PICT8014/PICX8014 S1 2022

Assignment 1: Intelligence Summary and Collection Plan

Student instructions

Congratulations. You are a seasoned intelligence analyst who has set out as a private consultant, and you have just landed your first major contract. You and your team of OSINT collectors have been hired by the government of Fiji to conduct OSINT collection and intelligence analysis on a burning issue. You have been asked to evaluate and report on the Australia’s National Intelligence Community’s campaign against foreign interference, a campaign that has received a great deal of public attention recently following some explosive public revelations by Director General of Security, Mike Burgess.

As you know, the Fijian government has a complex relationship with its Australian counterpart whom it sees as an ally on some issues, and a strong rival on others. The Fijian government remains suspicious of Australian intentions in the Pacific region. The Fijian government is also conscious of and concerned about attempts of foreign powers to meddle in Pacific affairs.

Your customers are strongly interested in the Australian National Intelligence Community and in the extent of foreign interference. Specifically, your customer would like your report to help them understand

• the true extent and risk of foreign interference in Australia

§ is it real? Or is it exaggerated for political or other ulterior motives?

§ Who are the Australians concerned about?

§ What is the nature of the foreign interference?

§ What is the risk to Australia?

o Your customers will use your report in part to assess the foreign interference risk to

Fiji.

• The Australian National Intelligence Community’s response to foreign interference § How is Australian intelligence organised to meet foreign interference?

§ What resources are available to the Australian intelligence community?

§ What is the Australian National Intelligence Community’s strategy?

§ What methods does the Australian National Intelligence Community use to confront foreign interference?

§ How effective is the Australian National Intelligence Community’s action? • What are the results – both intended and unintended – of the Australian National Intelligence Community’s action?

§ What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Australian National Intelligence Community as reflected in the response to foreign interference?

o Your customers will use your report to help them evaluate the quality of the Australian National Intelligence Community as well as to help develop Fiji’s response to potential foreign interference.

Your task is to create an intelligence picture – a target model – of Australia’s National Intelligence Community as it responds to foreign interference, and use that as a basis to interpret the information and answer the questions that were posed to you.

You will produce several intelligence products during the semester. These products (which are your three assessable assignments in this semesters) are as follows

1. An open-source intelligence collection plan (due week 5). This will include a brief intelligence summary that will be based on your quick preliminary analysis, which will synthesise what you know about your target and the context in question and identify gaps that will require additional intelligence collection.

• Once you submit your collection plan, you will review all the other collection plans of your class members as well, and then start collecting your intelligence, which will lead to the next product.

2. An intelligence report based on your intelligence collection (due week 9). This will provide your analysis and identify the remaining gaps.

• This report, along with the equivalent reports of your fellow students, will form the basis of your final product.

3. An intelligence briefing to inform your customer of your efforts, and your intelligence assessment (due week 12).

• This will be a recorded ten-minute audio presentation accompanied by PowerPoint slides.

The first two products can be completed individually or in groups of up to three students. The last assignment – the briefing – will be an individual assignment.

Specific instructions for assignment 1 – Intelligence Collection Plan

You are asked to write an intelligence collection plan in support of your intelligence analysis. Please make sure you carefully read chapter 2 of Clark and Mitchell’s book Target-Centric Network Modeling.

You should consult the best OSINT material you need to form as accurate a picture as you can of your target in a very short time. There is no way you can consult all, most, or even more than a fraction of the relevant material, so you will have to be very strategic and very effective with your choice of sources.

Possible sources may include official websites; official reports and reviews; media briefs by senior officials; investigative journalist reports; major peer-reviewed publications; media, online reports by NGOs, etc.. Please remember – not all sources are equally reliable, and all sources reflect a specific position. You should consider the merits and characteristics of sources as you select them. Also, you do not need to read sources from beginning to end. You have a very tight schedule so now is the time to skim and be as disciplined as possible with your time.

You are to write a brief intelligence summary and collection plan as follows:

1. One page – cover sheet giving your name, the course, the title of your product, and the date you have written the document.

2. Two pages, an outline of the target system you are investigating and the relevant context– the Australian National Intelligence Community as it responds to foreign interference. This will help collectors understand your target, what you know about it, and what the critical gaps in your knowledge are. Your description should cover the threat of foreign interference as perceived by the Australian National Intelligence Community; the political, institutional and social context in which the Australian National Intelligence Community operates; as well

as the structures, functions and processes of the Australian National Intelligence Community.

a. You should make sure your reader knows the differences between what you know about your target, what you infer about your target, and what you do not know.

b. If some information is accurate as at an earlier date, indicate this clearly.

c. Unless you are certain about a fact or an observation, your judgement should accurately convey your degree of doubt that is inherent in your judgment using the scale of: Remote; Very unlikely, unlikely, possible/even chance, probably/likely, very likely, almost certain. (e.g. “The Australian government almost certainly continues to identify the PRC as the greatest threat of foreign interference, although it is likely that priority accorded to Russian foreign interference has increased considerably.”) For more information see insert below from an American National Intelligence Estimate of 2007.

d. For the purposes of this exercise, we will use a citation style that involves endnote references. Specifically, we will use the Chicago note-bibliography style. Check out the library site for a review of the different reference systems:

https://libguides.mq.edu.au/Referencing. The endnotes should be used to both cite specific sources, and, where relevant, provide a brief evaluation of them. (When evaluating sources, please consider the scheme outlined by Clark and Mitchell. If appropriate, very briefly justify your evaluation.) A separate reference list/bibliography is not required.

3. One page, outlining the main collection gaps (not analytic gaps), and some suggestions of how to strategise and prioritise the collection. Now, given you are only tasking OSINT collectors, you should only discuss specific categories of OSINT sources and collection.

4. Create a table of intelligence requirements to direct the subsequent collection. Model your table after table 2.4 (“Intelligence Collection Plan: Sierra Leone Gray Ars Traffic Matrix”) from Chapter 2 of Clark & Mitchell’s book.

a. The left column “priority intelligence requirement” should clarify the logic behind your question. If you think the collector could benefit from additional information, add a brief endnote.

b. The “Information Requirement” column should have the general questions.

c. In the “Sources” column, typify the kinds of sources you would like the collectors to explore (e.g. published academic research; press and media; court documents; official publications; leaked material, relevant press conferences, security conventions etc.).

d. The column of specific information requirements breaks down the questions in the “information requirements” column into more specific questions.

5. Your table of intelligence requirements should be 4–10 pages long.

The collection you are asking for should allow you to construct as accurate a model as possible of your target – the Australian Intelligence Community – based on available OSINT.

Please make sure your font is no smaller than 11 points, and that you leave margins. Line space should be more than single. I have it set at 8 points after the line here. You can follow this, or perhaps set it at 1.5 lines. Make your own judgment call.

The table at the end of the essay can have single spaces, but please make sure the font is 11 points or larger. Endnotes can also be in single space. Please keep those to 11 points as well. (Intelligence customers tend to be middle aged and do not often like to be reminded of their waning eye site with small font they once could read.)

Assignment submission instructions:

You will need to post your assignment twice, as follows:

• First you will post it to the database link. There it will be open for access to the rest of the class, so that your fellow students can benefit from your work and incorporate relevant observations into their own work.

• Once you have submitted the paper to the database, you are required to post it to the Turnitin site where it will be checked for originality and be subsequently graded. (Your grade will not be shared across the class, and will be kept entirely private in line with Macquarie University policy.) You must submit your assignment through Turnitin before the deadline, or penalties will apply.

• For those who submit as a group, only one person needs to submit the paper on behalf of the whole group.

From US NIE Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities 2007