Question

Summarize the intelligence cycle and imagine a model that will better capture what really goes in the process of finished intelligence.

I need help with the second one in bold

Answer 1

Summary of Intelligence cycle
There are 5 steps in the Intelligence cycle
1. Planning and Direction
This is management of whole effort, from recognizing the need for data to delivering an intelligent product to a consumer. It is the starting and the end of the cycle. The starting because it involves drawing up particular collection needs and the end because finished intelligence, which helps in policy decisions and generates new requirements.
2. Collection
Collection the gathering the raw information required to produce finished intelligence. There are a lot of sources of information including sources such as newspapers, foriegn broadcasts, periodicals, and books. Open source reporting is vital to CIA's analytical abilities. There are some secret sources of information. CIA's operations officers collect this type of information from agents living abroad and from defectors who give information occoupied in no other ways.
3. Processing
Processing involves converting the large amount of information collected in a form which could be used by analysts by decryption, language translations and data reduction.
4. Analysis and Production From All Sources
It is the conversion of basic information into finished intelligence. It consists of integrating, evaluating, and analyzing all data available which is usually fragmentary and contradictory and making intelligence products. Analysts, who are subject related specialists, consider the information's validity,reliability and relevance. They combine data into a coherent whole, put the analysed information in context, and form finished intelligence that includes evaluation of events and judgments about the implications of the information.The CIA assigns the bulk of its resources to provide strategic intelligence to the people incharge of policy formation. It performs this important function by supervising events, warning decision makers about threats and predicting developments. The subjects involved could concern different regions, problems, or personalities in many contexts such as political, geographic, economic, military, scientific, or biographic.
5. Dissemination
The final step, which actually feeds into the first is the distribution of the finished intelligence to the consumers( The same policymakers whose needs initiated the intelligence requirements).

What really goes in the process of finished intelligence ?
Answer- It is Allocating intelligence products to the policymakers who request them. Once information has been revised and combined with data from different available sources, it is called as finished intelligence and is disseminated directly to the same policymakers whose initial requirements caused the generation of intelligence requirements. Finished intelligence is actionable reporting mainly for stakeholder decision making. In other words, finished intelligence is the product of analysts specialized subject matter expertise and comprehensive strategy of collection that spans illegal communities in the deep dark web (DDW), encrypted chat services, and open web sources.