Mr. Greg Treverton spoke on the changed nature of intelligence. At first he outlined the differences in intelligence now as compared with intelligence when our enemy was the USSR. Nowadays the problem is that there is a lot of data but there is a challenge when it comes to data processing. The second problem outlined was the lack of a clear narrative, a clear story about the enemy. We do not have a clear story about the terrorist enemy. We have stand alone factoids but we do not have a clear story. The third problem is that the US cannot count on the new enemy to act in a reliable way. We do not know how they will react.
Mr. Treverton went on to say that preventing terrorism puts a lot of pressure on the intelligence community. This problem stems from the fact that we cannot rely on the enemy to act in a certain reasonable way.
Initially the intelligence community was shocked but not surprised by the 9/11 attacks. This shock led to an increased cooperation between he inteligence agencies. A director of national inteligence was created. And in this new world order intelligence analysis was given prcedence over the law enforcement aspect of the intelligence agencies. The challange now is to make all the law enforcement agencies work together and share their intelligence and this includes police departments and sheriff’s departments.
In the question and answer session Mr. Treverton was asked to talk about international sharing of information. He explained that between the US and the Anglo-Saxon countries there is an institutionalized sharing of information. With other countries whose loyalties we cannot be sure of there is a quid pro quo kind of intelligence sharing. Pakistan falls into the latter category obviously and the challenge there is to create more over-lapping reas of interest between the US and Pakistan so that a more fruitful sharing of intelligence can take place.
With a very thought provoking Q&A session the talk came to an end and lunch was served.