US Intelligence Research Articles

The US intelligence community's biases during the Nigerian civil war

The US intelligence community's biases during the Nigerian civil war

Counterterrorism: Privately Clustering a Radical Social Network Data

The tradeoff between the needed or essential gathering and analysis of personal data and the privacy rights of individuals is now an important requirement under any counterterrorism program. The most famous and controversial recent example is the revelation that US intelligence agencies systemically engage in “bulk collection” of civilian “metadata” detailing telephonic and other types of communication and activities, with the alleged purpose of monitoring and thwarting terrorist activity. Differential privacy provides one of the strongest privacy guarantees up to now. In this paper, we present a new provably privacy-preserving algorithm able to identify and take action upon members of the targeted subpopulation. Meanwhile, avoiding compromising the privacy of the patriot subpopulation. It is a new algorithm for search methods which use a new combination of nodes social similarity and differential privacy.

Security stupidity

ABSTRACTThis essay proposes that securitization is underwritten by stupidity, defined as a shared social exposure to limits which condition the possibility of thinking, knowing, and communicating about threats and responses. This conceptualization of stupidity depicts security threats not as gaps in information that can be filled by a knowing subject, but encounters with difference arising from persons, communities, or nations which threaten that subject with awareness of its own stupidity. This essay subsequently reads two excesses of public discourse about ‘connecting the dots’ after 9/11, which have re-established US counterterrorism as a reliable source of knowledge. The first excess involves enhanced authorization of US decision-makers, intelligence analysts, and citizen-subjects to reliably discern threats. The second involves the figure of the terrorist threat, who is depicted as too stupid to challenge the authority of US knowledge. I conclude by considering how dubious Westernized security discourses and scholarly practices might be disrupted by placing them in relation to what Avital Ronell calls an ethic of stupidity ‘before the other’.

Hybrid war: Russian contemporary political warfare

ABSTRACTRussia is waging a far-reaching political warfare effort against US interests in Europe and elsewhere, an effort facilitated by the Internet, cyber tools, cable news, and especially social media. This persistent political warfare effort largely eschews traditional military force; rather, it is focused on influencing the populations of targeted countries. Though the effects of Russian political warfare operations are hard to measure, they have likely had some effect on elections in France, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. Factors that make nations vulnerable to political warfare include physical proximity to Russia, high levels of corruption, contested politics, and cultural or historical affinities with Russia. If left unchecked, political warfare can do great damage to US power and interests by creating unwanted tensions, weakening allies, and eroding faith in democracy. The United States, as an open and democratic society, is at an automatic disadvantage when it comes to countering Russian political warfare. Nonetheless, Washington can seek to defend its interests by investing in effective counter-messaging, ensuring that the US intelligence community has the analytical and collection resources it needs, prioritizing anti-corruption programs in certain countries, and helping to build defense institutions in allied and partner nations.

Inventing terrorists: the nexus of intelligence and Islamophobia

ABSTRACTThe transatlantic Islamophobia industry, emboldened by US intelligence efforts to entrap Muslims, appears to have helped to increase permissible levels of Islamophobia across the US, as illustrated by the fiery anti-Muslim rhetoric during the 2016 presidential campaign. In this article, I first look at five key leaders of the Islamophobia industry who also claim to be “terrorism experts” and have links to US and Israeli intelligence. I then describe US law enforcement’s mass surveillance of Muslims and its invention of terrorists, including a map of the “successful terrorist prosecutions” claimed by the US Department of Justice, most of which were tried only as criminal cases. Finally, I explore in-depth the case against the Holy Land Foundation, a Muslim charity based in Texas that was run by Palestinian-Americans and targeted by both the state and the Islamophobia industry for its dubious links to “terrorism”, helping to legitimate the Bush W. Administration’s “War on Terror”. I argue that this nexus of intelligence and Islamophobia has empowered anti-Muslim voices that were formerly marginal.

The end of privacy for the populace, the person of interest and the persecuted

Erosion of US and foreign citizens’ privacy has resulted from the escalating use of electronic devices; creation of gargantuan commercial and government/intelligence databases; government access to business data; and the motivation and ever more sophisticated ability to mine and unaccountably use such information. After suffering the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the US government led the way in globally collecting and exploiting personal data. This ultimately required revisions to existing US law, as well as altered legal interpretations of constitutional protections for civil liberties. The overwhelming focus of US communications and electronic storage policy has been on offensive intelligence operations; collection has been enhanced partly by undermining cyber defense for companies and citizens. As with other business sectors, US medical information now is vulnerable to both criminal cyber-attack and government access. This article is authored by a former US intelligence community and national security professional with highly specialized proficiencies and experience at some of the top levels of intelligence oversight – where technical, operational, analytic, inter-agency, legislative, regulatory, legal and budget activities converge. Using unclassified and public sources, the author summarizes the types and breadth of US domestic collection and its distribution, the degree to which individuals’ privacy may be impinged, abuse of these powers, and effects on governance. Resulting US ability to spot and forestall pending domestic terror attacks - the rationale used to justify surveillance without end - is evaluated.

‘We recommend compliance’: bargaining and leverage in Ethiopian–US intelligence cooperation

ABSTRACTDisputes over the costs and benefits of intelligence liaisons between the US and its African allies are routine. The contentious and largely overlooked bargaining processes that stem from these disputes call into question prominent depictions of US–African security partnerships as rigidly hierarchical alliances. Through an assessment of compliance bargaining between Ethiopia and the US over the terms of their intelligence liaison, this article posits that, despite the vast power asymmetry between these allies, Ethiopia routinely dictated and policed the terms of this liaison, while consistently leveraging it as means to acquire political concessions from the US.

Less is more, and more professional: reflections on building an ‘ideal’ intelligence program

Offered the chance to create an intelligence studies program from scratch at The Catholic University of America, this recently retired career CIA officer and historian decided on two fundamentals. First, an ideal intelligence program would take a ‘Goldilocks’ approach, neither relegating intelligence to the fringes (as academia has done in the past) nor elevating it to a degree program (as is the approach at dozens of US colleges and universities). Because US intelligence agencies prefer their candidates for employment to have substantive knowledge of global issues and language skills, a certificate or minor program in intelligence will educate students about intelligence without depriving them of the opportunity to major in a substantive field. Second, an ideal program will involve former professional intelligence officers to a high degree; too many academic programs in intelligence suffer from the metaphorical ‘Bulgaria problem’ in which alleged experts on Bulgaria don’t speak the language, have never been to Bulgaria, and don’t see their lack of experience on Bulgaria as a problem. Smaller programs, taught mostly by retired practitioners, are the ideal for intelligence studies.

Outrage without Consequences? Post-Snowden Discourses and Governmental Practice in Germany

In 2013 Edward Snowden’s disclosures of mass surveillance performed by US intelligence agencies seriously irritated politicians and citizens around the globe. This holds particularly true for privacy-sensitive communities in Germany. However, while the public was outraged, intelligence and security cooperation between the United States and Germany has been marked by continuity instead of disruption. The rather insubstantial debate over a so-called “No-Spy-Agreement” between the United States and Germany is just one telling example of the disconnect between public discourse and governmental action, as is the recent intelligence service regulation. This article considers why and where the “Snowden effect” has been lost on different discursive levels. We analyze and compare parliamentary and governmental discourses in the two years after the Snowden revelations by using the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD) to dissect the group-specific statements and interpretive schemes in 287 official documents by the German Bundestag, selected ministries and agencies within the policy subsystem. These will be analyzed in reference to actual governmental practice.

Herbert Marcuse and the Promesse Du Bonheur

In an essay on French literature in the period of Nazi occupation, Herbert Marcuse argues that a literature of intimacy—love poems and romantic novels—is the last resort of freedom in totalitarian conditions. Written in 1945 and revised in the 1970s, Marcuse’s essay argues that in the face of totalitarianism, a literature of intimacy opens a realm of human experience that is outside the control of the regime. Because it carries a memory of joy, it is radically other to the ethos of the regime. Later, in The Aesthetic Dimension (1978), Marcuse returns to the role of aesthetics when political change is unlikely to occur. The article revisits Marcuse’s 1945 essay and his reading of the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and Paul Eluard. It begins by relating Marcuse’s interest in love poetry to the work of other critical theorists who see a radical role for aesthetics and the pursuit of happiness in periods when political change is blocked. It examines the 1945 essay, puts it in context of Marcuse’s work for the US intelligence services in the 1940s, and looks at the similarities between the 1945 essay and Marcuse’s later writing. Finally, it asks whether Marcuse’s arguments matter today (as the dreams for which the New Left of the 1960s went in search appear as remote as ever).

IARPA Director Jason Matheny advances tech tools for US espionage

ABSTRACTThe Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, or IARPA, develops research and technology to serve the US intelligence community. In this interview, IARPA Director Jason Matheny explains how the 10-year-old agency does its work. With a modus operandi similar to the one used by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, IARPA comes up with specific problems to solve, then signs up university labs, private companies, and other institutions to carry out the research. Best known for its research programs in quantum computing and machine learning, IARPA has recently increased the amount it invests in biotechnology research. Biotechnology, cybertechnology, and artificial intelligence are the three areas of defense technology that concern Matheny most as potential threats. In this wide-ranging interview with Bulletin contributing editor Elisabeth Eaves, he also talks about the latest research on whistle-blowers, how to get the world’s best scientists working on a problem, how to predict a cyber attack, and why IARPA seems surprisingly transparent compared to intelligence agencies of yore.

Missing revolution: the American intelligence failure in Iraq, 1958

Why were American officials caught by surprise with the military coup and later revolution in Iraq on 14 July 1958? Drawing on American intelligence and diplomatic records as well as multilingual sources, this article argues that the US intelligence failure is the product of two factors: the collection of information from too few and too similar human sources of intelligence in Iraq’s ruling regime, and the unreceptivity of US officials to assessing new information and their unwillingness to update assessments of local Iraqi developments. It revisits America’s intelligence failure in Iraq and suggests important lessons for the study of intelligence.

Trump and the US intelligence community

President Trump has publicly denigrated the value of the United States' intelligence community (IC), imperilling the morale and retention of intelligence officers. Unless he establishes a better working relationship with the IC, the White House not only risks hollowing out the IC but could also wind up politicising the intelligence process and misusing intelligence products.

Strategijski i legalni aspekti borbene upotrebe dronova u protiv terorističkim operacijama SAD

The rapid increase in the use of armed drones in the first decade of the 21st century in launching air strikes against Al Qaeda and its related terrorist groups has enabled the US counterterrorist operations to have an unprecedented advantage over highly decentralized and fragmented terrorist networks. Terrorist organizations are not burdened with the rules and regulations of a sovereign state and its members can freely move across state borders, operate in different parts of the world, enabling them to plan, organize and execute objectives and tasks. A freedom of movement gives terrorist networks a significant advantage over sovereign states. Intensive technical and technological improvement of drones will enable a wider range of options in the US counterterrorist operations as a direct response to security threats by terrorist groups and they will diminish the strategic advantage of terrorist networks. The combat use of drones enables the US military and intelligence community the ability to quickly and resolutely oppose terrorist networks globally, to effectively weaken and/or neutralize their development in key regions of the world, reduce their operational capabilities and prevent their free movement. The advancement of technology and tactics in the use of armed drones acts as a 'multiplier of power' for the US military and intelligence community, enabling them to project significant military force in inhospitable parts of the world. The dedication of Bush and Obama administration to the combat use of drones against leaders and operational members of international terrorist groups has put their use in the forefront of counterterrorist operations, both tactically and strategically. The US program on the use of drones raises very important questions in relation to international law and the US legal system. Discussions about its legitimacy have been obstructed by Obama administration constant refusal to answer even the basic questions concerning the combat use of drones. The lack of transparency and inconsistency with the main principles of international law have made it impossible to evaluate effectiveness of the combat use of drones in neutralizing terrorist groups and their networks, as well as legal justification of the program. Unclear statements by the US officials on this program, with the absence of a clear state policy, lead to weakening of the basic principles of international law and fundamental human rights.

Making future leaders in the US intelligence community: challenges and opportunities

This article explores what factors are important in developing the future leaders of the US intelligence community in the post-9/11 security environment. It surveys traditional leadership theory to assess whether any of its perspectives are applicable to understanding leadership in the intelligence context. It argues, that although some leadership theory may be applicable, the intelligence studies field may be better served by developing its own body of leadership theory. Second, any leadership theory needs to consider together the two synergistic components of intelligence leadership: personal leadership development and the ability to lead organization reform. Furthermore, the role of intelligence governance may be the most critical factor in promoting better leaders of US intelligence agencies and the broader community.

Forecasting Innovation: Lessons from IARPA’s Research Programs

OVERVIEW:The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA) is a research arm of the US intelligence community. IARPA research programs are undertaken by diverse teams drawn from industry and academia. One of IARPA’s best-known programs is in the area of anticipatory intelligence, or forecasting. The lessons of that effort can be applied to the forecasting of science and technology. Most notably, the most accurate forecasts emerge from the averaging of forecasts that draw on a wide variety of data streams.

US officially accuses Russia of DNC hack while election systems come under attack

US intelligence agency officials have now openly blamed Russian hackers for the theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

Contesting France: French informants and American intelligence in the dawning Cold War

By integrating French archives and untapped US intelligence records, this article uncovers a debate within US government circles about the accuracy of the entrenched image of France at the onset of the Cold War as decadent and teetering toward revolution. In exchanges with the White House, State Department and military, right-leaning French sources bolstered this view. French contacts in the Resistance meanwhile shaped Office of Strategic Services analysis that France was a strong, worthy ally. France became a contested idea with warring factions in both capitals seeking to influence US policy – with repercussions for Franco-American relations for decades to come.

Organizational processes and ontological (in)security: Torture, the CIA and the United States

This paper builds upon previous work that has sought to use ontological security to understand problematic and violent state practices, and how they relate to the securitizing of identity. Yet like much (although not all) work which has utilized it in International Relations theory, the application of ontological security theory (OST) to state ‘drives’ has provided only a superficial unpacking of ‘the state’. Further, while OST scholars have examined environmental or background conditions of ‘late modernity’, and how these conditions facilitate anxiety and uncertainty for agents, the content of such factors can be further explicated by placing OST in conversation with one particular systemic account. Alongside ‘the state’ and ‘late modernity’, the paper therefore explores several complementary sites shaping the ontological security seeking process of, within and around states. The paper reads the 2000s re-embrace of torture by the United States by examining ontological security alongside: (1) the structural level via Laura Sjoberg’s ‘gender–hierarchical’ argument; (2) the routinized organizational processes (via Graham Allison) of the US intelligence community and specifically the Central Intelligence Agency; and (3) the narrated interplay between public opinion and elite discourses.

Medical intelligence, security and global health: the foundations of a new health agenda.

Medical intelligence, security and global health are distinct fields that often overlap, especially as the drive towards a global health security agenda gathers pace. Here, we outline some of the ways in which this has happened in the recent past during the recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa and in the killing of Osama Bin laden by US intelligence services. We evaluate medical intelligence and the role it can play in global health security; we also attempt to define a framework that illustrates how medical intelligence can be incorporated into foreign policy action in order delineate the boundaries and scope of this growing field.