Intelligence Types in Corporate Warfare

There are primarily five intelligence disciplines which significantly support corporate operations:

Human Intelligence (HUMINT)

Signals Intelligence (SIGINT)

Technical Intelligence (TECHINT)

Image Intelligence (IMINT)

Communications Intelligence (CI)

Human Intelligence (HUMINT)

The objective of most corporate campaigns, highlighting specifically the areas of marketing, advertising, selling, legal, mergers and acquisitions, and other key areas where the intent is to influence humans with a specific level of buy-in.

The most effective source of intelligence gathering is Human Intelligence.

Human Intelligence can be collected using a variety of methods.

§ Survey persons in the target market or industrial segment and debrief those persons who have recently had interpersonal contact with either. refugees.

§ Debrief new employees who are or formerly have been part of the target market.

§ Perform controlled collection.

§ Intelligence gathering by observation

§ Form strategic alliances with those individuals and organizations inside the target market, industry, or sector of industry along with members of the local population, obtaining intelligence information from any number of groups friendly to the corporation.

Corporate-based psychological warfare and other highly-controlled forces originating from the vision of corporate senior management utilize Human Intelligence developed from primary sources such as from controlled collection, Communications Intelligence, surveys as described above, debriefings as described before, and from other defensive or offensive Human Intelligence corporate warfare operations. To support these activities, Human Intelligence must be timely and accurate.

Intelligence information gathered from individuals or business units within a rival company, industry, or that hold key positions in the target market often provide intelligence-gathering business units with significant insights into the psychological situation within one of these specific areas or other target group. Under the proper circumstances, these individuals can also be used to develop products that can later be used in psychological operations. They can also be extremely valuable in testing, pre-testing, or post-testing said products.

Signal Intelligence (SIGINT)

Signals Intelligence is developed from the collection, evaluation, analysis, integration, and interpretation of information derived from intercepted electromagnetic emissions. Signals Intelligence sub-fields include Communications Intelligence (COMINT) and Electronic Intelligence (ELINT). By integrating these forms of intelligence with intelligence from other resources, accurate targeting and threat data can be obtained and realized.

Signals Intelligence data supports psychological operations by providing products extracted from locating, monitoring, and transcribing threat communications and by intercepting non-communications releasers. These assets provide information and intelligence that help reveal activities or plans of opposing forces so that psychological operations can assist the corporate leader in developing effective countermeasures.

Image Intelligence (IMINT)

Image Intelligence comes from radar, photographic, infrared, and electro-optic imagery.

Psychological warfare analysts use Image Intelligence in varied ways. It helps locate and determine the capabilities and operational status of geographic locations of assets that the opposition has that may be a threat within a target geographic area or demographic.

By analyzing imagery of the spatial location and architecture of key structures, Imagery intelligence analysts can determine the ethnic or religious composition of a town or village. Other uses for Imagery Intelligence products include identifying and evaluating operational capabilities of transportation and/or logistics networks, factories, and other rival structures or systems.

Imagery Intelligence analysts use Image Intelligence to confirm or deny acts of acts of sabotage, demonstrations, and work slow-downs that are either the original PSYOP objective or an impact indicator of a PSYOP campaign or specific product.

Technical Intelligence (TECHINT)

Technical Intelligence consists of comparing Scientific and Technical Intelligence and battlefield TECHINT. Technical Intelligence provides business unit personnel with intelligence about other business unit or corporate technological developments and the performance and operational capabilities of business unit or corporate technological materiel. Corporate battlefield TECHINT can provide the tactical-level corporate leader with countermeasures to neutralize and defeat rival systems and materiel. Furthermore, in-depth Technical Intelligence can assist corporate leaders at levels higher than tactical in formulating business unit or tactical strategy.

Psychological operations-involved business units can use Technical Intelligence to focus their efforts on critical, highly technical threat business units.

Counter Intelligence (CI)

Counter Intelligence detects, evaluates, counteracts, or prevents the intelligence collection, subversion, sabotage, and terrorism of rival corporations, business units, or other entities. It determines security vulnerabilities and recommends countermeasures. Counter Intelligence operations support operational security, deception, and business unit protection.

Personality and Intelligence: A Brief Contrast and Comparison

Personality: The complex of all the attributes--behavioral, temperamental, emotional and mental--that characterize a unique individual; "their different reactions reflected their very different personalities"; "it is his nature to help others"

Intelligence: The ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience.

Many people have been conditioned to think that one of the above can be changed while the other is concrete for life. The ability to comprehend and apply lessons to one’s experiences to their benefit and the benefit of others is something that is not constant: This is a reason why intelligence quotient tests can be used as a metric of change in intelligence. Given a specific demographic the knowledge, skills, and the ability to apply them to a series of problems is charted across peers in that demographic. As we grow older we may learn more or we may learn less, but at any rate maturity tends to bring with it increased judiciousness and a changing attitude towards risk.

By contrast, personality is the underlying construct to intelligence: Just like an operating system controls the functions of a computer or the framework of a house determines how large the house can be or where walls, rooms, and doors can go, personality instructs how we learn and how our intellect interacts with the rest of the world. Just as new information can change our intelligence if we are receptive to it—just as it is that a house can have an addition added or rooms taken away—what is to say that personality, the underlying construct of who we are, cannot be just as malleable?

Research by developmental psychologist Dr. Carol Dweck at Stanford University suggests that this is, in fact, the case. An article recently published in Newsweek overviews the old way of thinking and the empirical data that suggests otherwise:

“The old thinking was that our personality—the sum total of our human qualities—was an inherited legacy, fixed at birth and unchanging through life. So we had adventurous people and timid people; competitive Type As and laid-back Type Bs; conscientious, truthful types and—well, scoundrels and liars.”

Instead:

“The new thinking is that these traits are not fixed but in flux, and there are many ideas about why personality might change. Dweck's theory is that our beliefs about ourselves and the world—our "self theories," in the jargon—are a powerful influence on who we become in life. In other words, our own lay theories about personality and aptitude actually shape our character.”

Years ago when I was in a special leadership development course we were taught that “People see the world how they want to see it.” This correlates strongly with the adage that “someone convinced against their will is of the same opinion still.” My friend Rick once counseled me with the following advice: Whenever we have problems with someone it behooves us to look inside. It stands to reason, then, that the best way to change our world and how we interact with it is to look inside and change our worldview.

In Dr. Dweck’s research hundreds of pre-teens were given a standard IQ test. Most of them scored “OK” on the test but different groups were praised differently on the test: Some were praised for their natural talent (“What a great score! You're so smart!”), while others were praised for their hard work (“What a great score! You must have worked very hard!”). The first message was crafted to convey people’s abilities as a fixed personal asset and the second message meant to convey a person’s abilities as something that can be changed.

As they say, “the proof is in the pudding:” Where results are the things that matter, the children who were told that they were smart were less apt to expose themselves to more circumstances that would possibly offer evidence to themselves that would take away this worldview, this perception, that they had. The pre-teens that were told that they had worked hard, however, were more apt to expose themselves to new challenges more because it allowed them the opportunity for growth.

To prove the point, the pre-teens were subsequently given very difficult problems to solve. When they failed, the children that were told that they were “so smart” saw it as a blow to their self-worth. Those that were told that they had worked “very hard” just “dug in more.”

The story gets better.

After all the testing Dr. Dweck gave the kids the opportunity write down their thoughts about the test, leaving a space to record their grade on the test under the auspices that it would be for those that took the test in the future. Those that scored badly inflated their test scores in order to improve their own self-perception of their own self-worth. In other words they justified their actions by lying to themselves in order to make themselves feel better instead of expending the effort to actually do better.

In the end the research has proven that undesirable personality traits need not be permanent or be allowed to affect our lives for the worse: As long as we don’t allow our self-perceptions to be negative and look at problems as opportunities, exerting enough good old-fashioned effort, each of us should be able to overcome anything in our path.