Tradecraft was never meant to stay classified.
Every discipline we teach — observation, elicitation, negotiation, risk assessment — was developed under conditions with real consequences for getting it wrong. We didn't invent the method. We declassified it for people who never signed up for the field, but live in it anyway.
How the institute started.
A curriculum for one team
Real Intelligence began as an internal training program, written by a former intelligence analyst for a single corporate negotiation team that needed to stop losing deals it should have won.
The individual track opens
Graduates kept asking for a version they could bring home. Foundation-level courses were rebuilt for people with no professional stake in the material — just a want for better judgment.
Faculty expands past one discipline
Negotiators, security consultants, and a behavioral scientist joined as faculty, each rebuilding one course from their own field instead of teaching around it.
Eight case files, two tracks
The curriculum you see in the catalog — tested first on corporate cohorts, then rebuilt again for anyone willing to do the work.
What we won't do.
Tradecraft has a reputation problem. Here's where we draw the line, stated plainly.
No manipulation dressed as skill
Ethical Influence teaches persuasion you could explain to the other person afterward. If a technique only works when it's hidden, we don't teach it.
No surveillance of people who didn't opt in
Every course applies to your own decisions, conversations, and risk — never to monitoring someone else without their knowledge.
No costume, no theater
We don't sell a spy fantasy. We sell a method that happens to come from a field where the stakes made the method honest.
Who teaches it.
Each instructor rebuilt their course from their own field — not from a textbook about it.
M. Halvorsen
15 years in intelligence analysis before writing File 014 and File 061 as the institute's original curriculum.
D. Osei-Poku
Former commercial contracts negotiator. Built File 033 from deals that were won and lost on preparation alone.
R. Lindqvist
Behavioral scientist focused on deception research. Teaches File 040 as a verification discipline, not a lie-detection party trick.
J. Abioye
Corporate trainer and former case officer. Teaches File 021 and File 052 with a strict no-manipulation rule.
T. Kowalczyk
Security consultant to corporate clients. Rebuilt File 070 around ordinary professional life, not classified environments.
S. Okonjo-Reyes
Oversees the after-action method taught in File 084 and how it threads through every course in the catalog.
See if the method fits.
Start with the full curriculum, or go straight to an application — Foundation courses have no prerequisites.