Intelligence analysisNew mathematical logic to help intelligence services cope with uncertainty
Intelligence analysts are constantly struggling with the reliability of circumstantial evidence. The sources may be unreliable or directly misleading. When intelligence services in one country attempt to find out what another country is planning to do, they need to take into account the credibility of the information. The fact that the information tends to be incomplete and the circumstantial evidence often is contradictory does not make things any easier. “It is therefore essential to assess all information, evidence, facts and circumstances in a way that reflects this situation,” says a Norwegian mathematician who has developed a new type of mathematical logic to help improve the analytical tools in the hands of intelligence services worldwide. The U.S. Army has already expressed its interest and the new approach.
Imagine that you are the head of U.S. military intelligence services immediately prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. You have a wealth of intelligence to help you find out whether Saddam Hussein really has weapons of mass destruction or not. You have access to satellite photos and huge amounts of information from spies and defectors. Each of these sources is fraught with uncertainty to a greater or lesser extent. Some pieces of evidence are more reliable than others.
The amount of information is so huge that nobody is capable of establishing a total overview. You therefore need computational tools to interpret all the information. One of your hypotheses is that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. The other hypothesis says the opposite. It is your job to determine which hypothesis appears to be the most correct one.
The head of the U.S. intelligence services got it wrong. He erroneously determined that Saddam had access to weapons of mass destruction.
“Current intelligence analyses are often based on information with a considerable degree of uncertainty. Intelligence analysts are constantly struggling with the reliability of circumstantial evidence. The sources may be unreliable or directly misleading. When intelligence services in one country attempt to find out what another country is planning to do, they need to take into account the credibility of the information, says Audun Jøsang, professor at the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo (UiO).
The fact that the information tends to be incomplete and the circumstantial evidence often is contradictory does not make things any easier.
“It is therefore essential to assess all information, evidence, facts and circumstances in a way that reflects this situation.”
The new logic
A UiO release reports that Jøsang has developed a completely new type of mathematical logic that may improve the ability of intelligence services to deal with unclear evidence while pointing out intelligence areas that merit further investigation.
This new form of intelligence analysis is based on subjective logic. This type of logic can explicitly handle degrees of uncertainty, and this produces intelligence analysis models that are far more realistic than those produced by current interpretation methods.
In current intelligence analysis models, all circumstantial evidence must be weighted by a specific probability. Jøsang points out that this is not enough. He claims that an estimate of the certainty of this probability also must be included. “Most people are unaccustomed to the fact that a probability in itself may be uncertain.”
