Tinker, Thaler, Soldier, Spy : The Behavioral Economics of HUMINT Transactions and Source Prioritizations

What we know about human decision-making under risk and uncertainty has expanded rapidly over the past forty years. Much of this work has been undertaken by psychologists and economists working together in the new field of behavioural economics. We work through the steps that led to the development of behavioural economics and explore the most robust findings to date, especially the work of Richard Thaler. The implications of behavioural economics for intelligence are explored, including the exchanges and transactions involved in recruiting and running agents. In addition, we explain how prioritisation tasks involving the ranking of alternatives is impacted by systematic patterns of bias in the human decision-making process. These prioritisation tasks might be encountered during the collection, processing and analysis of human intelligence (HUMINT) and shape not only the outcome of the process, including subsequent decisions by government officials, but may shape the very questions that frame and guide the intelligence process. Among the many prioritisation tasks that could be discussed, we have chosen to examine the task of prioritising HUMINT sources for interrogation