8

Summative Remarks

The summit closed with a panel of participants, including the steering committee members, representatives from the intelligence community, and an invited discussant, to sum up what they learned at the summit and identify gaps and opportunities deserving attention in the SBS Decadal Survey.

As invited discussant, Robert Fein (National Academies Intelligence Community Studies Board) reiterated that the survey is an important and much-needed opportunity to offer methodologies, knowledge, and insights from the social and behavioral sciences (SBS) to the professionals in the U.S. intelligence community (IC). Presentations at the summit have suggested the breadth and depth of expertise and information that is and will be available to the IC. Fein encouraged the audience to contribute to the project to expand the range of knowledge and insights considered. He offered his own ideas of what those contributions might entail:

• Understand the interests and needs of the IC: What questions does the IC have regarding the content and process of its analyses and operations? What SBS areas are of most interest?
• Find ways to express both what is known and what is not known: Fein recognized that several presenters articulated the limits of current and likely future knowledge in their areas of expertise.
• Suggest rough timelines about where a body of research can be in 3 years or 10 years: Fein encouraged contributors to identify realistic development stages, barriers to progress, and priority areas where new knowledge is needed.

• Facilitate effective communication: Fein noted a need for translating SBS data and knowledge and explaining it in terms that make sense to IC analysts, operators,¹ and policy makers.
• Seek assistance from and possible collaboration with existing organizations: Fein identified the Center for Research in Evidence of Security Threats in the United Kingdom as one such resource.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Bear Braumoeller (The Ohio State University) expressed excitement about the presentations and studies at the summit. However, he pointed out that social scientists who carry out research on national security and international relations were underrepresented. These researchers spend a lot of time grappling with research challenges, he noted, such as ecological inference issues and drawing causal inferences from observational data. For example, he said, there is no way to do experiments when one is trying to understand countries and what makes them go to war. He saw great potential for collaboration between his discipline, political science focused on international security studies, and the disciplines presenting at the summit. He noted that the SBS Decadal Survey is a good opportunity for academic communities to interact and learn more about each other, and a variety of international security centers would be willing to be part of the conversation and host town halls as part of the project.

Erica Chenoweth (University of Denver) asked how the social sciences would fit into the SBS Decadal Survey. She noted that other levels of analyses, beyond the individual level, were not represented well at the summit. Many major problems of national security, she said, do not emerge from individual decision-making, conscious or unconscious, but rather from cases where group life determines collective behavior. In many situations, empirically demonstrated characteristics, structures, and systems of countries influence whether they fight one another or not. Chenoweth said that research in the social sciences, or analyses at the group or society level, would be a better fit to the types of questions posed at the summit by IC representatives regarding the instability of leadership or the consolidation of political powers. Thomas Fingar (Stanford University) recognized that the summit represented a partial cut into the problem. As the SBS Decadal Survey proceeds, he said attention would be brought to sociology, political science, economics, and other disciplines as the project considers different levels of analyses—from individuals and individual cognition and action—to groups’ collective decision-making and impacts on society’s stability.

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¹ In regard to the intelligence community, operators refer to the personnel in the field, either those collecting information or those making decisions from the analyses.

Steven Hyman (Harvard University) suggested that the model presented by Joshua Epstein (Johns Hopkins University) tried to bridge some of these levels (see Chapter 5), but noted that studying cross-level connections is very challenging. Epstein added that his Agent_Zero work has illustrated that there are cases where a group as a collective entity will unanimously take an action that no member of the group would take alone. Charles Gaukel (National Intelligence Council), drawing on his IC experiences, observed that people have multiple identities that can be evoked differently under different circumstances and under perceptions of threat. The identity that matters most is situationally dependent.

Valerie Reyna (Cornell University) pointed out that people have agency and can change the way they interpret things. Emotions are not only a function of biological underpinnings, but are also a function of how reality is interpreted. Often, she said, genetics, biology, or even cultural groups are construed as immutable. However, research has found, for example, that while the brain has certain responses to fear and that different cultures have certain differences, these things can be changed.

Deanna Caputo (MITRE Corporation) agreed with others on the absence of social sciences at the summit, but anticipated the SBS Decadal Survey would cover them. She noted IC representatives frequently brought up the notion of culture, which should be considered in the project. She cautioned that the research is very domestic-focused, and it may be difficult to find arguments and findings that translate, knowing that behavior is very different from culture to culture. She concurred with Reyna’s point on change in people and recognized that the summit presenters did not talk about mitigation (a term computer scientists use in cybersecurity work). She urged more applied research, and incentives to do so, focused on changing behaviors.

Another summit attendee said she appreciated the multidisciplinary approach to the summit and the SBS Decadal Survey. She suggested a few areas that were not covered that might be considered, including personnel selection and assessment, insider threats, effective interviewing, users and technology, and measuring effectiveness. She underscored that practices within the agencies could be informed by SBS research.

Margaret Polski (George Mason University) drew attention to other disciplines that should be considered in the SBS Decadal Survey: human-systems integration, quantum computing, computational social science, and operations research. She pointed out that the SBS Decadal Survey will have practical value beyond intelligence analysis since this analysis informs policy-making, strategy, and operational design. She emphasized that it is important to keep in mind that the methodologies, tools, and knowledge considered in the survey will feed into strategic behavior, which is different from deterministic behavior, and as such has to be approached in a very different way.

Stephen Balfour (Texas A&M University) suggested two programs that might serve as examples of collaboration between the academic community and IC: the IC postdoctoral program and the Department of Defense Minerva Program. Charlie Rogan (Artis International) observed that researchers in the Minerva Program often do not feel connected to the policy community in the same vein as the stated goal of the SBS Decadal Survey. He reiterated that it would be useful to bridge gaps between communities and to develop an understanding of the challenges and difficulties in doing short-term analyses from the perspective of those in the IC.

CLOSING COMMENTS

In closing remarks, David Honey (Office of the Director of National Intelligence) thanked the presenters, discussants from the IC, staff at the National Academies, and the government staff. He recognized that the National Academies’ ability to convene people from multiple disciplines and perspectives, as well as geographic areas, will prove valuable to the SBS Decadal Survey. He projected that after a 2.5-year consensus process requiring a lot of deliberative thinking, participants will end up at a higher level of understanding, and the survey will produce a quality report. He encouraged the audience to continue to participate in the project, visit the website,² provide ideas and research suggestions, and attend meetings and town halls. Honey made a special request to government personnel for input.

Sallie Keller (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) closed by reminding the audience that the summit was designed to bring attention to the SBS Decadal Survey, expose the research community and the IC to some of the possibilities, and generate significant energy and excitement. She encouraged all participants to stay engaged and volunteer ideas and suggestions to ensure the survey’s success.

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² The website for the SBS decadal survey is at http://nas.edu/SBSDecadalSurvey [December 2016].