By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

This morning the CIA, possible in cooperation with the Ukrainian intelligence service, was able to successfully get advanced knowledge that Russia is planning to fabricate a pretext for an invasion of Ukraine by falsely blaming the Ukrainian military for an attack which would include corpses and actors that would be depicting mourners and images of destroyed locations.

 

The pros and cons of what intelligence agencies have to deal with today.

While early on, we researched the 'why' British spies (trying to protect cable networks from communicating, for example, with British forces in India) were also sent to Russia when the initial interventions were not, until their very end, monitored by traditional military or political chains of command. And while following their planners were primarily intelligence-operations specialists whose objectives were to preserve and expand the Empire. Meaning for most of history, power, and geography provided security when distance mattered.

 

Meet the new world today's spy agencies

The current Ukraine situation is a far cry from the plodding pace at the tensest point in U.S.-Russia relations since the Cold War ended three decades ago with satellite images revealing an expansion of Putin's Russia's military presence at multiple locations in Belarus, Crimea, and western Russia.

In short, data volume and accessibility are revolutionizing sense-making. Intelligence collectors are everywhere, and the sheer volume of online data today is so staggering, whereby when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, the best evidence did not come from spies or secretly intercepted communications. It came from selfies: time-stamped photos of Russian soldiers and posted on social media with Ukrainian highway signs in the background. Now underground nuclear command centers display Twitter feeds alongside classified information feeds.1

This is a radically new world, and intel­ligence agencies are struggling to adapt to it. While secrets once con­ferred a considerable advantage, open-source information increasingly does today. Intelligence used to be a race for insight where great powers were the only ones with the capabilities to access secrets. Now every­one is racing for understanding, and the Internet gives them tools to do it. Secrets still matter, but whoever can harness all this data better and faster will win.

However, secrecy brings greater risk in the digital age because emerging technologies are blurring nearly all the old boundaries of geo­politics. Increasingly, national security requires intelligence agencies to engage the outside world, not stand apart from it.

It used to be that adversaries were threatened from abroad. Now they can attack privately owned critical infrastructure like power grids and financial systems in cyberspace - nytime, from anywhere, without crossing a border or firing a shot. In the twentieth century, economics and security politics were separate spheres because the Soviet-bloc command econo­mies were never part of the global trading order. In the twenty-first century, economics and security politics have become tightly inter­twined because of global supply chains and dramatic advances in dual­use technologies like AI that offer game-changing commercial and military applications. Until now, intelligence agencies focused on un­derstanding foreign governments and terrorist groups. They also have to understand American tech giants and startups - and how malign actors can use our inventions against us.

Securing advantage in this new world means that intelligence agen­cies must find new ways to work with private sector companies to com­bat online threats and harness commercial, technological advances. They must engage the universe of open-source data to capture the power of its insights. And they must serve a broader array of intelligence customers outside of government to defend the nation.

These days, the National Security Agency isn't the only big data behe­moth. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are, too. Al­though some companies have declared they will never use their technol­ogy for weapons, the reality is their technology already is a weapon: hackers are attacking computer networks through Gmail phishing schemes and Microsoft coding vulnerabilities, terrorists are live streaming attacks, and malign actors have turned social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook into disinformation superhighways that undermine de­mocracy from within.2 American intelligence agencies have to find better ways to access relevant threat information held by these and other com­panies without jeopardizing civil liberties or firms' commercial success.

Intelligence agencies need the private sector more for innovation now, too. Analyzing massive troves of data, for example, will increas­ingly depend on AI tools. Technological advances (like the Internet) started in government and then migrated to the commercial sec­tor.3 Now that process is reversed, with breakthroughs coming from large companies like Google and Nvidia and startups like Ginko Bioworks and Datamini'. Instead of developing technologies in-house, spy agencies now have to spot and adopt them rapidly from outside. That requires talent and technology, and the private sector is cor­nering the labor market, too, offering compensation packages and cutting-edge computing facilities that are hard for government agencies (or universities) to match. Hence experts are worried there won't be enough left to teach the next genera­tion of students.4

 

Open-source information

Emerging technologies are also unleashing a whole new world of publicly available or open-source information - from Russian soldier selfies in Ukraine to satellite images of Chinese trucks in North Korea - challenging the primacy of secrets and the in­sight they provide. While open-source information has always been important, secrets have reigned supreme inside America's intelligence agencies. Not everything was secret, but secrets were everything. As former CIA analyst Aris Pappas noted, during the Cold War, it was easy to slip into the attitude of "Gee, if they spent a trillion dollars to get this information, it must be a trillion dollars' worth of data.5

Technological breakthroughs are even challenging ideas about who counts as a decisionmaker. Until now, national security policy was the province of government. Important decisions were made by federal em­ployees who wore badges, held security clearances, and knew how the Intelligence Community worked.

Not anymore. Increasingly, decision-makers live worlds apart from Washington - making policy choices in living rooms and board rooms. They are executives and employees working in technology compa­nies where rewards come from inventing new products and finding new markets, not protecting society from nefarious uses and downside risks. Leaders in these companies may want no part of American national security policy or global politics, but their decisions unavoidably affect both the digital age, business is not just business. Tech policy is public policy. Social media companies decide what presidential messages can be blocked or shared with the world. Software developers are affecting how vulnerable their global products will be to cyberattacks. Cell phone and messaging app executives make encryption decisions that determine how dissidents can operate and how law enforcement agen­cies can combat terrorists.

Leaders cannot do it without intelligence about how the threat landscape shapes the development and use of new technologies and how new technologies shape the threat landscape.

In the 2020 presidential election, intelligence officials, especially the US, became more active and creative, making video public service announcements, issuing more frequent press releases, and granting more media interviews.6 

These steps have been essential but insufficient. The 2020 video announcement, for example, received just 22,400 views on YouTube before election day.7 Russia’s state-run propaganda mill, RT America (formerly called Russia Today), had more than a million YouTube sub­scribers.7

Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election 8 - occurred because spy organizations did not change fast or thoroughly enough to meet advanced technology for theft, espionage, information warfare, and more. Cyber threats are hacking both machines and minds. This is only the beginning; artificial intelligence creates deepfake video, audio, and photographs so real that their inauthenticity may be impossible to de­tect. No set of threats has changed so fast and demanded so much from intelligence.

Protecting information, sources, and methods is critical to spy agencies’ and national security; at the same time, officials have frequently complained that far too much information is classified unnecessarily, impeding information sharing between agencies, hindering collaboration between the government and outside experts, and undermining democratic accountability. In some sense, the problem is so severe precisely because it is no one’s fault; bureaucracies naturally hoard information because revealing secrets can get bureaucrats into trouble but keeping them rarely does. When in doubt, it’s better to classify.

 

Complaints about over-classification

In 2020, John Hyten, the four-star Air Force general serving as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared, “In many cases in the department, we’re just so overclassified it’s ridiculous, just unbelievably ridiculous.” 9

Classification absurdities abound. Until the early 2000s, the phrase “offensive cyber operations” was classified. Not what it might mean, what targets might be considered, or what technologies might be used. Just the phrase itself. 

 

Intelligence Agencies of Different Countries

 

 

Why does secrecy matter?

Spy-tainment has generated two policy problems. The first is a public mindset that sees intelligence agencies as far more powerful, capable, and unaccountable than they are. In its most extreme form, the tendency to believe intelligence agencies are omnipotent has fueled conspiracy theories that a Deep Slate is out there, running rogue. The second problem is a policymaking elite that invokes fictional spies and unrealistic scenarios to formulate actual intelligence policy. From the heartland to the beltway, a little knowledge of intelligence turns out to be a dangerous thing.

For example, the President Trump administration pushed high-tech conspiracy theories into overdrive, accusing U.S. intelligence agencies of being part of a Deep State that was secretly working to undermine the Trump presidency at every turn.12 Trump used the phrase “Deep State” repeatedly,13 accused the FBI without evidence of “spying” on his campaign and said that he trusted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denials of interfering in the 2016 presidential election more than the judgments of his intelligence agencies.14 President Trump also accused intelligence agencies of “running amok” and appointed loyalists without intelligence experience to, in his words, “rein them in.” 15

During his term, conspiracy theory catchphrases and arguments about the Deep State peppered Trump’s tweets and press conferences. In a single day (10 May 10, 2020), Trump posted nearly a hundred conspiracy-oriented tweets.16

In the 2020 presidential election, Trump’s conspiracy theories threatened the democratic transfer of power for the first time in American history. He was refusing to concede. Trump insisted without any evidence that the election had been “rigged” and that he’d rightfully won.17

On 6 January 2021, Congress met to certify the electoral college results. Trump delivered a speech to thousands of followers, insisting the election had been stolen from him. Shortly after, a pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol, forcing Representatives and Senators to evacuate to a secure location.

The 2020 election in the US revealed the powerful grip of conspiracy thinking and the genuine dangers. The themes of conspiracy theories are always the same for intelligence agencies: intelligence agencies are too powerful, secret, and rogue - just like they are in the movies. No amount of evidence will ever be enough to prove that suspicions are unfounded and bureaucrats are just trying to do their jobs. 

We do not mean to suggest that intelligence agencies and officials never overstep their legal authorities or engage in objectionable activities. Novels... They’re read as the real thing.

In June 2017, Senator Tom Cotton compared the “fantastical situations” of spy fiction to the allegations that Attorney General Jeff Sessions colluded with the Russians during the 2016 presidential elections at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. Cotton began his inquiry by asking whether Sessions enjoyed espionage entertainment. Sessions quickly responded that he had “just finished” David Ignatius’s bestselling espionage thriller. The Director.19

Mounting evidence suggests that fiction too often substitutes for the fact, creating fertile ground for conspiracy theories to grow and influencing the formulation of actual intelligence policy. 

In the twenty-first century, the tip of the spear isn’t a spear; it’s intelligence - the ability to find, acquire, and analyze information to give us a decision advantage against adversaries in physical space, outer space, and cyberspace. But secret agencies in democratic societies cannot succeed without trust.

 

Continued in part two

 

Footnotes on request

 

For updates click homepage here