Good book about the national intelligence architecture of the United States of America, with specific focus on its growth and development since September 11, 2001 and expansion of counter-terrorism operations. Mr. Aid chronicled the size, make up, technology enablers, policies, processes, capabilities and limitations of the Intelligence Community (IC) over the last decade.
This book highlighted this challenge by analyzing the attempt to improve intelligence capabilities since 2001 via complex digital and sensor technology and data intensive systems. However, as the technical collection capability grew, the analytical processing and exploitation capability and quality declined. Analysts were flooded with data and often times unable to find or link key data together to provide policy makers and military commanders with increased clarity of national or regional security threats, their operations or intentions. However, technology did contribute to multiple impactful (and controversial) intelligence operations.
Increasingly, intelligence and covert operations featured unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). These systems offered additional collection capabilities to integrate with other sources of intelligence, but they also offered a new ability to eliminate time sensitive or fleeting targets. The book discussed how the Bush and Obama Administrations frequently relied on systems such as drones to perform targeted killings of terrorist threats.