  Big data holds critical importance in the current generation of information
technology, with applications ranging from financial, industrial, academic to
defense sectors. With the exponential rise of open source data from social
media and increasing government monitoring, big data is now also linked with
national security, and subsequently to the intelligence community. In this
study I review the scope of big data sciences in the functioning of
intelligence community. The major part of my study focuses on the inherent
limitations of big data, which affects the intelligence agencies from gathering
of information to anticipating surprises. The limiting factors range from
technical to ethical issues connected with big data. My study concludes the
need of experts with domain knowledge from intelligence community to
efficiently guide big data analysis for timely filling the knowledge gaps. As a
case study on limitations of using big data, I narrate some of the ongoing work
in nuclear intelligence using simple analytics and argue on why big data
analysis in that case would lead to unnecessary complications. For further
investigation, I highlight cases of crowdsource forecasting tournaments and
predicting unrest from social media.
