This book provides an institutional costs framework for intelligence and security communities to examine the factors that can encourage or obstruct cooperation.
The governmental functions of security and intelligence require various organisations to interact in a symbiotic way. These organisations must constantly negotiate with each other to establish who should address which issue and with what resources. By coupling adapted versions of transaction costs theories with socio-political perspectives, this book provides a model to explain why some cooperative endeavours are successful, whilst others fail. This framework is applied to counterterrorism and defence intelligence in the UK and the US to demonstrate that the view of good cooperation in the former and poor cooperation in the latter is overly simplistic. Neither is necessarily more disposed to behave cooperatively than the other; rather, the institutional costs created by their respective organisational architectures incentivise different cooperative behaviour in different circumstances. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, organisational studies, politics and security studies. For more info
This volume examines intelligence services since 1945 in their role as knowledge producers. Intelligence agencies are producers and providers of arcane information. However, little is known about the social, cultural and material dimensions of their knowledge production, processing and distribution. This volume starts from the assumption that during the Cold War, these core activities of information services underwent decisive changes, of which scientization and computerisation are essential. With a focus on the emerging alliances between intelligence agencies, science and (computer) technology, the chapters empirically explore these transformations and are characterised by innovative combinations of intelligence history with theoretical considerations from the history of science and technology and the history of knowledge. At the same time, the book challenges the bipolarity of Cold War history in general and of intelligence history in particular in favour of comparative and transnational perspectives. The focus is not only the Soviet Union and the United States, but also Poland, Turkey, the two German states and Brazil. This approach reveals surprising commonalities across systems: time and again, the expansion and use of intelligence knowledge came up against the limits that resulted from intelligence culture itself. The book enriches our global understanding of knowledge of the state and contributes to a historical framework for the past decade of debates about the societal consequences of intelligence data processing. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, science and technology studies, security studies and International Relations.
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National intelligence agencies have long adjusted to the opportunities and threats from new technologies, and have created structures, concepts, and practices to best apply new capabilities. But such recent technological developments as artificial intelligence are different in kind. Increasingly affordable to nongovernmental actors, they are powerful enough to overwhelm and marginalize much of what agencies do.
In The Future of National Intelligence: How Emerging Technologies Reshape Intelligence Communities, Shay Hershkovitz argues that only with a new paradigm can these agencies take up this fundamentally new technological challenge. For more info
American extremists are consistently turning up on loosely-governed Russian social media platforms.
Why it matters: While there’s no evidence to suggest that the Russian government is explicitly trying to lure American extremists to its social sites, experts note that Moscow doesn’t seem interested in doing anything to discourage them, either.
Lures users into downloading malicious apps and browser extensions. Meta said it had uncovered malware purveyors leveraging public interest in ChatGPT to lure users into downloading malicious apps and browser extensions, likening the phenomenon to cryptocurrency scams. Since March, the social media giant has found around 10 malware families and more than 1000 …
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Today I announce the appointment of Mr Brendan Dowling as Australia’s next Ambassador for Cyber Affairs and Critical Technology.
Australia’s Ambassador for Cyber Affairs and Critical Technology leads Australia’s international engagement on cyber affairs and critical technology issues, while delivering cyber capacity building, crisis response and resilience across our region.
Cyberspace and critical technology is vital to international relations, including national security and international peace and stability, sustainable development, and the protection and realisation of human rights and freedoms.
Mr Dowling will have a key role in the development of Australia’s Cyber Security Strategy for 2023-2030, which will enhance our role as a trusted and influential global cyber leader. The strategy recognises that a whole-of-nation approach to cyber is required and that cyber affairs are an integral element of Australia’s foreign and strategic policy.
The next independent review of Australia’s intelligence community received welcome funding in this month’s federal budget. That should put Canberra on track to meet the five- to seven-yearly schedule set by the post-Iraq Flood review in 2004, which established regular intelligence community assessments rather than relying on post-mortems. While there’s been no intelligence failure, the strategic context is shifting rapidly, with rising global instability, Moscow’s war in Europe and an increasingly aggressive Beijing. At the same time, we have the growing abuse of technology by authoritarian regimes and the spectre of Australia’s largest trading partner and closest ally seeking to technologically decouple. A general check-up geared to confirm the status quo will be insufficient. The review will need to grapple with some revolutionary changes already happening as well as those on the horizon, foremost among them technological game-changers such as generative artificial intelligence and the enormous growth in open-source opportunities beyond what was foreseen at the time of the last review in 2017.
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As artificial intelligence becomes a larger part of our world, it’s easy to get lost in its sea of jargon. But it has never been more important to get your bearings than today.
AI is poised to have a major impact on the job market in the coming years (see: Automation). Discussions over how to manage it are playing a larger part in our political conversation (see: Regulation). And some of its most crucial concepts are things that you won’t have been taught in school (see: Competitive Pressure).
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The African nation of Sudan has been in the headlines, as intense fighting has rocked the country. As this bloody power struggle plays out, the map infographic above aims to provides key information on the conflict, as well as general facts and context about the country.
To begin, what exactly is happening in Sudan?
Ukrainian opensource intelligence (OSINT) agency Molfar, has released the data of 167 persons whom they say are employees of the Russian Federation’s foreign intelligence service. The data indicates that most of the spy networks in Western countries were using diplomatic cover, known in spy parlance as “official cover.”
To avoid suspicions, the Russian spooks took day jobs at embassies, worked as journalists, and gained employment in cultural organizations to act as cover for their real goal: to infiltrate organizations to spread disinformation about Ukraine before the full-scale invasion.
Fentanyl has lonh been one of the most dangerous wares of the underworld cryptocurrency economy—so dangerous, in fact, that even many dark-web markets have banned it. But new research shows that cryptocurrency is playing a different role in that deadly opioid’s supply chain: Chinese chemical producers are accepting cryptocurrency as payment for fentanyl ingredients they’re selling to drug operations that mass-produce the narcotic in countries around the world. And they’re offering it not on the dark web, but in full public view.
Cryptocurrency-tracing firms Elliptic and Chainalysis this week both released new findings that offer a glimpse of an underreported role of cryptocurrency in the global fentanyl trade: the wholesale supply of ingredients to fentanyl producers around the world. Researchers at Elliptic found more than 90 Chinese chemical companies that sold fentanyl “precursor” chemicals and advertised their products on the open web, fully 90 percent of which offered to accept payment in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Tether.
Chinese Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actors constitute a substantial threat towards private and governmental entities from local to global levels. As contemporary geopolitical tensions in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond intensifies, so are the incentives for Chinese operations in cyberspace.
China’s APT network is a large web of intertwined actors capable of conducting sophisticated cyber operations against its opponents. While not every APT group is attributed to the Chinese government, Beijing is known to use APT actors to pursue its national interests. The United States (US) Office of the Director of National Intelligence 2021 Annual Threat Assessment states that China possesses substantial cyber capabilities and presents a considerable cyber threat towards digitised societies.
The intelligence services compete with other public and private bodies to recruit the best candidates. Therefore, they must design specific recruitment policies to attract the young talent they need. However, the variables associated with the desire to work for these agencies among young people is still unknown. In this study, we explore these variables based on a survey administered to 2,888 young university students in Spain. The results reveal that social science students and those with greater satisfaction with democracy and trust in political institutions are more willing to work for the Spanish National Intelligence Centre.
Read the reportAs a former CIA career officer, I wince learning about leaks of classified documents that produce sustained headlines. I know the damage such a debacle can wreak on intelligence-gathering and cooperation with U.S. allies. The hard-won intelligence that Jack Teixeira, the recently alleged Air National Guard leaker delivered via the internet to nations hostile to the United States, likely cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars to produce, and some of those sources and methods may never produce again.
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By 2030, the Metaverse will have achieved mass adoption across both consumer and business markets, with billions of dollars of investment and capability powering a truly parallel existence.
As with the ubiquity of the Internet today, organisations will adopt increasingly sophisticated digital replicas of their products and services, operating perfectly simulated twins of their physical counterparts.
Ecommerce will shift from storefront websites such as Amazon and Kogan, to fully immersive digital showrooms, with virtual stores that you can walk around and products you can pick up, inspect, and interact with in virtual reality.
This future isn’t science fiction, in fact, it’s not even that far off. Luxury product manufacturers are already experimenting with virtual reality showrooms, and this trend is growing as businesses realise the power of virtual and augmented reality in the sales cycle.
Diamonds, hearts, clubs and spades. On this episode of DIA Connections, listen to how a team of analysts developed a special deck of playing cards used in Operation Iraqi Freedom. You’ll also hear how they became one of the most significant pieces of DIA history and heritage, not to mention a red-hot collector’s item. *Nothing in this podcast should be construed to be an endorsement by the DIA or the US Government of any particular company, product, or service.
For more informationRolf Mowatt-Larssen challenges us with his fasten your seatbelts presentation on the complex issue of intelligence in which he discusses spies, nukes, emerging science and technology, climate change and fake news.
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