Learning By Doing: Acquiring The Tacit Knowledge of How To Conduct An Open-Source Intelligence Collection and Analysis Project

Intelligence professionals working in analytic jobs in the U.S. intelligence community, in law enforcement intelligence, or in the competitive intelligence field can increasingly expect to participate in, or even lead, intelligence project teams. At XXX University, the first-ever intelligence studies program in the United States, resident graduate students in Applied Intelligence prepare for intelligence careers by taking the mandatory Strategic Intelligence capstone course. This course enables them to gain valuable tacit knowledge by conducting a semester-long, intelligence collection and analysis project for a real-world, external client. Based on a positivist intellectual paradigm and consistent with the theory of Social Constructivism, students learn to operate effectively as a team, acquire and apply project management skills, communicate with external clients, articulate Key Information Topics and Key Information Questions, scope a project, use specialized, commercially-available software and tradecraft to conduct open-source intelligence collection, aggregate and share acquired intelligence, comply with Intelligence Community Directive 203 (Analytic Standards), select and use appropriate structured analytic techniques, evaluate sources and information, write a final estimative intelligence product using probabilistic language, and present timely, actionable intelligence and findings to different types of audiences.