Assignment COX Report Analysis - Intelligence Threat
The final research essay will be the results of a Congressional report on the People's Republic of China and assess the CI analysis used in the report to develop the report's conclusions.
People's Republic of China (PRC) Threat Analysis
Value: This Assignment counts for 40% of your APUS Final Course Grade for this course.
Objective: This assignment, in accordance with undergraduate academic endeavors, provides an opportunity to evaluate assimilation of course topics, and sharpen and evaluate students' research & critical thinking skills. The assignment is driven & tested by a combination of course materials and external self-led research (depending upon essay[s] selected); analyzed and presented in essay(s) form.
Type: This assignment consists of a research analysis paper approximately seven to ten pages in length, double-spaced (This page count does not include a title page, abstract (optional), table of contents (optional), bibliography page(s), or Endnotes page(s) (if used)). The source material should result primarily from self-led external research of scholarly articles. In addition, the course required reading materials may be used. The paper should have seven to ten pages of content which are the written results of your research efforts.Topic:
The final research essay for this course is to review the results of the Cox Committee investigation by Congress into the threat posed by the PRC. This report was prepared by the House of Representatives with input from the Intelligence Community (IC) and the Congressional Research Service (CRS). It represents an outstanding counterintelligence analysis product. The complete report is posted under the Resources in the "Cox Report - US Natl Scty and Mil-Commercial Concerns with PRC - 1999" folder. (As a backup, the Govt Printing Office link for this report is http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CRPT-105hrpt851/content-detail.html)
Your assignment starts with a review of the Cox Report (start early -- it is long) to determine the descriptive, explanatory, and predictive analytical methods used by Cox Committee, IC, and CRS to develop the report's conclusions on the PRC's intelligence threat. Your assignment is to describe the various analytical methods used. Your description of the methods used should be supported by examples from the Cox Report. Finally, your assignment must include a discussion of the policy and operational decisions made as a result of this counterintelligence analysis of the PRC's threat.
The purpose of this assignment is for you to understand how counterintelligence analysis is applied.
Note: Per the original course author, this course was designed as follow-on to the INTL300 Research Methods. Thus, you were supposed to bring the knowledge of the three analytical methods mentioned above with you from taking INTL300 earlier/previously. However, if you are not familiar with these methods, I am posting in the class' Resources a CIA reference document titled, "Tradecraft Primer - Structured Analytic Techniques for Improving Intelligence Analysis," dated Apr 2009. Please feel free to use the three previously mentioned methods in the assignment, if you are familiar with them, or any one or combination of methods from this primer.
Format: Your paper requires a Title page, citations, and a bibliography. Your paper should be in the Chicago/Turabian format (http://www.apus.edu/Online-Library/tutorials/chicago.htm) -- Also see the Turabian Quick Guide in the Resources.