Intelligence organizations have increased their ability to collect intelligence in recent years, but significant work remains before that intelligence is useful for U.S. Central Command and the war fighter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Joseph Votel would know. From 2016 to 2019, the retired general served as commander of Central Command. Prior to that, he served as the head of Special Operations Command. At the 2019 Intelligence and National Security Summit Sept. 4, Votel was asked which areas the intelligence community was lacking. Here are the challenges based on his previous experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Open source intelligence<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first issue Votel raised was gathering and using open source intelligence, or OSINT, and publicly available information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs we got involved in the defeat ISIS activities, I think we had a struggle \u2014 and we have addressed it but we will continue to struggle \u2014 with the challenge of open source and publicly available information,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Incorporating intelligence gathered from sources, such as social media, proved difficult, Votel said, and it wasn\u2019t always possible to get that information to the war fighter in a timely manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Improving that capability would help the next Central Command leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sharing intel with partners<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Additionally, the military needs to make it easier to share intelligence with partners,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t do anything by ourselves, we have partners with us, so I think we\u2019re continuing to some extent be challenged by sharing authorities,\u201d said Votel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the former commander, military leaders need more authority to share intelligence to trusted partners and enable sharing across systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Managing big data<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the military\u2019s ability to collect data is impressive, it can struggle with turning it around and making it actionable for the war fighter, Votel explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cExploitation at the speed of a campaign is an important aspect,\u201d he said. \u201cWe picked up a lot of information off the battlefield in Iraq and Syria from our ISIS adversaries, and our ability to […] get that into a usable format and mine that data […] continues to be a challenge,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Boosting human intelligence<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor combatant commanders, understanding what people are thinking, understanding how they\u2019re looking at things, having those kinds of insights are extraordinarily valuable,\u201d Votel said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having more human intelligence, or HUMINT, can mitigate the need for large formations on the ground, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t mean that to take a dig at the HUMINT community. They do exceptional work, but I think we need more of it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joseph Votel, the retired general, explained the areas where he’d like to see improvement from the intelligence community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":27620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":19,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[160,36,19],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3385],"class_list":["post-14719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-newsletters","category-pentagon"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"4IBA7ENJU5HAFHKJ2HP5MIJLDU","arc_canonical_url":"\/artificial-intelligence\/2019\/09\/04\/4-intel-challenges-from-a-former-central-command-leader\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n