A Decadal Survey of the Social and Behavioral Sciences A Research Agenda for Advancing Intelligence Analysis (2019) / Chapter Skim
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These potential adversaries will likely be motivated by both familiar and unforeseeable drivers, including the effects of global climate change, which will be manifest through such issues as scarcities of water, food, and other resources; extreme weather events; and dislocation of communities. Shifting strategic alliances, military conflicts, the presence of hostile terrorist factions and street gangs, and deteriorating local economies will further challenge stability.
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The charge to the Committee on a Decadal Survey of Social and Behavioral Sciences for Applications to National Security was to (1) develop understanding and direction regarding resources from SBS disciplines with the greatest potential to augment and support the intelligence analysis process and enhance national security, which the IC can use in determining its research priorities for the coming decade; and (2)
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To adapt to anticipated changes in both the security landscape and the way intelligence analysis is conducted, the IC will need the insights that come from deep understanding of cultural and political history and context, the way humans and social and political entities behave, and current trends and forces shaping the actions and decisions of individuals and groups. Integrating the understanding of human beings and social processes that comes from SBS research into the analyst's work as it evolves in the coming decade will be critical.
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CONCLUSION 5-1:1 Developing research on narratives, social net works, complex systems, and affect and emotion can enhance under standing of primary targets of intelligence analysis, the potential impact of actions taken by the Intelligence Community, and individual and social processes relevant to security threats. This research offers possi bilities for new tools, including but not limited to 1Conclusions are numbered according to the chapters in which they are introduced.
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It could also support the development of an ecosystem for intelligence analysis composed of human analysts and autonomous AI agents, supported by other technologies, with the capacity to derive meaning efficiently from multiple sources of information. Existing and emerging SBS research can also provide essential support for the procurement of products from the private sector, such as commercially available software programs and other technologies.
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A research program for this purpose would extend theory and findings from current research on human–machine interactions to new types of interactions involving multiple agents in a complex teaming environment. CONCLUSION 7-2: A social and behavioral sciences research agenda to support the development of technologies and systems for effective human–machine teams for intelligence analysis should include, but not be limited to, the following goals: • Apply methodologies from the vision sciences, the behavioral sci ences, and human factors to advances in data visualization to improve understanding of how people extract meaning from visu alizations and the functionality of tools designed to present infor mation from large datasets.
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could best ensure that such systems function in an ethical manner and prepare to address unforeseeable new ethical issues by • from the start, incorporating into the design and development pro cess collaborative research, involving both members of the IC and the social and behavioral sciences community, on the application of ethical principles developed in other human–technology contexts to the IC context; • ensuring that all research supported by the IC adheres to the stan dards for ethical conduct of research; and • establishing a structure for ongoing review of ethical issues that may arise as the technology develops and new circumstances arise. Optimal Readiness to Confront Evolving Security Threats The contributions of SBS research will be vital to the capacity of the United States to react effectively to future risks.
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To the extent that foundational and current insights from industrial-organizational psychology and related fields have not already been integrated into the IC's personnel management approaches, translational research to identify the applications of a well- eveloped body of research and practice in this area is likely to be d beneficial. Four salient areas for which robust research is available are the selection of applicants likely to be effective in analytic roles, skill development on the job through both formal training and informal learning, means of retaining and engaging effective analysts, and ways of providing support for a potentially stressed and fatigued workforce.
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careful consideration of safety and ethical issues related to their use. CONCLUSION 8-5: To fully benefit from research findings relevant to the development of an optimal analytic workforce, the Intelligence Community (IC) would need to invest in research and evaluation to
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The research described in this report amply demonstrates the critical importance of • interdisciplinary research -- both foundational and applied and domestic and international -- designed to take advantage of and integrate theory, methodology, and data from across SBS fields to yield new insights into human behavioral and social processes with relevance to national security; • the integration of basic science and developing research on human behavior and social processes, as well as advances in computational methods for large-scale data analysis, with the expertise of the IC on analytic methods and challenges; • the incorporation of a deep understanding of the IC's challenges into the identification of research questions and hypotheses to be tested, as well as the design and execution of research; • the integration of SBS insights into the design and engineering of technologically based analytic tools; and • translational and applied work to establish the direct utility of SBS research findings for the IC. The range of opportunities explored in this report demonstrates both the power of the benefits SBS research offers for the IC and the extent of the challenge of fully taking advantage of these opportunities.
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Moreover, awareness of the potential applications of SBS research to IC needs is highly uneven across relevant SBS fields, and there is a long way to go in building awareness of these potential applications of their work among the research community. Most of the opportunities identified in this report will depend on the integration of research from SBS fields with work from technical fields including engineering, computer science, and neuroscience.
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Collaborations between the two have yielded important scientific and analytic insights, and have functioned well when funding sources and agency goals have been transparent, when social and behavioral sciences research questions and agency missions and goals have been harmonized and clear, and when ethical and value-based concerns have been treated with sufficient care. Conversely, the relationship has fractured in the past when funding sources have been kept secret or misrepresented, researchers and government agencies have struggled to balance research and agency needs, and research has touched on broader ethical or value-based disagreements.
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Capitalizing on the research opportunities discussed in this report will require the IC to abandon procedures and ways of doing business that have been in place for a long time. The continued strengthening of the IC workforce will depend on interdisciplinary approaches in which the insights and ideas of SBS researchers are fully integrated with the needs and objectives of the IC.
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