A DIFFERENT LOOK AT THE UNCHANGING NATURE OF INTELLIGENCE

The study of intelligence is an essential element, or should be, in all research related to war and warfare. Consider that when classified material dealing with the Ultra traffic in the Second World War, revealed by Frederick Winterbotham in 1974, in The Ultra Secret, many wartime histories in the West required significant revision.[3] In 1977, Dr. Harold Deutsch of the U.S. Army War College wrote, “Whatever the verdict on the hotly debated question of whether the ULTRA revelations require a ‘complete’ re-write of World War II history, there can be no argument that they will demand the re-examination of a vast complex of historical problems.”[4] Winterbotham was perhaps more blunt. “No history of World War II is complete which does not take into account our knowledge of our enemy’s intentions, disclosed by our ‘most secret source[AH1] ’.”[5] And so it is today. Intelligence studies in Canada lag far behind such programs in our closest allies.

Most historical study is incomplete if it misses the intelligence dimension, ignoring its important causal and enabling role. Why any specific battle took place, or why commanders did what they did cannot be fully answered without examining the intelligence enterprise that enabled those activities. Traditional thinking considers the intelligence function as offering different products for different wars, to enable different forms of warfare. New thinking will see intelligence as unchanging. The essential unchanging nature of intelligence is captured in a conceptualization of the intelligence function having its roots in human nature, not as a simple written product provided to a client. Deeper thinking also reveals the much more substantial and essential nature of intelligence than commonly exists within the profession of arms today.

To demonstrate the enduring nature of intelligence, this paper argues that human cognitive activity is the premier, unchanging activity of the intelligence process. It argues that bio-psychological human intelligence is the one enduring fundamental form of intelligence and that, as such, is essentially humankind’s attempt to replicate the bio-psychological human intelligence process in purposeful social groups. It is further suggested that the pursuit of advantage is the central, unchanging focus of a true intelligence enterprise. This is the nature of intelligence. It always has been and will continue to be.

See the full paper at https://www.thekcis.org/publications/insights/insight-5-4