Research Shorts & Notes
Research Shorts and Notes are brief publications. Research Shorts are a cross between conventional intelligence products and the shorter academic papers published by universities and think tanks. Research Notes fuse current events with a research insight. Although most of our Research Shorts and Research Notes appear within government channels, those below have been cleared for public release.
2025
Intelligence work inherently requires exceptional intercultural competence to understand adversaries and foster collaboration with partners and assets to address threats.
The Iranian-led Axis of Resistance failed to disrupt global energy markets during the Israel-Hamas war but won at least a temporary victory in its struggle to prevent Israel from becoming a regional trade and energy hub.
The IC is hampered by an organizational culture deficient in introspection. To deliver robust intelligence support—regarding China and the full range of issues the IC addresses—we must get past our long-held tendency…
2024
Improving the analysis and intelligence techniques that inform humanitarian response, programming and policy decision making can save lives, reduce human suffering…
A continually shifting landscape of new challenges, technologies, and adversaries complicates the IC’s core mission of protecting national security…
Substantial public safety benefits derive from declassifying information related to private sector security…
As the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) grades analytic products for rigor and excellence, it also collects and shares best practices in the use of the IC Analytic…
For more than a half-century, government leaders, intelligence practitioners, and scholars have sought to define and redefine intelligence in the national security sense…
Today’s political leaders are using military force as a go-to solution for geopolitical disputes in Ukraine, Gaza, and beyond…
2023
China’s leaders apparently see their partnership-focused foreign policy strategy as adequate, but that view may not hold indefinitely…
This Research Short looks to reignite debate on how the IC defines warning and several terms associated with it in the context of intelligence…
The IC requires the utmost capability to meet increasingly complex national security threats. Having sufficient foreign language-qualified personnel should be the least of its worries…
Informal communities of practice (CoPs) already help analysts collaborate across the IC, and their expertise is often levied against threats that do not fit neatly into existing organizations…
State-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) systems are almost certain to transform how the IC executes its mission, but the risks…
2022
Most Americans experience the Intelligence Community through works of fiction—stories told on the silver screen, in powerful prose, and through conspiratorial overtures…
US intelligence analysts sometimes mirror-image their own sense of time—how they relate to the past, present, and future—onto actors of national security interest…
Policymakers call upon intelligence analysts to deliver insightful assessments, yet consistent success has faltered due to a lack of understanding…
Asia watchers have been exploring what lessons Taiwan might take from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to bolster Taipei’s ability to deter or defend against a Chinese attack…
The war in Ukraine has seen nonstate actors, including private corporations and NGOs, assume a prominent role collecting, producing, and distributing intelligence…
2021
The prevailing narrative among observers in academic, policy, and intelligence circles is that China’s effort to expand its international influence through aggressive…
National security is the U.S. Government’s most basic responsibility, laid out in the first sentence of the Constitution’s preamble: provide for the common defense..
One year after U.S.-led coalition operations liberated ISIS-held territories in Iraq and Syria and killed ISIS core leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS is resurging…
Taiwan’s success in containing coronavirus infections—with only 77 domestic cases out of 942 total and 9 deaths as of February 22, 2021— gives Taipei a rare opportunity…
2021
Complexity theory reveals a nation is not just a people with a government: it arises from competition and the compromises…