Radio-Intercepts,Reconnaissance and Raids: French Operational Intelligence and Communications in 1940

Mentioned in memoirs by a few former military intelligence officers, operational intelligence has had little attention in academic writing on the Second World War before Ultra's decisive contributions began in 1941–2. Especially neglected has been the fighting provoked by the German offensive in 1940 that cleaved through France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg and drove Britain off the Continent. This article tackles this gap, analysing the military intelligence/military operations interface on the French side. It assesses the contributions and shortcomings of radio-intercept intelligence, along with intelligence-gathering by air and ground reconnaissance (demonstrating that German air superiority imposed a ‘battle blindness’ on Allied commanders wanting intelligence on approach marches and formation switches more than a dozen kilometres into the German rear). It reveals that frontline infantry raiding – redolent of intelligence-gathering techniques familiar to veterans of 1914–18 trench warfare – was again widely employed. This proved a highly effective recourse, particularly during the positional battles on the Somme, Aisne and Oise in June 1940, filling intelligence gaps left by more technologically sophisticated but more fragile sources. The factors that kept formations fighting so as to inflict significant delays and heavy losses on the German assaults were robust communications networks (to convey operational intelligence fast enough to permit counter-manoeuvres based on it), and the preservation of French chains of command and control. When these key nodes collapsed, preventing the hard-won operational intelligence being deployed to coordinate French military resistance, the latter declined into a series of disjointed, directionless and unavailing acts of courage that could not exploit the several instances during the campaign when the Germans, too, were afflicted by battle fatigue, re-supply bottlenecks and morale wobbles.     

Collision Avoidance and Improving Space Surveillance

Satellite collision avoidance and other efforts to reduce man-made hazards to operating satellites present numerous opportunities for international cooperation. In fact, this article argues that such cooperation and cooperation of commercial and government satellite operators may be required in order to minimize the number of false alarms, to minimize the possibility that a satellite may perform a maneuver that would increase the risk of collision or other interference, and, as a result, minimize the operational cost of such a service.     

Counter-Terrorism,Information Technology and Intelligence Change

Since 11 September 2001 Counter-Terrorism has been Intelligence's super-priority. It puts a special emphasis on the potential of advanced Information Technology for integrating different databases in different organizations. The problems of applying it fully are organizational and cultural, not technical. They should be met through emphasizing the unity of modern intelligence power, and through personnel policies across separate agencies designed to develop this holistic view. Central authority and leadership will be needed for these purposes.     

Application of a Maritime Framework to Space: Deep Space Conflict and Warfare Scenario

This article considers how Klein’s argument for the use of a maritime framework for space warfare is buoyed by the consideration of deep space conflict both in application to terrestrial wars and in its own right. It describes the greater alignment of Corbett’s work with this deep space medium than with the orbital medium considered by Klein. Through this analysis, it suggests that possible futures need to consider the deep space medium, making Corbett/Klein’s model superior to other possible approaches.     

Tele-Reality: How Space Technology Transforms Human Perceptions of Space,Time, and Self

With the introduction and development of space techniques, three types of remote reality, or tele-reality, have emerged: (1) the Earth, its environments, and its inhabitants have been brought closer to each of us; (2) the planets in the solar system are now “at hand's reach”—a robotic hand, that is; and (3) deep space is brought to our screens in three dimensions. But remote reality raises questions: What connection does it make between the perceptible and the intelligible; and what confusion does it maintain between what is real and what appears on the screen? New practices are challenging the way we handle the relationship between seeing, knowledge, and power, and questioning our ethical values. It is time and essential that we redefine the conditions and boundaries of our “tele-techniques.”     

Reflections on Technology and Intelligence Systems

Abstract

The impact of individual technological innovations on intelligence operations is often discussed, but the influence of technological change per se on intelligence systems remains less well understood. The historical literature on this topic is uneven – filled with detailed narratives on certain aspects, but also with surprisingly little attention to larger trends and their meaning. This is significant for two reasons. First, it means we have an incomplete understanding of what happened in the past, particularly for the ‘analog revolution’ in intelligence in the twentieth century. Second, it leaves us with few clues for understanding another wave of technological change washing over the intelligence profession at this time (a ‘digital revolution’). Looking at the second revolution in the light of the first can give us important clues to what to watch for in coming years.     

技术、空间和权力——米歇尔·福柯的技术政治哲学

福柯作为20世纪最有影响的政治哲学家之一,在其权力-知识概念内自然不会放过对技术这一重要的现代性现象进行哲学的思考,并从微观政治学视角把技术看作是人操控自身的“自我技术”。在此基础上,他进一步从全景敞视主义出发就工厂、医院、学校等空间单元讨论了技术与权力的特定关系,其政治批判直接指向的是任何情景化的技术都是对人体的权力控制并由此造就了作为技术权力效应的“肉体-机器”这一“敌托邦”。沿此政治批判线索,其追随者和其他学者更是把全景敞视主义方法拓展到了对实验室、工业区域、互联网络和基因技术等的政治哲学分析,从“生物-权力”视角提出诸如“半机械人”、“半生物人”等概念,由此显现新兴技术对人体产生的权力控制效应。为了激发对这种技术控制的有效对抗,福柯试图复兴一种具有“生存美学”特征的地方性知识或技术,以摆脱占据统治地位的技术权力控制。     

Fiction,Faction and Intelligence

There is a demonstrable overlap between authentic intelligence operations and the way they have been portrayed in works of fiction, which is not entirely surprising considering the number of distinguished, and some lesser-known, novelists who have worked for MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service over the years. Setting aside for a moment the work of Compton Mackenzie, Graham Greene, John le Carré and Somerset Maugham, arguably SIS's most renowned authors, what about Kenneth Benton, David Footman and Jack Cordeaux? The writing culture was especially prevalent in the Security Service, where the legendary case officer Jack Bingham, for whom David Cornwall once worked, raised no objection to the employment of authors. His colleague Max Knight wrote some terrible thrillers, and his assistant, William Younger, chose the interesting pen-name William Mole. Bingham's wife Madeleine and daughter Charlotte, who also worked for MI5, wrote many books, and they were not alone. Curiously, however, it is Ian Fleming who has attracted the greatest attention for his great invention, 007. Yet there remains some doubt about whether Bond may not have been inspired by his former tutor in pre-war Kitzbuhel, Phyllis Bottome, whose 1946 novel The Lifeline introduced a suave, German-speaking, Swiss-educated, mountaineering, British agent a full five years before the publication of Casino Royale. A coincidence? Maybe, but the paths taken by these two authors criss-cross on many occasions.     

Statement by Undersecretary of the Air Force Director,National Reconnaissance Office Department of Defense Executive Agent for Space The Honorable Peter B. Teets Before the Strategic Forces Subcommittee On Space Policy March 16, 2005

ABSTRACT

The following is the prepared testimony of the Honorable Peter B. Teets, then Undersecretary of the Air Force, Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, and Department of Defense Executive Agent for Space, presented to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, Strategic Forces Subcommittee, on 16 March 2005. Mr. Teets has subsequently retired from the Department of Defense. This prepared statement can be found at: http://armed-services.senate.gov/statemnt/2005/March/Teets%2003-16-05.pdf     

Intelligence,International Relations and 'Under-theorisation'

This article submits that the conceptual framework within which intelligence is studied must continue to evolve and adapt to the new conditions of the early twenty-first century. As more intelligence and intelligence related material than ever before enters the public domain, scholars of international relations must take greater account study of the role of intelligence. Despite its obvious importance to the course of the Cold War, for example, most accounts of the Cold War tend to ignore or downplay the importance of signals intelligence in particular. Intelligence, moreover, is all but absent in most contemporary international relations theory. The essay argues that intelligence should be placed closer to the centre of new interpretations of both the course of the Cold War and of the political dynamics of authoritarian states.     

Max Weber, Socialism, and the Space for Time

In Economy and Society Weber provides a detailed criticism of socialism emphasizing the dynamic nature of the formal rationality of economic action, thus indicating the limits of bureaucratic rationality. Unfortunately, Weber's critique has received scant attention, commentators concentrating instead on remarks in his political essays. Weber's main argument against socialism is that it would lead to a decrease in formal rationality. Drawing upon Austrian political economy, Weber attempts to secure a 'realm of freedom' within anarchical capitalist production through emphasizing the dynamic nature of economic decision making which necessarily precludes the possibility of a rational socialist planned economy.     

Surveillance and resilience: Relationships,dynamics, and consequences

“Resilience” is a contested term with varying and ambiguous meaning in governmental, business, and social discourses. Surveillance is increasingly relied on as an instrument for resilience, enhancing the capability of anticipating, preventing, or recovering from adversity, thus preserving the fabric of society and the state. However, surveillance itself might undesirably erode social freedoms, rights, and other public goods. In the present study we focus on the interrelationship of surveillance and resilience. Studying the relationships between surveillance and resilience requires not only the theoretical study of possible examples but also the exploration and evaluation of the resilient entity’s core properties, strategies, and tactics and the external observer’s stance toward the entity in question. Furthermore, different contexts may exhibit different effects of surveillance on resilience. For example, an increase in surveillance by a democratic state may lead to increasing resilience of the state in the face of terrorist attacks but may also lead to the decreasing resilience of that society’s ability to exercise democratic values. The various models generated by these differing relationships will be explored with relation to three examples: the surveillance of international migration, the surveillance of extremist views, and the surveillance of digital financial transactions.     

Intelligence Requirements at the Crossroads: The 1948 French Plan de Renseignement,Intelligence Requirements and the Role of Intelligence History

Very often intelligence history concentrates on the knowledge produced by a country's intelligence service and its impact on national decision-making, or – in the case of intelligence failures – the lack thereof. Using a previously unexplored document from the archives of the French Foreign Ministry, this research note proposes another contribution of intelligence history to diplomatic history: By analysing national intelligence requirements – the ‘top secret diaries’ of governments – intelligence history can provide a window into the minds of decision-makers. The 1948 French plan de renseignement illustrates this case. Written shortly after the Cold War started in earnest in 1947, the plan de renseignement shows a French government deeply worried about the danger of global conflict and of internal upheaval in its empire, but also a government not fully committed to the western cause and particularly sceptical about American intentions. French foreign policy was at a crossroads in 1947/48 and, quite sensibly, French policy-makers wanted to know exactly what lay on all the possible roads ahead. While these findings do not contradict existing scholarship, they may help to encourage a re-weighing of existing arguments.     

Intelligence,security and information flows in CFSP

This article traces the growth of the intelligence support role that a number of relatively small bodies have assumed within the European Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy. The implications of the development of this role are considered in detail. The article concludes that a new type of intelligence capability is gradually emerging at the European level, which could not easily be reproduced at the national or bilateral levels.     

Policing Uncertainty: Intelligence,Security and Risk

Today, the idea of risk is ubiquitous, a presence in debates across a range of fields, from investment banking to politics, from anthropology and sociology to health, environmental and cultural studies. While this ubiquity attests to the importance of the concept it is at the same time a potential weakness in that it injects the term into a wide range of debates in each of which its meaning can be subject to different emphases and meanings. The notion of risk is of obvious importance to security intelligence, but here too its ubiquity has had an impact on specificity of meaning. While the term is widely used in both the profession and study of intelligence, its usage can carry different meanings and it can be used interchangeably with linked terms. Given the importance of the idea of risk to intelligence, clarity of meaning is essential. This article sets out to consider the meaning of, and relationship between, uncertainty and risk in a security intelligence context, propose a framework on which a common understanding can be built, and illustrate how this can help in thinking about the nature and role of security intelligence.     

Thinking about defence intelligence: Victor Cavendish-Bentinck,Denis Capel-Dunn,Kenneth Strong and the Joint Intelligence Bureau as foundation for the Defence Intelligence Staff

Abstract

The Defence Intelligence Staff’s closest relative was the Joint intelligence Bureau. The Bureau was created in 1946 as part of the post war reorganization of the intelligence machinery, consolidating a number of wartime organizations. It was a centralized organization, providing defence intelligence to customers in the armed forces and government. The Bureau was founded with the objective of implementing several lessons that had been identified in the Second World War concerning the organization and management of intelligence. This paper examines the particular lessons the Bureau’s founders and its leader had learned, and the ideas they sought to ingrain in the organization. It asks what kind of foundation the Bureau provided for the DIS, when it merged with the service intelligence directorates in 1964.