The intelligence hubris

Intelligence agencies work like live organisms. They react, recoil and respond to an emerging threat, sensed through a cascade of networks within and outside their jurisdictions. The conventional intelligence apparatus still considers silence as a primary feature of intelligence collection, synthesis and dissemination to maintain its effectiveness. The stillness of intelligence is often broken, intentionally or unintentionally, through public whistleblowers, on flexible platforms, as the centre of gravity of intelligence gathering is shifting from private to public sphere at a rapid pace. This has posed a number of challenges for intelligence agencies as they find ways and means to maintain their monopoly of control over intelligence dissemination.

The more an intelligence agency believes that it exercises intelligence control, the more it feels confident about its operational and tactical actions. This is where it deceives itself and starts following a situation which can be termed intelligence hubris. It is therefore necessary for intelligence agencies to exercise caution while thinking of taking excessive pride in intelligence collection, collation and circulation. Such a situation pushes an agency into a non-information sharing mode. It clutches on to its intelligence believing that all sub-national agencies are not capable of handling it whereas the situation may be partially or totally different on-ground. In today’s environment, holding back an information, in majority of situations, is not an asset. In fact, whosoever, first utilises it carries the day as the same may ultimately be available in public domain. Hence, an agency inclined more towards concealing an information rather than regulating it publicly may be at a disadvantage.

History is replete with examples of an agency falling prey to a hubris trap. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), once it retarded the Russian aggression in Afghanistan in 1990, thought that it now held undisputed monopoly over intelligence which resulted into critical details of local intelligence lapses at home. The 9/11 commission report highlights three areas of intelligence failure. One there was lack of information sharing between the domestic and central intelligence apparatuses. Two, serious communication lapses within the intelligence community resulted into multiple incidents of terrorism on the soil of the country. Three, the CIA failed to counter Al Qaeda threat although the agency knew that the latter intended to carry out activity against the US. The CIA could not proactively collect information from its contacts inside and outside the country. Two steps were taken by CIA in the backdrop of the commission report. It established threat assessment units to enhance their role in interpretation and translation of threat alerts. Moreover, it expanded its Counter Terrorism (CT) wing through recruitment of analysts and agents. However, the most important part remains that CIA failed to see through the information and could not visualise clearly the situation unfolding on ground. The expansion of intra and inter agency candid communication remains amiss even in post 9/11 phase.

The public perception is usually based on or biased towards the initial general information activity. The intelligence hubris is a static state of functioning whereby an agency, though it feels that it is firmly in control of the situation, fails to restructure itself in accordance with changing information environment and its elements. A kind of intransigence seeps into rank and file of the intelligence organisation and its members think that they are acting in the benefit of the state when in reality they are weakening it from within. Hence, a successful intelligence agency works in a dynamic format, fully susceptible to new ideas and opinions to tap or utilise precious sources of information in public domain. An unending cycle of vigilance is essential with rapid decentralisation of its functional specifications.

The art of reading correctly the available information, in physical and non-physical spaces, differentiates between a good and a bad intelligence apparatus. The best agency, however, is the one which not only conducts clear information interpretation but also manipulates it successfully in public domain.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 19^th, 2022.

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