The US executive spends billions of bucks each year to lessen uncertainty: to watch and forecast every little thing from the elements to the unfold of ailment. In different phrases, we spend handsome profit to expect difficulties, establish possibilities, and steer clear of errors. a considerable element of what we spend—over $50 billion a year—goes to the USA Intelligence Community.

Reducing Uncertainty describes what Intelligence neighborhood analysts do, how they do it, and the way they're suffering from the political context that shapes, makes use of, and infrequently abuses their output. particularly, it seems at why IC analysts pay extra awareness to threats than to possibilities, and why they seem to concentration extra on caution in regards to the danger of "bad issues" occurring than on supplying the enter helpful for expanding the possibility of confident results.

The publication is meant to extend public knowing of what IC analysts do, to elicit extra suitable and positive feedback for development from outdoor the Intelligence group, to stimulate innovation and collaboration between analysts in any respect grade degrees in all organisations, and to supply a middle source for college students of intelligence. the main important element of this publication is the in-depth dialogue of nationwide Intelligence Estimates—what they're, what it skill to assert that they symbolize the "most authoritative judgments of the Intelligence Community," why and the way they're vital, and why they've got such excessive political salience and symbolic significance. the ultimate bankruptcy lays out, from an insider's point of view, the tale of the improper Iraq WMD NIE and its influence at the next Iran nuclear NIE—paying specific consciousness to the heightened political scrutiny the latter obtained in Congress following the Iraq NIE debacle.