State intelligence is important because it influences relative power and the outcomes of interstate asymmetric information conflicts. However, it presents a unique theoretical and empirical problem for international security scholars. While indisputably a critical component of state power, the role of intelligence collection, analysis and subsequent policy implementation has received light treatment in critical scholarship. As Robert Jervis noted in 1987 (“Intelligence and Foreign Policy: A Review Essay.” International Security 11:141-161) “For all its glamour, intelligence has also been a stepchild to academics. In a way, this is odd: much of social science consists of analyzing other countries and so parallels the general mission of intelligence organizations… But academic neglect there has been, in large part because of the difficulty of gathering reliable information.”
The widely perceived failure of the United States intelligence community before 9/11 and Iraq has prompted sharp rebuke from policymakers, important changes to national laws and substantive self-reflection inside its component bureaucratic structures. Yet the academic community of international security scholars, which should be concerned with the causal mechanisms that led to these perceived failures, has largely remained silent. This is surprising since the difficulties in collecting classified data, which would have stymied quantitative analysis in the past, have become somewhat less central to analysis with the advent of formal models as an important tool of theoretical development and refinement in the field. Eleven years after Jervis’ comment, the topic of intelligence as a defensive state function has become a more important question with a greater paucity of answers.
One of my favorite quotations that explains the reasons for the centrality of intelligence comes from former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Although it is often held up as a joke of some sort, I think it actually makes the point somewhat succinctly:
“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
- Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
This speaks directly to empirical models, where the dependent variable can be difficult to construct for multiple reasons. First, if the purpose of research is to measure effectiveness of intelligence as a state defensive measure, the effects of intelligence must be distinguished from those of counterintelligence, suggesting a fixed effects model. Second, the limits of the available data suggest that any model will suffer from an omitted variable problem which cannot be solved by differencing models. Perhaps most importantly, if the intelligence system is accurate in predicting and deflecting threats to state security, no outcome will be recorded, at least not publicly, tempting some researchers to sample on the dependent variable.
Unfortunately, in the place of rich sources of data, formal modeling, too, has not fully developed the concept of intelligence, although it lends itself to such an analysis through its purposive approach to information asymmetry. Logically, intelligence has the capability to clarify the signal of an opponent in an imperfect information game. For example, James D. Morrow’s (1994 "Modeling the Forms of International Cooperation," International Organization 48:387-423) examination of decentralized cooperation models with an informational problem could have different results with the introduction of intelligence and counterintelligence actions by states. With symmetry of intelligence capabilities and utilization, such actions could solve the informational problem for both sides by clarifying signals, increasing the probability of cooperation.
In the larger sense of institutionalized constraints on state behavior, the effective utilization of intelligence services may help states achieve their policy preferences outside of the norms of multilateral treaties and international institutions. Counterintelligence, however, could worsen this problem for offensive states, if, as Jennifer Sims (2008 "A Theory of Intelligence in International Politics," unpublished draft) claims, “Offensive counterintelligence doesn’t so much block the opponent’s operations as it distorts his thinking to the perpetrator’s advantage, whether or not the perpetrator’s own intelligence assets are at risk from the opposing service.”
In terms of scholarship and practitioners, one suspects (or hopes) that a tremendous amount of meta-analysis is being done in the field of intelligence by individuals who cannot publish their findings due to classification. At the same time, students and academics who are concerned with objectivity and maintaining a publication record are unlikely to agree to the conditions necessary to fully study the processes and effects of intelligence.
In the meantime, these are a few open sources that I refer to when necessary:
CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence
JIOX Intelligence Tradecraft and Analysis Blog
RAND Intelligence Policy Center
The widely perceived failure of the United States intelligence community before 9/11 and Iraq has prompted sharp rebuke from policymakers, important changes to national laws and substantive self-reflection inside its component bureaucratic structures. Yet the academic community of international security scholars, which should be concerned with the causal mechanisms that led to these perceived failures, has largely remained silent. This is surprising since the difficulties in collecting classified data, which would have stymied quantitative analysis in the past, have become somewhat less central to analysis with the advent of formal models as an important tool of theoretical development and refinement in the field. Eleven years after Jervis’ comment, the topic of intelligence as a defensive state function has become a more important question with a greater paucity of answers.
One of my favorite quotations that explains the reasons for the centrality of intelligence comes from former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Although it is often held up as a joke of some sort, I think it actually makes the point somewhat succinctly:
“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
- Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
This speaks directly to empirical models, where the dependent variable can be difficult to construct for multiple reasons. First, if the purpose of research is to measure effectiveness of intelligence as a state defensive measure, the effects of intelligence must be distinguished from those of counterintelligence, suggesting a fixed effects model. Second, the limits of the available data suggest that any model will suffer from an omitted variable problem which cannot be solved by differencing models. Perhaps most importantly, if the intelligence system is accurate in predicting and deflecting threats to state security, no outcome will be recorded, at least not publicly, tempting some researchers to sample on the dependent variable.
Unfortunately, in the place of rich sources of data, formal modeling, too, has not fully developed the concept of intelligence, although it lends itself to such an analysis through its purposive approach to information asymmetry. Logically, intelligence has the capability to clarify the signal of an opponent in an imperfect information game. For example, James D. Morrow’s (1994 "Modeling the Forms of International Cooperation," International Organization 48:387-423) examination of decentralized cooperation models with an informational problem could have different results with the introduction of intelligence and counterintelligence actions by states. With symmetry of intelligence capabilities and utilization, such actions could solve the informational problem for both sides by clarifying signals, increasing the probability of cooperation.
In the larger sense of institutionalized constraints on state behavior, the effective utilization of intelligence services may help states achieve their policy preferences outside of the norms of multilateral treaties and international institutions. Counterintelligence, however, could worsen this problem for offensive states, if, as Jennifer Sims (2008 "A Theory of Intelligence in International Politics," unpublished draft) claims, “Offensive counterintelligence doesn’t so much block the opponent’s operations as it distorts his thinking to the perpetrator’s advantage, whether or not the perpetrator’s own intelligence assets are at risk from the opposing service.”
In terms of scholarship and practitioners, one suspects (or hopes) that a tremendous amount of meta-analysis is being done in the field of intelligence by individuals who cannot publish their findings due to classification. At the same time, students and academics who are concerned with objectivity and maintaining a publication record are unlikely to agree to the conditions necessary to fully study the processes and effects of intelligence.
In the meantime, these are a few open sources that I refer to when necessary:
CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence
JIOX Intelligence Tradecraft and Analysis Blog
RAND Intelligence Policy Center
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