Target-Centric Network Modeling

Case Studies in Analyzing Complex Intelligence Issues

Robert M. Clark, William L. Mitchell

• Publisher: CQ Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781483316994
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Inteligencia y espionaje

In Target-Centric Network Modeling: Case Studies in Analyzing Complex Intelligence Issues, authors Robert Clark and William Mitchell take an entirely new approach to teaching intelligence analysis. Unlike any other book on the market, it offers case study scenarios using actual intelligence reporting formats, along with a tested process that facilitates the production of a wide range of analytical products for civilian, military, and hybrid intelligence environments. Readers will learn how to perform the specific actions of problem definition modeling, target network modeling, and collaborative sharing in the process of creating a high-quality, actionable intelligence product. The case studies reflect the complexity of twenty-first century intelligence issues by dealing with multi-layered target networks that cut across political, economic, social, technological, and military issues. Working through these cases, students will learn to manage and evaluate realistic intelligence accounts.

Part I Process and Methodology

1 Introduction

There are no single node targets in intelligence. Even when we are concerned just with a person, organization, object, or location, our target is associated with some network—usually with many networks—that are essential to understanding the target. These networks have become more complex over the years, largely because of advances in communications technologies. The ones of intelligence interest now are transorganizational and transnational.

The toughest job for intelligence analysts in any field—national policy, military operations, or law enforcement—is to deal with networks. Most of the major challenges facing governments today come from organized networks with established and identifiable infrastructures. These networks are well adapted to their operational environment and capable of surviving and accommodating substantial military, economic, and political changes. Countering them is a difficult task and requires an intense intelligence effort. 1 For this reason, the cases in this workbook are devoted to analyzing target networks.

A formal methodology for dealing with complex networks is outlined in this chapter and the next: target network modeling is an answer to one of intelligence’s most pernicious problems today: how to make sense of and quickly communicate to other members of the intelligence team (and to customers) the morass of disparate pieces of intelligence that comprise any complex problem. The term customer is used in this workbook to refer to the intelligence customer in general (who may be a military commander, government leader, or law enforcement executive). In some cases, one type of customer, such as the military commander, will be specified.

Target network modeling provides a blueprint for understanding and operating against a well-defined activity—such as conventional or unconventional warfare, militant extremism, counterinsurgency, terrorism, and organized criminal activity. Reduced to its basics, the methodology relies on decomposition and visualization techniques to facilitate the development and communication of a shared situational awareness (SA) and understanding:

Situational awareness ensures the customer (particularly in the military theater) has the right level of knowledge to put new data and information into context to make rational decisions and take appropriate actions.

Situational understanding goes beyond that: it concerns the perception and interpretation of the particular situation which provides the context, insight, and foresight required for effective decision-making. 2

The two concepts sound similar, and in fact, they draw from the same target network model (TNM). The difference is that SA is more descriptive, while situational understanding (SU) is more analytical, leading to the foresight needed for accurate prediction. Consider an insurgent group that the intelligence customer might wish to negotiate with. SA is achieved by a network diagram identifying the group’s decision makers and their objectives (descriptive). SU comes from a deeper analysis of the model such as recognizing that all of the decision makers in the group are men past middle age, indicating that the target organization is patriarchal in nature or their social relationships are driven by men (explanation). Therefore, the customer knows to choose an elderly male to negotiate with the group. As another example, SA can be achieved by a list of high-value targets for attack to decimate a terrorist group (descriptive). SU is derived by having the contextual insight or foresight that attacking some of the targets on the list would have severe political or social repercussions, perhaps offsetting the military gains achieved.

The decisive advantage of target network modeling for intelligence teams is timeliness. In rapidly evolving situations, a TNM can be amended and disseminated within seconds. Long written narratives are cumbersome and tend not to get read after the first iteration.

In tackling an intelligence issue, TNMs are used first as a means to assimilate data into an organized format by the analyst who creates them to promote his own understanding. Second, TNMs facilitate the communication of that understanding to others who can help improve the model—fellow analysts, intelligence collectors, decision makers, operational planners, law enforcement professionals, and military commanders—across organizational boundaries. And, perhaps most critically, TNMs are a vehicle for conveying the complexity of a situation to customers in a fashion that they can understand.

Target network modeling is also groundbreaking because it inherently provides a mechanism for tracking the historic development of targets, operational environments, or narratives over time. Why is this important? It is because the crux of intelligence is not about looking at a snapshot. It is about analyzing patterns over time (several years, a couple of weeks, or even a day when tracking terrorists) in order to engage in informed estimative analysis.

Target network modeling makes use of the target-centric approach to intelligence analysis that is detailed in the companion textbook by Robert M. Clark, Intelligence Analysis: A Target-Centric Approach. It employs three overarching concepts: problem modeling, target network modeling, and collaboratively sharing the models, which are briefly outlined next.

The Problem Model

An intelligence analyst cannot develop a TNM properly without first thinking critically about the intelligence problem or issue. If this step is skipped, the analyst may later exclude things that should be part of the TNM or include things that should not be part of it. In the first case, the analyst answers the wrong question. In the second case, she produces answers that don’t help her customer.

The exercises in this workbook provide statements of the intelligence problem or issue upfront in each case study. These statements are typical of what customers provide to analysts. They are very general and usually reflect the customer’s view of the problem. For example, the military scenarios present the problem statement in the form of a “commander’s intent,” which simply states the commander’s objective. The job of the intelligence analyst is to flesh out this general guidance by creating a problem model. The customer’s question or guidance is just a starting point. Sometimes the customer asks the wrong question. Even when the initial question is well posed, intelligence customers seldom are able to think about all of the factors that bear on the problem. That becomes the analyst’s job.

Intelligence problems always have several factors that have to be considered at the beginning. That happens because we must deal not only with networks but also with systems—which have a definite meaning and a special significance in intelligence analysis. So let’s spend some time upfront explaining just what we mean by a “system.”

Major weapons systems employed by a military force are comprised of many interacting subsystems, often causing them to be referred to as a “system of systems.” A main battle tank, for example, requires ammunition and fuel. It must be operated by a crew. The crew requires training. The tank needs frequent maintenance and repair of battle damage. It has to have sensors to detect, identify, and attack targets and also communications to permit it to function effectively in the battlespace. Without all of these things—and more—that comprise the weapons system, the tank is just an ineffective hunk of metal.

Many systems of intelligence interest have little or nothing to do with the military, though. There are health care systems, law enforcement systems, and financial and banking systems; the list is very long. The case studies in this workbook all deal with networks, but they also deal with systems. Criminal cartels and gangs—the subjects of Chapters 3, 4, 7, and 11—are both networks and systems of systems. Some case studies deal with military systems, or a mix of military and nonmilitary systems—Chapters 10, 13, and 14, for example. The case study in Chapter 12 focuses on a single military system, but even there civilian matters intrude.

The development of systems theory and systems thinking goes back many decades. In the 1960s, the U.S. military defined four top-level systems through which a state exercises its power, which the military called “Instruments of National Power”: political, military, economic, and psychosocial. Over the years, there have been several iterations of this breakdown. The current one, used frequently in this workbook, is political, military, economic, society, infrastructure, and information, or PMESII.

Rarely, if ever, will an intelligence problem only include one of these factors or systems. Complex international issues typically involve them all. The events of the Arab Spring in 2011, the Syrian uprising that began that year, and the Ukrainian crisis of 2014 involved all of the PMESII factors. But PMESII is also relevant in issues that are not necessarily international. Several of these factors are in play in local law enforcement events such as the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang case in this workbook.

Once the issue has been thought through, the next step is to formulate a problem breakdown, which will create a problem model, almost always in the form of a hierarchy. How that breakdown might be done is discussed, with examples, in Chapter 2.

The Target Network Model

Beginning from the problem model, the next step is to create a TNM. Target network modeling has two distinct advantages over other paradigms in terms of flexibility.

First, it is not bound by one structure—there are any number of different types of target models from which to choose to represent any given problem. In fact, for most situations, the analyst will begin by building interacting models of the target. A relationship model, such as the one that helped in going after Osama bin Laden, is common in intelligence. A relationship model will generally lead to a model on patterns of living—where do the people in those relationships live, conduct their business, practice their religion, or send their children to school? This intelligence will lead to geospatial models and so on. It is the intersection of these target models that will bear fruit along the way and in the end. Intelligence Analysis: A Target-Centric Approach devotes considerable time to detailing various model categories and the use of alternative models. Chapter 2 of this workbook presents a few of these.

The second advantage of building target models, already noted, is that they are easily and quickly modified—something that is not true of finished intelligence reports (INTREPs), for example. All intelligence situations are fluid; new information arrives and pieces of existing intelligence, having been proven invalid or irrelevant, must be discarded. The TNM provides a rapid means for the analyst to update the picture and disseminate it to working partners and/or customers. This capability is essential in the military theater or in a fast-developing situation such as the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013.

The target network is broadly defined here. It includes the opposing forces, persons, organizations, and their allies, of course. But you may, in some instances, need to include a model of your allied networks and neutral networks too. In fact, intelligence often has the job of assessing neutral and friendly networks, considering all of the PMESII dimensions.

Intelligence organizations, in fact, have a long history of assessing frie...