Learning with Us
National Intelligence University offers a supportive and inspirational environment for enquiring minds to learn and grow. We strive to build confident and creative thinkers and aim at delivering an education that is truly relevant to their future.
60th NIU Anniversary
NIU Current Events
Click on the article images below to see full current NIU event articles.
NIU Welcomes its Provost and a New Class of Students
Every year, the end of August marks an exciting time for students across the United States. Colleges and universities open their doors to new students ready for all the possibilities that higher education offers. As the intellectual hub of the Intelligence Community (IC), National Intelligence University (NIU) welcomed a new class of future IC leaders at the Convocation on August 26, 2024, integrating more than 650 resident...
NIU Opens Innovative, Unclassified Research Lab in Washington, D.C.
In a research lab above a Chevy Chase Cheesecake Factory and a T-Mobile, students, government employees, and experts from industry and academia are attempting to address some of the nation’s most pressing technological challenges.While the collaboration is inspired by a goal to strengthen partnerships in the National Intelligence Strategy released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) ...
Apply now for all NIU Academic Programs
NIU is the Intelligence Community’s accredited, federal degree-granting institution attended by intelligence and national security professionals from across the federal government who study and pursue solutions to the toughest national security challenges. NIU is the Intelligence Community’s accredited, federal degree-granting institution attended by intelligence and national security professionals ...
Featured Research Publications
Research Shorts are a cross between conventional intelligence products and the shorter academic papers published by universities and think tanks. Research Notes fuse current events with a research insight. Though most of our Research Shorts and Research Notes appear within government channels, those below have cleared for public release. Articles are presented in PDF Format.
Unveiling Public Safety: The Power of Declassification
Substantial public safety benefits derive from declassifying information related to private sector security. From declassification of the US military’s Global Positioning System to actionable warnings of terrorist activities and Russia’s plans to invade Ukraine, intelligence sharing has fostered private sector technology development and risk management strategies that better protect US national security and public safety. Providing the US public with knowledge that can safeguard the populace has undeniable intrinsic value, but transparency and the free flow of critical information also foster trust, enhance understanding, and promote beneficial public-private partnerships.
Benchmarking Best Practices:
A Means To Improve Analytic Rigor and Excellence?
As the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) grades analytic products for rigor and excellence, it also collects and shares best practices in the use of the IC Analytic Tradecraft Standards. The wider IC, however, does not systematically share the best practices developed by its use of the standards to guide analysis processes and grow analysts’ proficiency, which hinders analytic quality. This Research Short cites Benchmarking Theory, a business improvement framework for determining transferability of potential best practices, to introduce one agency’s potential example best practice to improve analytic tradecraft. Then, it seeks additional exemplars that could be collected and shared across the IC.
Why Define Intelligence?
For more than a half-century, government leaders, intelligence practitioners, and scholars have sought to define and redefine intelligence in the national security sense. The effectiveness of the US Intelligence Community (IC), without consensus on this basic term, begs the question: Does defining intelligence matter? The answer is an emphatic yes. Defining intelligence is critical for the IC and the nascent intelligence studies discipline. Achieving agreement on what intelligence is would better focus IC missions, authorities, resources, and oversight. Moreover, understanding what it should be is essential to envisioning and achieving an efficacious future intelligence enterprise to enable sound decisions in a rapidly changing world.