Student 1 : “One of the very necessary steps to intelligence gathering is to make sure the funds can be acquired. Everything costs money, but technology and employment of something as huge as this means huge funds. Satellites, for example, are important pieces for intelligence gathering. They are also very costly. I expected that they would cost a few million, which is still a ton of money, but they actually can cost up to $500 million each launch. (Lowenthal, 2016, pg. 93). Where this is a massive cost alone, there are still so many other parts of this process that will continue to add to the bill. The employees who will be looking at this information and evaluating it will also have to be paid, for example. The information that they are gathering with these $500 million dollar satellites is nothing without these people. Not only do the people need to be paid but there are bills for the buildings to be up and running, proper and

secure
transportation for vulnerable information or people, all of these “small” things that are not often thought of that also add to the bill.

All of these fees have to fit into the budget that has to be approved by Congress. Since this is not the cold war era anymore, Congress has backed off from funding large intelligence-gathering technologies as much. What is even tougher, is when asking for more funds for new technologies Congress will want the gatherers to bring in and evaluate more intelligence, which can not always be promised. Not only can it not be promised, but there is already an existing issue of having too much information coming in anyways. Funding is just one of the many tough things needed to do the job”.

Lowenthal, M. (2016). Intelligence, 7th Edition. CQ Press.

student 2: ” The overall target of our nation’s collection efforts is the capabilities and intentions of people or groups that threaten America, our people, and our assets. With this goal in mind, there is so much that would be considered necessary for our national security collection efforts. For instance, there is no argument that one of the most common collection capabilities is human intelligence (HUMINT). That is to say, the interviews and interrogations that net information have always been commonplace in the collection of intelligence. However, as we know, our capabilities are not limited to HUMINT. The United States also has the ability to collect through signal intelligence (SIGINT) communications intelligence (COMINT), imagery intelligence (IMINT), geospatial intelligence (GEOINT), measurement and signatures intelligence (MASINT), and open source intelligence (OSINT) (College, U.S. Naval War, 2019). Again, this displays that there are a number of capabilities that are possible for the U.S.’s intelligence collection. I would asses that all of the previously stated collection types are necessary for intelligence gathering. For example, if there is information being gathered on a possible hack into CIA, or any other intelligence dealing agency, we have the systems in place to be able to detect this. This could be done through COMINT, by intercepting the communications between the would-be hackers. Also, IMINT capabilities could come into play through the use of satellite imagery and un-manned aerial vehicles (UAVs); which could locate where the hackers are operating from and individuals that are working with them. This is where HUMINT comes in, once individuals are discovered then they can be brought in, in accordance to legislation will determine whether enough information must be gathered to get a warrant for an individual. Once again, every capability available to the intelligence community is necessary to get the job done”.

refernce

College, U.S. Naval War. (2019, October 8). Intelligence Studies: Types of Intelligence Collection. Retrieved from U.S. Naval War College: https://usnwc.libguides.com/c.php?g=494120&p=33814…