This is a summary of all lectures of the course 'introduction to secret affairs'
It is based on the lectures in 2024. I hope this is helpful for the preparation for your test!
- Information/ product
- Made by humans
- documents
- Secrecy
- secret institutions collecting people’s secret information to make secret products
- Process
- information becomes intelligence
- professional process to inform customers or users of information, to help them with
the decision process
- understanding intentions and capabilities
- Protect citizens / state / party / regime / leader
- Tactical vs strategic
- where are the troops vs. what are the plans of the enemy
- Organizations/ bureaucracy
- Surveillance
- observe groups
- Secret intelligence = Source of power (Michael Herman)
- decisions advantage
- project influence abroad
- increase relative state power
- Support politics / security
- business intelligence? Commercial entities. (not focus of course)
Intelligence studies
- British school
- diplomatic history
- filling the missing dimension
, - American school
- tends towards social sciences
-models and methodologies
- Related disciplines
- international history/ international relations/ security studies / sociology of
knowledge
- Anglo-dominance decreasing, more diversity
Paradox of studying secrecy
- Why do states wish to keep intelligence secret/ why do they not declassify information
- to protect secrets from adversaries
- to protect sources of information and methods, loss of access to it
- to avoid international embarrassment / diplomatic escalation
- to enable negotiations, moderate, pragmatic and adopt unpopular positions
- avoid causing tension
- lean towards caution
Cultures of secrets; how can we know
- What sources can we use to research intelligence, what challenges do they pose
Why do governments disclose intelligence
- Transparency laws
- National reconciliation post-political change
- Influence of 3rd party
- Influence for the agencies
- building government support
- criminalizing
,Significant variation in source access between countries; nature of their policies
- Also between systems; Mi5 vs MI6, MIVD vs AIVD
- Few systems have organized official histories
- Wide variation in traditions of writing memoirs and granting interviews
- Laws on civil investigations/ media freedom is also not the same. Internet has an
important role.
- Wide variation in independent oversight by judges and transparency laws
- Whistleblowing laws, leaks and defectors
- Imperfect and biased knowledge and understanding; ethical dilemma’s of how we
access and sources
lecture 2
Defining intelligence
Sun tzu: “what enables general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of
ordinary men.”
Von Clausewitz: “every sort of information about the enemy and his country – the basis, in
short, of our own plans and operations” (does not recognize that intelligence is specific. Also
does not rely on trans-national organizations)
Lowenthal: “intelligence refers to information that meets the stated or understood needs of
policy makers and has been collected, processed, and narrowed to meet those needs”
- The decision-making process is a two way street
- You focus on providing the information to the policy makers in a brief way
Difference information and intelligence
Information
- Unprocessed
- Raw
- Perishable
- Incomplete
, - Unspecific
Intelligence
- Actionable (can make a decision on information)
- Also perishable
- (generally) reliable and verified. (unless time sensitive)
Scenario
Weapon smuggling
Raw information
- Intercepted comms
- Local sources
- Historical data
- Satellites?
How to turn this into actionable intel
- Check/verify information (triangulate)
- Estimated probability (fair chance, good chance, very unlikely)
- Decode comms
- Combine sources
Actionable intelligence is specific and credible
“a significant illegal arms shipment is expected to cross the border within a 48-hour window
at a specific location)
Intelligence cycle
Historical background
Uncertainty in war
- Britain and France wanted to defeat each other AND internal threats
- Relied on networks of spies and covers operations
- Increased complexity of war
- Decision-making had to speed up and be based on the most current information
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