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How to Be a Good Intelligence Analyst - by Santi Ruiz

statecraft.pub · 7,626 words · saved by 1 readers

Today we're joined by Dr. Rob Johnston. He's an anthropologist, an intelligence community veteran, and author of the cult classic Analytic Culture in the US Intelligence Community, a book so influential that it's required reading at DARPA. But first and foremost, Johnston is an ethnographer. His focus in that book is on how analysts actually produce intelligence analysis. Johnston answers a lot of questions I've had for a while about intelligence: Why do we seem to get big predictions wrong so consistently? Why can't the CIA find analysts who speak the language of the country they're analyzing? Why do we prioritize expensive satellites over human intelligence? We also discuss a meta-question I often return to on Statecraft: Is being good at this stuff an art or a science? By “this stuff,” in this case I’m referring to intelligence analysis, but I think that the question generalizes across policymaking: would more formalizing and systematizing make our spies, diplomats, and EPA bureaucr

Statecraft How to Be a Good Intelligence Analyst 77 7 11 1× 0:00 Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -1:01:25 -1:01:25 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. How to Be a Good Intelligence Analyst “The first to get thrown under the bus is the intelligence community” Santi Ruiz Aug 07, 2025 77 7 11 Share Today we're joined by Dr. Rob Johnston . He's an anthropologist, an intelligence community veteran, and author of the cult classic Analytic Culture in the US Intelligence Community , a book so influential that it's required reading at DARPA. But first and foremost, Johnsto

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