Scientific and technical intelligence

Scientific and technical intelligence (S&TI), (STINFO) is a national-level intelligence discipline that involves from the collection, evaluation, analysis, and interpretation of foreign scientific and technical information that covers:

• foreign developments in basic and applied research and in applied engineering techniques;
• scientific and technical characteristics, capabilities, and limitations of all foreign

military systems, weapons, weapon systems, and materiel; the research and development related thereto; and the production methods employed for their manufacture.

Somewhat confusingly, technical intelligence (TECHINT) is, in United States intelligence community usage, different from S&TI. TECHINT is a more tactically oriented discipline. S&TI identifies basic new ideas, revolutionary changes in broad technologies, fundamentally improved manufacturing, etc. So, if a nation invented a completely new way to propel bullets, the S&TI analyst would define the method. A TECHINT analyst would investigate the use of the new "gun", and a materials MASINT analyst would evaluate what the bullets did to various materials.

No single United States intelligence community agency has primary responsibility for all oc S&TI. Historically, the discipline was probably first formalized by R.V. Jones while he was a Scientific Officer for the British Secret Intelligence Service during World War II.