Treadstone 71 / Founder's briefs
What are structured analytic techniques?
Structured analytic techniques are repeatable methods that force an analyst to show the reasoning behind a judgment: competing hypotheses, assumption checks, deception detection, red-hat analysis, and more. They reduce bias and make an assessment auditable. Treadstone 71 LLC teaches thirty techniques in its Advanced Analytic Dominance course and documents sixty-six across nine families in the reference Tradecraft at Machine Speed.
One source. A codename. Curveball.
In 2002 an Iraqi defector handled by German intelligence carried much of the American case for mobile biological weapons labs. The American analysts who relied on him never interviewed him. His reporting reached a speech at the United Nations in February 2003.
The labs did not exist.
Nobody in that chain lacked intelligence or effort. They lacked a method that forced the weak point into the open. A single assumptions check, written down and signed, asks the question out loud: what happens to the judgment if the one source is lying?
What the techniques do
A structured technique takes reasoning out of the analyst's head and puts the reasoning on paper where a second reader is able to attack it. Analysis of Competing Hypotheses lines up every explanation against every piece of evidence and hunts for the evidence that kills a hypothesis. A key assumptions check lists what must be true for the judgment to stand. Red-hat analysis asks how the adversary sees the board. Deception detection asks who benefits if we believe the report. A premortem imagines the judgment already failed and works backward to the cause. Indicators get written in advance, so later events confirm the estimate or break it without a fight. None of them is hard, and all of them get skipped under deadline.
Technique at the speed of the incident
The classic canon assumed an analyst with a week. Incident response gives her an afternoon. Tradecraft at Machine Speed arranges sixty-six techniques in nine families around an eight-part execution structure, so a team under pressure picks the two techniques the problem needs and runs them in hours. Salt Typhoon, Volt Typhoon, Spamouflage, and Wagner are worked as live cases. Find the book through my Amazon author page.
Writing the judgment
Analysis that stays in a notebook changed nothing. The product leads with the bottom line. Verified fact and adversary claim never share a sentence. Every assessment carries a likelihood from one fixed scale:
| Band | Probability (percent) |
|---|---|
| Almost certain | 95 to 99 |
| Highly likely | 85 to <95 |
| Likely | 55 to <85 |
| Roughly even chance | 45 to <55 |
| Unlikely | 15 to <45 |
| Highly unlikely | 5 to <15 |
| Almost no chance | 1 to <5 |
Half-open intervals, so no number lands in two bands.
An assessment without a confidence marker is a draft, not a product.
Where to learn them
Advanced Analytic Dominance teaches thirty techniques with AI integration. Analytic Writing covers the product. The free Cognitive Bias Validator lets an analyst test a draft against common bias patterns.
Evidence grading sits underneath every technique. The ASA Evidence Standard opens with a Curveball retrospective, graded factor by factor. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22662242.
Questions buyers ask
How many structured analytic techniques does Treadstone 71 teach?
Thirty, in the Advanced Analytic Dominance course. Jeffrey S. Bardin's reference book Tradecraft at Machine Speed extends the count to sixty-six, grouped in nine families.
What probability scale does Treadstone 71 use?
A Kent-style spectrum with half-open intervals: almost certain 95 to 99 percent, highly likely 85 to under 95, likely 55 to under 85, roughly even chance 45 to under 55, unlikely 15 to under 45, highly unlikely 5 to under 15, and almost no chance 1 to under 5.
