Measuring whether a warning becomes a decision
Coherence sounds like a quality you can only sense, not score. It isn't. Here is how the ICI turns "will our warning travel?" into a number you can track.
Every serious diagnostic starts by refusing a vague word and replacing it with something you can observe. For the ICI, the vague word is coherence, and the observable behind it is transmission: whether a signal held at one level of an intelligence enterprise reliably reaches the level that must act.
The instrument reads that across three layers and resolves them into one composite, using the same peer-reviewed arithmetic as its sibling, the Adaptive Coherence Index – re-labelled for intelligence.
The three layers
- Executive intent (macro) – tasking clarity, insulated from partisan capture and stable across leadership cycles.
- Fusion architecture (meso) – whether collectors, analysts and agencies share one picture and cross-tip by default.
- Analytic tradecraft (micro) – model adaptability, dissemination responsiveness and warning-to-action readiness.
How the number is built
The composite is not a simple average. It rewards alignment between the layers, weights it against mean capability and an analyst-sustainability floor, and then applies a velocity penalty – because a fast-moving threat environment amplifies whatever fragmentation already exists. In plain terms: a service can be individually capable at every layer and still score poorly if those layers have drifted apart, or if it is being outpaced.
Reading the readout
The composite lands in one of four bands – coherent, conditionally coherent, fragmentation risk, or fragmented – but the band is not where the insight lives. The insight lives in the drift: the gap between the highest and lowest layer.
A service with strong executive intent and weak fusion is the classic dangerous profile – the will to act exists at the top, but nothing carries the signal up to meet it. That pattern scores as a wide drift, and it is exactly the configuration in which a specific, timely warning can coexist with total surprise.
What it is not
The ICI is not a maturity checklist, and it does not ingest classified material. Its inputs are assessments you set – from a facilitated round with your own people, or explored directly in the interactive console. Because the arithmetic is disclosed, the number is auditable rather than a black box.
Using it in practice
The value is in repetition. Baseline the enterprise, act on the lagging layer, and re-measure the next round. Coherence recovery shows up as a rising composite and a narrowing drift – and, unlike a one-off inspection, it tells you whether a reform actually made warnings travel, or merely rearranged the org chart.
That is the whole ambition of the instrument: to make the thing that failed last time – transmission – something you can see coming.