FUTURE CHALLENGES FOR US INTELLIGENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP89G01321R000700350010-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 27, 2012
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: September 15, 1988
• Content Type: REPORT

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Future Challenges for US Intelligence
The intelligence profession is on the cusp, so to speak, between eras. We
have ended, over the last year or so, the largest growth in US intelligence in
history. At the same time, some major new investments still are not in our
inventory or totally paid for. The fiscal stringency now setting in will make
the tradeoffs for resources even starker. And concurrently, US policy and
military commitments and needs abroad are increasing--not remaining
approximately static. Finally, the march of technology--as well as foreign
espionage against the US--is proceeding apace. Major changes are in process
in key areas of our world, from the USSR to South Africa and from Europe to
Japan. These factors will increase the strain on capabilities that are
already pressed by expectations of support and a very long list of
requirements.
While this nation's Intelligence Community has many strengths and is much
more capable than 10 years ago, it also is true that we face some daunting
challenges over the next 10 years. The challenges that will drive
intelligence activities in the 1990s cross a wide range of concerns that will
force us to look at problems from several perspectives as we work toward
enhanced performance and, ideally, solutions. There are essentially three
major categories of issues that we will have to deal with:
o substantive areas like arms contro_1 and developments in the Soviet
Union;
o management and infrastructure issues like the composition of our work
force and our processing and analysis capabilities; and
o a third set of concerns that centers on our role in support
policymakers and the policy process.
The single most important task of all is upon us right now as we build our
budget for FY 1990 and beyond: to maintain, with the help of our executive
and legislative leaders, at least some modest fiscal momentum against the
challenges we face in a rapidly changing world, lest a serious mismatch
develop in the early 1990s between our capabilities and the work our leaders
ask us to perform.
Substantive Challenges
The Soviet Union The Community must be able to provide comprehensive and
timely collection and analysis on the turbulent political, economic, and
military changes under way in the Soviet Union under General Secretary
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Gorbachev, and as a result of his more dynamic foreign policy. New issues,
such as the rise of nationalities and open dissension, must be addressed, as
well as traditional threat areas. Efforts to track the Soviet military
threat, as it modernizes with new weaponry, will have the greatest impact on
intelligence resources. Advanced Soviet weapons systems will be of particular
importance, including directed energy weapons, the effect of low observables
technology (on both offensive and defensive systems), and the possibility of
breakthroughs in new technologies. Continued emphasis on mobile strategic
wPaoons will also pos
Better insight into political and economic questions will
require en anced human and open source intelligence capabilities, including
collection and exploitation. We will also be challenged by increasing amounts
of information available from the Soviet Union, which will particularly affect
our ability to exploit open sources.
Arms Control At the same time that it must deal with requirements tied to
the Soviet threat, the Community will also have to accommodate requirements
springing from the Soviet presentation of a more benign face to the outside
world. The Community must continue to address current treaty monitoring
requirements and assist negotiations for potential arms control agreements.
Monitoring a prospective START Treaty will require additional collection and
analysis capabilities and will have a significant impact on intelligence
resources. Detecting and locating any illegal mobile missiles, determining
throw weight and the number of warheads, and counting nondeployed
treaty-limited nuclear weapons and launchers will be especially important.
Beyond strategic weapons, other areas that pose potentially significant
requirements include conventional forces, especially given heightened concern
about the post-INF conventional balance in Euro e and biolo ical and chemical
weapons in the USSR and Third World.
Finally, monitoring requirements associa a wi nuc ear
testing constraints will also affect resources, especially monitoring the
yields of tests if thresholds are reduced, and detecting low yield tests if
the number of tests is limited or if tests are banned entirely.
International Economics The Community must be able to support
policymakers who will be attempting to address a variety of economic topics in
an increasingly interdependent economic world. Debt burdens, trade relations,
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and issues of competitiveness will dominate requirements. Insights and data
will be necessary on the potential effects of the creation of a unified
internal market in the European Community, the continued growth of already
formidable Japanese economic power, and the role of newly industrialized
economies. Early warning of trade disputes and information to support
negotiations will also affect intelligence resources. The Pacific Rim
countries will be of special importance as will the need for data on fiscal
and monetary policies of major economic partners to support the greater
economic policy coordination that will accompany interdependence.
Counterterrorism The Community must have the ability to closely support
counterterrorist planning and operations. State support of terrorism will
continue to be used as a means to political ends. Successful terrorist
operations will generate high visibility and public impact that will create
pressures for response. Human intelligence will be especially important.
Counternarcotics The Community must have a strong capability to collect
and ana yze information on narcotics production and trafficking, traffickers'
financial networks, and foreign government attitudes towards the problem.
Demands for policy support on this topic will be especially strong in the next
five years, with particular emphasis on support for counternarcotics
operations. Important resource questions will center on the nature and extent
of basic capabilities that must be developed to play an increased role in this
area. This will require a clear appreciation by policymakers of the
contributions that foreign intelligence can make to the effort to curb drug
trafficking. It will also require the Intelligence Community to have an
explicit understanding of the mission and tasks it is asked to perform.
Third World Instability The Community must expand its abilities to
monitor and assess developments in key Third World countries to respond to
policymakers' concerns. Introduction of sophisticated military systems will
affect regional balances of power and endemic instability and economic
difficulty will pose diverse threats to US interests. Collection and analysis
must be sufficient to ensure that changes and challenges are detected early
and that information is available on critical countries to support contingency
planning. A particular need is the development of comprehensive data bases;
other problems will be posed by the growing sophistication of Third World
communications systems. We must also be able to anticipate the force and
sweep of social and .psychological movements, such as those that gave rise to
the Islamic Revolution.
Proliferation The Community must have a well coordinated collection and
analytical capability targeted against proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and
biological weapons and sophisticated delivery systems. The spread of
ballistic missile technology and systems to Third World nations will expand
collection and production requirements, and the need for a capability to
detect new chemical and biological agents will become increasingly important.
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Concern will continue to grow over detecting production and transfer of
advanced weapons to the following countries:
o Nuclear--South Africa, Israel, Argentina, Brazil, North Korea, South
Korea, India, and Pakistan;
o Chemical and biological--primarily the Middle East; and,
Infrastructure and Management Challenges
Information Handling and Dissemination The Community must improve its
ability to share information and to disseminate it in sufficient time to meet
perishable needs. Requirements will stem from the need to handle massive
amounts of data, to improve interaction between data bases, and to meet the
timeliness challenges posed by demands for targeting support and other needs
associated with the increasing mobility of strategic forces.
Counterintelligence and Security The Community must continue to improve
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its program for physical, technical, and personnel security an
counterintelligence.
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Survivability The Community must address continuing difficulties in
achieving appropriate survivability of intelligence assets to support both the
National Command Authority and military commanders during situations ranging
from natural disasters through nuclear war. Requirements will be based on the
SecDef-DCI survivability strategy, with particular emphasis given to NFIP
components that have a critical intelligence warfighting support role.
People and Support Infrastructure To respond successfully to challenges,
the Community must maintain its skilled work force and an infrastructure to
provide secure work spaces, modern communications and computer facilities, and
general logistical support. Principal requirements will involve the
attraction and retention of a work force with the necessary mix of skills to
deal with changing technologies and increasingly complex targets. These
skills include scientists, engineers, mathematicians, linguists,
cryptanalysts, and acquisition specialists.
Policy Support Challenges
Relations with Polic.ymakers and the Congress The Community must enhance
its dialogue with the Executive Branch policymakers that it supports, and with
the Congress, as resource pressures grow. There are two important aspects to
this issue. The first involves the need to ensure that requirements for
support are thoroughly understood by intelligence activities. The second is
to give decisionmakers and the Congress a clear sense of intelligence
capabilities and possible contributions. It will be particularly important to
point out the serious imbalance between demands placed on intelligence and the
Communityy's capabilities to satisfy them. The growing complexity and
evolutionary development of intelligence targets contributes to this imbalance
as does the relatively austere funding outlook for intelligence programs,
particularly those intended to modernize capabilities or develop new
initiatives. Two distinct ways of approaching the imbalance exist. The first
is to increase funding for intelligence activities to allow credible treatment
of high-priority problems. The second is to raise the risks, by reducing
expectations and requirements, a course that would be based on a reassessment
of national interests and intelligence needs. Either approach will require a
strong educational role by intelligence managers to ensure that decisionmakers
have a clear picture of the Community's capabilities, strengths, and
weaknesses.
Public Expectations for Intelligence The Community must continue to
demonstrate its management competence to a public that is growing more
knowledgeable of intelligence activities, but without harming our sources and
methods. For example, intelligence issues and questions will be increasingly
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visible as the public debate occurs about the USSR's intentions and as
prospective arms control treaties are negotiated. Public confidence is
essential to maintain a basis for support of intelligence activities and
resources and the Community must meet public expectations of professionalism
and skill.
Support to Military Activities The Community must improve its ability to
support a wide range of military activities, ranging from the provision of S&T
intelligence for weapons development to support for the planning and conduct
of military operations. Particular demands will flow from the need to make
intelligence more operationally relevant and more readily available to
military users, with emphasis on the timeliness of required data. Low
intensity conflicts, crises, and contingency planning will add to requirements
for use of national intelligence assets to support the Unified and Specified
Commanders, creating additional demands on tasking, management, and reporting
systems.
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September 9, 1988
~~~~~~.~ ~ 72~ J~ 7'- /~75y
The Honorable Robert M. Gates
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, D.C. 20505
Happily, as a member of Freedom House, I routinely
receive FREEDOM AT ISSUE. The current copy just came in
and I was delighted to see your article as the lead
article. I have phoned them about sending you copies, as
well as additional ones for me. Therefore, in the
meantime, I can let you have my copy.
Incidentally, the PFIAB meeting will, I
understand, find you out of the country. I have been
trying to reach you in the hope that you will have reached
a conclusion in connection with the panel which PFIAB had
recommended for a articular type of dispute. I had
mentione ossible candidate for such a
panel.
When he learned of it, he made a wiser
suggestion. The former Attorney General would bring to
that small group the rare combination of excellent legal
knowledge and a particular intimate and sophisticated
knowledge of intelligence. He would, as a result of that
combination, not look at any particular disagreement as a
legal one.
I will miss seeing you at the next meeting.
Warm regards.
LC/mlg
Encl.
Cordia],,,~y,
STAT
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