stephen A. 

Cambone

Answers to 

Advance Questions

The most pressing challenge facing the DoD is arranging itself to 

operate in an environment where surprise is commonplace. 

Defense intelligence has an important role to play in helping to 

avert surprise and mitigating its effects when it occurs. Defense 

intelligence is critical to enabling the Department to adjust its policies, structure, posture, and capabilities and plans to operate in 

this environment. Those activities need to be attentive to the possibility of surprise and will need to improve its ability to warn of 

impending surprises.

March 4, 2003 Los Angeles Times Greg Miller Military Wants Its 

Own Spies: 

Moving onto the 

CIA’s turf, the Pentagon is seeking a 

cadre of operatives for global 

reconnaissance 

and the fight 

against terrorism.

Congressional aides said intelligence committee members in the 

Senate and House have yet to see details of the plans. But they 

noted that there is broad support among lawmakers for expansion 

of the nation’s ability to collect human intelligence — an area identified as a major shortfall by investigators of the September 11 

attacks. 

Intelligence experts said the new program is a logical step at a 

time when the September 11 attacks and the ongoing terrorist 

threat have exposed inadequacies in the nation’s intelligence 

capabilities.

Date Publication Author Title Comment

Appendix 2 (Continued)
104

April 5, 2003 Los Angeles Times No Author Cited Intelligence On 

Iraq Seen As 

‘Weak’

...officials said intelligence out of Baghdad since the attack had 

largely dried up, despite expectations that the enormous military 

pressure bearing down on Hussein’s regime would prompt a wave 

of defections and a flood of information by this point in the war.

Pentagon officials this week expressed concern that intelligence 

on the Iraqi leadership was “weak” despite the daring work of CIA 

informants.

One senior Pentagon official struck a blind pose — eyes closed, 

arms extended — when asked about the quality of intelligence that 

war planners were getting.

“Nobody can tell us where anybody is,” the official said. “Nobody 

can tell us what buildings they’re in so that we can bomb them. I’d 

call that weak.”

Intelligence officials dispute that characterization but acknowledge 

that they have had limited success in locating Hussein and other 

high-interest officials inside Baghdad. They also stress that it is an 

exceedingly difficult assignment.

May 27, 2003 Op-Ed in the Berkshire Eagle (MA) No Author Cited Congress finds its 

voice

The administration assured Americans that Saddam Hussein was 

stockpiling chemical and biological weapons and was prepared to 

use them against U.S. troops, and the failure to find them will 

make it impossible for the White House to make a similar case 

against Syria, North Korea or other rogue nations. Americans 

need to know if this prediction was the result of the latest intelligence failure on the part of the CIA.

2003 Yale University 

Press 

Lt. Gen. William 

E. Odom, US 

Army Ret. 

Fixing Intelligence 

for a More Secure 

America 

The events of 11 September 2001 cast a dark shadow over the 

Intelligence Community. Why was there no intelligence available to 

the war of the Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the 

Pentagon? No intelligence failure since 1941 has been as 

great...Once again the United States found itself at war and ill-prepared to fight. 

Date Publication Author Title Comment

Appendix 2 (Continued)
105

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1999, pp 36 - 49. 
115

End Notes 1 This Agency was the forerunner of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, or

“PFIAB” May 6, 1960.

2 In testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, February 11, 2003, the Defense

Intelligence Community was defined as being composed of DIA, the Service Intelligence Centers, and the Combatant Command Intelligence Centers. The larger “Intelligence Community”

now includes the Defense Intelligence Community, plus the CIA, the FBI, the NRO, and the

National Security Agency. 

3 John P. Kotter, Leading Change (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1996), p. 16.

4 Two examples: digital consumer photography and business unit transformation. Digital photography and cameras — and the multi-million dollar shoulder products industries that digital

photography spawned — required a revolution in the industry. One or two providers could not

introduce the revolution. Likewise, we know from our experience in business unit transformation that introducing fundamental and good change in a business unit is extremely difficult

unless adjacent business units and the corporate staff align with the change. Unless there is

horizontal and vertical alignment across and within the community, changes in the Defense

Intelligence Agency are unlikely to be durable, if they succeed at all. 

5 Not for attribution interview with Chief Scientist, Fortune 500 Company conducted by Toffler

Associates on 27 March 2003. 

6 The State of California, for example, has a GDP that already ranks it among the top 10 economies of the world.

7 Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), p. 19.

8 Not for attribution interview with Chief Scientist, Government Agency conducted by Toffler

Associates on 21 February 2003.

9 Bruce D. Henderson, “The Origin of Strategy,” Harvard Business Review, November 1, 1989.

Reprint Number 89605.

10 Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, “Unrestricted Warfare: Assumptions on War and Tactics in

the Age of Globalization” (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, 1999), p.149.

FBIS translation.

11 Ralph D. Sawyer, translator and commentator, with Mei-chun Sawyer, “T’ai Kung’s Six Secret

Teachings,” The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China [Wu ching ch’i shu], (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), pp. 68-69. 

12 The Honorable Stephen A. Cambone, “Transformation Of The Submarine Community,” April

26, 2003.

13 “Rich Man, Wise Man...,” The London Observer, March 10, 2002.

14 National Strategy For Combating Terrorism, February 2003, p. 9.
116

15 M-Day equals beginning of mobilization. C-Day equals beginning of hostilities. D-Day equals

beginning of deployment. When all are the same day, the war started with no warning and the

U.S. military was forced to mobilize, deploy and fight simultaneously.

16 Not for attribution interview with SES conducted by Toffler Associates on 19 March 2003.

17 See Hughes, Thomas, “The Cult of the Quick,” Aerospace Power Journal, winter 2001.

18 See “Are You Ready?” Global Futures Partnership, Central Intelligence Agency, July 2001.

19 David Ronfeldt, “Beware the Hubris-Nemesis Complex: A Concept for Leadership Analysis,”

(Santa Monica CA: RAND MR-461, 1994), p. 31. 

20 Jeanne Kirkpatrick called the Soviet Union “Upper Volta with rockets.” The rockets commanded our attention for three generations.

21 Not for attribution interview with Chairman, US Government Board conducted by Toffler Associates on 11 March 2003.

22 Not for attribution interview with Vice President, Fortune 500 Corporation conducted by Toffler Associates on 21 March 2003.

23 259 million online users worldwide by year-end 1999. 490 million Internet users by year-end

2002. See: http://www.interconnection.org/background/statistics.htm.

24 http://www.aps.org/apsnews/1299/129914.html.

25 MSNBC, “Cray Unveils Fastest Supercomputer,” 14 November 2002.

26 Admiral William A. Owens, USN, “Vision Force 2005: The Pending Revolution,” VCJCS Briefing, 3/95.

27 Not for attribution interview with DISES, Defense Intelligence Agency, conducted by Toffler

Associates on 7 March 2003.

28 Not for attribution interview with DISES, Defense Intelligence Agency, conducted by Toffler

Associates on 20March 2003.

29 Not for attribution interview with Major General conducted by Toffler Associates/Dove Consulting on 20March 2003.

30 Not for attribution interview with DISES, Defense Intelligence Agency, conducted by Toffler

Associates on 17 March 2003.

31 http://www.fda.gov/cber/cntrbio/cntrbio.htm.

32 Not for attribution interview with Group Manager, Fortune 500 Corporation conducted by Toffler Associates on 28 February 2003.

33 Not for attribution interview with DISES, Defense Intelligence Agency, conducted by Toffler

Associates on 27 March 2003.

34 “Navy’s New Affordable Cruise Missiles Ready For Use, If Requested,” Inside The Navy, March

24, 2003, Pg. 1.

35 But we can’t be sure because the absence of observation, the only way to leave the target

untouched, would also leave it unobserved. Hence, uncertainty. 

36 Not for attribution interview with Fortune 500 CTO conducted by Toffler Associates on 

11 March 2003.
117

37 Not for attribution interview with Chief Scientist, US Government Agency conducted by Toffler

Associates on 21 February 2003.

38 Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma (Harper Collins, 2000), page xxvii.

39 Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck, The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business, Harvard Business School Press, 2001, pages 2 - 3.

40 Not for attribution interview with IC member conducted by Toffler Associates/Dove Consulting

on March 13, 2003.

41 Dr. Dennis K. Leedom, “Sensemaking Symposium Final Report October 23-25, 2001,” Command and Control Research Program (CCRP), Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for

Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence, 2001, Page 27.

42 Google.com web site: http://www.google.com/help/about_news_search.html, as check on

May 12, 2003.

43 Bob Leonhard, Fighting by Minutes: Time and the Art of War, from an interview conducted by

Toffler Associates/Dove Consulting on February 14, 2003.

44 Not for attribution interview with noted academic conducted by Toffler Associates/Dove Consulting on February 27, 2003.

45 Not for attribution interview with media thought leader by Toffler Associates/Dove Consulting

on March 3, 2003.

46 Not for attribution interview with Intelligence Community leader by Toffler Associates/Dove

Consulting on March 20, 2003.

47 Not for attribution interview with Intelligence Community leader by Toffler Associates/Dove

Consulting on February 24, 2003.

48 Kees van der Heijden, Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation (John Wiley & Sons, 1996).

49 Art Kleiner, Karen Stephenson’s Quantum Theory of Trust, Strategy and Business Magazine

available at: http://www.strategy-business.com/press/article/?ptagps=LCShk0&art=9056282&pg=6#authors as of May 12, 2003.

50 Adapted from a presentation by Dr. Karen Stephenson before the Conference Board May 2002,

Strategy and Business Magazine, available at: http://www.strategy-business.com/press/article/?ptag-ps=LCShk0&art=9056282&pg=6#authors as of May 12, 2003.

51 Thomas A. Stewart et al, “The 2003 HBR List: Breakthrough Business Ideas for Tomorrow’s

Business Agenda, Harvard Business Review, April 2003, Page 96.

52 Not for attribution interview conducted with SES in federal law enforcement Community , conducted by Toffler Associates/Dove Consulting on March 27, 2003.

53 The National Security Strategy of the Unites States of America, September 2002.

54 Adapted from Thomas A. Stewart et al, “The 2003 HBR List: Breakthrough Business Ideas for

Tomorrow’s Business Agenda, Harvard Business Review,” April 2003, Page 92.

55 Toffler, Alvin and Heidi, “The War of Pyramids vs. Pancakes and How It Will Shape the

Future,” Los Angeles Times Syndicate International, 2002.

56 Toffler, Alvin and Heidi, Powershift, (Bantam, New York, 1990).
118

57 Reference to an article by Tom Peters, entitled “The Brand Called You”, Fast Company Magazine, August/September 1997, Page 83.

58 Second and Third Wave Economies are a reference to Toffler Associates model of the history

and future of economies as symbolized by the predominant industry attributes of the period.

59 Thomas A. Stewart et al, “The 2003 HBR List: Breakthrough Business Ideas for Tomorrow’s

Business Agenda, Harvard Business Review, April 2003, Page 96.

60 Toffler, Alvin and Heidi, “The War of Pyramids vs. Pancakes and How It Will Shape the

Future,” Los Angeles Times Syndicate International, 2002.

61 Not for attribution interview conducted by Toffler Associates with a Defense Intelligence

Agency advisory board member on March 21, 2003.

62 Toffler, Alvin and Heidi, “The War of Pyramids vs. Pancakes and How It Will Shape the Future,”

Los Angeles Times Syndicate International, 2002.

63 HBR, pg. 93.

64 Toffler, Alvin and Heidi, “The War of Pyramids vs. Pancakes and How It Will Shape the

Future,” Los Angeles Times Syndicate International, 2002.

65 Rumsfeld, Donald, Report to the President, 2002.

66 Not for attribution interview conducted by Toffler Associates with a Defense Intelligence

Agency executive on March 7, 2003.

67 Less, of course, the French Republic, which will continue the irreversible decline it began in

1870

68 See Workshop Report, “New Warning Lessons Needed,” The Ecology of Warning: How the

Organizational Environment Affects Strategic Intelligence, Global Futures Partnership, Central

Intelligence Agency, May 29-30, 2002.

69 Adapted from Garratt, Bob and Robert A. G. Monks, Thin on Top: Why corporate governance

matters and how to measure, manage, and improve board performance (Brealey, Yarmouth, Maine,

2003).

70 Garratt, Bob and Robert A. G. Monks, Thin on Top: Why corporate governance matters and how to

measure, manage, and improve board performance (Brealey, Yarmouth, Maine, 2003).

71 Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo, Linked, The New Science of Networks (Perseus, Cambridge, MA, 2002).

72 “The New Intelligence ‘Order’: A View from 2010,” Global Futures Partnership, Central Intelligence Agency, April 22. 2003. 

73 ASD, C3I, 2003, http://www.c3i.osd.mil/homepage.html, 2003.

74 Los Angeles Times, “Military Wants Its Own Spies,” March 4, 2003, Pg. 1.

75 Address by Under Secretary of Defense (AT&L) E.C. Aldridge, Jr., “Turning Point for Missile

Defense,” August 21, 2002. Emphasis in the original. 

76 From a meeting with the Deputy Director, Signals Intelligence, NSA, July 2002.

77 Not for attribution Intelligence Community thought leader interview conducted by Toffler

Associates on March 25, 2003.
119

78 Bob Leonhard, Fighting by Minutes: Time and the Art of War, from an interview conducted by

Toffler Associates/Dove Consulting on February 14, 2003.

79 Professor Daniel Hastings, MIT, from an interview conducted by Toffler Associates/Dove Consulting team on March 31, 2003. 

80 Not for attribution interview with Intelligence Community Thought Leader conducted by Toffler Associates and Dove Consulting on March 17, 2003. 

81 Not for attribution private sector defense and space industry executive interview, conducted

by Toffler Associates on February 28, 2003. 

82 Interview with Dr. Ron Sanders, Office of Personnel Management, for Defense Intelligence

Agency Workforce of the Future Project, March 25, 2003.

83 Not for attribution interview with Intelligence Community Thought Leader conducted by Toffler Associates on March 3, 2003. 

84 Not for attribution interview with Intelligence Community Thought Leader conducted by Toffler Associates on March 3, 2003. 

85 Not for attribution interview with Intelligence Community Thought Leader conducted by Toffler Associates on March 19, 2003. 

86 Broad, William, “The Impossible Task for America’s Spies,” New York Times, May 11, 2003.

87 The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September, 2002.

88 Not for attribution interview conducted by Toffler Associates with an authority on creativity,

management and DoD, March 28, 2003.

89These include the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Characterized as the “most widely used personality inventory in the world.” According to http://www.cpp-db.com/products/mbti/

index.asp , “the MBTI(r) instrument provides an accurate picture of a person’s personality

type. The MBTI(r) instrument determines preferences on four dichotomies:

■ Extraversion-Introversion (describes where people prefer to focus their attention and get

their energy-from the outer world of people and activity or their inner world of ideas and

experiences) 

■ Sensing-Intuition (describes how people prefer to take in information-focused on what is

real and actual or on patterns and meanings in data) 

■ Thinking-Feeling (describes how people prefer to make decisions-based on logical analysis

or guided by concern for their impact on others) 

■ Judging-Perceiving (describes how people prefer to deal with the outer world-in a planned

orderly way, or in a flexible spontaneous way) 

Combinations of these preferences result in 16 distinct personality types. Understanding characteristics unique to each personality type provides insight on how they influence an individual’s way of communicating and interacting with others.”

Screening tools also include tests for creativity. According to Dr. Curt Bonk, of Indiana University, there are more than 20 of these available http://www.indiana.edu/~bobweb/Handout/

cretv_6.html :

1. Exercise in Divergent Thinking (CAP Packet) 

2. Exercise in Divergent Feeling (CAP Packet) 

3. The Williams Scale (CAP Packet) 
120

4. Wallas & Kogan Tests 

5. Monitor Tests of Creative Potential 

6. How Do You Think (Davis) 

7. Structure of the Intellect: (SOI; Guilford Tests: Contents, Operations, Products) 

8. Group Inventory for Finding Creative Talent: (i.e., Davis: GIFFI I/11, GIFT, PRIDE) 

9. Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) 

10. Adjective Check List 

11. Getzels and Jackson Tests 

12. Creative Attitude Survey (Schaeffer) 

13. Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement (Torrance) 

14. Thinking Creativity with Sounds and Words (Torrance) 

15. Barron-Welsh Art Scale 

16. Remote Associates Tests (RAT) 

17. The Creative Reasoning Test: (20 items to assess creativity using riddles) 

18. Biographical Inventory-Creativity 

19. Instruments assessing creative products 

20. The Creativity Behavior Inventory 

21. Khatena-Torrance Creative Perception Inventory: tests for personal acceptance of authority,

self-confidence, inquisitiveness, awareness of others, and disciplined imagination.

Finally, there are tests for psychological health. The most widely used is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) http://www.pearsonassessments.com/assessments/

tests/mmpi_2.htm and its successor the MMPI-2(tm). According to Pearson Assessments, a clinical and career testing firm: 

“The MMPI-2 test’s contemporary normative sample and extensive research base help make it

the gold standard in assessment for a wide variety of settings. The test can be used to help:

■ Assess major symptoms of social and personal maladjustment. 

■ Identify suitable candidates for high-risk public safety positions. 

■ Support classification, treatment, and management decisions in criminal justice and correctional settings. 

■ Give a strong empirical foundation for a clinician’s expert testimony. 

■ Assess medical patients and design effective treatment strategies, including chronic pain

management. 

■ Evaluate participants in substance abuse programs and select appropriate treatment

approaches. 

■ Support college and career counseling recommendations. 

■ Provide valuable insight for marriage and family counseling

90 Not-for-Attribution Interview, July 1999.

91 See note 11 above. 
121

92 According to General Electric, the company has long been known for developing some of the

best leaders in business and some of the most widely practiced business techniques. Worldwide, GE invests about $1 billion annually on training and education programs — from assembly lines to corporate classrooms to boardrooms. Over 30,000 students, including non-Boeing

attendees, have graduated from the Leadership Center since it opened in March 1999. The

Center has, according to press reports, a $30 million annual operating budget. According to

Boeing: “The Leadership Center has three residential lodges, with a total of 120 private rooms,

a dining room that seats 200, a commons area, and a workshop building. The workshop has

two large classrooms, four medium classrooms, a lecture hall, and 21 breakout rooms. An

underground ballroom, built in 1946, has been incorporated into the Leadership Center and is

used as a meeting and dining place.”