For purposes of national security or competitive intelligence, practitioners in intelligence studies work with information that may not be authoritative or reliable, that may be deceptive, or may lack context.

By focusing on the critical thinking skills of evaluation, you’ll learn to collect and critique the perspectives, biases, and contexts of sources before utilizing them for analysis. You’ll utilize standard analytical tools to discern the cognitive biases of intelligence collectors, other analysts, decision makers, and even yourself in circumstances when time is short and information is lacking.

Because collecting information is not a value-free activity, you’ll also learn to recognize the legal and ethical issues surrounding surveillance, moles, terrorists, national security, and data collection for more benign purposes such as marketing, social science, and humanities research.