NONFUEL MINERAL SUPPLY-DEMAND DATA BASE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88B00443R001103890048-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 5, 2007
• Sequence Number: 48
• Content Type: REPORT

Approved For Release 2007/07/06: CIA-RDP88B00443RO01103890048-1
ADM?ISTRATIVE-INTERNAL USE ONO C / a-
I. PROJECT TITLE: Nonfuel Mineral Supply-Demand Data Base
Submitting Agency: CIA
II. COSTS IN THOUSANDS: FY83 : FY84 : FY85
III. DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT:
A. Statement of need:
There is a persistent and justifiable Federal policy concern
with the vulnerability of the United States and its allies to
interruptions in the imports of nonfuel minerals that are critical
to the maintenance of defense or essential civilian production or to
the general strength of the Western economies. For example, the
United States, Western Europe, and Japan all import more than 90
percent of their requirements of such important minerals as
manganese, cobalt, chromium, and bauxite. Interruptions in this
supply would severely affect steel production, stainless steel
output, and the manufacture of jet engines, among other
industries. The risks of supply disruption for these and other
critical minerals are magnified by their restricted availability and
the fact that they are disproportionately distributed among areas
that are especially subject to instability or politically motivated
supply interruption.
In response to this problem, the Agency has intermittently
carried out ad hoc analyses of particular mineral supply or
contingency situations. Such efforts, however, are hampered by the
lack of a comprehensive, systematically compiled and coordinated
governmental and private information base bearing on future nonfuel
mineral consumption and supply. This proposal would greatly enhance
the potential for quicker, more penetrating, and more reliable
evaluative efforts.
B. Who will accomplish:
The proposed data base will be maintained by the Resource
Analysis Branch of OGSR after having been established as the result
of both staff and contract efforts. It would combine and coordinate
those relevant governmental and commercial data bases already in
existence or under development as well as raw data and intelligence
that is reported currently in a variety of open and classified
sources.
C. Mat is to be developed:
The proposed data base will consist of a variety of separate
data sets, both quantitative and narrative, on consumption,
capacity, production, inventories, prices, and recycling, as well as
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?INISTRATIVE-INTERNAL USE OLY
on the relevant economic, political, geographic, institutional, and
other determinants of those variables. Predictions made by other
authorities will also be included-especially predictions or
contingency scenarios that relate to the risk of future supply
problems. These data~sets:will be accessible to.analysts through
the Agency! s :interact ive .; system. -Software will be developed to
'provide .both machine -readable ..output and printouts suitable for
distribution or for-inclusion-In finished reports. Adjunctive use
will also be made of?the MAGAS system to provide a variety of
graphic displays and cartographic arrays. Under appropriate
safeguards, the data sets will be made accessible in part to other
government agencies. , ' N
The data sets would be established and maintained for each of
the important commodity-forms of those nonfuel minerals
(tentatively,same..15-20) selected for their importance in the
general economy-and/or-:their-critical defense applications.
'Particular..priority would.be -given to those minerals characterized
by the greatest--,apparent --risk of potential supply problems.
Further, they will .,consist" rot only of crude statistical and
narrative inputs,-but will permit those analytical summations and
manipulations of -the data-determined to be useful on a routine
basis.
D. Time phasing:
The bulk of the work of establishing the data base can be
accomplished, under one or-more outside contracts, during the first
year of the program, with practical application and "debugging"
commencing late that same year. Initial assessments of voids in the
data base can then be made. Efforts to eliminate the gaps and bring
the system online will continue well into the second year. Costs in
succeeding years will be those for maintenance of the system.
In the detailed scheduling, priority will be given to those
minerals and those elements of the system that are most relevant to
providing assessments of situations with greatest risk and most
serious consequences of a supply contingency.
IV. INTELLIGENCE COMUNITY APPLICABILITY:
The project could lead to the development of new techniques for
screening and integrating partially or largely inconsistent reports on
the same subject. The most likely contribution will most likely be,
however, the establishment of a rigorously derived data base on nonfuel
minerals.
V. INTELLIGENCE CONSUMER BENEFITS:
The principal benefit to intelligence consumers will be the
enhanced capability both for foreseeing the emergence of potential
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mineral supply problems and for evaluating the implications of
contingency, policy, and other scenarios affecting mineral supply.
These benefits would accrue both from direct evaluation of the entries
in the data base and - especially for longer term problems - use of the data base in the System Dynamics models that have been developed by,.
CIA.
VI. PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS:
There has by now been a sufficiently large body of successful
experience with large data banks - both numerical and narrative and
particularly within the CIA - that the probability of success for the
one here proposed is very high. Furthermore, the proposed effort would
be a success in terms of its impact on analyst productivity, and the
upgraded analysis made possible even if score elements of the project
failed to be achieved.
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