Information Evaluation

Foreword

One of the distinguishing features of the 21st Century is the extraordinary expansion of information in all its forms. The possibilities that each and every one of us now has at our fingertips for acquiring knowledge and for keeping track of events would, only a few years ago, have been utterly unimaginable. Long gone are the days of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, or of the humanist scholars at the University of Paris, who dazzled their contemporaries with the extent of their erudition. Today, with the help of the Internet and a few good technical practices, any student is capable of throwing up open sources of information which would enable him to adequately respond to nearly all the questions posed to those academic giants of yesteryear.

In France, the awareness of the advantage of having the maximum possible amount of data available in order to make the best possible decision has gradually progressed from the military to other spheres since the publication of the Livre blanc de la défense et de la sécurité nationale (White Paper on Defense and National Security). In numerous domains of activity, the reading of Sun Tzu’s work and the methods and practices of competitive intelligence have revealed that which seemed obvious: mastery of the cycle of selection, acquisition and processing of knowledge useful to a decision-maker provides a defensible – and, above all, long-lasting – competitive advantage. From sporting intelligence to judicial, touristic or cultural intelligence, the provision of information, which has become a reliable fount of knowledge because of processing, opens up untold possibilities in the worldwide competition which has become our daily diet.

Therefore, the notion of information provision, and the way in which it is perceived by the general public, are undergoing major alterations, acquiring positive connotations and breaking out of the “ghetto” to which they have hitherto been confined by our cultural history and certain ideologies. However, this proliferation, which means all now have easy access to information which had previously been the preserve of a select few, carries with it a major risk: some of the information circulating around our various networks is false, incomplete or biased. Furthermore, certain players now have no hesitation in circulating untrue information, to give their side the upper hand in operations of influence, exploiting the faults in our system to their own advantage. For this reason, certain experts estimate that 20% of all information available is incorrect, be it deliberately or unwittingly.

It is undeniable that the mass presence of media in today’s world has changed the role of journalists and other information providers. Forced to move fast so as not to be overtaken by his competitors in the publication of the scoop or comment, a journalist no longer has the time to check the reality of the information. He trusts the press agency which provided the initial information, which he supplements with a comment, which will then be added to with other successive comments. All together, these nuggets of information form a highly structured and very interesting multi-faceted whole, the only problem with which will be the lack of trustworthiness of the reality of the initial information. If that information is incorrect, the house of cards collapses. In this case, we have to wait for the completion of the lengthy tasks of investigative journalists, researchers, university students or judges before a clear idea of the initial reality comes to light.

That which has become acceptable in terms of communication, sometimes stemming from misleading of the consumer, is not only unethical; it is unusable for a professional when decisions need to be based on that information for warfare, international politics or business strategy. At that stage, the information needs to be crosschecked and verified, which takes time. Beyond identification of the sources, evaluation of those sources and traditional techniques for valuation drawn from military experience, a multi-dimensional approach is needed for the evaluation of the reliability of those sources. We need to integrate the level of uncertainty of the events into our thought process, and practice creative doubt in order to deal with the changes in level of trust or mistrust.

These procedures, which are necessary – if not absolutely imperative – cause a delay before transmission and diffusion, which puts professional intelligence collection at a disadvantage. Its credibility suffers because of the rapidity of diffusion of the media, whose influencing capacity will often lead a politician or CEO of a company to form a false idea. This may also lead the professional, when faced with the obligation to react quickly, to base his reasoning on erroneous or unconfirmed information. In a world which is constantly reducing reflection time in the interests of immediacy and direct action, analysts therefore have to develop procedures and find tools to help reduce his intervention time without renouncing his fundamental integrity.

Today, in addition to Clausewitz’s factors of political and military conflict, economic conflict is a never-ceasing reality in the worldwide competition between the different poles which will structure the world of tomorrow. Faced with this ever more real situation, we are becoming aware of the importance of evaluating information. That is where the merit of this book lies – a book written by recognized experts which forces us to take note of the advantages, constraints and techniques relating to information evaluation. It is time to integrate into all of our organizations and services charged with reflection and preparation of the decision of those in power the requirement that the reliability of the information used be verified.

It is important to remember that information is forged from raw facts, which are untreated and therefore objective data. On the basis of these true or false data, the information is constructed which will circulate between interested parties. Yet it must not be forgotten, in view of the conditions and actions mentioned above, that that information needs to be crosschecked with other information, and it will be necessary to evaluate it in order to draw from it an affirmation, i.e. a credible, identified and evaluated piece of information which can then be used in our reasoning and our strategic and tactical constructs. To remain at the level of the raw information, against the advice of the fervent partisans of total transparency, opens us up to a multitude of errors, whose consequences may sometimes be disproportionately far-reaching.

For reasons probably relating to the individualism and Cartesianism of its citizens, France suffers from a lack of culture of information control, which means that the French are insufficiently inclined to doubt the information given to them. Trusting in their own intellectual capacity, they favor reasoning over information seeking. They have a tendency to take any information given to them as gospel, so long as it is consistent, logical or, worse still, if it supports their philosophical and political convictions. The recent examples of the Arab Spring and the dreadful errors in interpretation to which it gave rise serve as an unfortunate reminder of this.

This is the major difference between French culture and that of the English-speaking world, which includes a high degree of caution, constructed over centuries of practice, and a realism far removed from any sensitivity. It is unsurprising, therefore, that Americans, for instance, work on the different facets of the profession of an analyst to orientate, search for, select and then evaluate the pieces of information that are useful for a decision-maker’s thought process. It is interesting to note that in Britain and in the United States, analytical works are very popular, whereas in France, the emphasis is placed on vigilance, playing down the importance of using perspective to define the boundaries of the search, and disregarding evaluation of the pieces of information to filter them by their value and their usefulness.

In the face of the burgeoning torrent of information, the problem is no longer one of finding information, but rather one of being selective about the information we use from the veritable ocean of data at our fingertips. We need to trust in the expertise of an analyst to break down this barrier by zeroing in on what is essential. A far cry from simple deduction, which usually involves extrapolation of the past, the task of an analyst is to use other logical forces based on a process of induction/deduction, broadening the field and the possibilities available to him. Drawing upon a perfect knowledge of the basic dossier created over time and constantly updated, an analyst is capable of interpreting weak signals and detecting changes and trends which facilitate the effective practice of anticipation. At this stage, cognitive software which mimics the behavior of the human brain, and the potential of cyberspace – of which we have only begun to scratch the surface – are extremely promising for the coming years.

The quality of the information selected is dependent on the perfect definition of the context for the search. The efficacy of the evaluation of that information is crucially important for the trust of the people that use it. The speed of transmission is often a determining factor in the successful construction and implementation of a winning strategy. All of this is founded on effective teamwork both in terms of the gathering of information and in terms of its exploitation and use. An analyst will be well aware of this, because his success depends on the...