Globalisation continues to challenge our world at unprecedented speed. Technological innovations, changing geographical developments, regional rivalries, and destruction of national critical infrastructures in several Muslim states due to the US so called war on terrorism-all transformed the structures and hierarchies of societies. The idea of development of a nation that sounds on tripods that are food, shelter and security failed. The Edward Snowden leaks challenged policy makers and the public understanding. Read more

The central intelligence agencies have earned the wrath of the government for failing to sufficiently warn local agencies. Why do our secret intelligence agencies fail repeatedly? Is it because of the lack of adequate intelligence, the dearth of trained manpower in the intelligence sector, failure to apply latest sophisticated technology in surveillance, lack of proper intelligence sharing between the Centre and the states, lack of action on available intelligence, or the lack of sensible intelligence reforms? Read more

John A. Gentry and Joseph S. Gordon update our understanding of strategic warning intelligence analysis for the twenty-first century. Strategic warning—the process of long-range analysis to alert senior leaders to trending threats and opportunities that require action—is a critical intelligence function. It also is frequently misunderstood and underappreciated. Gentry and Gordon draw on both their practitioner and academic backgrounds to present a history of the strategic warning function in the US intelligence community. In doing so, they outline the capabilities of analytic methods, explain why strategic warning analysis is so hard, and discuss the special challenges strategic warning encounters from senior decision-makers. They also compare how strategic warning functions in other countries, evaluate why the United States has in recent years emphasized current intelligence instead of strategic warning, and recommend warning-related structural and procedural improvements in the US intelligence community. The authors examine historical case studies, including postmortems of warning failures, to provide examples of the analytic points they make. Strategic Warning Intelligence will interest scholars and practitioners and will be an ideal teaching text for intermediate and advanced students. Read more

Since the secret of Bletchley Park was revealed in the 1970s, the work of its codebreakers has become one of the most famous stories of the Second World War. But cracking the Nazis’ codes was only the start of the process. Thousands of secret intelligence workers were then involved in making crucial information available to the Allied leaders and commanders who desperately needed it.

Using previously classified documents, David Kenyon casts the work of Bletchley Park in a new light, as not just a codebreaking establishment, but as a fully developed intelligence agency. He shows how preparations for the war’s turning point—the Normandy Landings in 1944—had started at Bletchley years earlier, in 1942, with the careful collation of information extracted from enemy signals traffic. This account reveals the true character of Bletchley's vital contribution to success in Normandy, and ultimately, Allied victory.

David Kenyon is the research historian at Bletchley Park. He is coauthor of Digging the Trenches and author of Horsemen in No Man's Land. Read more

Written from a practitioner’s perspective, Intelligence in Regulation fills a void in international literature on regulation. The wide and largely disparate world of regulators is late to the idea of professionalising decision-making despite this need being well understood and ingrained in national security and, to a lesser extent, law enforcement.

The book draws largely from the experience of the author as a former intelligence officer, as a builder of intelligence and decision-systems across many sectors, and as a user of intelligence in leading regulatory operations. The narrative leads the reader through the barriers to effective regulatory decision-making, then to case studies of regulatory failure, and concludes with practical guidance on building and improving intelligence systems. Theoretical references are drawn from a number of sources and, in particular, the book acts as a companion piece to Managing Intelligence: The Art of Influence (Quarmby and Young, 2010) which contains the fundamentals of contemporary intelligence craft.

While oriented towards compliance and regulation, the content can be applied across other public and private sectors, especially where consideration of external change agents is important in decision-making. If in doubt, simply insert the name of your organisation or field where you read the word ‘regulator’ and you may be surprised how many of the observations echo your own organisational circumstance. Read more

The War on Terror has left Afghanistan without a viable centralized intelligence agency. Thousands of bloodstained and heartbreaking stories in newspapers, journals and books document the failures of the KHAD and NDS. The government and military are both crippled by the "bad intel" due to lack of mutual trust and limited information sharing. Read more

His book explores how potential bio-threats and risks may evolve post 9/11 given the rapid changes in biotechnology and synthetic biology. It also explores what role intelligence communities can play in understanding threats and risks. It argues that although bio-threats and risks are largely low probability and high impact in nature, intelligence in ‘Five Eyes’ countries remain insufficiently prepared to understand them. This book identifies key areas where intelligence reforms need to take place including a more strategic and systematic collaboration between national security/law enforcement intelligence and the scientific community. It is aimed at intelligence analysts, those in the scientific community working on health security threats, policy makers and researchers working on biosecurity and bioterrorism threats and risks. Read more

Israel’s military doctrine was aimed at defeating powerful Arab militaries, mostly those of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. In the years 1948-1982 Israel and Arab states had a series of wars i.e. high intensity wars. Israel, since 1948, also dealt with guerrilla and terror attacks. Since 1982 and mostly in the last 15 years Israel faced hybrid forces, Hamas and Hezbollah. Those groups are a mix between a conventional military and a guerrilla group. Israel fought against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 and against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, mostly in two wars, in 2008-2009 and in 2014.

Israel’s Military Doctrine begins with explaining Israel’s national security policy. Ehud Eilam then focuses on how the IDF (Israel defense forces) had to adjust its doctrine and build up to confront hybrid forces, by examining Israel’s air and the ground corps and major issues such as offense and defense, infrastructure and manpower.

The IDF can inflict heavy casualties and damages to a hybrid foe. Yet destroying the latter is a tall order because Hezbollah and Hamas are too elusive, they hide inside populated areas etc. However, compared with past wars against Arab states, there is much less danger to Israel let alone to its survival since even a coalition between Hezbollah, Hamas and other groups can’t defeat the IDF. Furthermore since fighting a hybrid force is less demanding than running a high intensity war against an Arab state, then Israel does not rely that much on the United States in receiving weapon systems, ammunition and spare parts. Read more

Switzerland suffered four major terrorist attacks in 1969 and 1970, which forced the Swiss government to address the issue of international terrorism for the first time. Subsequently, “neutral” Switzerland worked closely with Western Cold War powers to develop international counterterrorism measures and forged a European-Israeli counterterrorist alignment to counter Palestinian terrorism in Europe.

Using recently declassified archival records, this book is the first study to examine how the Swiss government positioned the country within the international struggle against terrorism. The book brings to light the creation of the Club de Berne, a secret European network of intelligence agencies connected to Israel and the United States. It offers new insights about the history of Swiss, Western European, and Israeli security cooperation. Read more

Mark Lowenthal is a widely respected figure in the murky world of intelligence production. In this latest book, he does not attempt to predict the “future” of intelligence, but rather tries to summarize the current state of intelligence and identify those factors that will impact on its future. For the most part, he succeeds in this effort. Read more

Book Summary

The edited volume, edited by Helmut Muller-Enbergs and Thomas Wegener Friis, is the first step of the project “DDR-espionage in the World”, which explores the intelligence activities of the GDR outside of Germany. East Germany and certainly its secret police “The Stasi” is a legend within the World of intelligence – for better and for worse. But what is behind the scenes? How well did the German communist agents actually do, when they went beyond the comfort zone of the German language?

The first volume in the series presents 13 articles concerning 10 countries: Albania, America, Andorra, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, and Great Britain. It's a broad variation of small and big states, of partners and foes. The authors present the current state of art, and their work is meant to encourage new research into Cold War espionage. Although, the first East German archives were made accessible already in the early 1990s, research German focused primarily of local history. Today, several other Central European and even Western archives are open improving the possibilities to systematic research in historical espionage considerably.

This volume - as well as the following - is meant to give new impulses, especially to a strengthened cooperation between European researchers. It should rather be a point of departure than the final answer to all questions. Read more

Ioannis (John) M. Nomikos and Tassos Symeonides contributed an article on “Greek-Chinese Relations in the 21st Century” in The One Belt, One Road: The Balkan Perspectives – Political and Security Aspects, edited by Vladimir N. Cvetkovic, published by University of Belgrade, Faculty of Security Studies (2016), Belgrade, Serbia