David Gordon

Thomas M. Sanderson

Arnaud De Borchgrave

The U.S. intelligence community (IC) has made great strides in collecting and analyzing open source information. By contrast, the IC's outreach to nongovernmental experts lags behind. Such experts are not integral to collection strategies, nor are they adequately leveraged by analysts. This shortcoming is a critical weakness in the United States' intelligence apparatus.In an effort to invigorate the debate on expanding IC outreach, the CSIS Transnational Threats Project created and operated a Trusted Information Network (TIN) to examine extremism and transnational crime in Southeast Asia. Composed of top specialists from the region and beyond, this network highlighted the immense expertise such a group could bring to bear on important national security priorities by answering a series of relevant questions. Simultaneously, this effort demonstrated ways in which the IC could draw on TINs to collect and analyze information in the future.Based on the TIN experience, the authors of this new CSIS report recommend that the IC consider the absence of robust outreach as a collection gap; identify the relative absence of outreach as an analytic weakness; strengthen and fully support outreach from the top; build support for outreach at the working level; promote outreach with incoming analysts; be knowledgeable of the top nongovernmental experts; and ensure that efforts to improve outreach are balanced with measures that mitigate the associated counterintelligence risks.

Leveraging Nongovernmental Expertise on Substate Threats in Southeast Asia

The Power of Outreach

Jennifer G. Cooke

An arc of instability stretching across Africa’s Sahel region, an area of strategic interest for the United States and its allies, is plagued by violent extremist organizations (VEOs). These organizations, including Boko Haram, al Qaeda, and other terror groups, have metastasized and present a serious threat to regional stability.

Violent Extremism in the Sahel

Militancy and the Arc of Instability

These assessments, compiled by the CSIS Transnational Threats Project, were drafted by members of the CSIS Trusted Information Network project on Southeast Asia (TIN-2). The Transnational Threats Project created and operated TIN-2 to examine extremism and transnational crime in Southeast Asia and the surrounding region. Comprising top specialists from the region and beyond, this network highlighted the immense expertise such a group could bring to bear on important national security priorities. Primary analysis and findings of the TIN-2 project were published in an April 2009 CSIS report, The Power of Outreach: Leveraging Expertise on Threats in Southeast Asia. Because the TIN-2 discussion questions focused on overarching thematic issues, the editors felt it was important to draw on the tremendous and varied knowledge of the TIN-2 team to create a regional threat assessment. To this end, the TIN members drafted a short paper on their respective areas of expertise.The 16 assessments address terrorism and criminality in the Southeast Asia region as a whole as well as the individual countries of Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, and Australia. As the essays show, the situation is improving in some counties, while violence in on the upswing in others. The authors bring to bear direct experience with local terrorist threats, painting a concise and realistic picture. They pay particular attention to the role of local governments in fighting the threats, which have succeeded when they focus not on ideology or reframing the narrative but rather on reducing local grievances and encouraging and offering opportunities for mainstream Muslims. The lessons that can be drawn from these essays in effect recalibrate the debate on terrorism in Southeast Asia and, more generally, offer insights on strategy and tactics to countering local extremist threats.

A Report of the CSIS Transnational Threats Project

Conflict, Community, and Criminality in Southeast Asia and Australia: Assessments from the Field

Julianne Smith

An Assessment of America's War on Terror

Five Years After 9/11

Thomas M. Sanderson

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