Intelligence And The State

From the ancient Greek and Roman origins of human intelligence and its use in the Catholic church to Francis Walsingham's Elizabethan secret service to the birth of the surveillance state in today's digital hi-tech age, Colonel John Hughes-Wilson, author of the highly successful Military Intelligence Blunders, gives an extraordinarily broad and wide-reaching perspective on espionage and intelligence, providing an up-to-date analysis of its importance of intelligence and in the recent past. Drawing upon a variety of sources, ranging from first-hand accounts to his own personal experience, Hughes-Wilson covers everything from undercover agents to photographic reconnaissance to today's much misunderstood cyber welfare.Authoritative and analytical, Hughes-Wilson searches for hard answers and scrutinizes why crucial intelligence is so often ignored, misunderstood, or spun by politicians and seasoned generals alike. From yesterday's spies to tomorrow's cyber world, The Secret State is a fascinating and thought­-provoking history of this ever­-changing and ever­-important subject.

In the eighty years since Pearl Harbor, the United States has developed a professional intelligence community that is far more effective than most people acknowledge--in part because only intelligence failures see the light of day, while successful collection and analysis remain secret for decades. Intelligence and the State explores the relationship between the community tasked to research and assess intelligence and the national decision makers it serves. The book argues that in order to accept intelligence as a profession, it must be viewed as a non-partisan resource to assist key players in understanding foreign societies and leaders. Those who review these classified findings are sometimes so invested in their preferred policy outcomes that they refuse to accept information that conflicts with preconceived notions. Rather than demanding that intelligence evaluations conform to administration policies, a wise executive should welcome a source of information that has not "drunk the Kool-Aid" by supporting a specific policy decision. Jonathan M. House offers a brief overview of the nature of national intelligence, and especially of the potential for misperception and misunderstanding on the part of executives and analysts. Furthermore, House examines the rise of intelligence organizations first in Europe and then in the United States. In those regions fear of domestic subversion and radicalism drove the need for foreign surveillance. This perception of a domestic threat tempted policy makers and intelligence officers alike to engage in covert action and other policy-based, partisan activities that colored their understanding of their adversaries. Such biases go far to explain the inability of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to predict and deal effectively with their opponents. The development of American agencies and their efforts differed to some degree from these European precedents but experienced some of the same problems as the Europeans, especially during the early decades of the Cold War. By now, however, the intelligence community has become a stable and effective part of the national security structure. House concludes with a historical examination of familiar instances in which intelligence allegedly failed to warn national leaders of looming attacks, ranging from the 1941 German invasion of the USSR to the Arab surprise attack on Israel in 1973.

In the eighty years since Pearl Harbor, the United States has developed a professional intelligence community that is far more effective than most people acknowledge--in part because only intelligence failures see the light of day, while successful collection and analysis remain secret for decades. Intelligence and the State explores the relationship between the community tasked to research and assess intelligence and the national decision makers it serves. The book argues that in order to accept intelligence as a profession, it must be viewed as a non-partisan resource to assist key players in understanding foreign societies and leaders. Those who review these classified findings are sometimes so invested in their preferred policy outcomes that they refuse to accept information that conflicts with preconceived notions. Rather than demanding that intelligence evaluations conform to administration policies, a wise executive should welcome a source of information that has not "drunk the Kool-Aid" by supporting a specific policy decision. Jonathan M. House offers a brief overview of the nature of national intelligence, and especially of the potential for misperception and misunderstanding on the part of executives and analysts. Furthermore, House examines the rise of intelligence organizations first in Europe and then in the United States. In those regions fear of domestic subversion and radicalism drove the need for foreign surveillance. This perception of a domestic threat tempted policy makers and intelligence officers alike to engage in covert action and other policy-based, partisan activities that colored their understanding of their adversaries. Such biases go far to explain the inability of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to predict and deal effectively with their opponents. The development of American agencies and their efforts differed to some degree from these European precedents but experienced some of the same problems as the Europeans, especially during the early decades of the Cold War. By now, however, the intelligence community has become a stable and effective part of the national security structure. House concludes with a historical examination of familiar instances in which intelligence allegedly failed to warn national leaders of looming attacks, ranging from the 1941 German invasion of the USSR to the Arab surprise attack on Israel in 1973.

Using espionage as a test case, The End of Intelligence criticizes claims that the recent information revolution has weakened the state, revolutionized warfare, and changed the balance of power between states and non-state actors—and it assesses the potential for realizing any hopes we might have for reforming intelligence and espionage. Examining espionage, counterintelligence, and covert action, the book argues that, contrary to prevailing views, the information revolution is increasing the power of states relative to non-state actors and threatening privacy more than secrecy. Arguing that intelligence organizations may be taken as the paradigmatic organizations of the information age, author David Tucker shows the limits of information gathering and analysis even in these organizations, where failures at self-knowledge point to broader limits on human knowledge—even in our supposed age of transparency. He argues that, in this complex context, both intuitive judgment and morality remain as important as ever and undervalued by those arguing for the transformative effects of information. This book will challenge what we think we know about the power of information and the state, and about the likely twenty-first century fate of secrecy and privacy.

Formerly a staff archivist for the National Archives and a senior intelligence analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency, Rudgers challenges the popular view that the Agency was principally the brainchild of former OSS chief William J. Donovan. Rather, he explains, the centralization of intelligence was part of a larger reorganization of the US government during the transition from World War II to the Cold War. He also documents how it swerved from its original purpose of guarding against sneak attacks to taking part in clandestine activity against the Soviet Union. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Mark M. Lowenthal’s trusted guide is the go-to resource for understanding how the intelligence community’s history, structure, procedures, and functions affect policy decisions. In this Seventh Edition, Lowenthal examines cyber space and the issues it presents to the intelligence community such as defining cyber as a new collection discipline; the implications of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s staff report on enhanced interrogation techniques; the rise of the Islamic State; and the issues surrounding the nuclear agreement with Iran. New sections have been added offering a brief summary of the major laws governing U.S. intelligence today such as domestic intelligence collection, whistleblowers vs. leakers, and the growing field of financial intelligence.

Neuro-symbolic AI is an emerging subfield of Artificial Intelligence that brings together two hitherto distinct approaches. ”Neuro” refers to the artificial neural networks prominent in machine learning, ”symbolic” refers to algorithmic processing on the level of meaningful symbols, prominent in knowledge representation. In the past, these two fields of AI have been largely separate, with very little crossover, but the so-called “third wave” of AI is now bringing them together. This book, Neuro-Symbolic Artificial Intelligence: The State of the Art, provides an overview of this development in AI. The two approaches differ significantly in terms of their strengths and weaknesses and, from a cognitive-science perspective, there is a question as to how a neural system can perform symbol manipulation, and how the representational differences between these two approaches can be bridged. The book presents 17 overview papers, all by authors who have made significant contributions in the past few years and starting with a historic overview first seen in 2016. With just seven months elapsed from invitation to authors to final copy, the book is as up-to-date as a published overview of this subject can be. Based on the editors’ own desire to understand the current state of the art, this book reflects the breadth and depth of the latest developments in neuro-symbolic AI, and will be of interest to students, researchers, and all those working in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

Documents the institutional growth of the intelligence community under Directors Walter Bedell Smith and Allen W. Dulles, and demonstrates how Smith, through his prestige, ability to obtain national security directives from a supportive President Truman, and bureaucratic acumen, truly transformed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The history of secret intelligence, like secret intelligence itself, is fraught with difficulties surrounding both the reliability and completeness of the sources, and the motivations behind their release—which can be the product of ongoing propaganda efforts as well as competition among agencies. Indeed, these difficulties lead to the Scylla and Charybdis of overestimating the importance of secret intelligence for foreign policy and statecraft and also underestimating its importance in these same areas—problems that generally beset the actual use of secret intelligence in modern states. But in recent decades, traditional perspectives have given ground and judgments have been revised in light of new evidence. This volume brings together a collection of essays avoiding the traditional pitfalls while carrying out the essential task of analyzing the recent evidence concerning the history of the European state system of the last century. The essays offer an array of insight across countries and across time. Together they highlight the critical importance of the prevailing domestic circumstances—technological, governmental, ideological, cultural, financial—in which intelligence operates. A keen interdisciplinary eye focused on these developments leaves us with a far more complete understanding of secret intelligence in Europe than we've had before.

Introduction to Intelligence Studies (third edition) provides an overview of the US intelligence community, to include its history, organization, and function. Since the attacks of 9/11, the United States Intelligence Community (IC) has undergone an extensive overhaul. This textbook provides a comprehensive overview of intelligence and security issues, defining critical terms and reviewing the history of intelligence as practiced in the United States. Designed in a practical sequence, the book begins with the basics of intelligence, progresses through its history, describes best practices, and explores the way the intelligence community looks and operates today. The authors examine the "pillars" of the American intelligence system—collection, analysis, counterintelligence, and covert operations—and demonstrate how these work together to provide "decision advantage." The book offers equal treatment to the functions of the intelligence world—balancing coverage on intelligence collection, counterintelligence, information management, critical thinking, and decision-making. It also covers such vital issues as laws and ethics, writing and briefing for the intelligence community, and the emerging threats and challenges that intelligence professionals will face in the future. This revised and updated third edition addresses issues such as the growing influence of Russia and China, the recent history of the Trump and Biden administrations and the IC, and the growing importance of the cyber world in the intelligence enterprise. This book will be essential reading for students of intelligence studies, US national security, foreign policy and International Relations in general.