Intelligence Analysis for Beginners

Marc Ambinder has a great post up about how to look at the information streaming out of Iran via video, Twitter, blog, mainstream media, etc., as if you were an intelligence analyst. It got me thinking about other issues than Iran, though. In keeping with Brittany's post earlier, everyone is going to have to learn how to handle Web 2.0 appropriately, and to interpret it. This seems to pose a particular challenge for the intelligence agencies: how do you tell what's real, what's the creation of folks living out part of their lives online, what's rumor, what's subjective, what's indicative? Online, everyone is living out a covert identity to a certain extent, and intel analysts will have to learn how covert those identities are, and what the forms they take mean. Fortunately, it seems, a new generation that's deeply steeped in Web 2.0 and social media may be well-primed to do that interpretive work. If we're doing it in our spare time and our social lives, and even for our jobs, already, it'll be easier for the intelligence community to find employees who are prepared to live, examine, and interpret in a new information regime.