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[20 July 2023] In a report published a few days ago, the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) notes that Switzerland has turned into an international espionage battlefield, as more foreign spies are probably active there than in most other European countries. This phenomenon has been partly caused by intensifying competition between the superpowers, the FIS says in its report. According to the FIS, Russian operatives are particularly active in the alpine [...]

[7 June 2023] It was reported earlier this month that senior representatives of more than 20 intelligence agencies from around the world participated in a secret meeting in Singapore. The meeting, which included representatives from American and Chinese intelligence agencies, allegedly took place in parallel to the Shangri-La Dialogue, a high-level security conference held annually in Singapore. The conference focuses on security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. It has been organized [...]

[6 May 2023] Tsai Ming-yen had not spoken in public since assuming assumed the post of Director-General of Taiwan’s National Security Bureau (NSB) in February of this year. His public silence ended last Thursday, when he spoke to an audience of graduating students at Taiwan’s National Chung Hsing University in Taichung City. According to reports, it was the first time in a quarter of a century that an NSB director-general had [...]

[28 April 2023] There is clearly no shortage of notable developments in the field of intelligence. However, the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (MI) to support intelligence operations is likely to prove the most pervasive in the long-run. Over the past few years, intelligence agencies around the world have been investing heavily in developing AI and ML capabilities in support of their mission. On the one hand, [...]

[26 March 2023] Earlier this month, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray said during a television interview that COVID-19 “most likely” originated from a Chinese government laboratory. “For quite some time now”, said Wray, the FBI has “assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan”. Wuhan, a city in central China, hosts the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which includes laboratories that [...]

[12 January 2023] First it was former President Donald Trump, whose private residence in Florida was raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, because of a large number of classified documents that had apparently been stored there. But the plot thickened in the past week, when classified government documents from the administration of United States President Barack Obama were also found stored in private property. This time, the property belonged to [...]

[22 December 2022] In February of this year, the largest country in the world invaded the largest country in Europe, marking the opening salvo of the most extensive military conflict in Europe since World War II. Cascading domino effects have since ensued, which include the most expensive refugee crisis in Europe’s postwar history, as well as a series of global inflationary pressure waves, which are unprecedented for a generation. As the [...]

[27 November 2022] The firm Standard & Poor's needs no introduction. Founded in 1868, S&P, as it is known today, has a worldwide reputation for building and maintaining accurate financial market indices. The latter are widely viewed as points of reference across the world. In addition to issuing credit ratings for companies, as well as evaluating debt obligations, S&P issues periodic forecasts about the state of the global economy and its [...]

[30 October 2022] Future historians are likely to assess the impact of COVID-19 on scholarly inquiry as mixed. The pandemic compelled an unparalleled growth in mRNA medicines and pharmaceutical science more broadly. It also forced a re-evaluation of the use of emergency medicine practices in public health. At the same time, however, COVID-19 hampered scholarly cooperation by preventing experts from gathering and sharing ideas through discussion. Yes, a host of emerging [...]

[26 September 2022] Arguably no individual deserves the title of ‘doyen’ of intelligence studies more than Loch Johnson. An active participant in the management of intelligence in the 1970s, as well as a thinker and scholar in subsequent decades, Johnson’s meticulous work has shaped the thinking of countless students, practitioners and academics in our field. The most recent issue of Intelligence and National Security contains an extensive interview with Loch Johnson, which was [...]

[31 August 2022] In late July, Nikos Androulakis, leader of Greece’s center-left PASOK opposition party, who is also a serving member of the European Parliament, revealed someone had tried to bug his mobile telephone in 2021. A few days later, the director of Greece’s National Intelligence Service (EYP), Panagiotis Kontoleon, told a parliamentary committee that the EYP had bugged a telephone belonging to Greek journalist Thanasis Koukakis, who works for CNN [...]

[17 July 2022] Few terms in intelligence studies are used as often as “intelligence failure”. The fear of faulty information somehow being at the root of a wrong decision with far-reaching consequences haunts intelligence analysts and the agencies that employ them. And yet, relatively little attention has been paid to the responsibility of decision-makers to take into account the views of intelligence experts. In an article published on July 3 in the Daily [...]

[15 June 2022] For generations, intelligence analysts have been instructed to shroud their products in empiricism and the scientific process, and to shield them from emotions. The latter are associated with sentimentality, excitement and feelings, which, by their very nature, are opposed to analytical logic. But that dichotomy is false, and is not necessarily the key to arriving at successful analysis products. Don’t take my word for it. Read instead a [...]

[10 May 2022] Since its inception, Australian intelligence has strictly followed the British model: subtle, discreet and, most of all, avoiding any publicity —good or bad— by any means necessary. That is why, until very recently, there was no presence of anything resembling public relations in the Australian intelligence community. Even in our age of transparency, Australian spooks are rarely heard of in public. That is precisely why one should pay [...]

[20 April 2022] In the West of the post-Cold-War era, intelligence has typically been an esoteric preoccupation. That is neither good nor bad. It can be argued that healthy democracies should not prioritize intelligence and security matters, as a matter of principle. On the other hand, because of its openness, democracy is a fragile political system, whose security infrastructure requires much attention by all, especially in times of crisis. Recent events [...]

[31 March 2022] In the field of intelligence, success is always an ephemeral concept. It is here one day, gone tomorrow. Constant vigilance is required to ensure that accomplishments are more than fleeting moments in time. Take the example of the French intelligence services. Back in August of last year, many praised the French intelligence community for anticipating —and preparing for— the Western coalition’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan. It was reported at the [...]

[28 February 2022] On February 24, the largest country in the world invaded the largest country in Europe, marking the opening salvo of the most extensive military conflict in Europe since World War II. A cascading series of domino effects has since ensued, which include the most expensive refugee crisis in Europe’s postwar history. So far, the conventional theater of this war is unfolding along four major theaters, namely the Russian [...]

[22 January 2022] Earlier this month, the European Intelligence Academy, launched a new and innovative internship program, in collaboration with its transatlantic partners. The program operates under the direction of the Chanticleer Intelligence Brief (CIB) and the Intelligence Operations Command Center (IOCC) at Coastal Carolina University in the United States. This new internship consists of six dedicated Critical Mission Centers (CMCs). Each CMC is headed by a CMC Director. These directors supervise teams [...]

[30 November 2021] In an insightful essay that appears in the latest issue of the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (Vol. 34, No. 4.), Mark Lowenthal makes a provocative statement: “Intelligence is NOT about telling truth to power”, he claims. Initially, this statement might seem to fly in the face of the decades-long common wisdom in the field of intelligence. After all, intelligence professionals are tasked with finding the truth about critical [...]

[18 October 2021] Founded in 2016, the International Centre for Policing and Security (ICPS) at the University of South Wales (USW) is a think tank that concentrates on the European and international dimensions of policing and security. Although it specifically focuses on European Union institutions and agencies, as well as relevant policies and the law, it frequently extends its reach beyond the European borders. That was precisely the intention behind the ICPS’ recent online [...]

[31 August 2021] August 30th marked the inglorious demise of Operation RESOLUTE SUPPORT and the end of the NATO-led multinational mission in Afghanistan. For several weeks now, some of the “bread-and-butter” terms of intelligence analysis, such as “optimism bias”, “critical thinking”, and even “strategic surprise”, have been appearing with uncommon frequency in the headlines. Obviously, this rare phase will not last long, as the Memento-like nature of the neurotic news cycle [...]