Critical Intelligence Studies: A new framework for analysis

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Critical Intelligence Studies: A new framework for

analysis

Samantha Newbery & Christian Kaunert

To cite this article: Samantha Newbery & Christian Kaunert (2023): Critical Intelligence

Studies: A new framework for analysis, Intelligence and National Security, DOI:

10.1080/02684527.2023.2178163

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2023.2178163

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Critical Intelligence Studies: A new framework for analysis

Samantha Newbery and Christian Kaunert

ABSTRACT

As the purpose of the study of intelligence is, in part, to aid the practice of

intelligence, scholarship must reect that practice. This article sets out

a theoretical framework for Critical Intelligence Studies that will increase

the real-world applicability of the study of intelligence as currently repre-

sented by Intelligence Studies. Critical Security Studies’ recognition of the

broadening and widening of the concept of security, and the ensuing

recognition that intelligence work is not only done by state intelligence

agencies or for the security of states, provides an opportunity to push

forward the study of intelligence into a position where a well-developed,

and theoretically sound, Critical Intelligence Studies can be meaningfully

said to exist.

Introduction

The central premise of this article is that the move from Intelligence Studies to Critical Intelligence

Studies, can – and should – take inspiration from the critical turn taken by Security Studies.

Intelligence Studies scholars remain overwhelmingly focused on the activities of state intelligence

agencies working in support of national security. As will be demonstrated herein, there are two

limitations to this. The rst is that state intelligence agencies already pay attention to non-traditional,

non-military threats, leaving Intelligence Studies scholars behind the curve in reecting this practice.

Second is that intelligence work is not restricted to state employees but is also undertaken in and for

the private sector. Again, although some progress has been made here, scholars have so far been

slow to recognise this and to reect it in their research. By accepting that security can – and is –

dened not only in terms of individual states or in terms of traditional, military threats to states, we

can develop a sub-eld that reects practice. The study of intelligence has long been driven by

practice: this article argues that there is some work to do to catch up with practice and that a critical

turn in Intelligence Studies can provide a much-needed theoretical framework with which to achieve

this.

This article proceeds by rst assessing how Intelligence Studies scholarship denes intelligence,

and how it describes the purpose of this academic discipline. It makes clear the discipline’s focus

heretofore on intelligence as a function of state actors and as an activity that is conducted in pursuit

of state security. After articulating these limits to the current study of intelligence, the

article’s second section examines the critical turn taken in Security Studies. This turn, it will be

shown, has seen a broadening and widening of the conceptualisation of security. As the purpose of

intelligence practice is to improve and support security, the re-conceptualisation of security seen in

Critical Security Studies provides an established and well-theorized approach that can form the basis

of Critical Intelligence Studies.

While there are already scholarly publications that describe themselves as adopting a critical

approach to Intelligence Studies,

as it stands the sub-eld is theoretically under-developed. Two of

CONTACT Samantha Newbery [email protected]

INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY

https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2023.2178163

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.

0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

those publications suggest that Critical Security Studies can be used, though they do so briey.

Those articles appear in the 2021 ”Critical Intelligence Studies” special issue of Intelligence and

National Security, and are Berma Klein Goldewijk’s examination of Critical Security Studies and

Critical War Studies, and Cristina Ivan, Irena Chiru and Rubén Arcos’s study of digital

communication.

A valuable 2018 study by Hamilton Bean – ”Intelligence theory from the margins” –

identies that a range of theoretical approaches beyond the traditional have already begun to be

applied to the study of intelligence.

Further valuable theorising was produced by Hager Ben Jael,

Alvina Homan, Oliver Kearns and Sebastian Larsson in a 2020 article that proposes intelligence be

understood as a social phenomenon.

These, and the introduction to the 2021 special issue, tend to

focus if not on state intelligence actors, then on the benets of intelligence for the state rather than

for private actors.

These works dier from the current article chiey in that they focus predomi-

nantly on intelligence activities conducted by state actors and in the extent to which they consider

the benets of applying a Critical Security Studies framework to the study of intelligence. In the latter

sense, the current article builds on and signicantly expands on these previous works, providing

a framework for future scholarship about and within Critical Intelligence Studies.

The nal section of this article uses key features of the critical turn in Security Studies to argue for

a new approach to pushing forward the Critical Intelligence Studies agenda. It does so by demon-

strating that the broadening and widening of the concept of security, as seen in the critical turn in

Security Studies, is already reected in state intelligence practices, and that although intelligence

scholars have begun to acknowledge this, much greater scholarly attention is warranted.

Additionally, this section of the article uses the critical turn’s attention to who provides security to

prompt and encourage greater scholarly attention to the under-studied elements of the state’s

intelligence apparatus: namely the police forces and armed forces. Finally, it uses the critical turn’s

focus on ”whose security?” to push for the acknowledgement that intelligence work is conducted not

only by and for states, but also by and for the private sector. Although some inroads have already

been made into research in these areas, this article calls for this to gather pace so the study of

intelligence does not get too far behind the realities of intelligence work, and to do so with

a theoretical underpinning. By adopting these features of the critical turn in Security Studies, scholars

can develop a sub-eld of Critical Intelligence Studies that much better reects intelligence practice.

In turn, this sub-eld can then better support the practice of intelligence – even if it does so by

critiquing and highlighting poor practice – and do so not only for the state intelligence agencies, but

for other state agencies that also carry out intelligence work, and for the private sector that carries

out intelligence work for its own benet.

The purpose of intelligence and of Intelligence Studies

Academics are yet to agree on the best way to describe or dene intelligence. Some approach the

task through the lens of intelligence as a process, while others focus on intelligence’s purpose.

Underpinning both of these approaches though is the link between intelligence and security, even

though this link is not often asserted directly despite it being relatively uncontentious, or perhaps

even because of that. The UK’s Security Service Act 1989, which put the Security Service (MI5) onto

a statutory footing for the rst time, acknowledges this link when it describes MI5’s function as ”the

protection of national security”.

Safety, rather than security, is the term of choice used by the Secret

Intelligence Service (MI6) when it describes its purpose as to ”make the UK safer and more

prosperous”,

and by the US’s Central Intelligence Agency whose mission is to ”leverage the

power of information to keep our Nation [sic] safe”.

Similarly, the US’s intelligence agencies describe

their collective mission as ”to collect, analyse, and deliver foreign intelligence and counterintelli-

gence information to America’s leaders so they can make sound decisions to protect our country”.

Safety and protection are the result of security, and it is therefore uncontroversial to assert that

security is the overarching purpose of state intelligence agencies. Also evident here is a focus on the

security of the state to which they belong, and therefore on national security rather than other forms

2 S. NEWBERY AND C. KAUNERT

of security. Critical Security Studies” input on dening intelligence will be discussed later in the

article.

One of many to comment on the purpose of intelligence was the late Brian Stewart CMG,

a Deputy Chief of SIS and Secretary of the Joint Intelligence Committee. He described its purpose

as to nd the truth, specifying further that it is ”to discover the truth behind the lies and obfuscations

of our rivals and our enemies”.

Others are more specic, thereby limiting the types of activities they

are talking about. Sir David Omand, a former Director of GCHQ, species in Securing the State that this

book is concerned with secret intelligence. By ”secret intelligence” he means an intelligence product

that is not based solely on open source intelligence.

Omand describes secret intelligence as

something that supports the government by seeking to provide public security.

It does so, he

writes, by reducing ignorance and uncertainty amongst decision-makers.

Jennifer Sims and

Michael Warner have made similar points. Sims wrote that ”Good intelligence involves reducing

uncertainty relative to adversaries and in the context of conict at hand”,

while Warner notes

”Intelligence has been widely viewed as a tool for managing risk – indeed, any number of authors

have remarked that intelligence is a means of reducing uncertainty for decision-makers”.

Sims and

Warner do not specify what types of decision-makers are being addressed here. This is perhaps

surprising: if intelligence is dened as having a particular purpose, it might follow that the types of

beneciary ought to be specied.

When intelligence is described not by its purpose but as a process it is easier to see it as

something that is not conned to state intelligence agencies. When Stewart dened intelligence

as a process involving collection, analysis, assessment and presentation, he himself acknowledged,

”This activity is not, of course, the exclusive domain of governments; any organisation needs a good

information base”.

The 2017 Palgrave Handbook of Security, Risk and Intelligence provides readers

with an insightful chapter on ”corporate intelligence” by Arthur Weiss.

Part of that chapter

addresses the process followed in corporate intelligence, as originally outlined by Michael Porter

in 1980.

By articulating that this involves collecting, compiling, cataloguing, assessing, analysing

and communicating data, it can be seen that this is strikingly similar to the intelligence cycle as

outlined in the Intelligence Studies literature.

When intelligence is described as existing in order to support government or state decision-

makers the state is necessarily central. This type of intelligence exists to help protect the state against

threats. Intelligence practice therefore focuses on threats that can be considered dangerous to

states. Intelligence Studies scholars have acknowledged that the type of threats considered should

be broadened either in intelligence practice, in (Critical) Intelligence Studies scholarship, or in both.

Intelligence and National Security’s 2020 special issue on health intelligence demonstrates that this

broadening of scholarship has begun.

In a survey conducted eight years earlier Intelligence and

National Security’s editorial board noted ”non-traditional threat assessments, such as forecasting the

occurrence of natural disasters” as under-researched areas.

These remain under-researched today.

If intelligence is dened as being for the benet of a state, then Intelligence Studies can justiably

address only this. But the term ”intelligence” is used in many other contexts, such as corporate

intelligence. It is an appropriate label to use in those other contexts because its purpose – supporting

decision-makers by reducing uncertainty, and thereby increasing security – is the same whether the

beneciaries are state or non-state actors. A dierence is what types of organisations carry out this

work: because of its focus on national security and secret intelligence, Intelligence Studies focuses on

state intelligence agencies. When intelligence is understood to be something broader, other orga-

nisations become ”intelligence actors”, ranging from terrorist groups to private companies.

Specifying that the intelligence being discussed in the literature is ”national” or ”secret” intelligence

is useful because it serves as an acknowledgement and a reminder that other types of intelligence

work exists.

Parallel to discussions about the purpose of intelligence practice is the matter of the purpose of

Intelligence Studies. A theme within this literature is its relationship with practitioners. Although

aiding the practice of intelligence ought not to be described as its sole aim, it is a prominent aim of

INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY 3

Intelligence Studies scholarship. The discipline is aided in achieving this by maintaining working

relationships between academics and former practitioners, especially in the US where academic

departments include a larger number of individuals with practical experience in the eld.

Former

practitioners turned academics are some of the leading gures in Intelligence Studies. These gures

include Jan Goldman (FBI), the late Michael Herman (GCHQ) and Omand (GCHQ).

Naturally, there is variety in the extent to which intelligence practitioners take heed of

scholarship.

Stephen Marrin argues persuasively that Intelligence Studies is useful for the intelli-

gence professional, and that eorts should be made to improve Intelligence Studies (partly) for this

reason.

He also makes practical recommendations about how to close the gap between intelli-

gence analysts and Intelligence Studies scholars in particular.

A growing number of Masters

programmes tailored to the intelligence practitioner will help improve this relationship. Higher

Education, Marrin writes, contributes to the practice of national security intelligence by ”interpreting

its past, understanding its present, and forecasting its future”.

The benets of Intelligence Studies scholarship can be felt beyond national security intelligence

practitioners though. Its analyses of where failures can creep in to the intelligence cycle, for

instance,

can apply to open source intelligence work carried out by or for multinational corpora-

tions, whether that be to protect their CEOs from threats when travelling to countries experiencing

high levels of political violence or deciding whether a particular country is going to remain politically

stable enough to expand its business into. Intelligence Studies literature addressing how to improve

intelligence analysis will also apply. Indeed, Marrin argues persuasively that the Intelligence Studies

knowledge that analysts need to do their jobs well includes ”how intelligence is collected, analysed,

processed, and distributed, all within group, organisational, cultural, and national contexts”.

If Intelligence Studies exists, at least in part, to support practice, then widening the types of

practices included means widening Intelligence Studies. This article argues this should be referred to

as Critical Intelligence Studies. What is already present in Intelligence Studies is useful for practices

other than national security intelligence. Research into those other practices will reveal whether

dierent questions are raised by these practices that are not yet covered by existing scholarship in

Intelligence Studies or beyond.

What is evident from this analysis of the Intelligence Studies scholarship’s understanding of the

purpose of intelligence and the purpose of studying it, is rstly its interest in intelligence as an

activity that aims to increase security, and secondly its focus on the security of states. That focus on

states sees attention paid primarily to individual states though there is acknowledgement of the

value international intelligence cooperation can have in support of security as well.

As intelligence

is intrinsically linked to security – whether national or international – in order to conceptualize

intelligence, the conceptualization of security must rst be investigated.

Critical security studies: the broadening and widening of security

The concept of security is surrounded by imprecisions and controversies. The imprecisions arise from

what exactly the concept is and the controversies are because of the uncertainty as to what are the

issues or referent objects to accord security. Contrary to Alan Collins’ ”good news that a consensus

has emerged on what security studies entails – it is to do with threats to survival”,

the unsettling

truth is that there is now a wider schism as to what security issues are. How can there be a consensus

when there is intense debate among scholars as to who secures, and what is to be secured; who

threatens whose security and what are the issues at stake? Above all, how can we say that there is

consensus when methodologically there is serious divergence? To think of security therefore in

terms of mere survival is narrow and weak. The imprecisions and controversies could also be argued

to arise from the evolution of security studies. The power politics of the Cold War period narrowed

the concept of security around the state and national security as the major referent objects needing

security. However international politics witnessed a tectonic shift with the receding of the Cold War,

bringing about a redenition of the concept of security and widening of referent objects.

4 S. NEWBERY AND C. KAUNERT

Arnold Wolfers thought that ”security, in an objective sense, measures the absence of threats to

acquired values in a subjective sense, the absence of fear that such values will be attacked”.

The

vital question will be what those values are and to whom they belong. It could be the state,

individual, particular identities or societies. For Ole Waever, ”the concept of security refers to the

state”, ”security in other words has to be read through the lens of national security”.

But the

evolution of global politics has also meant that ”redening security” is consequently abundant with

”not only”, ”also” and ”more than” arguments.

The result is that in subsequent works from Waever’s

colleagues (for example Barry Buzan, Weaver and Jaap de Wilde

) the idea of widening and

deepening the discourse on security was introduced with the incorporation of wider referent objects

of security. The ”not only” argument has also brought about almost a disregard for the state but

more focus on the individual as major security object. Ken Booth had therefore postulated thus;

Security means the absence of threats. Emancipation is the freeing of people (as individuals and groups) from

those physical and human constraints which stop them carrying out what they would freely choose to do. War

and threat of war is one of those constraints, together with poverty, poor education, and political oppression and

so on. Security and emancipation are two sides of the same coin. Emancipation not power or order produces

true security. Emancipation theoretically is security.

A while after Booth’s paradigm,

the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) was worried

by the horrendous developments of conicts, wars, hunger, famine and abuses going on around the

world and came up with yet a wider take on referent objects and issues of security. The UNDP

therefore noted that:

With dark shadows of the Cold War receding, one can now see that many conicts are within nations rather that

between nations. For most people, a feeling of insecurity arises more from worries about daily life than from the

dread of cataclysmic world events. Will they and their families have enough to eat? Will they lose their jobs? Will

their streets and neighbourhood be safe from crime? Will their religion or ethnic origin target them for

persecution? In the nal analysis human security is a child who did not die, a disease that did not spread,

a job that was not cut, an ethnic tension that did not explode in violence; a dissident who was not silenced.

Human security is not a concern with weapons – it is a concern with human life and dignity.

The foregoing has briey demonstrated the imprecisions and controversies surrounding the concept

and denition of security. The plan is not to privilege any particular denition or oer an alternative.

It prepares the ground for the argument over objectivity and subjectivity in the application of the

concept of security. For instance Buzan, Waever and de Wilde argued that there is no objective

security; instead it is socially and inter-subjectively constructed according to the predilection of

political leaders, actors or institutions and their audiences.

Thierry Balzacq argued however on the

side of objectivity that ”some security problems are the attributes of the development itself”.

short, threats are not only institutional; some of them can actually wreck entire political communities

regardless of the use of language. In other words there are threats according to this line of thought,

which are out there, external and independent of the actors labelling them so and this article

disagrees with that opinion. It argues instead that security is a constructivist agenda. There may

be many threats but they only become framed as security issues by someone whose ”values” are

threatened.

Wolfers argues that ”Security, in an objective sense, measures the absence of threats to acquired

values, in a subjective sense, the absence of fear that such values will be attacked”.

Traditionally,

the term security was sought through military might. Therefore, the referent object, which is the

thing that needs to be secured, was the state.

Similarly, Waever states that ”Security is, in historical

terms, the eld where states threaten each other, challenge each other’s sovereignty, try to impose

their will on each other, defend their independence, and so on”.

However, after the end of the Cold

War, the term security and the core assumptions about the referent object had begun to occupy

scholars’ thoughts. As a result, alternative approaches to security, which oer dierent referent

objects, started to evolve.

In that sense, there are other issues that are perceived as existential

threats, which are not related to the military realm. For instance, migration,

lack of water sources,

INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY 5

and diseases.

Thus, as Weaver mentioned, in order to have a comprehensive understanding of the

term security, it was vital to “broaden the security agenda to include threats other than the military

ones”.

Securitization theory was developed in a broader attempt to redene the concept of security, as it

introduces a wider security perception, which comprises not only military security but also political,

societal, economic, and environmental security. In adopting a constructivist approach to the study of

security, securitization theory, which was developed by Buzan, Waever and de Wilde from the

“Copenhagen School” (CS), explores the process in which social entities transform issues into security

threats. In short, there are three key main components in securitization theory: (1) referent object:

thing that is seen to be existentially threatened and has a legitimate claim to survive; (2) securitizing

actor: actor who securitizes issues by declaring something (a referent object) existentially threa-

tened; and (3) audience: the target that needs to be persuaded that the referent object is existentially

threatened.

Although it seems that the move from normal to emergency mode is immediate, in

most cases, securitization is in fact a very gradual process and it is very rarely that an issue moves

directly from normalcy to emergency.

In that context, Sarah Leonard and Christian Kaunert suggest

”not to follow too closely the traditional and narrow denition of security as advocated by the

Copenhagen School as it may hamper the understanding of ‘real life’ security dynamics”.

Alternatively, they assert that securitization occurs even when the security issue is located at the

lower level of the normalcy/existential threat spectrum.

Thus, securitization does not necessarily

incorporate aspects of emergency, exceptionalism or illegality. In that sense, this article supports

Leonard and Kaunert’s view, which reects how security issues are being perceived and dealt with in

reality.

In Buzan’s People, States and Fear the attention is on the state as the referent object of security.

For Waever, ”the concept of security refers to the state”.

But in Buzan, Waever and de Wilde, while

arguing for deepening and widening the ground of Security Studies to accommodate diverse

referent objects of security they still gave primacy to state.

Consider also that in Regions and

Power, Buzan and Waever articulated theories about the structure of contemporary international

security.

They postulated that there are neorealist, globalist and regionalist perspectives.

According to them they are convinced thus; ”that in the post-Cold War world, the regional level

stands more on its own as the locus of conict cooperation for states and as the level of analysis for

scholars seeking to explore contemporary security aairs”. Here, the Copenhagen School scholars

through Regional Security Complex Theory privileged the state as the focus of security analysis even

while advocating for expanding the ground for security discourse. And Waever, Buzan, Morten

Kelstrup and Pierre Lemaitre left no one in doubt as to what should be secured.

Society and

identity are seen as objective realities out there needing security. If this is accepted as the focus of

their argument, one will begin to question the place of other values of that same society. Are they

now treated as irrelevant?

This ”wonderful” innovation on security studies (starting with People,

States and Fear

) to which according to Booth many authors ”have been writing footnotes”,

has

also in more recent publications attracted negative comments. Leonard and Kaunert have revealed

its lack of clarity on who constitutes the audience in the speech-act process.

According to Buzan,

Waever and de Wilde, an ”issue is securitized only if and when the audience accepts it as such”.

other words a securitizing actor will have to make an argument about an issue in such a way that it

will nd resonance with an audience. But the character and composition of this audience were not

claried.

One of the substantial contributions of securitization theory is the way in which the concept of

security is perceived. In contrast to the realist concept that perceives threats objectively (there is

a ”real” threat), securitization theory adopts a constructivist approach to security. Thus, securitization

theory perceives threats as a social construction on the basis of a speech act

or practices.

Hence,

arguing that threats are not ”real” but ”perceived”, securitization theory focuses on the process of

how issues intersubjectively transform into security threats. In other words, an issue becomes

a security threat not because it constitutes an objective threat to the referent object, but rather

6 S. NEWBERY AND C. KAUNERT

when an audience accepts the securitizing actor’s position that the issue constitutes an existential

threat to the referent object. In that sense, it is impossible to fully verify whether a threat is “real” or

not, as securitization theory focuses on the process of how issues transform into security threats and

how those issues are being perceived. To illustrate this argument, let us consider the following

scenario: Two people, Person A and Person B, armed with pistols, arrive at a remote island inhabited

by a native population, who have never seen or heard of rearms. When the two armed people reach

the shores of the island, a group of locals arrive and threaten the two uninvited guests with their

bayonets. In response, Person A pulls out his gun and threatens to re at the native group. The

islanders, who have never seen or heard of rearms, and especially not about their ability to kill

people, do not actually understand what the tool is that Person A is holding. It is very possible that

those locals do not feel threatened by the gun at all. Moreover, it is not inconceivable to assert that

some of them would think that Person A greets them and tries to bestow them the gun as a token of

friendship. Without a doubt, had Person A shot the gun and killed one of the natives, or if Person

B had convinced them that the gun is lethal, they would have changed their perception of the gun

and would have recognized it as a security threat. Yet, until that happens, the islanders do not realize

that the pistol poses a security menace to them.

This scenario clearly demonstrates one of the key factors of security threats. On the one hand,

from an objective point of view, there is no doubt that the gun poses a security threat to the lives of

the islanders. On the other hand, however, it is also a fact that from a subjective perspective, the

pistol is not perceived by islanders as a security menace. Thus, a paradox is created, in which the gun

is simultaneously both a security threat and non-security menace. To overcome this situation, we

need to decide what the purpose of our examination is. Thus, while we pursue understanding of how

people and states confront security threats, we must rst focus on how they perceive them as such.

In other words, it is their subjective and more precisely their inter-subjective character that counts for

our understanding, not the objective one. In fact, this is the essence of Securitization Theory, which

examines how social entities decide what an existential threat is and how to deal with it.

Despite the originality of the theory, there are scholars who criticize the CS’s ignorance of the

objectivity of security threats. Booth argues that the CS’s conception misses chunks of reality, as it is

“based on the fallacy that threats do not exist outside discourse”.

For instance, Booth asserts that

“the danger posed by global warming to low-lying island states was a physical process long before

the discourse of environmental security was invented by its proponents and listened to by their

audiences”.

This article holds that Booth is partly right. On the one hand, it is true that the CS’s

framework ignores the objectivity of threats. According to the CS, an issue becomes a security threat

not because it constitutes an objective threat to the referent object, but rather when an audience

accepts the securitizing actor’s position that the issue poses an existential threat to the referent

object. On the other, the main aim of securitization theory is not to suggest whether a threat is ”real”

or not, but to explore how an issue becomes a security threat in the eyes of social entities. Therefore,

the theory must focus on the threat’s subjectivity and not on its objectivity. In other words, for

exploring securitization, it does not matter whether a threat is ”real” or not, rather whether social

entities perceive this threat as ”real”. In that context, it is important to clarify that ”threat” is a relative

term, as it is perceived dierently in diverse places.

As can be seen, intelligence activities may cover many dierent security areas, whether it be

political, economic, social, environmental, health or cultural. Further, its ability to cover this wide

range of areas is considered to be an indicator of intelligence professionalism and

institutionalisation.

In other words, just as in the case of securitisation, ”widening” lies at the centre

of intelligence activities that attempt to handle various security issues and threats at a professional

level. Security is the main point of intersection for both securitisation and intelligence. In fact, the

overriding raison d’etre or the object of intelligence is security (again military, political, societal,

environmental and economic).

A further point of intersection can be interactions (intersubjective

processes)

and threat perceptions.

As Phythian put it, ”the absence of any general agreement on

a denition of the subject has implications for the development of theoretical work”.

INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY 7

The case for Critical Intelligence Studies

This nal section of this article begins by examining the broadening and widening of security that

can already be seen in state intelligence practices, and in the study of intelligence. It establishes that

intelligence practices conducted by states have already adapted to the broadening of the concept of

security, and that scholars have already made some moves to reect this. It then argues that state

agencies other than their intelligence agencies conduct intelligence work and that therefore scholar-

ship should pay more attention to this intelligence function held by police forces and armed forces.

When the focus is on the security of states, intelligence scholarship should pay due attention to the

full range of intelligence activities that are carried out for that purpose. Finally this section uses the

critical turn in Security Studies’ incorporation of the question ”whose security” to acknowledge that it

is not only for states’ security that intelligence work is carried out. Indeed, intelligence work is

conducted by the private sector, in ways that have considerable parallels with intelligence practices

carried out by state intelligence and security agencies for the state’s own security, and this too

should feature in Critical Intelligence Studies. Currently, the latter two are addressed in Intelligence

Studies to a much lesser extent than is state intelligence agencies’ work to protect states against

state-based threats. Adopting this article’s approach to Critical Intelligence Studies therefore

encourages other areas of intelligence practice to be studied, and to be studied to a greater degree.

As Intelligence Studies is a discipline driven by practice, it is sensible to evaluate it in these terms.

Practitioners have adapted to changes in the way security is conceptualized; academics ought to be

doing the same. One of the advantages of the alignment between practice and academia – as argued

above – is that it allows Intelligence Studies to help practitioners. As practice evolves, therefore, so

too should scholarship. States have long acknowledged that threats to their security should no

longer be described exclusively or predominantly in military terms. The UNDP Report on human

security issued in 1994, referred to above, best illustrates this. Helping to obtain, improve or stabilize

security is the purpose of intelligence practice. It aims to support the pursuit and maintenance of

security by reducing uncertainty for decision-makers. That states have acknowledged changes to the

conceptualisation of security leads us to ask whether, or to what extent, state intelligence agencies

have also adopted that change. When intelligence practice is the subject of Intelligence Studies, we

should ask what intelligence practice concerns before moving on to acknowledge that steps have

already been taken towards producing scholarship that reects those practices.

To do this we can demonstrate that western states’ intelligence agencies are already concerned

with the strands of human security articulated by the UNDP report. Political security, one of the

UNDP’s strands of human security, concerns people being “able to live in a society that honours their

basic human rights” and being protected from state repression.

Recent threats to political security

include Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential elections and in the UK’s 2016 referendum

on EU membership. Regarding the latter, it has been convincingly noted that the impact of any such

attempts to inuence the referendum “would be dicult – if not impossible – to assess”, but that

establishing “whether a hostile state took deliberate action with the aim of inuencing a UK

democratic process” is important.

There is evidence in the public domain that the UK intelligence

community was aware of ”the Russian threat to the UK’s democratic processes and political

discourse”,

therefore conrming that intelligence agencies recognize the political strand of threats

to security.

Moving on to the topic of health security, the US intelligence community have sought to establish

the origins of the COVID-19 virus. Agreeing that the virus was not developed as a biological weapon,

they also agreed there were two plausible explanations: ”natural exposure to an infected animal and

a laboratory-associated incident”.

Although this was a backward-looking investigation, its purpose

was to ”trace the roots of this outbreak . . . so that we can take every precaution to prevent it

happening again”.

It therefore is in line with intelligence’s purpose of helping decision-makers by

reducing uncertainty. In President Joe Biden’s words, “Pandemics do not respect international

borders, and we all must better understand how COVID-19 came to be in order to prevent further

8 S. NEWBERY AND C. KAUNERT

pandemics”.

His press statement called upon China to cooperate by sharing information, echoing

the joint US intelligence community report that asserted they could not reach conclusive ndings on

the origins of COVID-19 without China’s cooperation. ”China’s cooperation”, the Oce for the

Director of National Intelligence wrote, ”most likely would be needed to reach a conclusive assess-

ment of the origins of COVID-19”.

Organized crime is also known to be a subject of concern for western intelligence agencies. The

US intelligence community have acknowledged that organized crime is a threat,

and it is part of the

tasking given to the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

Like the other

strands of human security, organized crime too is not widely considered to be a threat in

a military sense. Economic security for individuals, as outlined in the UNDP Report, ”requires an

assured basic income”.

Organized crime results in unemployment,

rendering it something that

falls under the broadened denition of security. Personal security, according to the UNDP Report, is

security from physical violence, including when that comes from crime.

Europol’s 2021 four-yearly

Serious and Organized Crime Threat Assessment found that the use of violence by organized crime

gangs seemed to be increasing in terms of frequency of use and severity.

Around 60 per cent of

criminal networks ”use violence as part of their criminal businesses”.

(Critical) Intelligence Studies scholars must be given credit for already pursuing research into

some of these developments in state intelligence agencies’ practices. Just some examples are Evan

Barnard, Loch K. Johnson and James Porter’s work on environmental security intelligence in the US,

a growing collection of texts on health intelligence concerning the COVID-19 pandemic,

and

examinations of Russian eorts to inuence the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election.

is hoped that this very recent growth in reecting state intelligence practices will continue.

As noted above, an examination of Critical Security Studies also reveals a lack of consensus on

“who secures” and “whose security”. This perspective should lead us to question Intelligence Studies’

focus hitherto on intelligence as an activity carried out by state intelligence agencies for the primary

benet of individual states. The rst of two broadenings this gives rise to is that intelligence is also

a practice conducted in the interests of states not only by state intelligence agencies, but also by

police forces and the armed forces. The second is private intelligence, to which this article will turn

below.

Human beings seek security from threats.

As individuals we desire economic and nancial

security, amongst other forms of security. For our bank accounts to be secure against fraud requires,

for instance, that suspected fraud cases be investigated and, where possible, brought to trial.

Signicant eorts therefore need to be made to collect evidence that is admissible in court.

Preventing fraud also requires intelligence, however. In the UK, at least, this kind of work is primarily

conducted by law enforcement agencies in the form of the police and the National Crime Agency,

rather than by dedicated intelligence agencies.

If intelligence is dened as something that concerns only threats to national security, then only

bodies set up and run by the state will be the subject of Intelligence Studies. Even with this fairly

narrow denition the intelligence work conducted by police forces, the National Crime Agency and

the armed forces is relevant. The armed forces have certainly already gained some attention from an

Intelligence Studies perspective, as research into the weaknesses in intelligence practice that

allowed the surprise attack on the US at Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941 to take place

demonstrates.

Criminologist and former police ocer Jerry Ratclie has led the charge in scholarship on

intelligence-led policing. This is a proactive model of policing where actions are informed – or

”led” – by intelligence.

The study of this policing model addresses matters such as how technology

facilitates it.

Valuable work on police intelligence has also been produced by Colin Atkinson, who

analyses the impact of police culture on interactions between police ocers and intelligence

analysts who, although working for the police, have not served on the street.

Traditionally,

Intelligence Studies has neglected intelligence when it is conducted by law enforcement agencies,

though this is arguably less the case with the FBI than it is with UK police forces and the National

INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY 9

Crime Agency (and its predecessor the Serious and Organized Crime Agency). As John Buckley writes,

”Academic research relating to intelligence in a law enforcement context, of practical worth, is

extremely limited”.

Peter Gill persuasively attributes this to Intelligence Studies’ focus ”on foreign

and military intelligence”, which itself stems from its interests in “international relations and/or

history”. He adds that in comparison to foreign and military intelligence,

intelligence matters regarding crime and internal security have been studied by few, with far less archival

material available and less mileage to be gained with publishers who have become just as entranced with

terrorism as many governments have become obsessed.

Intelligence Studies scholarship that does directly address police forces’ intelligence work tends to

focus on case studies. An example is that concerning ”the troubles” in Northern Ireland and its

associated threats to security.

While scholars have already begun to acknowledge and incorporate the broadening of state

attitudes towards security into their work, the exercise in incorporating private intelligence work into

scholarship is much less advanced. This is only now beginning to be addressed by intelligence

scholars, though certain other disciplines already include this kind of analysis, as explained below.

The examination above of Critical Security Studies revealed a lack of consensus on ”whose security”.

This perspective encourages us to extend our understanding of intelligence practice into something

that is done by non-state actors with the purpose of helping bring about or improve security for non-

state actors.

Non-state actors are concerned with their own security and carry out intelligence work in support

of that agenda. This is the case for terrorist and insurgent groups,

but that is not the subject of this

article. Instead, the focus here is on companies. Giving due academic attention to these intelligence

practices ought to be a key feature of Critical Intelligence Studies, setting it apart from the traditional

approach to the study of intelligence.

When it is acknowledged that the purpose of intelligence is to reduce uncertainty for decision-

makers, it can be seen that this is a function of non-state actors as well, not only in principle but in

practice. The decision-makers here range from the boards of companies taking decisions such as

which countries or regions to expand their businesses into, to Chief Security Ocers taking decisions

about which countries or cities it is safe to allow their CEOs to travel to and what precautions need to

be taken to ensure their safety whilst there in order to ensure not just their individual wellbeing but

the brand’s reputation.

100

Here the referent object that is seen to be existentially threatened or that

perceives it faces a threat and has a legitimate claim to survive is the company.

Work on developing and establishing this research agenda has already begun. Maria Robson

Morrow’s 2022 article in Intelligence and National Security is a welcome and rare addition to the eld,

not only because of the subject matter but because of the scale of the data collected and analysed

therein.

101

Focusing specically on the professionalisation of private sector intelligence, the latter

term is used to refer “to applying intelligence techniques to external operating environments legally

and transparently to facilitate strategic decision-making and mitigate geopolitical and security risks.

The focus is on both protecting operations and assets and on supporting business decision-

making”.

102

Similarly, Magdalena Duvenage’s original, primary research into the ”professional iden-

tity of security risk intelligence analysts in the private sector” found that of 73 survey respondents

taken from this population, 78% said ”their responsibility is to provide forewarning and situational

awareness of the threats to the business”,

103

though beyond that there was some variety in the other

ways they described their role, function and unique contribution to the private sector and to

society.

104

This clearly aligns with the purpose of intelligence as articulated by Intelligence Studies

scholars.

A distinction is also made therein between private sector intelligence and Competitive

Intelligence, with the latter being “a discipline that enables organizations to reduce strategic risk

and increase revenue opportunities by having a deep understanding of what has happened, what is

happening, and what may happen in their operating environment”.

105

Competitive Intelligence,

10 S. NEWBERY AND C. KAUNERT

Market Intelligence and Business Intelligence are topics that are deserving of analysis. These are

indeed topics that already receive scholarly attention, especially with regards to what sources to

collect relevant raw intelligence from and on appropriate analytical techniques. Published works in

these areas come from scholars in Business Studies

106

and Information Science,

107

from

consultants,

108

and from those who bridge the divide between academia and practice.

109

Critical

Intelligence Studies scholars might benet from greater engagement with this literature and its

authors, and perhaps from bringing them in to Critical Intelligence Studies itself.

Further broadenings are also warranted: around the world Intelligence Analysts – often indivi-

duals who have been trained by the emergency services or armed forces

110

– operate Security

Operations Centres (SOCs) providing round-the-clock threat monitoring to companies.

111

SOCs can

be in-house or third party,

112

and produce their own intelligence assessments whilst also, on

occasion, receiving outsourced intelligence assessments. Examples of these outsourced assessments

include reports covering a particular region either for the year ahead or for a particular month,

addressing trends including climate change, sanctions, upcoming elections and cyber threat devel-

opments in order to guide future intelligence collection activities,

113

and more narrowly focused,

often bespoke reports, on topics as narrow as the likely eects on Al Qaeda of the 2021 Taliban

takeover of Afghanistan.

114

This type of intelligence practice is vastly underrepresented in academia

compared to the study of similar practices conducted by state intelligence agencies.

Intelligence liaison is a subject of Intelligence Studies, and this too can and should be broadened

to incorporate the private sector. Though research into domestic intelligence liaison – involving state

intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies – is growing,

115

when the Intelligence Studies

literature addresses intelligence liaison it primarily focuses on international liaison between state

intelligence agencies.

116

An exception is a passage in the article that understands intelligence as

a social phenomenon, wherein Ben Jael usefully addresses the role of law enforcement agencies in

intelligence liaison.

117

When it is acknowledged that intelligence and security can go beyond the

nation state, it can – and is – also located in organisations such as the European Union, the United

Nations and others. Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, for example, has an information

sharing function,

118

as does Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency.

119

In practice, state agencies also liaise with corporate bodies, as illustrated by Operation

Agapanthus. In the context of terrorist attacks carried out using vehicles as weapons, Agapanthus

encouraged and facilitated vehicle rental companies to report concerns about suspicious transac-

tions to the police, though in practice the Operation’s features are more commonly used to

investigate serious crimes that had already taken place rather than to help prevent attacks.

120

The

likelihood that corporate entities share intelligence with each other depends upon the type of

organisation being discussed. It may be that private contractors working in a post-conict state-

building environment overseas may share local intelligence so they can better protect their person-

nel. Where sharing their intelligence would compromise their own security by making them less

competitive in the marketplace, the chances of intelligence liaison narrow. By contrast, when states

are the point of focus it can be argued that in some respects at least, the security of one depends

upon the security of its allies. This is another opportunity for further research.

The implications of secrecy surrounding intelligence practices and its impact on the study of

intelligence must also be considered. State actors collecting intelligence domestically are permitted

to infringe on the privacy of those people who are within its borders. In western states this is

governed by legislation and accompanying codes of practice that provide limits, procedures to

follow, and provisions for oversight and accountability. In the UK for example, the Regulation of

Investigatory Powers Act 2000 permits the interception of communications by named public

authorities when necessary and proportionate.

121

The state has this capability in part because they

are able to give themselves this capability. Moreover, they have it because it helps them full their

core task of providing ”a basic element of personal and collective security”.

122

Non-state actors do

not have this capability, constraining the methods they can legally and ethically use to collect

intelligence.

INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY 11

Although the Intelligence Studies literature pays much more attention to states collecting

intelligence from secret sources – involving collecting intelligence without the target knowing

such as by wire-tapping or espionage – there is an acknowledgement that secret sources comprise

only a small amount of intelligence work conducted on behalf of states. In Johnson’s words, “the

overwhelming percentage – sometimes upwards of 95 per cent – of the information mix provided to

America’s decision-makers in the form of intelligence reports is based on open sources”.

123

A valuable warning about the dangers of focusing on secrecy comes from Sims, who suggests that

although ”a capacity for secrecy is usually critical to success”, there are examples where ”exclusive

focus on keeping or stealing secrets may lead to intelligence failure”.

124

Dierences between sources

of intelligence for state intelligence practices and private intelligence are therefore present, but not

absolute: Critical Intelligence Studies ought to acknowledge this and build on it.

Consideration also ought to be given to whether, and in what ways, there are methodological

implications of broadening Intelligence Studies from something that is state-centric to something

that also gives due consideration to non-state actors. Intelligence scholars have noted that when

studying state intelligence practices, secrecy and classication of material sometimes leads to gaps

in knowledge.

125

This challenge will be present no matter the type of actor being researched: all

actors will aim to protect information about themselves. They will wittingly reveal only some of the

details of their practices, though leakers can intentionally put information into the public domain

that their employees would rather have kept condential. Robson Morrow and Duvenage’s work

demonstrates that surveys and interviews can be conducted eectively in the private sector. Serving

employees might be inuenced by their employers with regards to whether they provide interviews

to researchers, but there is less control over former employees. There is an exception, to some

degree, where the interviewee is a former state employee and a signatory of the Ocial Secrets Act

or equivalent legislation in their country of origin.

It may be argued that for private businesses even less information is in the public domain than for

states. Precisely because of their public role, western states release information into their national

archives to create a public record, with exceptions in place for sensitive information. The same does

not appear to be true of private companies. Similarly, there may be more in the way of media news

reporting on state intelligence activities that puts information into the public domain or at least

draws our attention to information that is already public, than for the private sector. Public Inquiries’

reports, and the evidence that they collect and make available online, do not seem to have an

equivalent in the corporate domain.

126

Those researching state intelligence activities may, therefore,

have more information to work with, though interviews can be pursued regardless of the subject of

study.

Conclusion

This article argues that the academic study of intelligence should be substantially and signicantly

expanded. As the purpose of the study of intelligence is, in part, to reect and aid the practice of

intelligence, scholarship must reect those practices. Analysis contained in this article shows that the

academic discipline of Intelligence Studies is lacking in certain respects. Firstly, while it focuses on

intelligence work conducted by state intelligence agencies, it is argued that the new discipline of

Critical Intelligence Studies needs to acknowledge that intelligence practice is also carried out on

behalf of states by police forces and armed forces. Secondly, while Intelligence Studies focuses on

practice that benets states, intelligence is also practiced widely by, and for, the private sector.

Critical Intelligence Studies should, therefore, also focus on these practices. This argument is

informed, and underpinned, by a theoretical framework from Critical Security Studies, a discipline

that is already comparatively well-developed. Developing Critical Intelligence Studies along the lines

set out in this article will signicantly increase the real-world applicability and relevance of the study

of intelligence to all the dierent organisations that conduct and benet from intelligence work.

12 S. NEWBERY AND C. KAUNERT

If we are to accept, as seems reasonable, that part of the purpose of the study of intelligence is to

support and aid practice, that study must keep up with the realities of intelligence practice. There are

challenges in obtaining data on intelligence practice: that is the case regardless of whether that

practice is conducted by a state or a non-state actor. These limitations to the availability of data are

not as severe as those who are unfamiliar with research into intelligence might assume. Each type of

organisation poses slightly dierent challenges for researchers, but overcoming or mitigating these

is perhaps something that appeals to, or even motivates, intelligence scholars. Bringing in the

theoretical underpinning to the study of intelligence proposed in this article is practicable. As argued

above, the critical turn taken by Security Studies bears a close relationship to developments in the

study of intelligence that are already underway, as well as to practice in intelligence (in both the state

and private sectors), and therefore provides a relevant and productive approach to pushing the

Critical Intelligence Studies agenda forwards. Any further developments in the eld of Critical

Security Studies should be monitored for possible incorporation into Critical Intelligence Studies.

Similarly, while there are commonalities at a basic level, at least, between Critical Security Studies

and Critical Military Studies, this deserves further analysis.

127

There are many opportunities to broaden research into intelligence practice. These include

analyses of intelligence work carried out for the private sector by the private sector, intelligence

work carried out in support of national or international security when conducted by state agencies

other than their intelligence agencies, and state intelligence agencies devoting attention to factors

such as environmental security in support of national or international security. Some of these

openings for research are already being addressed: as noted above, there is scholarly work that

addresses health intelligence, for example, though it does not label itself Critical Intelligence Studies

work. Academics have also begun to consider and publish work on what Critical Intelligence Studies

could usefully become. These opportunities for broadening research into intelligence practice are

not only in line with the critical turn in Security Studies, but, as demonstrated here, that turn can be

used to prompt, provoke and encourage that further research.

Intelligence practices have changed: the ”security” for which they are carried out has changed,

who they are carried out for has changed, and who carries them out has changed. While Intelligence

Studies emerged as an academic discipline long after the practices to which it refers began, scholar-

ship on these changes to intelligence practices is in a much better place. Yet there is considerable

work to be done before Critical Intelligence Studies provides the understanding of the realities of

intelligence that it has the potential to: there are considerable bodies of practice that are not yet fully

represented in scholarship. Critical Security Studies’ recognition of the broadening and widening of

the concept of security, and the ensuing recognition that intelligence work is not only done by state

intelligence agencies or for states’ security, provides an opportunity to push forward the study of

intelligence into a position where a well-developed, and theoretically sound, Critical Intelligence

Studies can be meaningfully said to exist.

Notes

1. For example: Bean, de Werd and Ivan, “Critical Intelligence Studies”.

2. Klein Goldewijk, “Why Still Critical?”; Ivan, Chiru and Arcos. “A Whole of Society Intelligence Approach”.

3. Bean, ”Intelligence theory from the margins”.

4. Ben Jael, Homann, Kearns and Larsson, ”Collective Discussion”. We are grateful to one of the anonymous

reviewers for recommending this source.

5. For example, Bean, de Werd and Ivan, ”Critical Intelligence Studies”.

6. Security Service Act 1989.

7. SIS, https://www.sis.gov.uk/index.html, accessed 23 Nov. 2021.

8. CIA, ”About CIA”, https://www.cia.gov/about/, accessed 23 Nov. 2021.

9. US Intelligence Community, ”Mission”, https://www.intelligence.gov/mission, accessed 23 Nov. 2021.

10. Stewart and Newbery, Why Spy?, xx, 2.

11. Omand, Securing the State, 21–55.

12. Ibid., 21.

INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY 13

13. Ibid., 22, 24–8.

14. Sims, ”Theory and Philosophy of Intelligence”, 46.

15. Warner, ”Theories of Intelligence”, 29.

16. Stewart and Newbery, Why Spy?, 3.

17. Weiss, ”Corporate Intelligence”.

18. Ibid., 378.

19. For just one example see Lomas and Murphy, Intelligence and Espionage, 4–5.

20. See Lentzos, Goodman and Wilson, ”Health Security Intelligence”.

21. Johnson and Shelton, ”Thoughts on the State of Intelligence Studies”.

22. Marrin, ”Intelligence Studies Centers”.

23. Goldman, ”The Ethics of Research in Intelligence Studies”; Herman and Schaefer, Intelligence Power in Practice;

Omand, Securing the State.

24. Johnson and Shelton, ”Thoughts on the State of Intelligence Studies”, 114–15.

25. Marrin, ”Improving Intelligence Studies as an Academic Discipline”.

26. Marrin, ”Intelligence Studies Centers”.

27. Marrin, ”Improving Intelligence Studies as an Academic Discipline”.

28. For example: Betts, ”Analysis, War, and Decision”; Bar-Joseph and Levy, ”Conscious Action and Intelligence

Failure”.

29. Marrin, ”Intelligence Studies Centers”, 399.

30. Sims, ”Foreign Intelligence Liaison”; Lefebvre, ”The Diculties and Dilemmas of International Intelligence

Cooperation”; Lander, ”International Intelligence Cooperation”.

31. Collins, Contemporary Security Studies, 2.

32. Wolfers, ”“National Security” as an Ambiguous Symbol”, 495.

33. Waever, ”Securitization and De-Securitization”, 49.

34. Ibid.

35. Buzan, Waever and De-Wilde, Security.

36. Booth, ”Security and Emancipation”, 319.

37. Booth, ”Security and Emancipation”.

38. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report, 22.

39. Buzan, Waever and De-Wilde, Security, 31.

40. Balzacq, ”A Theory of Securitization”, 12–13.

41. Wolfers, ”“National Security” as an Ambiguous Symbol”, 485.

42. Collins, Contemporary Security Studies, 2.

43. Waever, ”Securitization and De-Securitization”, 50.

44. Collins, Contemporary Security Studies, 2.

45. Leonard and Kaunert, ”Refugees, Security and the European Union”; and Baker-Beall, ”The Threat of the

“Returning Foreign Fighters””.

46. Stetter et al., ”Conict about Water”.

47. Elbe, ”Should HIV/AIDS be Securitized?”; Sjostedt, ”Health Issues and Securitization”; McInnes and Rushton ”HIV/

AIDS and Securitization Theory”; Kamradt-Scott and McInnes, ”The Securitization of Pandemic Inuenza”;

Hanrieder and Kreuder-Sonnen, ”WHO Decides on the Exception?”.

48. Waever, ”Securitization and De-Securitization”, 51.

49. Buzan, Waever and De-Wilde, Security.

50. Abrahamsen, Democracy and Global Governance.

51. Leonard and Kaunert, Refugees, Security and the European Union, 23.

52. Ibid., 24–29.

53. Leonard and Kaunert, Refugees, Security and the European Union.

54. Buzan, People, States and Fear.

55. Waever, O. (1995) ”Securitization and De-securitization” in Ronnie D. Lipschutz, (eds) On Security, Columbia

University Press, New York, pp. 46–86, 49.

56. Buzan, Waever, and De-Wilde, Security.

57. Buzan, and Waever, Regions and Powers, 6–75.

58. Waever et al., Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe.

59. McSweeny, ”Durkheim and the Copenhagen School”.

60. Buzan, People, States and Fear.

61. Booth, ”Security and Emancipation”, 317.

62. Leonard and Kaunert, ”Reconceptualising the Audience in Securitization Theory”.

63. Buzan, Waever, and De-Wilde, Security, 25.

64. Waever, ”Securitization and De-Securitization”.

65. Bigo, ”Security and Immigration”; and Leonard, ”EU Border Security and Migration into the European Union”.

66. Booth, Theory of World Security, 165.

14 S. NEWBERY AND C. KAUNERT

67. Ibid.

68. Buzan, Waever and De-Wilde, Security, 30.

69. For an overview see Lowenthal, Intelligence, particularly pages 7, 374, 382, 384, 388 and 389.

70. Ibid.

71. See: Buzan, Waever and De-Wilde also have argued that ”Securitization, like politicization, has to be understood

as an essentially intersubjective process”. Buzan, Waever and De-Wilde, Security, 30.

72. Gill and Phythian, Intelligence in an Insecure World, 8.

73. Phythian, ”Intelligence Theory and Theories of International Relations”, 66.

74. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report, 32.

75. Intelligence and Security Committee. Russia, 12.

76. Ibid., 13.

77. Oce of the Director of National Intelligence, Updated Assessment on COVID-19 Origins, 1.

78. Statement by President Joe Biden on the Investigation into the Origins of COVID-19.

79. Ibid.

80. Oce of the Director of National Intelligence, Updated Assessment on COVID-19 Origins.

81. Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence.

82. For example, Intelligence and Security Committee. Annual Report 2017/18, 20.

83. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report, 25.

84. Europol, European Union Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment, 8.

85. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report, 30.

86. Europol, European Union Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment, 10.

87. Ibid., 19.

88. Barnard, Johnson, and Porter, ”Environmental Security Intelligence”.

89. For example: Gradon and Moy, ”COVID-19 Response”; Gressang and Wirtz, ”Rethinking Warning”; Smith, and

Walsh, ”Improving Health Security and Intelligence Capabilities to Mitigate Biological Threats”; and Lentzos,

Goodman, and Wilson (eds), ”Health Security Intelligence” special issue of Intelligence and National Security.

90. Gioe, ”Cyber Operations and Useful Fools”; and McCombie, Uhlmann, and Morrison, ”The US 2016 Presidential

Election & Russia’s Troll Farms”.

91. Johnson, ”The Development of Intelligence Studies”, 3.

92. See, for example, Kahn, ”The Intelligence Failure of Pearl Harbour”.

93. Ratclie, Intelligence-Led Policing, 6.

94. Ratclie, Intelligence-Led Policing.

95. Atkinson, ”Patriarchy, Gender, Infantilisation”. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewer for recommending

this source.

96. Buckley, ”Intelligence and Organised Crime”.

97. Gill, ”Organised crime”.

98. Newbery, ”Inter- and Intra-Agency Intelligence Liaison During “The Troubles””.

99. Mobley, Terrorism and Counter-Intelligence; Mobley and Ray, ”The Cali Cartel and Counterintelligence”.

100. For just one example of a company that provides intelligence assessments in order to support Close Protection

work (known as Executive Protection in the US), see Intelligent Protection International Limited, accessed

29 March 2022, https://www.intelligent-holdings.co.uk/intelligent-protection.html.

101. Robson Morrow, ”Private Sector Intelligence”.

102. Ibid.

103. Duvenage, ”The Professional Identity of Security Risk Intelligence Analysts in the Private Sector”, 67.

104. Ibid., 67–71.

105. Strategic & Competitive Intelligence Professionals, ”What is Competitive Intelligence?”, https://www.scip.org/

page/CI-MI-Basics-Topic-Hub, accessed 14 Oct. 2022.

106. Fleisher and Blenkhorn, Managing Frontiers in Competitive Intelligence.

107. Nelke and Håkansson, Competitive Intelligence for Information Professionals, xi-xii.

108. Murphy, Competitive Intelligence.

109. Hedin, Hirvensalo and Vaarnas, The Handbook of Market Intelligence.

110. Speaker (name withheld), Second Annual SOC of the Future Europe Forum, 10 March 2022.

111. For example, ”SOC Security Analyst” job vacancy, TalkTalk, posted 18 April 2022; ”SOC IRT Security Analyst” job

vacancy, Amazon Web Services, posted 1 April 2022; ”Crisis Response Intelligence Analyst” job vacancy,

Pinkerton, posted 2 April 2022.

112. Newbery, ”The SOC Endgame?”.

113. For example, Crisis24, ”2022 Global Risk Forecast: Executive Summary”; and Intelligence Fusion, ”Monthly

Intelligence Summary: Central Asia”.

114. Dragony’s Security Intelligence & Analysis Service, ”Al Qaeda Revived by Taliban Takeover”, 19 Aug. 2021,

https://www.dragonyintelligence.com/news/global-al-qaeda-revived-by-taliban-takeover/.

115. Newbery, ”Inter- and Intra-Agency Intelligence Liaison During “The Troubles””.

INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY 15

116. Examples include: Sims, ”Foreign Intelligence Liaison”; Lefebvre, ”The Diculties and Dilemmas of International

Intelligence Cooperation”; Lander, ”International Intelligence Cooperation”.

117. Ben Jael, in Ben Jael, Homann, Kearns and Larsson, ”Collective Discussion”.

118. Europol, ”About Europol”, 4 Feb. 2022, https://www.europol.europa.eu/about-europol.

119. Frontex, ”Who We Are”, accessed 20 Sept. 2022, https://frontex.europa.eu/about-frontex/who-we-are/origin-

tasks/.

120. Intelligence and Security Committee, The 2017 Attacks, 40.

121. Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

122. Gill and Phythian, Intelligence in an Insecure World, 170.

123. Johnson, ”Introduction”, 2.

124. Sims, ”Theory and Philosophy of Intelligence”, 42–3.

125. Jervis, ”Thoughts on the State of Intelligence Studies”, 114.

126. Newbery, ”Ocial Inquiries and Their Sources of Evidence”.

127. See Basham, Belkin and Gifkins. ”What is Critical Military Studies?” and the Critical Military Studies journal. We are

grateful to the anonymous reviewer for suggesting this avenue of exploration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Samantha Newbery is Reader in International Security in the Politics and Contemporary History Department at the

University of Salford, Manchester, where she teaches intelligence, security, counter-terrorism, and counter-insurgency.

Her next book, Terrorist Informers in Northern Ireland, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2024. This is the rst

book-length analysis of the use of individuals involved in terrorism, and therefore in crime, as sources of intelligence.

Although there are times when collecting intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks should be given priority over

prosecuting these terrorist informers for their oences, the book will argue that the long-term damage caused by

failing to prosecute them can be equally as damaging. Her previous publications include Interrogation, Intelligence and

Security (Manchester University Press, 2015), and – co-authored with former Deputy Chief of SIS and Secretary of the

Joint Intelligence Committee Brian T.W. Stewart CMG – Why Spy? The Art of Intelligence (Hurst, 2015).

Christian Kaunert is Professor of International Security at Dublin City University, Ireland. He is also Professor of Policing

and Security, as well as Director of the International Centre for Policing and Security at the University of South Wales. In

addition, he is Jean Monnet Chair, Director of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence and Director of the Jean Monnet

Network on EU Counter-Terrorism (www.eucter.net).

ORCID

Samantha Newbery http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9084-0729

Christian Kaunert

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4493-2235

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