Intelligence
To Keep Top Secrets Secret, We Need Fewer of Them
Late last week, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Mark Warner described how over-classification of national security-related information is a key and neglected factor behind the latest, disturbing intelligence leak. “We need...
Open-Source Intelligence is Indispensable for Countering Threats
When most people hear the word intelligence in a political context, they immediately think of clandestine sources, spies, and secret meetings. Intelligence services still rely on human source intelligence (HUMINT)...
White House to Increase Intelligence Sharing with Kyiv
The Biden administration has lowered bureaucratic barriers for intelligence sharing, giving the Ukrainian government greater access to U.S. intelligence data, according to the Wall Street Journal. While the United States has engaged...
After 75 Years, the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance Remains a Mystery
Seventy-five years ago, the United States and the United Kingdom signed a unique secret alliance. To this day, no other countries share classified information, work together to gather information, and...
Kudos to South Korea: Intelligence Sharing Pact With Japan Still On
For a while, it looked as though South Korea might abandon a critical military information sharing agreement with Japan. Its last-minute decision to remain in the agreement is welcome news....
New Book Sheds Light on One of America’s Least Known Intelligence Organizations
“We are the organization that produced the infamous Iraqi WMD estimate, but we also do nonfiction work,” Ambassador Robert Hutchins and former National Intelligence Council (NIC) chair said. Hutchins and...
Intelligence Failure in the Trump Era
The Trump administration’s tendency to disregard the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community has become, as the Washington Post’s Greg Miller has reported, something of a habit. Initially, Trump’s shoving...
Fantasy and Treason in the Post-Truth Era
A feature article in a recent issue of The Economist examines the disturbing rise in lying in politics and public affairs. The biggest current stimulus for such an examination is,...
The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Intelligence Agencies
Some of society’s brightest minds have warned that artificial intelligence (AI) may lead to dangerous unintended consequences, yet leaders of the U.S. intelligence community—with its vast budgets and profound capabilities—have...
Safeguarding Privacy, Inside and Outside Government
A recent report in the New York Times, about impending new rules that would permit the National Security Agency to share more extensively with other U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted communications...
Does Obama Care What Iran Wants in Iraq?
Marina Shalabi and Ian Duff, two researchers at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, have done some interesting spadework on the history of how the U.S. Director of National...
The CIA and the Cult of Reorganization
Re-arranging bureaucracies has long been a favorite Washington way of pretending to make improvements. It is a handy recourse in the absence of good ideas to make real improvement. Revising...