Every morning, analysts, operators, and policymakers arrive at their desks to read the latest news and intelligence reporting that has come in during the past day. The daily rhythm of “reading the morning traffic” has remained largely unchanged since the 1950s. Professionals in the intelligence community and military spend upwards of a third of their days poring over incoming cables to stitch together a coherent picture of worldwide events. Policymakers and senior military commanders increasingly struggle to consume the enormous volume of daily reporting and rely on analysts and operators to deliver tailored intelligence briefings to help them keep up.
The 2017 London Bridge attack served as a reminder that national security professionals both in the U.S. and in partner countries are facing an information overload in the context of modern intelligence collection. In the 48 hours following the attacks, intelligence analysts were confronted with more than 6,600 news articles on the attack, as well as tens of thousands of YouTube videos, tweets, and other social media postings. “The good news is we’ve got lots of information, but the bad news is we’ve got lots of information,” said Philip Davies, director of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, in the wake of the attacks. “I think we’re going to have to be realistic that MI5 and SIS [MI6] are being confronted with information overload in terms of scale and complexity. We have been cutting national analytical capability for 20 years. The collection of information has increased but if you cut back on analysis you get overload.”
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