Why should activists adopt an intelligence mindset?

Or, “What is intelligence, and why should I care?”

This post originally appeared on Intelligence-Led Activism on 21 March 2025.

In a nutshell,

• Effective activism requires effective decisions. Effective decisions require intelligence.
• Intelligence is about weaponising understanding: using insight and foresight to gain decision advantage over your opponents.
• The intelligence mindset involves:
  • a critical appraisal of oneself and one’s adversaries;
  • intuition and empathy;
  • a cool and detached analytic approach that is both critical and creative; and,
  • a forward looking approach that evaluates and forecasts future developments.
• Finding ways to use intelligence to improve activists’ decision making is invaluable, but challenging.
• (Click here for a primer with basic intelligence analysis techniques.)

Intelligence is critical for success in conflict. Intelligence has decided the outcome of wars, political intrigue, trade conflicts and sporting contests since long before recorded history. The craft of intelligence as we know it today emerged in the 19^th century along with the bureaucratisation and standardisation of life in modern Europe, and has continued to evolve ever since.

Intelligence conjures up exciting images of espionage, sabotage, and technological wizardry – glamorous people using sex, money and coercion to shape the world. All these elements are important parts of the craft of intelligence – even if film makers tend to exaggerate them – and we will discuss them in future posts because they directly affect activists and activism.

But this post will rather focus on the seemingly mundane yet most important and meaningful element of intelligence – analysis. Intelligence analysis is the art of inferring what is happening, what can be done, and what might happen next. It is also about finding the chinks in your opponents’ armour; and knowing the chinks in your own.

For underdogs in conflict – the usual position that activists take – intelligence is vital. If your opponent has a decisive superiority of force, it doesn’t leave you much option. You can rely on luck, the occult or divine intervention, or you can rely on smarts. So unless you have some special ways with the gods and the spirits, you may as well make the most of your brain. (And even so, you can still hope that the deities smile on you.)

So, what is intelligence?

At its core, intelligence is about gaining decision advantage through better understanding of the contest and its environment. In other words, you leverage a better understanding of reality to make better judgement calls that allow you to outmanoeuvre your opponent. The word advantage highlights that intelligence is not simply about making better decisions, but rather, you should be making better decisions than your adversary to the point that your decisions give you an advantage over your adversary.

This can obviously be done by optimising your own decisions. But decision advantage can also be achieved and enhanced through degrading your adversary’s decision making, for example by using denial and deception. Your adversary probably knows this, too, and may well be planning at this very moment to degrade your decision making. (These games of intelligence and counterintelligence will be discussed in future posts.)

And what do intelligence professionals mean by understanding? Typically, understanding is described as gaining insight and foresight. In other words, understanding what is actually going on, and what is likely to happen next. Or, to use two other common military phrases, it is about gaining situational awareness, and deriving situational understanding from it.

Decision advantage – the weapon of the underdog

Military history has many examples of decision advantage being decisive in shaping the outcomes of battles and wars. By decisive, I mean that decision advantage allowed the otherwise weaker side to prevail. Decision advantage is a force multiplier, to use yet another military pet phrase.

One of my favourite examples of situational understanding and decision advantage comes rather from the world of sports. Boxing. On 30 October 1974, in what was dubbed the Rumble in the Jungle, two men faced off in a boxing Arena in Kinshasa, Zaire, to fight for the Undisputed Heavyweight title. George Foreman, the unbeaten reigning champion, was by far the stronger one. Muhammad Ali, the challenger, was the audacious underdog, having resurrected his career after being banned for years over his opposition to the Vietnam War. What followed was the culmination of a meticulously crafted and deftly executed strategic surprise.

Knowing he could not defeat Foreman in a direct confrontation, Ali decided to defend and let Foreman wear himself out. To ensure Foreman would attack as savagely as possible, Ali taunted Foreman for weeks before the fight, and continued to insult him during the fight. And indeed, the enraged Foreman attacked, and attacked and attacked, while Ali lay passively on the ropes and defended. Eventually, exhausted, Foreman could barely keep his arms up. It was then, in the eighth round, that Ali made his move and delivered his famous knockout blow that ended the match and decided the title.

The drama is captured in Leon Gast’s 1996 documentary masterpiece When we were Kings. The film is not only a brilliant account of the saga as it unfolds, but also depicts a real-life example of how decision advantage unfolds, with all the doubts and fears and ambiguities. This fight is a model for underdog victory.

Activists make decisions. Just like military leaders, pugilists and others, they strategise, they plan, they execute. And just like military decision makers, activists’ decisions range from strategic (e.g. what types of activities to use: electoral politics? artwork? civil disobedience? direct action? armed struggle?) through operational (e.g. planning and orchestrating a mass rally) all the way to tactical (e.g. what slogans go into a communiqué or posters at a rally? which banners lead the march?). And just like in military contexts, intelligence is needed for decisions to yield an advantage.

Getting there – The Intelligence Mindset

The single most important step on the way to using intelligence to gain decision advantage is to adopt an intelligence mindset. You do not need to be trained in intelligence to adopt an intelligence mindset. Muhammad Ali was not a trained intelligence analyst.

So, what is an intelligence mindset?

The first critical element of the intelligence mindset, one which state intelligence agencies often lack miserably, is what we might call “cow-manure voyeurism” – deriving satisfaction from seeing not only through your opponents’ bullshit, but especially through your own. This is really a disposition rather than a capacity. It’s not just the ability to see your own blind spots and your opponents’, but the inclination to do so. Enjoy being a contrarian. Challenge your own sense of reality. Play devil’s advocate. Think the unthought. Think the unthinkable. (And remember to be tactful when conveying your thoughts to your fellow activists – none of this will make you popular.)

Think with pen and paper. Draw. Chart. List. Model. When you look at a question, try to think holistically. Who are the players in the field? What stakes are they playing for? How? Find patterns. Patterns and regularities are the signal in the noise. Analyse (break problems, questions, situations into their component parts), then synthesise (put the components together in a way that makes sense), and finally evaluate (what does this mean? what are the implications?).

Empathy and intuition are your best friends. Empathy is your ability to see the world through someone else’s eyes. This is not easy. You might need to “get into the mind” of pretty reprehensible people. But you should try. Remember – empathy is not sympathy. You do not need to like these reprehensibles. You need to understand them.

Intuition is invaluable – always use it but never trust it. Intuition applies deeply internalised patterns to make sense of reality, but without awareness of which patterns are applied and how. When the patterns fit, intuition will give you insights that nothing else can. When they don’t, you might be off by a long shot.

Formal analytic techniques can help counter intuition’s excesses and shape your thinking and research. Many structured analytic techniques (SATs) have been introduced into intelligence practice to help control for biases and develop further insights. You probably know many of them from other contexts. If you would like to try some out, you can start with the CIA’s primer which is available here.

You must be forward thinking. You want to understand the present to contemplate the future, be it short term, long term, or anything in between. You need to get accustomed to thinking in probabilistic terms. It is not enough to say that maybe something will happen, or maybe not. You need to make a judgement call on how likely that something is to happen or not happen. And note, a judgement call is not a guess. It is reasoned and based on information.

But what if you don’t have relevant information to form a judgment? Find it. The intelligence mindset involves not only knowing your own knowledge gaps, but also seeking to fill them. For really important issues, you should approach intelligence as a research project – asking a research question, collecting data, analysing the data, and formulating a thesis. (This is essentially what intelligence professionals call the intelligence cycle.)

So, for example, saying that some reactionaries may or may not disrupt a protest is not very helpful. If you organise a protest and can assess that some reactionaries are likely to turn up to cause a provocation, you can prepare the volunteer helpers on how to respond, and remind the crowds to avoid being dragged into a provocation. If you can asses such provocation is unlikely, you can minimise your preparation for this eventuality and focus on something more critical that can maximise your protest’s chance of success.

Where would you find the necessary information? Maybe through social media where your local vigilantes chat and organise?

And if you can monitor the situation (e.g. by monitoring vigilante’s social media, by looking out for familiar provocateurs in the crowd) and quickly adjust your assessment as appropriate, your chances of having a successful protest will increase.

Importantly, forecasts are not prophesies. Unlikely events do sometimes happen. Likely events sometimes don’t. We all know weather forecasts are sometimes inaccurate. We still use them, and calibrate our risk judgement accordingly. If the chance of rain is 10% you may hang your normal wash on the line, but maybe not your only business shirt on the day of your job interview. Why take that risk?

So, risk is not only about probability. Impact is also important. If you commute in Sydney today, it is almost certain you will not have a car accident in which wearing a seatbelt would make any difference. But you should wear your seatbelt nonetheless, not only because of the risk of being fined, but because “low probability, high impact” scenarios like car accidents may be sufficiently impactful to warrant easy countermeasures, even if extremely unlikely.

When assessing probability in real life, it is often useful enough to distinguish between likely events, even-chance events and unlikely events. Intelligence agencies like to be a bit more granularity, though. This is how the US Intelligence Community calibrates its probabilistic language:

You must always be conscious of what you know for a fact, what you infer from what you know, and what relevant information you still don’t know. Intelligence doctrine typically requires intelligence analysts to provide not only an assessment of likelihood, but also a judgement of confidence in the assessment. This is a question about your level of trust in the forecast’s underlying data (the “intelligence base”). Are your sources of information sufficiently reliable, is the information coherent and credible, and your coverage sufficiently comprehensive, that your judgment is conclusive and no further information is required? How likely is it that there is critical information you are missing that, if acquired, might change your assessment?

When planning, intelligence tradecraft helps translate goals into plans. But in almost all other situations, an intelligencer is the pain the backside who provides a reality check to those who don’t want it but desperately need it, and who forces dreamers to think about the horizons of the possible and the probable rather than blissfully float in a world of fantasy and unjustifiable hope. And if you function as your own intelligence analyst, you will need to accommodate a healthy level of internal conflict.

The challenge of adopting the intelligence mindset

As Cassandra and many since her have found out the hard way, it is not enough to generated intelligence insights. Intelligence needs to be disseminated and integrated into decision making.

In military contexts, the use of intelligence is common and standardised. Intelligence is a military discipline with its own career trajectory. Intelligence officers are integral members of military staffs. Decision makers use intelligence as a matter of course. Standard operating procedures require intelligence assessments to form part of the planning and execution of different operations.

None of this applies to activists. This makes it particularly difficult to integrate the intelligence mindset into activist decision making. Decision making may be diffuse, decentralised and unstructured, making it a challenge to constructively influence them. And activist networks and groups are rarely differentiated or specialised to the point where there is scope for a dedicated intelligence officer, except for armed groups that develop a military-style structure.

To complicate things further, some activists resist the very pragmatic, strategic outlook that intelligence applies. They prefer introspection and apply primarily moral and universal ethical principles to decisions.

One way to bring intelligence into decision making is to turn intelligence into a group effort. Dedicating a meeting to an activity like mapping the political battlefield; brainstorming possible courses of action and their consequences; assessing the risks of an upcoming demonstration and so forth can be very useful. Alternatively, a group can try non-synchronous collaboration. For example, one person can write a draft analysis, or chart a problem to be solved, and circulate the draft to team members for editing, modification and comment.

Obviously, these approaches have their own limitations and complications. But, by turning intelligence analysis into a collective effort a group can achieve more than improving specific decisions. The group would be enhancing its members’ collective and individual intelligence mindset which will benefit it in the long run, too.

And what about the other cool stuff of intelligence?

Deception, espionage, covert action and so forth are all also very relevant to activists, and will be covered in future posts. In the meantime, look out…