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Intelligence, in military science, information concerning an enemy or an area. The term is also used for an agency that gathers such information. Military intelligence is as old as warfare itself. Even in biblical times, Moses sent spies to live with the Canaanites in order to learn about their ways and about their strengths and weaknesses. In the American Revolution George Washington relied heavily on information that was provided by an intelligence net based in New York City, and in World War II the results of a lack of good intelligence were realized in the destruction of the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor.
Chinese are known to employ their deception technique to achieve strategic gain to delay or render war unnecessarily. Thus, gaining reliable intelligence has become quite essential in employing those deception techniques. The Chinese intelligence-gathering technique is different from others. It does not believe in the traditional way of employing professional spies but utilizes the Chinese students, academicians studying and working abroad, tourists, and even though companies to help in the intelligence collection. This type of intelligence collection is a time-consuming process, and the data collected is amorphous and is of low quality. This low-quality data is analyzed, stitched together to form a part of more considerable intelligence. The type of intelligence collection is termed as the ‘Thousand grains of sand’ approach by a former China analyst for the FBI, Paul D Moore. He explains this intelligence collection method in the following way.
The Chinese motive of collecting information is just not limited to the security aspect aiming to understand the adversary’s capability and capacity. Chinese are also interested in understanding the social structure and government functioning at the social level. Chinese have even devised the strategy to use technology to collect information. Acquiring information from the cyber platforms has two-pronged approaches: first, creating a cyber attack vector on all connected devices worldwide, and second, investing in the companies that can provide vital information of users to Chinese agencies.
Acquiring intelligence is now not only limited to employing spies and planting moles. The technology has enhanced the scope of gaining information through various cyber platforms. Security Service (MI5) Director General Ken McCallum said that British intelligence had clocked 10,000 disguised approaches by foreign spies seeking to manipulate ordinary people in Britain. The consequences of spying by foreign powers can range “from frustration and inconvenience, through loss of livelihood, potentially up to loss of life,” McCallum will say in a speech at MI5 headquarters Thames House.
“We must, over time, build the same public awareness and resilience to state threats that we have done over the years on terrorism,” he said in excerpts of his speech released by MI5. British spies say China and Russia have independently sought to steal commercially sensitive data and intellectual property as well as to interfere in politics and sow misinformation. Beijing and Moscow say the West is gripped with a paranoia about plots. Both Russia and Chine deny they meddle abroad, seek to steal technology, carry out cyberattacks or sow discord. McCallum, a career spy, said the whole country should be alert to the threat of foreign spying.
“We see the UK’s brilliant universities and researchers having their discoveries stolen or copied; we see businesses hollowed out by the loss of advantage they’ve worked painstakingly to build,” he said. “Given half a chance, hostile actors will short-circuit years of patient British research or investment. This is happening at scale. And it affects us all. UK jobs, UK public services, UK futures.”
Military Intelligence
Intelligence is conducted at two levels, strategic and tactical. Strategic intelligence is information that is needed to formulate policy and military plans at the international and national policy levels. Tactical intelligence is intended primarily to respond to the needs of military field commanders so they can plan for and, if necessary, conduct combat operations. Essentially, tactical intelligence and strategic intelligence differ only in scope, point of view, and level of employment.
Whether tactical or strategic, military intelligence attempts to respond to or satisfy the needs of the operational leader, the person who has to act or react to a given set of circumstances. The process begins when the commander determines what information is needed to act responsibly. Several terms are used when discussing these requirements. On the national level they are usually called the essential elements of information and are defined as those items of intelligence information about a foreign power, armed force, target, or physical environment that are absolutely vital for timely and accurate decision making. On the tactical level intelligence needs are defined in a similar manner; often called information requirements, they are those items of information concerning the enemy and his environment that must be collected and processed in order to meet the intelligence needs of the military commander.
Types of intelligence
In most situations, intelligence production involves the assessment of conflicting pieces of incomplete information, the attempt to determine the correct items, and then the processing and assembly of these accurate items into a complete, understandable document that responds to the needs of the operational leader. More often than not the resulting product, which is usually called an intelligence appraisal or intelligence assessment, contains some incorrect information.
In order to structure this production, analysts divide intelligence into types. While all types of intelligence are valuable, in any given situation some may be of greater worth than others, may be more accurate, and may provide a more complete view of the situation. By dividing intelligence into types, analysts and commanders arrive at a better understanding of the value and accuracy of a given piece of information.
Armed forces
Information on a potential enemy’s armed forces—that is, personnel, training, equipment, bases, capabilities, manpower levels, disposition, readiness, and other factors pertaining to strength and effectiveness—is crucial for a nation that is about to enter combat. If the weaknesses can be exploited, then the conflict may be won more quickly and with fewer casualties. Toward the end of World War II, owing to incomplete intelligence it was predicted that Japan would fight resolutely against a U.S. invasion and that the United States might suffer up to one million casualties. This was a major factor in the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In reality, though, Japanese resolve was grossly overestimated, and Japan could probably have been conquered with far fewer Allied casualties.
Biographical
This is information collected on the views, traits, habits, skills, importance, relationships, health, and professional history of the leaders and important individuals of a nation. Biographical intelligence is important to those who must decide whether to support a foreign leader. For example, when Fidel Castro first came to power in Cuba in 1959, he claimed to be a nationalist and was even allowed to conduct a speaking tour in the United States. Subsequently, however, Castro revealed that he was a communist who intended to transform Cuba into a Soviet-style state. More accurate intelligence on Castro might have revealed his intentions more promptly, and U.S. foreign policy could have been revised accordingly.
In clandestine operations, one of the most difficult problems is assessing the validity of an individual who volunteers his services to an intelligence organization. Very often, information on the family life, education, travels, and professional and political affiliations of such a person provides great insight into motivation and can help in verifying authenticity.
Cartographic
Derived from maps and charts, cartographic intelligence is crucial for all military operations. During the Falkland Islands War, for example, British forces depended heavily on cartography. They also interviewed schoolteachers and scientists who had recently left the islands so that they had the most accurate information possible on road conditions, towns, and facilities. This prepared invading troops to meet the obstacles caused by rough terrain and poor roads, and as a result the invasion went remarkably well.
Economic
This is information concerning the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, as well as labour, finance, taxation, and other aspects of a nation’s economy or of the international economic system. Economic intelligence allows a nation to estimate the magnitude of possible military threats and is also valuable in estimating the intentions of a potential enemy. In wartime, economic intelligence is a prime indicator of an enemy’s ability to sustain a war. This is particularly important when analyzing small nations, such as Israel, where a conflict requires total mobilization and cannot be sustained for long without creating severe economic problems.
Energy
Energy intelligence specifically addresses the location and size of foreign energy resources; how these resources are used and allocated; foreign governments’ energy policies, plans, and programs; new or improved foreign energy technologies; and the economic and security aspects of foreign energy supply, demand, production, distribution, and use.
Energy requirements can be an important factor in military planning. For example, as German forces were advancing on Moscow during World War II, Hitler, on being informed that the German military was short of fuel, sent several of the advancing units southward to capture the oil complexes at Baku on the Caspian Sea. This move so depleted the forces advancing on Moscow that they failed to capture the city, dealing the German war effort a fatal setback. Later, on the Western Front, advancing Allied forces were so short of fuel that U.S. general George Patton’s 3rd Army was forced to stop and await replenishment. This allowed the retreating Germans to dig in and prolong the war.
Counterintelligence
Counterintelligence is intended to detect, counteract, and prevent espionage and other clandestine intelligence activities, sabotage, terrorist attacks, or assassinations conducted on behalf of foreign powers, organizations, or persons. It is especially vital that nations identify the capabilities and intentions of international terrorist organizations so that their operations can be thwarted; in the event that a terrorist attack is successful, identifying the culprit allows for reprisals, which are crucial to combating terrorism. In December 1988 an American commercial aircraft was destroyed over Scotland, and neither the United States nor Great Britain initially could identify the terrorist organization involved. As a result, the act was successful from the perspective of the terrorists, who had injured their enemy without suffering retaliation.
Geographic
Gained from studying natural characteristics including terrain, climate, natural resources, transportation, boundaries, and population distribution, military geographic intelligence involves evaluating all such factors that in any way influence military operations.
Geographic intelligence was crucial to the success of Israel’s rescue mission at the Entebbe airport in Uganda in 1976. Because they had reliable information on the exact location of the buildings at the airport, of the roads leading to Entebbe, and of military bases in the region, Israeli soldiers were able to land in three transport planes, kill many of the terrorists holding Israeli hostages, and depart with most of the hostages before the Ugandan military could react. A significant factor in the disastrous U.S. attempt to rescue its hostages in Iran in 1980 was a failure to anticipate and prepare for seasonal sandstorms, which disabled several helicopters and forced the rescuers to abort their mission.
Medical
This is intelligence gained from studying every aspect of foreign natural and man-made environments that could affect the health of military forces. This information can be used not only to predict the medical weaknesses of an enemy but also to provide one’s own forces with adequate medical protection. For example, in the Spanish-American War the majority of U.S. casualties in the Caribbean resulted from disease rather than combat, because U.S. forces were not prepared to deal with the environment of that region.
Sociological
Information on a nation’s social stratification, value systems, beliefs, and other social characteristics are of crucial value in assessing nations such as South Africa, the Soviet Union, or Israel, where national, racial, or social factions can have a great impact on a nation’s military capability.
A lack of good sociological intelligence was a major cause of U.S. blunders in dealing with revolutionary Iran. When Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi was overthrown in 1979, the United States had only the most superficial understanding of Islām and Iranian society, and the situation improved only slightly in subsequent years. As a result, the United States often remained ignorant about Iranian officials, calling them “radical” or “moderate” even when such terms did more to cloud a situation than to make it clear.
Transportation and telecommunication
This type of intelligence can be crucial to correctly assessing a nation’s ability to wage war, as it concerns a nation’s highways, railroads, inland waterways, and civil airways as well as its telephone, telegraph, and civil broadcast capabilities. When China sent troops across the border into Vietnam in 1979, many observers assumed that China would win the conflict. This estimate was based on the huge size of the Chinese army and on its excellent performance against United Nations forces in the Korean War. After China failed to score a decisive victory, the same commentators examined China’s transportation and telecommunication networks and found that, while they were very highly developed in the Northeast, they were quite primitive in the South. It was concluded that the advanced northeastern systems and the primitive southern systems were prime factors in China’s success in Korea and in its lackluster performance in Vietnam.
Following are the major sources of intelligence.
Acoustics
This is information derived from analyzing acoustic waves that are radiated either intentionally or unintentionally. In naval intelligence, underwater acoustic waves from surface ships and submarines are detected by sonar arrays. These sensors are extremely accurate and are a major source of information on submarines in the world’s oceans.
Imagery
This is information gleaned from analyzing all types of imagery, including photography as well as infrared and ultraviolet imagery. The examination of imagery, called imagery interpretation, is the process of locating, recognizing, identifying, and describing objects, activities, and terrain that appear on imagery.
Imagery collected by satellites and high-altitude aircraft is one of the most important sources of intelligence. It not only provides information for a huge number of intelligence categories (such as order of battle, military operations, scientific and technical developments, and economics), but it is indispensable for successfully monitoring compliance with arms-limitation treaties. The Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 allowed the United States to periodically request that the Soviet Union open certain intercontinental ballistic missile sites so that U.S. satellites (referred to as “national technical means”) could verify that the sites did not house intermediate-range missiles banned by the treaty.
Tactical infrared imaging devices can often identify camouflaged tanks and armour because the materials used to cover them—trees, branches, and leaves—often register different infrared signatures than does the surrounding foliage. Infrared satellites can register heat through clouds, producing imagery on enemy forces, equipment, and movements.
Signals
Gained from intercepting, processing, and analyzing foreign electrical communications and other signals, signals intelligence (often called SIGINT) comprises three elements: communications, electronics, and telemetry.
Communications intelligence is gleaned from foreign communications that are intercepted by other than the intended recipients. Such intelligence can be of the greatest value to a nation’s fighting forces because it allows them to be privy to the strategies, weaknesses, and attitudes of the enemy. For example, before and during World War II, the U.S. Navy’s breaking of the Japanese PURPLE code allowed the United States to know of Japanese moves in advance. It even provided warning of the attack on Pearl Harbor, although this intelligence was not sent to Hawaii quickly enough to prevent the debacle.
Electronics intelligence (also called ELINT) is technical and intelligence information obtained from foreign electromagnetic emissions that are not radiated by communications equipment or by nuclear detonations and radioactive sources. By analyzing the electronic emissions from a given weapon or electronic system, an intelligence analyst can very often determine the purpose of the device.
Telemetry intelligence is technical information that is derived from intercepting, processing, and analyzing foreign telemetry data. For example, by intercepting the telemetry signals emitted during foreign ballistic missile tests, an intelligence agency can calculate the range, accuracy, and number of warheads of the weapon.
Radiation
This source of intelligence does not include energy emanating from nuclear detonations or radioactive sources. Rather, it concerns unintentional emissions of energy from electronic systems (while ELINT is based on intentional radiations from the same systems). Inadequate shielding of electronic systems, or the following of incorrect procedures, may result in inadvertent energy emissions, which, when analyzed, may reveal a great deal about a system’s purpose or capabilities.
Foreign matériel
In 1976 a Soviet air force lieutenant, wishing to defect to the West, flew a MiG-25 Foxbat to Japan, where Japanese and U.S. technicians pored over every detail of the supersonic fighter before reassembling it and handing it back to its owners. Such analysis of a foreign weapon system can prove invaluable in producing systems to defeat it, and intelligence derived from any foreign matériel is of great value in assessing enemy capabilities.
Human agents
Often called HUMINT, human intelligence is provided by people rather than by technical means and is very often provided by spies and covert agents. Spies are often a prime source of information about a nation’s political leaders, strategies, and political decisions. The Soviet colonel Oleg Penkovsky, for example, was a very important source for British and U.S. intelligence until he was arrested and executed in 1963. The political, scientific, and technical information he provided included data on the capabilities of Soviet intermediate-range missiles during the Cuban missile crisis. Likewise, the Philby–Burgess–Maclean spy ring, which penetrated the highest circles of Britain’s MI-6 intelligence agency, provided the Soviets with a tremendous amount of information on British and Allied military and counterintelligence operations during and after World War II. In the United States, the Walker family sold the Soviet Union classified reports on the tracking of Soviet submarines and surface ships. Operating from 1968 until it was broken up in 1985, this spy ring did irreparable damage to the submarine warfare capabilities of the U.S. Navy.
Modern Trends
Indeed, technological innovations have always been central to the intelligence profession. The technological breakthroughs of recent years have led intelligence organizations to challenge the accepted truths that have historically shaped their endeavors. The hierarchical, compartmentalized, industrial structure of these organizations is now changing, revolving primarily around the integration of new technologies with traditional intelligence work and the redefinition of the role of humans in the intelligence process
This is changing now; agencies are now realizing that OSINT is easy to acquire and more beneficial, compared to other – more challenging – types of information. Take for example Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) – a concept created by the intelligence community to describe information that is unclassified and accessible to the general public. Traditionally, this kind of information was inferior compared to classified information; and as a result, the investments in OSINT technologies were substantially lower compared to other types of technologies and sources.
Today, nations have at their disposal information collection and processing systems that permit gathering and producing intelligence more rapidly and more accurately than ever before. Satellites, ultramodern aircraft, electronic systems, human sources, cameras, imaging and electronic devices, and a host of other systems permit the amassing of information on a scale that was unheard of in the past.
Traditionally when it came to processing, analyzing, interpreting, and acting on intelligence, however, human ability – with all its limitations – has always been considered unquestionably superior. From 1995 to 2016, the amount of reading required of an average US intelligence researcher, covering a low-priority country, grew from 20,000 to 200,000 words per day. And that is just the beginning. According to forecasts, the volume of digital data that humanity will produce in 2025 will be ten times greater than is produced today. Some argue this volume can only be processed – and even analyzed – by computers.
The national security establishment already recognizes that the private sector and academia are the main drivers of technological innovation. In the United States there is dynamic cooperation between these bodies and the security community, including venture capital funds jointly owned by the government and private companies.
Take In-Q-Tel – a venture capital fund established 20 years ago to identify and invest in companies that develop innovative technology which serves the national security of the United States, thus positioning the American intelligence community at the forefront of technological development. The fund is an independent corporation, which is not subordinate to any government agency, but it maintains constant coordination with the CIA, and the US government is the main investor.
It’s most successful endeavor, which has grown to become a multi-billion company though somewhat controversial, is Palantir, a data-integration and knowledge management provider. But there are copious other startups and more established companies, ranging from sophisticated chemical detection (e.g. 908devices), automated language translations (e.g. Lilt), and digital imagery (e.g. Immersive Wisdom) to sensor technology (e.g. Echodyne), predictive analytics (e.g. Tamr) and cyber security (e.g. Interset).
Actually, a significant part of intelligence work is already being done by such companies, small and big. Companies like Hexagon, Nice, Splunk, Cisco and NEC offer intelligence and law enforcement agencies a full suite of platforms and services, including various analytical solutions such as video analytics, identity analytics, and social media analytics . These platforms help agencies to obtain insights and make predictions from the collected and historic data, by using real-time data stream analytics and machine learning. A one-stop-intelligence-shop if you will.
Another example of government and non-government collaboration is the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) – a nonprofit organization which reports to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Established in 2006, IARPA finances advanced research relevant to the American intelligence community, with a focus on cooperation between academic institutions and the private sector, in a broad range of technological and social sciences fields. With a relatively small annual operational budget of around $3bn, the fund gives priority to multi-year development projects that meet the concrete needs of the intelligence community. The majority of the studies supported by the fund are unclassified and open to public scrutiny, at least until the stage of implementation by intelligence agencies.
References and Resources also include:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/intelligence-military/Types-of-intelligence
https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/10/how-tech-is-transforming-the-intelligence-industry/
