The Future of Intelligence

Mark Lowenthal is a widely respected figure in the murky world of intelligence production. In this latest book, he does not attempt to predict the “future” of intelligence, but rather tries to summarize the current state of intelligence and identify those factors that will impact on its future. For the most part, he succeeds in this effort.Still the book left this reviewer somewhat dissatisfied. Lowenthal makes no mention the role of artificial intelligence (AI) as an intelligence tool and gives only a cursory discussion of such 21st Century phenomena as “big data”, the Internet of Things (IOT), and the exploitation of “cyber space”. Now AI is not yet a reality and he undoubtedly didn’t want to speculate about it. Yet the fact is that many of the precursors to AI have been developed and already have an impact on intelligence collection, processing, and analysis. In the same manner, Big Data composed of both textual and numeric data clearly has intelligence value and is already being made manageable by sophisticated retrieval and organizational programs now available. Finally, the IOT (computers sending data to other computers) is going to be of considerable importance to the exploitation of cyber space.In short it seems to this reviewer that Lowenthal seemed in a hurry to get this book and really didn’t think about the contents with his usual care and attention.