The intelligence cycle in the digital age

Abstract

This chapter introduces the intelligence cycle and highlights its uses and limitations as a representation of the intelligence process in the digital age. The discussion presents the various steps of the intelligence cycle in the first section—from planning to collection, processing to analysis, and dissemination to consumption—and the main political, institutional, regulatory, and ethical challenges they raise. The second section highlights the limitations of this model and looks at efforts to develop an alternative representation that captures the complexity of the intelligence process and related challenges. The third section explores the emergence of artificial intelligence and its implications for how we construe core intelligence activities and the process that links them. Despite its obvious limitations, we argue that the intelligence cycle remains a useful tool to highlight the complex ways in which humans and machines collaborate to turn raw data and information into finished intelligence for decision-makers to use.