A history of winning intelligence practices from the Spanish Armada to Cyberwar that offers timeless, practical lessons we ignore at our peril.According to conventional wisdom, strategic surprise and other intelligence failures are both inevitable and ultimately irrelevant because, at least in international politics and war, military muscle matters more than brains. In Decision Advantage, Jennifer E. Sims counters this argument by investigating the history of intelligence through centuries of international conflict, including the 16th Century''s Spanish Armada, two US Civil War battles, the hunt for President Lincoln''s assassin, and key diplomatic crises before the two World Wars. Sims dives deep into these events to show that the competitive pursuit of intelligence advantage has been a measurable, buildable, and consequential form of power that can help competitors win against otherwise stronger opponents. From these observations, the author develops a general guide to building intel
