Postmodern Intelligence: Strategic Warning in an Age of Reflexive Intelligence

Abstract

Providing strategic warning to policymakers is a key function of governmental intelligence organizations. Today, globally networked challenges increasingly overshadow their historical state-centric counterparts so that warning has become considerably more difficult. It is recognized in parts of the intelligence community that many of the current problems for warning arise from continued reliance on analytic tools, methodologies and processes that were appropriate to the static and hierarchical nature of the threat during the Cold War. However, even though alternative analysis techniques have begun to be applied, this article argues that the intelligence community could benefit from the understanding that more than just the ontology of threats has changed, that in fact it is in the epistemological area that the most meaningful changes have taken place: Society has seen the replacement of the previous means—end rationality by a reflexive rationality. The notion of reflexive security can provide a valuable conceptual framework for understanding the current changes, and it could be instrumental in adapting intelligence sources and methods to a new era. In particular, an awareness of both complexity sciences and postmodernism might increase understanding of the limitations of knowledge and lead to the establishment of a political discourse of uncertainty.

The role of strategic intelligence in anticipating transnational organised crime: A literary review

“…These studies have been further supported by the declassification of a range of primary research material relating to the cold war (Laqueur, 2009). In each case the findings appear to be similar in that they focus on the issues of intelligence silos, lack of imagination, poor contextual understanding and the over use of dated, historically-based pattern analysis (Cavelty and Mauer, 2009;Laqueur, 2009). Analysis and research of past events more often than not fails to declare the bias that hindsight creates for researchers (Holland, 2007).…”

“…Post-cold war intelligence studies have seen the arrival of two new schools of thought: intelligence failure and strategic surprise (Cavelty and Mauer, 2009;Davis, 2003a;Matey, 2005). Since the 9/11 attacks a plethora of academic studies of intelligence failure have been undertaken (Cavelty and Mauer, 2009;Davis, 2003a;Matey, 2005).…”

“…This alternative could become increasingly important as non-state and networked threats to national security become increasingly the norm rather than outlier issues (Turbiville, 2005;Cavelty and Mauer, 2009).…”

“…Since the 9/11 attacks a plethora of academic studies of intelligence failure have been undertaken (Cavelty and Mauer, 2009;Davis, 2003a;Matey, 2005). These studies have been further supported by the declassification of a range of primary research material relating to the cold war (Laqueur, 2009).…”

Not knowing, emancipatory catastrophism and metamorphosis: Embracing the spirit of Ulrich Beck

“…Prominent scholars in the Paris School tradition were busy stretching out and applying Foucauldian tools and concepts, the Copenhagen School was bound up with establishing the way in which speech acts served to socially construct security, and the Welsh School had taken on the task of developing a critical, emancipatory approach to the study of security. Running parallel with these developments, Beck’s work has been commented on in security studies across a range of contexts, from HIV transmission to intelligence-gathering and the use of war as a technology of control (Elbe, 2008; Dunn Cavelty and Mauer, 2009; Jabri, 2006). Given the many fault lines in risk society theory, it is not surprising that wholesale adoption of Beck’s thesis has been rare.…”