Your assignment this week is to imagine that you are an intelligence analyst and that you have been asked to write a short intelligence

Your assignment this week is to imagine that you are an intelligence analyst and that you have been asked to write a short intelligence

Your assignment this week is to imagine that you are an intelligence analyst and that you have been asked to write a short intelligence style briefing for the President or a senior US General on the nuclear weapons program of a foreign power.

The specifics of the assignment are as follows:

  • Pick one of the following countries: Iran OR North Korea and follow the guidance below to write your briefing.

Guidelines for Writing the Intelligence Briefings

I am aware that for many students writing intelligence style briefings is something you may not have encountered before, and so in order to help you maximize points for this assignment, please refer to the following guidelines.

  1. Remember that briefings are tailored to a particular audience, and so must be written in a style that fits the need of the audience. For the purposes of this class, imagine that your audience is either the President of the United State, or a senior General. As such, briefings should be concise – no more than two pages (single spaced), and should include a mixture of historical background to a given situation as well as the most recent developments. You should assume that your audience has prior background to the situation and so the briefing should have some complexity to it. It is recommended that you include extra materials such as graphs and charts, and these do not count towards the two page limit.
  2. Your report should be structured in the following way – please make sure that these headings appear in your report. It will help you to structure your writing and also to guide you as to what information needs to go in each section:
  • Title (0 points)
  • Background (2 points)
  • Analysis (3 points)
  • Outlook (2 point)
  • Policy Recommendations (2 points)
  • References (1 point)

Title (0 point): This information should go on the front page of the report and should include the following:

  1. Title
  2. Date
  3. Name of person being briefed (nb, you can put POTUS)
  4. You will not be awarded points for doing this, but failure to do it may result in the loss of 1 point.

Background (2 points): You should try and include the following:

  1. Remember that the most important part of the report is the analysis and so keep this section relatively short.
  2. Include details that provide a quick summary of the situation that you are talking about
  3. This is the place to include historical details, prior agreements, or prior violations of international accords
  4. Your goal is to get the person up to speed on the situation without drowning them in information.

Analysis (3 points): The section that follows the background contains the analysis and is the most important part of the briefing, as as such the longest:

  1. You should be accurate, clear, and as brief as you can with each point that you make
  2. The goal is for the decision maker to be able to make a policy decision in the best interests of the USA – therefore you need to be as crystal clear as you can.
  3. Your analysis should be ordered logically starting with the most important points first
  4. I recognize that there are many points that you can include and that it can be overwhelming – as an analyst it is up to YOU to choose what you think is most important and to be able to explain why on the basis of the evidence.
  5. Please do NOT include your opinion here – this is meant to be entirely fact based, analyzed logically with as little bias as possible
  6. Your points should be referenced with in-text citations and multiple credible sources should be used.

Outlook (2 points)

  1. The purpose of this is to sum up the content of the paper
  2. Never introduce new ideas here – all of that should be in the analysis section
  3. Be concise and to the point
  4. Set the scene for your 2 recommendations

Policy Recommendations (2 points):

  1. Please make two separate policy recommendations
  2. Each recommendation should be distinct, and so it would be useful to note each as recommendation 1, and recommendation 2.
  3. Each recommendation must be based on the logic of your briefing
  4. These do not need to be long or elaborate. Be to the point and matter of fact.
  5. The reader should be able to see the logic of each recommendation in the briefing.

References (1 point):

  1. Each unique point you make in the text must have an in text citation, for example (Pieri, 2014: 33).
  2. Because the report is based on evidence, I expect to see citations, you may loose additional points in the analysis if I can’t see enough evidence
  3. You should include a list of references at the end of the paper as part of a bibliography – you may use any referencing style that you want, but it must be consistent and correctly used (my preference is APA – but you are not bound by that)

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