"Intelligence is not a science"
About this Quote
“Intelligence is not a science” is the kind of line a seasoned Washington operator drops to puncture a comforting myth: that spies and analysts can be treated like engineers, producing clean answers if you just fund the right tools. Frank Carlucci - who moved through the Pentagon, the CIA, and the White House at the height of late Cold War anxiety - is warning that the intelligence business resists the managerial fantasy of certainty.
The intent is defensive and corrective. Defensive, because when intelligence fails, critics reach for the language of laboratory error: bad data, flawed method, fix the process. Carlucci is staking out a different claim: intelligence is closer to judgment under pressure, stitched together from incomplete reporting, human deceit, political noise, and the analyst’s own biases. Corrective, because policy consumers often want prophecy. He’s reminding them that intelligence can narrow possibilities, not eliminate ambiguity.
The subtext is bureaucratic, too. Calling intelligence “not a science” pushes back against technocratic overreach - the idea that satellites, signals, and spreadsheets can replace street-level context or the messy art of interpreting motives. It also quietly shifts responsibility: if the work is irreducibly interpretive, then leaders can’t outsource accountability to “the intel.”
Coming from a politician-administrator rather than a poet, the line’s power is its plainness. It lowers the temperature of omniscience and raises the stakes of humility: the most expensive information apparatus in the world still runs on fallible humans making calls before the facts are in.
The intent is defensive and corrective. Defensive, because when intelligence fails, critics reach for the language of laboratory error: bad data, flawed method, fix the process. Carlucci is staking out a different claim: intelligence is closer to judgment under pressure, stitched together from incomplete reporting, human deceit, political noise, and the analyst’s own biases. Corrective, because policy consumers often want prophecy. He’s reminding them that intelligence can narrow possibilities, not eliminate ambiguity.
The subtext is bureaucratic, too. Calling intelligence “not a science” pushes back against technocratic overreach - the idea that satellites, signals, and spreadsheets can replace street-level context or the messy art of interpreting motives. It also quietly shifts responsibility: if the work is irreducibly interpretive, then leaders can’t outsource accountability to “the intel.”
Coming from a politician-administrator rather than a poet, the line’s power is its plainness. It lowers the temperature of omniscience and raises the stakes of humility: the most expensive information apparatus in the world still runs on fallible humans making calls before the facts are in.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|
More Quotes by Frank
Add to List
