Structured analysis for small CTI teams: Using AI to reinforce tradecraft

Source: Feedly Blog

Author: Dave Johnson

URL: https://feedly.com/ti-essentials/posts/structured-analysis-for-small-cti-teams-using-ai-to-reinforce-tradecraft

ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY:

Small CTI teams can use prompt-driven LLM workflows to apply structured analytic techniques quickly, improving rigor, consistency, and defensibility.

MAIN POINTS:

1. Structured analytic techniques are taught widely but frequently skipped under operational time pressure.
2. Collaboration-centric SATs clash with remote, understaffed CTI team realities.
3. Accepting reporting at face value increases bias risk and weakens conclusions.
4. LLMs can act as sparring partners that challenge assumptions, not replace analysts.
5. AI assistance can surface assumptions, organize evidence, and generate alternative hypotheses.
6. Salt Typhoon case study illustrated uncertainty hidden beneath confident attribution narratives.
7. Key assumptions checks can be accelerated via prompts producing assumption tables and gaps.
8. ACH prompts help eliminate weaker hypotheses by structuring evidence against alternatives.
9. Devil’s advocacy prompts generate credible critiques to harden assessments against stakeholder challenges.
10. Pre-mortems reconstruct failure paths to reveal missing evidence, dependencies, and overconfidence drivers.

TAKEAWAYS:

1. Lightweight SATs can be completed in roughly 20 minutes using repeatable prompt templates.
2. Separate sessions per problem reduces anchoring and cross-contamination bias in analysis.
3. Grounding outputs in curated intelligence and citations improves defensibility and traceability.
4. Using structured outputs increases clarity, consistency, and auditability of analytic reasoning.
5. Some structured analysis is better than none when resources prevent full team collaboration.