The CIA is particularly good at explaining why African leaders consider themselves non-aligned and why navigating global geopolitical competition is central to their foreign policy. Ta. After negotiations with Aboud, Kennedy publicly acknowledged that the United States “fully supports the determination of the newly independent countries of Africa to maintain their independence.”[35] In a press interview during a visit to Washington in 1985, Mozambique's Machel categorically stated that his country was “African, independent and non-aligned”, adding that “there is no bloc problem”. Ta.[36] President Reagan appears to have come to a similar conclusion, writing in his diary that Machel “has turned out to be a very good man and I believe he really intends to be 'non-aligned.'” There is. [sic] Instead of Soviet Patsy. ”[37]
In anticipating the key priorities of African leaders and potential issues for discussion, the visit articles yielded mixed results. The CIA published a lengthy paper on the Liberian economy ahead of the meeting between Presidents William Tubman and Lyndon Johnson, accurately foreshadowing Liberian leaders' deep concerns about the country's impending external debt repayments and rising commodity prices.[38] Tubman and Johnson then devoted several paragraphs to Liberia's economic challenges in a joint statement.[39] Similarly, some of the CIA's coverage of the visit accurately captured the concerns of many West African leaders about Libya's interference in the region, particularly Chad. After a meeting with President Reagan in 1983, Mr. Diouf of Senegal said: washington post “We have to stop Chad's adventures.”[40]
Meanwhile, the CIA repeatedly failed to identify global issues that African leaders discussed in their meetings with U.S. presidents, such as the situation in Berlin in the 1960s or the situation in Lebanon in the 1980s.[41] The agency was obsessed with Thomas Sankara, the leader of Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), and believed Libya was behind the 1983 coup, leading analysts to believe that Senegal's Diouf and Togo's Gnassingbe In his visit articles about Mr. Eyadema, he repeatedly pointed out that he is likely to take up the country as a topic. However, Upper Volta was not present in any of the official statements, press reports, diaries, or conversation notes from Eyadema's meeting with Reagan.[42]
There were some other big mistakes in the visiting piece. Prior to President Nimeiri's meeting with President Reagan in late 1983, the CIA expressed concern about the Sudanese leader's “erratic personal behavior” and expressed concern that his decision to implement Sharia law was a threat to the country's leftists, secular elites, and and warned that it alarmed mainly non-Muslim southerners.[43] Despite growing concerns from authorities that Mr. Nimeiri was vulnerable to a coup, Mr. Regan appeared unconvinced and avoided any questions about the Sudanese regime's increasing vulnerability. Nimeiri was eventually ousted from power by a popular uprising some 16 months later.[44] Furthermore, door-to-door operations in the 1980s failed in a fundamental way: they did not fully understand their customers. President Reagan repeatedly opined in his diary about whether African leaders were believers in “free enterprise,” but Houphouët's profile is the only one that examines the Ivorian president's economic philosophy. Ta.[45] A central lesson of leadership analysis is knowing the principal's interests, which the CIA appears to have failed to do during the Reagan administration.
Profiling for the future
When future African leaders visit the White House, President Biden will almost certainly ask the CIA about their political acumen, their top concerns for their countries' economies and security, or their views on global crises. will benefit from the insights of After more than 60 years of evolution and refinement, this travel document has become an essential source of information for U.S. presidents and will no doubt be useful in President Biden's next campaign commitments.
At the same time, the art form appears ripe for other innovations that leverage the generative power of AI. While drafting leadership profiles and assessments is essentially a human job, AI has the potential to enhance and enhance this important intelligence product. In last year's National Intelligence Strategy, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines called for leveraging open source “big data,” AI, and advanced analytics to strengthen the intelligence community's capabilities in linguistic, technical, and cultural expertise. promised.[46] Below are three recommendations on how to leverage AI to analyze African leaders and other prominent global figures.
- scale: Drafting a leadership evaluation is a time-consuming task that requires substantial depth of expertise and mastery of analytical techniques. While analysts focus on the visiting African leader, AI can generate additional profiles about the entire delegation, adding further value to the engagement. This is more than just a power multiplier. It is critical to policy success. In a CIA article on Zambian President Kaunda's visit, analysts highlighted the participation of Ruben Kamanga, a top foreign affairs expert in the ruling party who was instrumental in repairing relations between the United States and Zambia.[47] In contrast, the CIA neglected to mention Cape Verde's foreign minister (whom Reagan disliked, according to his subsequent diary) in its 1983 visit article about President Aristides Pereira.[48]
- Customization: Visit articles are typically addressed to the President of the United States and then distributed to other senior policy makers. The president's analysis covers strategic topics but often leaves out details that would inform subsequent meetings and engagements with U.S. officials. By leveraging AI, you can generate customized analysis to incorporate into existing assessments for additional readers. For example, the CIA only briefly discussed the cocoa market in its 1983 visit to Houffet, while the State Department devoted several sections to the topic in its own memorandum.[49] With the help of AI, leadership profiles can have multiple bespoke versions to better suit America's diverse policy needs.
- Data analysis: The Leadership Profile, like any intelligence assessment, uses information from any source to support its analytical judgments. However, this art form rarely utilizes big data to enhance its arguments. AI’s ability to identify common themes and patterns within the underlying data and quickly summarize large amounts of text could help analysts quantify some of their work. For example, the CIA explained in 1973 that Ethiopia's “budget suggests it may not be as concerned about the Somali threat as it says.”[50] By leveraging AI, the visit article could have included a deeper analysis of the budget to contrast the Emperor's stated priorities with the government's current actions.
