Encyclopedia Geopolitica’s team has traditionally been rooted in the world of intelligence, and is frequently asked for career advice by aspiring and junior intelligence practitioners. Advice is always difficult to give in a field with so many divergent career options, analytical styles, and training philosophies. That said, there are some core competencies that we believe every analyst should be aware of. As part of a new series addressing these core skills, Ben Brandt, a senior intelligence analyst at the global risks consultancy Control Risks, examines some of the virtues that make a good intelligence analyst.
The question of what makes a good intelligence analyst has been a topic of discussion for as long as the field has existed, with practitioners ranging from CIA officers to super-forecasters all providing thoughtful commentary on the subject. My perspectives are mostly footnotes on the pioneering work they’ve done, but after working in government and private sector intelligence analysis for 15 years, I’ve noticed a number of traits that set truly exceptional analysts apart in their ability to analyse information and act on it. These cardinal virtues include: curiosity, intellectual humility, integrity, judgment, adaptability, impartiality, communication skills, and customer focus.
Curiosity
In my experience, curiosity is one of the most fundamental virtues that a good intelligence analyst needs to possess. A curious analyst won’t just content themselves with the superficial details of an incident and its immediate physical security impact, but will also want and try to figure out why it happened, whether it fits into a broader pattern, whether it has any second order effects, and whether any broadly generalizable indicators can be derived from it. For example, an intellectually curious analyst will look at a low intensity bombing occurring right before elections in a certain country, note that similar events have occurred ahead of elections in the past to the benefit of a party with a pro-security image, and conclude that the bombings are likely intended as political theatre rather than a serious attack. If an intellectually curious analyst gets an analytic call wrong or if events proceed in a way that don’t match up with their usual expectations or forecasting model, they’ll typically take it as a positive learning opportunity, and spend even more time picking things apart to determine what went wrong, and adjust their predictive model accordingly. Curiosity can be encouraged, but is innate to some extent – if the analyst can’t make themselves be interested in a portfolio or problem set, they’ll never reach their full potential.
Humility
Humility is a virtue that often walks hand in hand with both curiosity and experience – as an analyst learns more about geopolitical risk and applies it on a daily basis, she or he will come to better understand both the limits of available information sources and how the motivations and capabilities of key actors can change gradually (or abruptly) even when seemingly plentiful information is available. As such, she or he will learn to give forecasts with various levels of probability while also pointing out key assumptions, unknowns, low probability/high impact outlier scenarios, and indicators which can illuminate which scenario is taking place. By way of example, an experienced analyst who is intellectually humble would not categorically rule out a military coup in a country with a politically powerful army and a history of coups, but focus on educating customers on what is likely, what to watch for, and how it would impact them.
Integrity
Integrity is a bedrock virtue for analysts – everyone has to learn the finer points of the field’s professional ethics to some extent, but if people don’t have a firm sense of what is morally right from the beginning, they’re in the wrong field. At its core, security-focused intelligence analysis is a life-safety business, and the people we’re entrusted with safeguarding could be placed in serious danger if we take this responsibility lightly. This means being scrupulous about the credibility of their information sources and analytic conclusions, remaining diligent about determining organizational impact, and always staying courageous enough to speak truth to power (though tact is also important). It also means being willing to work as long and as hard as necessary during a crisis where lives are endangered, and sharing any information possible with other organizations whose staff are also in harm’s way. Think of the sense of duty that firefighters, paramedics, police officers being to their job – intelligence analysts must aspire to the same.
Judgment
Judgment is a virtue that overlaps with but is not identical to integrity, as its scope extends much further. An intelligence analyst has to have the integrity to know what’s right and act accordingly, but they also need the ability to judge which information sources are credible, which information is most valuable to the organization, which customers have need of this information, how it will affect them, and how it should be communicated. They also must have the judgment to understand how their organization’s processes work, who they need to coordinate with, how to be aware of office politics and to avoid being drawn into them, how to react when a major crisis breaks out, and when to ask for clarification or assistance. This last is a particular test of judgment – it can be tempting to simply ask a leader to tell you what to do every time, but an analyst’s job is to provide decision advantage for leadership, and they can’t do so if they’re also bogging down the same leaders with 1,001 questions. At the same time, analysts shouldn’t send out communications to important stakeholders or chair cross functional projects without consulting their managers. Judgment about what requires escalation is crucial. In the end, developing judgment as an analyst is very much a process of trial and error – learning from mistakes and building on them to move forward.
Adaptability
Adaptability is another important virtue for intelligence analysts, particularly in the private sector. Like their government colleagues, private sector analysts must be able to adapt their views to changing facts, or their work to a changing mission set, but the flexibility required often goes much further in the private sector. Analysts must be able to do very fine grained research at the neighbourhood or city level to support a greenfield project, and then zoom out to assess regional or global trends an hour later. They must be willing quickly to learn new regions, business sectors, and corporate cultures, and cater their work accordingly. They must also be constantly willing to learn unfamiliar new skills that span multiple disciplines, such as data analysis and visualization, graphic design, or marketing. The field of private sector intelligence is only about 25 years old in its current iteration and constantly evolving – so analysts must be ready to evolve as well.
Impartiality
Both government and private sector intelligence analysts must cultivate the virtue of impartiality in a professional setting. No matter how passionately an analyst feels about controversial and politically-charged issues, they must focus solely on organizational impact, and always write and speak in a way where customers cannot discern their personal views. To do otherwise would make them advocates rather than analysts, destroy their credibility with key customers, and undercut their ability to help safeguard the organization by providing valued counsel. The world has enough op-ed columnists who generate sound and fury signifying nothing — what it needs is a sober voice speaking the unbiased truth.
Communication Skills
Speaking of op-ed columnists, they point out the need for analysts to have the virtue of communication skills. Everyone has seen and lamented the talking heads in the broadsheets and on cable news who propound questionable ideas far beyond their expertise, and are celebrated for it. Not enough people pay attention to the fact that they’re given a microphone because they can present their ideas (shallow or biased as these may be) in a manner that’s clear, concise, and persuasive. Analysts need to be able to do the same in their verbal and written briefings – to understand the delivery methods that will resonate with their audiences, capture their attention, meet them at their knowledge level, and push them to take action. You can have the best researched and reasoned insights in the world, but they mean nothing if the audience isn’t listening.
Customer Focus
Communications skills dovetail closely with the final cardinal virtue for intelligence analysts – the need for a strong customer focus. This means sitting down with customers regularly to understand both how they would like to have information delivered – calls, e-mails, videos, internal site postings – and what type of information they need. It means – as hard as this can be – skimming out verbiage, historical context, and factoids that are interesting to analysts but irrelevant to customers. Harder still, it means sitting down with regular customers to understand which products hit the mark, which didn’t, what impacted business decisions, and whether they even read it in the first place. This can be hard on the ego, but it’s another reason humility is an important virtue. Lastly, it means anticipating a customer’s information needs before they can articulate them (based on your understanding of the business and emerging geopolitical trends) and finding a way to tactfully deliver important information, even if it’s unwelcome due to business plans or personal bias.
Conclusion
It’s important to remember that these cardinal virtues are a necessary but not sufficient condition for success – they don’t mean that an intelligence analyst will always be right, or that they will always be able to convince their key customers to take action. Human knowledge is always limited, and there are always customers unwilling to listen due to biases of their own. But adopting them means that you will be doing your job in the most effective and ethical way possible, and supporting your organization to the best of your abilities.
Suggested books for in-depth reading on this topic:
Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis (Randolph H. Pherson & Richards J. Heuer)
Deep Dive: Exploring the Real-world Value of Open Source Intelligence (Rae L. Baker)
How Spies Think: 10 Lessons in Intelligence (Sir David Omand)
Decision Advantage: Intelligence in International Politics from the Spanish Armada to Cyberwar (Jennifer Sims)
Additional reading suggestions can be found on our 2024 geopolitical reading list
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Ben Brandt is a senior intelligence analyst with Control Risks Group based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, where he works in embedded services. Prior to this, he worked as a senior security intelligence analyst for Cargill, a director for the political risk consultancy Lime, and as Delta Airlines’ first threat analyst, and has extensive experience working on the Asia-Pacific region. Ben is a graduate of Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program, and speaks German and Indonesian.
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