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.

Acknowledgements

The author is an historian with the US Department of Defense (DoD). The views expressed are those of the author alone and should in no way be interpreted as conveying official positions of the DoD or any other US government entity.

Notes

*Email: [email protected]¹Wikipedia's article on Technology tells us it is ‘the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function' (accessed 8 December 2011).

²See, for instance, the breathless descriptions of real and fancied spy gear in Richard Wilmer Rowan, Spies and the Next War (Garden City, NJ: Garden City 1936).

³Two such memoirs were Frederick W. Winterbotham, The Ultra Secret (New York: Harper & Row 1974); and Constance Babington-Smith, Air Spy: The Story of Photo Intelligence in World War II (New York: Harper 1957).

⁴R.V. Jones, The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence, 1939–1945 (New York: Coward, McCann, & Geoghegan 1978).

⁵William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since AD 1000 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 1982).

⁶David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (New York: Macmillan 1996 [1967]) p.612.

⁷Jonathan Reed Winkler, Nexus: Strategic Communications and American Security in World War I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2008). David Paull Nickles, Under the Wire: How the Telegraph Changed Diplomacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2003).

⁸C4ISR signifies ‘command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance’.

⁹Ferris, John. ‘“Airbandit”: C3I and Strategic Air Defence during the First Battle of Britain, 1915–1918’ in Michael Dockrill and David French (eds.) Strategy and Intelligence: British Policy during the First World War (London: Hambledon 1995); see also ‘Netcentric Warfare, C4ISR and Information Operations: Towards a Revolution in Military Intelligence?’ in L.V. Scott and P.D. Jackson (eds.) Understanding Intelligence in the Twenty-First Century: Journeys in Shadows (London: Routledge 2004).

¹⁰Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Vision 2015, July 2008, <www.dni.gov/Vision_2015.pdf> (accessed 18 April 2010). The author was a consultant to the team that drafted Vision 2015.

¹¹Michael Warner, ‘Building a Theory of Intelligence Systems’ in Gregory F. Treverton and Wilhelm Agrell (eds.) National Intelligence Systems: Current Research and Future Prospects (New York: Cambridge University Press 2009).

¹²I discuss both of these ancient authors in ‘The “Divine Skein”: Sun Tzu on Intelligence’, Intelligence and National Security 21/4 (2006).

¹³George A. Furse, Information in War: Its Acquisition and Transmission (London: William Clowes & Sons 1895).

¹⁴Herbert Yardley, The American Black Chamber (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill 1931) p.48.

¹⁵For a quick summary of these developments, see Terrence J. Finnegan, ‘Military Intelligence at the Front, 1914–18’, Studies in Intelligence 53/4 (2009), <https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol53no4/military-intelligence-at-the-front-1914201318.html> (accessed 18 April 2010).

¹⁶The eclipse of Yardley and his methods by mechanized and mathematical methods is discussed in David Kahn, The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2004) pp.91–3, 239.

¹⁷For an idea of the information revolution's effects on operations, see Nicholas A. Lambert, ‘Strategic Command and Control for Manuever Warfare: Creation of the Royal Navy's “War Room” System, 1905–1915’, Journal of Military History 69/2 (April 2005).

¹⁸See, for instance, Christopher Andrew's description of the cast of characters recruited for ‘Room 40’, the Royal Navy's cryptologic enterprise in World War I, in Her Majesty's Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (New York: Viking 1986) pp.94–7. See also Jim Beach, ‘“Intelligent Civilians in Uniform”: The British Expeditionary Force's Intelligence Corps Officers, 1914–1918’, War and Society 27/1 (2008) pp.7–11.

¹⁹Frank Moorman, Office of the Chief of Staff, American Expeditionary Force, ‘Notes on Personnel Required by Radio Intelligence Service, AEF’, no date [1917], National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 120, American Expeditionary Force, Entry 105, Box 5765, unnamed folder. I am indebted to Mark Stout of the International Spy Museum for this reference and citation, as well as other insights he kindly shared with me in drafting this article.

²⁰Quoted by Kahn in The Codebreakers, p.633. American cryptologist William Friedman was still citing Tannenberg as an object lesson for National Security Agency employees more than four decades later; see the collection of his lectures published as The Friedman Legacy: A Tribute to William and Elizebeth Friedman (Ft. Meade, MD: National Security Agency 2006) p.123.

²¹The undated quotation is from the US Army's BG Dennis Nolan, and it appears in Terrence J. Finnegan, Shooting the Front: Allied Aerial Reconnaissance and Photographic Interpretation on the Western Front – World War I (Washington, DC: National Defense Intelligence College 2006) p.223. Also on inter-allied intelligence partnerships, see Martin S. Alexander (ed.), Knowing Your Friends: Intelligence Inside Alliances and Coalitions, 1914 to the Cold War (London: Frank Cass 1998).

²²For a notion of how this rapid tutorial came about in practice, see Jim Beach, ‘Origins of the Special Intelligence Relationship? Anglo-American Intelligence Cooperation on the Western Front, 1917 – 18’, Intelligence and National Security 22/2 (2007) pp.232–5.

²³I discuss an instance in which this dilemma had practical effects in ‘Reading the Riot Act: The 1971 Schlesinger Report’, Intelligence and National Security 24/3 (2009).

²⁴Laurie West Van Hook, Reforming Intelligence: The Passage of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (Washington, DC: Office of the Director of National Intelligence 2009) p.7, <http://www.dni.gov/content/IRTPA_Reforming-Intelligence.pdf> (accessed 18 April 2010).

²⁵For this insight I thank information security guru Whitfield Diffie and his remarks at the conference on ‘100 Years of British Intelligence: From Empire to Cold War to Globalisation’, Aberystwyth University, May 2009. A good primer on the problems of securing wealth in the digital age is Melissa E. Hathaway, ‘Strategic Advantage: Why America Should Care About Cybersecurity’, Belfar Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School, Harvard University, October <http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/19640/strategic_ advantage.html?breadcrumb=%2Fexperts%2F2132%2Fmelissa_hathaway%3Fpage%3D2> (accessed 8 December 2011). For a discussion of techniques involved, see David Leppard, ‘China Bugs and Burgles Britain’, Sunday Times, 31 January 2010, <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article7009749.ece> (accessed 31 January 2010).

²⁶ John Markoff, ‘Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries’, New York Times, 29 March 2009.

²⁷Dawn S. Onley, ‘Red Storm Rising’, Government Computer News, 17 August 2009.

²⁸Some idea of the magnitude of this literature can be gained from a quick perusal of Wikipedia's listings under the Category ‘Databases’, which holds 13 sub-categories and 186 separate ‘pages’ (i.e. individual articles). Choosing only a single one of those sub-categories, ‘Knowledge discovery in databases’, one finds under it a further two sub-categories and 15 pages.

²⁹Another question also arises: could the tools those analysts employ subtly constrain their thinking and thus their analyses? This is no trivial matter in an intellectual milieu in which ideas are typically expressed in formats dictated by (or compatible with) Microsoft Office software. I thank Martin Alexander for raising this issue, which might one day demand considerably more attention and insight than the present author can bring to it.

³⁰See, for instance, William S. Sims with Burton J. Hendrick, The Victory at Sea (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co. 1921) pp.125–6. In addition, Sir Alfred Ewing gave an influential talk at the University of Edinburgh on the decoding of German diplomatic messages in 1925; see Henry Landau, The Enemy Within (New York: GP Putnam's Sons 1937) p.153.

³¹‘EDV abgezapft’, Der Spiegel, 14 April 1969, <http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-45702341.html> (accessed 16 April 2010). Wolf's memoir mentions what must have been this case; see Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism's Greatest Spymaster (New York: Public Affairs 1997) p.201. Clifford Stoll, The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage (New York: Doubleday 1989). James Adams, ‘Virtual Defense’, Foreign Affairs (May/June 2001). Another early view of the possibilities for computer espionage was offered by Wayne Madsen, ‘Intelligence Agency Threats to Computer Security’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 6/4 (1993).

³²National Public Radio interview, 30 November 1999.

³³‘Press Conference with Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Collection Mr. Glenn A. Gaffney, Camp Williams Data Center’, Salt Lake City, 23 October 2009, <www.dni.gov/speeches/20091023_speech.pdf> (accessed 1 January 2010). For media reporting on the new data center, see Chuck Gates, ‘Big Brother is Coming: NSA's $1.9 Billion Cyber Spy Center a Power Grab’, Deseret News, 19 December 2009, <http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705352795/Big-Brother-is-coming-NSAaposs-19-billion-cyber-spy-center-a-power-grab.html> (accessed 1 January 2010).

³⁴James Gosler explains the problem of attribution thus: ‘For low-level threats, such as hackers, the combination of a connected target and an inherent vulnerability is sufficient to exploit targets … In the recent past, US adversaries have collected and exfiltrated several terabytes of data from key Department of Defense networks. The apparent inability to patch US systems in a timely manner provides opponents with ample opportunities for access to our information systems. While we are aware of these operations, we do not appear to have the technical ability to close the access holes or to clearly attribute these operations to the perpetrator(s)’ [punctuation in original]. See Gosler's ‘Counterintelligence: Too Narrowly Practiced’ in Jennifer E. Sims and Burton Gerber (eds.) Vaults, Mirrors, and Masks: Rediscovering US Counterintelligence (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press 2008) pp.181–2.

³⁵The Mariposa botnet, for instance, controlled an estimated 12.7 million infected computers for criminal purposes. Charles Arthur, ‘Alleged Controllers of “Mariposa” Botnet Arrested in Spain’, Guardian, 3 March 2010, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/03/mariposa-botnet-spain> (accessed 24 April 2010).

³⁶Whether one believes Okah acted to help the people of the Delta region – or to extort money from Western oil companies at the expense of the Nigerian government – the fact remains that his activities forced the Nigerian regime to respond and had a worldwide impact on oil prices. John Robb, ‘Global Guerrillas’, 28 February 2008, <http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2008/02/henry-okah.html> (accessed 25 November 2009). See also Will Connors, ‘The Nigerian Rebel Who “Taxes” Your Gasoline’, Time, 28 May 2008, <http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1809979,00.html> (accessed 25 November 2009).

³⁷Remarks by National Counterintelligence Executive Joel F. Brenner at the Applied Research Laboratories, University of Texas at Austin, conference on Business Strategies in Cyber Security and Counterintelligence, 3 April 2009, <http://www.dni.gov/speeches/20090403_speech.pdf> (accessed 3 January 2010).

³⁹Quoted in Gosler, ‘Counterintelligence’, p.193.

³⁸Bruce Schneier, Secrets & Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World (New York: John Wiley & Sons 2000) pp.363, 373.

⁴⁰For two good summaries of the argument, see Ferris, ‘Netcentric Warfare’; and David J. Lonsdale, The Nature of War in the Information Age: Clausewitzian Future (London: Frank Cass 2004).

⁴¹Joint Chiefs of Staff, The National Military Strategy of the United States of America: A Strategy for Today; A Vision for Tomorrow, 2004, p.18, <http://www.defense.gov/news/Mar2005/d20050318nms.pdf> (accessed 24 April 2010).

⁴²According to Ellen Nakashima in the Washington Post, the new US Cyber Command would ‘merge the Pentagon's defensive unit, Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations, with its offensive outfit, the Joint Functional Command Component-Network Warfare, at Fort Meade, home to the NSA. The new command, which would include about 500 staffers, would leverage the NSA's technical capabilities but fall under the Pentagon's Strategic Command’; see ‘Pentagon Computer-network Defense Command Delayed by Congressional Concerns’, Washington Post, 3 January 2010, p.A04. See also Lieutenant General Keith B. Alexander's answers submitted before his 15 April 2010 Senate confirmation hearing to be the first commander of Cyber Command, <http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2010_hr/041510alexander-qfr.pdf> (accessed 24 April 2010). Israel's chief of military intelligence, Major-General Amos Yadlin, recently noted that his nation already has an apparently parallel offensive and defensive cyberwar program, telling the Institute for National Security Studies of Tel Aviv University that ‘the cyberwarfare field fits well with the state of Israel's defense doctrine’. Dan Williams, ‘Spymaster Sees Israel as World Cyberwar Leader’, Reuters, 15 December 2009.

⁴³To cite but one example, computers in offices of the US Congress now fend off billions of ‘security events’ per year, including ‘worms, Trojan horses and spybots’. The Senate Security Operations Center alone was receiving almost 14 million attempts a day in early 2010; about four attacks per month succeeded in delivering malicious content. Erika Lovley, ‘Cyberattacks Explode in Congress’, Politico, 5 March 2010, <http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/33987.html> (accessed 25 April 2010).

⁴⁴Media speculation hints that this might have already happened at the turning point of the Iraq War in 2007; see Shane Harris, ‘The Cyberwar Plan’, National Journal, 14 November 2009, <http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/cs_20091114_3145.php> (accessed 1 January 2010).

⁴⁵‘Thus, those skilled in war subdue the enemy's army without battle. They capture his cities without assaulting them and overthrow his state without protracted operations. Your aim must be to take All-under-Heaven intact. Thus your troops are not worn out and your gains will be complete. This is the art of offensive strategy.’ Sun Tzu, The Art of War, III:10-11 (as translated in Samuel B. Griffith's edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1963).

⁴⁶Professor Agrell made this comment at the conference on ‘100 Years of British Intelligence: From Empire to Cold War to Globalisation’, Aberystwyth University, 2 May 2009.