Post-Fordism and the Transformation of Transatlantic Counter-Terrorism

Abstract

There is growing evidence that, led by the U.S., a transformation of trans-Atlantic counter-terrorism (CT) has occurred since 9/11. However, a theoretically informed framework for understanding how this has happened remains elusive. Using post-Fordist industrial theory and new evidence collected from senior practitioners across the trans-Atlantic space, this article provides a novel conceptual framework for understanding how states have transformed CT organization since 9/11, primarily in response to global jihadism. It shows how many of these solutions are remarkably similar and based on post-Fordist business and/or military best practices, including centralization and decentralization; integration of core and periphery workforces; a network approach to knowledge sharing; and outsourcing. The conclusion discusses the effectiveness of these solutions and their use in meeting new policy challenges.

Twenty years after 9/11, perhaps it is time to reflect on how trans-Atlantic counter-terrorism (CT) organization has changed? Despite attempts, there has been no similar scale attack, suggesting at least some improvement given global jihadists’ continued determination to conduct mass casualty attacks. Although the 2004 Madrid, 2005 London, and 2015 Paris attacks were notable failures, during the same period, U.S. CT organizationally transformed from being complicit in the nation’s worst intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor to leading Joint Inter-Agency Task Forces that “found, fixed, and finished” terrorist leaders, severely degrading Al-Qa’ida and its successors. This is just one example of how trans-Atlantic effectiveness has transformed since 9/11. Other scholars have identified a shift in border policing in the era of trans-national terrorism, and have debated the effectiveness of terrorist leader decapitation strikes.¹

These important developments are at odds with the literature on CT and intelligence organization, which is generally “gloomy” about the prospect of effective change.² In her seminal article, Zegart argued the 9/11 attacks were primarily caused by the CIA’s and FBI’s failure to organizationally adapt from a Cold War mentality to meet the threat from trans-national terrorism. She identified how the U.S. intelligence community’s (IC) competitive bureaucratic politics, secretive organizational cultures, and the fragmented federal government, acted as barriers to timely intelligence exchanges that could have prevented 9/11.³ Zegart thus concluded that the U.S. IC was highly resistant to organizational change, and for this to be meaningful, it would have to go beyond the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) structural changes instigated by the 9/11 Commission to change organizational routines and cultures too. In 2005, Zegart did not have much hope of this. Recently, Foley has applied the concept of state institutions and organizational routines to U.S. and British CT. He argued that in the U.S., divided institutional authorities have “contributed to a proliferation of security services with overlapping jurisdictions and a reliance on informal routines and relationships that often prove inadequate… for interagency coordination”.⁴ Britain, by contrast, has more centralized institutions and formal routines that enable better coordination. Zegart’s and Foley’s significant engagement with organizational theory are rare in the CT literature. But, perhaps due to their focus on routines, institutions and cultures, they remain skeptical about the prospects for meaningful change in U.S. CT in particular.

There is, however, growing evidence that, led by the U.S., a transformation of trans-Atlantic CT has occurred since 9/11. Yet, a theoretical understanding of this transformation remains elusive. This article uses post-Fordist theory and new evidence to provide a novel conceptual framework for understanding how trans-Atlantic states have transformed their CT organization. It shows that although CT has traditionally been perceived as resistant to effective change, there have been important organizational transformations since 9/11. This is controversial: the literature stresses the impact of differing national politics, policies, organizational cultures and routines. Yet this article shows how many of the organizational solutions adopted by trans-Atlantic states to address global terrorism are remarkably similar and based on post-Fordist business and/or military best practices. While it recognizes that national divergences remain, the paper argues the form and function of trans-Atlantic CT organization is best understood through post-Fordism. It proceeds in three parts. First, it reviews the CT transformation literature to highlight its lack of theoretical depth. Second, it explains post-Fordist theory, before discussing the context of post-Fordist CT transformation. Third, post-Fordist theory is applied to new evidence from numerous trans-Atlantic states across four central themes; centralization and decentralization; integrating the and periphery workforces; a network approach to knowledge; and outsourcing. The conclusion discusses the effectiveness of these solutions and their utility for new policy challenges.

Counter-Terrorism Transformation: A Lack of Theory

The trans-Atlantic intelligence and CT relationship is traditionally viewed as the most effective in the world, having a major impact on international security.⁵ Here, trans-Atlantic refers to North American, Western European and Scandinavian countries; CT refers to all intelligence, police, military, border, judicial, etc services with a responsibility for CT. In 2004, Aldrich noted that while there were positive signs of increased trans-Atlantic intelligence exchange in response to the multiplicity of trans-national threats, there was still a mis-match between the networked nature of these organizations and the highly compartmentalized trans-Atlantic security agencies tasked with disrupting them, coupled with differing national political and organizational approaches to CT.⁶ Aldrich & Wyn Rees examined the post-9/11 trans-Atlantic CT relationship in 2005. Although they noted that it had strengthened due to convergence on the threat of “new terrorism,” they also argued that the divergent strategic cultures of U.S. and Europe resulted in different approaches that impeded information exchange.⁷ More recently, Aldrich has presciently argued that the multiplication of trans-national threats driven by globalization mean that trans-Atlantic nations have become “vigilant states,” increasingly reliant on their expanded intelligence services to disrupt a panoply of threats.⁸ Chertoff, Bury and Richterova et al. have detailed how intelligence fusion cells, interagency task forces, and “hit no-hit” database searches are common organizational solutions.⁹ Clearly, patterns of organization exist which suggest convergence beyond that identified in the intelligence and CT literature. Currently though, a conceptual framework for understanding this organizational convergence is absent.

This criticism also applies to the literature on national agencies in the trans-Atlantic space. Scholars have identified major periods of organizational transformation, and some of the drivers of these, including – in relation to the U.K., threat, leadership and technology¹⁰ – or in the cases of the U.K. and France, legal and institutional pathway dependencies.¹¹ Like Foley, Davies conceptualized Britain’s intelligence and CT structures through the “core executive” lens of British government structure, which is conducive to interagency cooperation and coordination. This contrasts the U.S. IC where its adversarial nature is conceptualized as competing self-interest of “neo-institutions”¹² Works on U.S. CT organization have focused on either the reform of specific services or the wider problems faced by the disparate U.S. CT community due to institutional competition, bureaucratic politics and organizational cultures and routines – including the traditional siloed approach to intelligence organization and sharing pre-9/11.¹³ In the U.S. in 2005, Barger called for a Revolution in Intelligence Affairs (RIA), in part by adopting business and military models of transformation.¹⁴

With some notable national comparative exceptions,¹⁵ continental scholars mainly focus on changes to CT policy, practice and organization at the EU-level. Importantly, numerous works have identified the importance of U.S. pressure on the EU for instigating change.¹⁶ Den Boer and Wiegand assess EU CT policy in terms of “bubbles of convergence” and divergence with Member States’ own policies.¹⁷ Bossong details how EU CT policy and organization evolved after major attacks but predominantly focused on the period 2001–05,¹⁸ while others note that despite the growth in EU CT institutions post 9/11, there is a “distinction between presence and effectiveness” with much organizational duplicity.¹⁹ The EU’s role has also been conceptualized as “a conveyor belt” of organizational best practices to member states.²⁰ Interestingly, Den Boer and Wiegand briefly note how European services replicate others’ organizational solutions, but ultimately (and incorrectly) dismiss this due to sovereign control of CT. In their critique of the field, Kaunert, Argomaniz and Bures confirm the literature’s policy focus and lack of theoretical depth,²¹ a criticism Aldrich has echoed about the intelligence literature’s ignorance of social change and “somewhat myopic” focus.²² Recently, Renard has also detailed how “counter-terrorism studies remains significantly under-theorized.”²³ As will be shown, some CT scholars have identified elements of post-Fordism, but have not theoretically incorporated these into an overarching conceptual framework. Perhaps it is time for one.

Post-Fordism ²⁴

The Fordist mode of production – associated with Henry Ford – was characterized by a reliance on mass labor forces “employed on long term contracts, producing standardized products for stable markets under a state-interventionist system of regulation.”²⁵ However, this mode of production began to be undermined in the 1970s by rising production costs and competition. In response to these supply- and demand- side pressures, firms in Japan, and later the U.S., began to organizationally transform. The central tenets of post-Fordist theory coalesced in the 1980s in the industrial sociology of Piore and Sabel, and later in Womack, Jones and Daniel Roos, Prechel, and Gomes-Casseres.²⁶ Respectively, these identified four central changes in industrial transformation: the replacement of mass labor with a highly skilled core and less-skilled periphery; the outsourcing of non-core functions; the centralization of headquarters and the decentralization of decision-making to flatten hierarchies; and the development of a network approach to supply and knowledge. These tenets are most effective when combined. It is important to note that post-Fordist theory has been contested. There is disagreement over the nature of its tenets and their relative importance.²⁷ However, there is a general consensus about post-Fordism’s accuracy.²⁸

King has successfully used post-Fordism to analyze Western military transformation. He argues that modern Western militaries have transformed in a fashion analogous with post-Fordist industry due to similar “supply and demand-side pressures.”²⁹ The centralization of management control is evident in joint and trans-national military headquarters which simultaneously decentralize decision making, thereby increasing flexibility and flattening hierarchies. Special forces represent the core; reserve forces the periphery, and he describes the outsourcing of combat roles to private security companies. Similarly, the development of a non-linear operational approach centered on independent combat brigades indicates the military’s adoption of a network approach. In showing how dominant modes of production are an important source of Western military transformation, he explicitly links military change with industrial change. Bury has since used post-Fordism to show how trans-Atlantic militaries’ have integrated core and periphery forces to produce efficiencies.³⁰

Materials, Method and Definitions

This paper takes a qualitative case study approach, acknowledged in the social sciences as a credible method for concept building and collecting data.³¹ It follows a process “tracing research method” for tracing causal mechanisms using detailed, within-case empirical analysis of how a causal process plays out in an actual case… and to shed light on generalizable causal mechanisms linking causes and outcomes within a population of causally similar cases”³² by locating and detailing the introduction of post-Fordist principles. Evidence has been chosen on an influential case basis:³³ U.S., British, western European and Scandinavian CT services are examined as these have arguably undergone the most change since 9/11, with the greater emphasis on the U.S. and Britain reflecting that these were among the first to instigate post-Fordist practices and are some of the most capable CT actors in the trans-Atlantic space. These services also come under strong oversight and scrutiny creating more data, and the author had good access.

Between 2016–2021, primary data were collected from 24 interviews with serving and former senior leaders and practitioners in the trans-Atlantic CT space. These include, but are not limited to: a former National Security Agency (NSA) Director, a former CIA Director, a former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, a former British Home and Defence Secretary, a former GCHQ Director, a former Director British Special Forces, a U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) commander, a former head of CT in Scotland, a Europol Executive Director, the head of the Dutch CT Infobox, and a former Belgian Interior and Justice Minister, as well as off-the-record conversations with numerous other senior serving leaders. To strengthen the findings, participants then commented on drafts of this paper. Participants gave their informed consent to take part, some chose to be anonymised, and the project was approved by the University of Bath Research Ethics Committee. To mitigate against self-reported bias by seniors responsible for transformation, this data was further corroborated with participation in six working group meetings with senior serving CT practitioners from numerous trans-Atlantic nations, and with other primary sources such as elite memoirs, official publications, and newspaper reports.

Following Farrell and Terriff, I define transformation as a major “change in the goals, actual strategies, and/or structures of a [CT] organization;” my focus falls on the latter.³⁴ The focus here is on organizational transformation: important legislative changes, counter-radicalization programs and diplomatic efforts that have contributed to CT effectiveness are not examined.

Post-Fordist Transformation Context

It is important to establish that a transformation of CT organization has occurred since 9/11. All the former practitioners agreed it had:

I think it’s [US CT] definitely been transformed, and it will be transformed more in the future.³⁵

Yes, it [US CT] has. And you know, I’d say also internationally its transformed too.³⁶

Do I think its transformed? Absolutely. 9/11 forced us [UK CT] to look inward in terms of our business.³⁷

It was need to know. We’d go round with a document inside three separate envelopes with seals on each one. Another bloke with you to make sure. Then 9/11 occurred. There was this initial shock and then there was suddenly this enthusiasm and a recognition of a need to share.³⁸

Yes, it has. If you look at what transformed [Dutch CT], it was the increased political will to reorganise after the 2004 Madrid attacks. And in the transatlantic space… there are some continuities, but I think there is really a growing awareness of having some coordination, some common understanding about strategies to exchange not only intelligence on a bilateral level, but to come to a more common understanding of how to interpret threats. That’s the transformation part.³⁹

There’s been a massive investment of money and effort… its improved hugely.⁴⁰

Numerous authors have identified how the diversification of threats, including globalization, “new terrorism,” and the information revolution, have forced trans-Atlantic intelligence agencies to transform.⁴¹ Trans-atlantic SIGINT seniors were among the first to realize the potential impact of these developments, and the need to harness greater computing power to collect and analyze this data. Faced with managing profound organizational change these SIGINT leaders turned to industry and the military for inspiration. According to former GCHQ Director, David Pepper, since the turn of the millennium GCHQ “has undergone a radical transformation in response to fundamental changes in the geopolitical and technological environment. One important feature of the transformation has been the adoption of a wide range of managerial practices and techniques from the private sector.”⁴² Prior to 9/11, the Cold War legacy shaped GCHQ’s organizational form and function – GCHQ was still “a static organization, essentially because its main target, the Soviet Union, was static. The various operational systems were self-contained and independent, and there was rather little movement of people and information across internal boundaries.”⁴³ For Pepper, the internet “fundamentally changed the tech environment in which GCHQ operated, resulting in a major redesign of its technology” and “a radically different type of organization” – one that collected and analyzed vast amounts of digital data globally.⁴⁴ As GCHQ Director between 2003-08, Pepper oversaw this transformation. Faced with the need for huge organizational change at pace, he realized that “the commercial world ha[d] developed methods to deal with essentially the same challenges under commercial pressures.”⁴⁵ For the first time in GCHQ’s history, he used external experts from the “high tech defence sector” to improve strategic planning, and organizational performance, as well as “industry” to help manage technology change programs and human resources. The effect of these business best practices was that a “previously stove-piped and inflexible organization became agile and responsive, with management techniques that will stand comparison with high performing entities in any sector.” Pepper concluded “the key elements of this transformative process have required the adoption of commercial best practices.”⁴⁶

The new NSA Director at this time, and later CIA Director, former air force General Michael Hayden, experienced similar problems, “with modern data streams threatening to drown the NSA in a roiling sea of 1 s and 0 s.”.⁴⁷ He realized that the “NSA had been isolated from the dynamism of the market by its own secrecy,” and quickly “sought the opinions of outside experts” on how to rapidly organizationally transform. These identified “poor systems for communication, decision making, financial and personnel management, and business processes.”⁴⁸ While Hayden has stated these experts did not include the major business consultancies, technical experts from the private sector and military leaders were consulted.⁴⁹ Within weeks of 9/11, Hayden had suspended ten percent of NSA’s missions and degraded a further 25 percent to focus on al-Qa’ida, and this was followed by an immediate rationalization of management committees by a third, within a wider plan to simplify the organization of NSA into “Offense, Defense and Enabling Functions.” Hayden was aware of the success of similar function-oriented post-Fordist reforms in the U.S. military, and in “flattening the organization” he used “the agency wide supports as a tool for change.”⁵⁰ To reinforce the shake-up, NSA “hired from the outside to create crosscurrents within our own culture… the new chief financial officer came from Legg Mason, the Baltimore investment firm. We got our new inspector general via an ad in the Wall Street Journal.”⁵¹ The NSA also hired several thousand new, tech-savvy young staff, effecting “a generational change in our workforce in only a few years.”⁵² Similarly, although wary of outsourcing mission responsibility, in 2000 Hayden subcontracted the NSA’s IT system to “a private consortium in the $2 billion ten-year Groundbreaker program.”⁵³ These SIGINT examples provide evidence of how post-Fordist business and military approaches initially influenced transformations, but there is much more.

Centralization and Decentralization

The trans-Atlantic CT community responded to the digital data explosion and the threat from networked global terrorists with centralized management control and decentralized decision-making organizational solutions. The most obvious example of the centralization of management control after 9/11 is the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2002. Described as “the most significant government reorganization since the early days of the Cold War,” it merged 22 federal agencies into a unified DHS command structure aimed at increasing management control, inter-agency coordination and information exchange.⁵⁴ DHS is now the third largest U.S. government department, with over 240,000 employees and a 2020 budget of $88 billion. King noted how Western militaries followed post-Fordist principles in centralizing command and control in new joint headquarters, and, according to Secretary Chertoff, the post-Fordist U.S. military blueprint informed organizational principles in DHS. “There’s a concept of jointness in the U.S. after the Cold War, the idea was that you would actually incentivise people to serve in other armed services, or to jointly man combined operation centers again as a way of acquainting them with each other’s missions and seeing where they might help each other. So, that concept of jointness is a good deal of what we embedded in the culture of DHS.”⁵⁵ One crucial organizational innovation was the DHS creation of fusion centers to help centralize “fuse and share intelligence at the state, local, and federal levels in a way that was impossible prior to 9/11”.⁵⁶ Like the transformations in NSA and GCHQ, this was about data: DHS were sitting on treasure “trove of immigration and customs border data” that needed to be understood and then integrated with the core intelligence agencies where appropriate.⁵⁷

CT fusion centers are popular post-9/11 centralized interagency organizations for “coordinating, analyzing, combining, and facilitating information sharing”, yet are under-studied.⁵⁸ The basic premise of CT fusion centers is to break down information silos by centralizing staff liaisons from all relevant agencies in one building with access to their databases, to improve situational awareness and threat perception through “fused” intelligence products. Although individual agencies maintain control of their own databases, crucially, over time each center often develops its own centralized database of fused information which can be quickly cross referenced by staff members. Usually operant at the national level and focused on analysis and dissemination, as will be shown, fusion centers have also proved highly effective when integrated with collection in support of CT operations.

Although the Los Angeles and New York police departments trialed law enforcement fusion centers before 9/11, this new centralized, co-located organizational solution was especially useful in the competitive, fragmented and stove-piped U.S. IC. According to former CIA Director, John Brennan, in 2002 an interagency working group was established to examine how to “break down the organizational, cultural, and legal obstacles that stood in the way of connecting the frequently illusive terrorism ‘dots’ collected by the intelligence and law enforcement communities.”⁵⁹ The working group knew it needed to “deconstruct bureaucratic stovepipes,” and in order to preempt the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations it proposed a new Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) be established. This became operational in May 2003. Centered in CIA headquarters, TTIC had about three dozen personnel, and its priority was to centralize and consolidate terrorism reporting to the political leadership and to the participating agencies to improve co-ordination and situational awareness. Consulting widely outside the IC, Brennan knew the TTIC solution of centralized analysis and coordination required major cultural change. He would face strong bureaucratic resistance: “accused by CIA colleagues of abandoning the need-to-know principle essential to protecting the CIA’s… sources,”⁶⁰ while the FBI saw TTIC as a CIA plot to access its databases. As a result, the center’s “most pressing thing was information access;” Brenan initially had “half a dozen computer servers under my desk” – a situation common to the many fusion centers that followed.⁶¹ Despite these challenges, TTIC provided an organizational blueprint for centralized analysis, and in August 2004, on the Commission’s recommendation, it was incorporated into the new NCTC. After the gradual building of interagency trust and increases to its remit – “It took a long time to get enough buy-in, or all the American agencies to recognize they had to put really good people in”⁶² – the NCTC now maintains the authoritative database of known and suspected terrorists, shares information, prioritizes threats and conducts strategic operational planning by fuzing foreign and domestic data, intelligence and law enforcement information, and multiagency inputs every day. It has more than 1,000 staff from across the IC, the federal government (approximately 20 departments), and federal contractors, and is viewed as an “unqualified success” that “could not have taken place before 9/11.”⁶³ Other examples of U.S. CT centralization includes the establishment of the FBI National Security Branch in 2005, and the Department of Justice’s National Security Division in 2006. Clearly then, centralization of analysis management was a key principle in the first nation to undertake major CT transformation.

Although culturally more cooperative, the British IC found itself in a similar position to the U.S. after 9/11. According to former GCHQ Director, Sir David Omand: “It was very siloed, and this is not to run down what they’d been doing. They had spent that year, after 9/11, flat out just doing the things that needed fixing, some of which made us very vulnerable. So, there was a general sense of, what do we do next? What are the priorities? How do we work together?”⁶⁴ There was an awareness intelligence assessment and threat reporting needed to be centralized. Here, the U.S. TTIC was influential. “I developed a very good, warm working relationship with John Brennan. One of the first things I did was bring him to the U.K. to show him what we were doing. I went over to the ‘States and he showed me what he was doing.” Back in the U.K., “one of the questions which came up, again and again, was, how do we assess threats?” Who does that? I went around the various agencies and found while everyone was doing a bit, it wasn’t as joined up as it could be.” Eliza Manningham-Buller, Director-General MI5, had also recognized this deficiency and wanted volunteers from the different services to join an MI5 assessment group.

I said to her: “why don’t we have a joint centre and under JIC [Joint Intelligence Committee], joint ownership, but you will have the central role?” Eliza said, “let’s do it.” She cleared a floor of Thames House, everybody turned up very, very quickly, with their own information technology, so there was no attempt to produce a common system. This had the enormous advantage that, when the name of an individual popped up, whoever was working the case could go into [the new Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre] JTAC and walk around the desks and the SIS Officer would be able to access SIS’s data from a desktop they’d brought with them. The theory was: “put them all in the same space and they will get to know each other, and trust will develop.” So, [in June 2003] we did it. The whole idea was there was one place where you would go to get ground truth on a threat. And it worked remarkably quickly.⁶⁵

Based around post-Fordist military “joint headquarters,” British CT analysis and the issuing of threat levels were thus centralized in JTAC, which grew to comprise 16 departments and agencies. Centralization continued when, in 2004, MI5 was designated lead CT agency. And after the 2005 London bombings which “changed everything,” in 2006 police Special Branch activities were centralized under the Met Police’s Counter-Terrorism Command, reflecting greater cooperation between the police and MI5 needed to ensure terrorist prosecutions.⁶⁶ These organizational changes are widely perceived as increasing the effectiveness of British CT.⁶⁷ Indeed, such was the success of JTAC that in its early years its staff complained about being a “tourist site” for friendly nations’ ministers keen to visit.⁶⁸ Canada established its Integrated Threat Assessment Center that same year, and Scotland established its multi-agency equivalent in 2014.⁶⁹

These Five Eyes nations led the way in the centralization of CT management control and analysis, but European nations gradually followed, either by example or of their own accord. While 9/11 led to reevaluations of European security structures,⁷⁰ the 2004 Madrid bombings were “a game changer” for many European security services. The Dutch were among the first to transform their CT. In response to the attack and out of an awareness that if they reformed internally they could benefit from greater international intelligence exchange – they set up their “CT Infobox” – initially a five-agency integrated threat assessment and information sharing enterprise housed in the AIVD (Dutch security service). According to a former Dutch intelligence official:

I was in those rooms when some very experienced officers were talking about those ideas and started to draw on the whiteboards. I remember those professionals reflecting on how to set up such an infrastructure. It was a nightmare to have an attack in which you realised that one party had crucial information that was not shared with the rest.⁷¹

Reflecting different legal constraints, the Dutch Infobox is different to NCTC and JTAC in that the information inside the box is only shared with its own personnel and cannot be passed on. Instead, within the box information provided by the participating agencies is combined and assessed from a multi-agency perspective. Co-operation is intensive, but the response to the recommendations is left to the organizations receiving them. According to a former Dutch intelligence official: “It was really about bringing all pieces of information together whilst protecting sources in the sense that everything remains within the box and once you [an agency] want to use it outside the box you just follow the ordinary legal challenges.”⁷² The Infobox now comprises ten agencies and is viewed as enhancing Dutch CT effectiveness.

Other European nations have centralized their analysis. Less than three months after the Madrid attacks, Spain created a national CT fusion center that would eventually become the Counter-Terrorism and Organized Crime Intelligence Center (CITCO). In December 2004, Germany created its GTAZ (Joint Counterterrorism Center) to centralize assessment and information exchange, the effectiveness of which was apparent when the same organizational solution was adopted for counter-right wing extremism in 2012 (GETZ). Italy established its Anti-Terrorist Strategic Analysis Committee (CASA) in 2003, Belgium its Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (CUTA) in 2006, partly in response to an EU report praising fusion centers as effective organizational solutions.⁷³ The centralized solution has also been scaled to the multilateral level, with a Counter-Terrorism Fusion Cell established in the EU’s INTCEN in 2004, and Europol’s European Counter-Terrorism Center in 2016. Of course, these centers have different legislative and organizational constraints, and institutional and behavioral norms can make them more or less effective.⁷⁴ Nevertheless, all operate on similar principles and display organizational consistency. The centralization of management control of analysis and assessment has been an important part of trans-Atlantic CT transformation.

This centralization has often been accompanied by a simultaneous decentralization of operational CT decision-making. The CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC), established in 1986, focused on overseas operations and was not multiagency. But unlike the rest of the CIA at the time, the CTC was organized around the terrorist threat, rather than geographically, thereby spanning numerous national boundaries and issues. According to former CIA Director, Leon Panetta, post 9/11 it grew rapidly to have “the largest office at CIA and… the biggest budget.”⁷⁵ With the need to integrate intelligence across the U.S. government, and much greater resources to do so, according to Hayden the CTC became a hub for the multi-agency (NSA, FBI and Defence intelligence Agency) “melding of ops and analysis and S&T [science and technology, that] enabled more focused collection, more relevant technology and better analysis. With more centralized direction we could better prioritize requirements [and synchronize and] craft collection plans.”⁷⁶ As CIA Director at the time, Hayden was aware that more centralized coordination of CT operations had to be complemented by decentralized decision-making. “What we were doing couldn’t be done with a tight stick and rudder control from a seventh-floor suite in Langley … if we were a military organization this would have been called ‘mission type orders’: broad direction and clear limits from Headquarters. The rest is yours.”⁷⁷ Influenced by the post-Fordist military, decentralized decision-making was key to U.S. CT operations.

The British experience highlights how decentralization strengthened effective domestic CT operations. Due to increasing domestic jihadist activity, it became clear that there must also be “a step-change in the way that intelligence was collected,”⁷⁸ and in order to address this threat, in 2003 MI5 took the unprecedented decision to decentralize CT operations to regional hubs. The first six of these hubs formed in 2004, and later grew to eight. They were located in areas of activity and adopted to ease the constraints of centralized operations.

The natural development of [the increased domestic jihadist threat] was eventually for [MI5] to say; “we had better regionalize,” because it was getting to the point where the amount of time case officers and surveillance teams were spending on the motorway – if you were a London-based organization, every time you need to do something you’ve got to drive up the motorway and do it and come back again. So, regionalization was hugely important.⁷⁹

Not only did it increase collection capabilities and capacities by placing teams closer to activity, it also fostered greater collaboration and trust with local police forces integrated into these new hubs. The regionalization program has been assessed to have bought “clear benefits.”⁸⁰ For Peter Clarke, Counter-Terrorism Commander at the time: “the most important change in counter-terrorism in the U.K. in recent years has been the development of the relationship between the police and the security service.”⁸¹ The decentralization of national-level CT incident response teams to decease reaction times in numerous European nations since 9/11 provides further evidence of the dual processes of the centralization of management control and the decentralization of operational decision-making in recent CT transformation.

Integrating the Core and the Periphery

Post-Fordist transformations have attempted to better integrate core and periphery workforces to increase effectiveness. In CT terms, the core workforce are the intelligence and military organizations with direct responsibilities, skills and resources for counter-terrorism. Despite some differences in the trans-Atlantic space, these are a nation’s domestic, foreign and signals intelligence services, specialist counter-terrorism investigative and response police, and, increasingly since 9/11, military special forces. In the U.S., the CT “core” is represented by the ODNI, CIA, NSA, National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency and NRO (National Reconnaissance Office, NRO, FBI, DIA and special forces response teams; in the U.K.: MI5, MI6, GCHQ, and, since 9/11, the Met CTC and special forces. Even in Germany’s notoriously fragmented CT landscape of 40 local, state and federal organizations, the core can be identified in the Federal Intelligence Service, Federal Domestic Intelligence Service, the Federal Police and its CT units; GSG9 and BFE+; and Federal Public Prosecutor General. The core can be also identified by the concentration of resources upon them. The expansion in budgets and manpower in core CT agencies since 9/11 is informative. In the U.S., in constant dollars, the total intelligence budget more than doubled to $85.8 billion in 2022.⁸² Indicating its importance, the NSA’s budget, rose from about $4 billion in 2001 to $10.3 billion in 2013.⁸³ According to the ODNI, “more than 50% of the Intelligence Community workforce was hired after 9/11.”⁸⁴ While exact staff numbers of core agencies remain classified, following 9/11 the FBI doubled its agents assigned to CT to 5,000.⁸⁵ Similarly, the DHS border force was doubled to 18,000 within four years of 9/11.⁸⁶ Britain is similar. After 9/11 “money was no object” in British CT.⁸⁷ The annual Single Intelligence Account – which funds the three intelligence services – more than tripled to £3 billion between 2001 and 2019.⁸⁸ MI5’s workforce doubled from 2,000 on 9/11 to about 4,100 in 2021; the Met’s CTC also doubled to 1,500 in the five years after 9/11. Resource allocation is also indicative: in 2005 CT was GCHQ’s largest effort, while in 2006, MI6 doubled its disruption operations against terrorists abroad.⁸⁹ In 2008-9, 93 percent MI5’s workforce was dedicated to international terrorism.⁹⁰ Germany and France recorded less steep, but still large, increases to their intelligence budgets, as have numerous other European nations since 9/11.

Whilst the core counter-terrorism agencies have received huge increases in funding and manpower, it is these agencies’ closer integration with other organizations more peripheral to CT that is one of the most obvious transformations since 9/11. Peripheral CT agencies have some CT responsibilities but fewer specialized skills and resources. In the U.S., the peripheral agencies include the Departments of Homeland Security (and its 22 agencies), State, Treasury, and Energy, the DEA, state and local police, and the military services’ intelligence organizations. In the U.K., they include the Home Office, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Treasury, justice department, regional police forces, social services, military intelligence, and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), amongst others. In the British context, one important change since 9/11 is that the CPS has been more closely integrated with CT case management in order to ensure viable prosecutions. It is precisely this wide scope of organizations that hold potentially relevant data or expertise that makes integrating the core and the periphery so important. Indeed, the DHS example, with its centralized management control and fusion centers to coordinate information exchange between 22 agencies, and the core CT agencies, highlights how post-Fordist tenets are mutually supporting.

Another example of the integration of the core and the periphery is the growth of national security and intelligence coordinator roles. One of the key 9/11 Commission recommendations, the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act directed that the ODNI be established to lead the IC, be the President’s principal intelligence adviser, and lead integration efforts. One of its most important integrative functions is the oversight and implementation of the National Intelligence Program budget in liaison with agency chiefs and the president. This helps coordinate resource allocation and tasks. While initially viewed as a symbolic role without enough power to successfully fight the beltway wars, under Mike McConnell and James Clapper’s tenures the ODNI was strengthened into a core coordinating body. Realizing that “good people overcome imperfect structures,”⁹¹ and with the support of Hayden at CIA, Clapper set up mission managers to coordinate collection, analysis and counter-intelligence by target or theme rather than by intelligence discipline or organization. However, his primary focus was the integration of the community’s IT systems. Clapper started by building “interagency bridges to connect the archipelago” of separate IT systems in the core agencies, and once this was achieved then brought “all the agencies and eventually the smaller intelligence components into a single united [and global] IC IT Enterprise.”⁹² According to General Stanley McChrystal, this was accompanied by “a gradual but undeniable paradigm shift toward information sharing” amongst the U.S. national security community after 9/11.⁹³ While former NCTC Director Nick Rasmussen has stated that “better U.S. IC integration is needed,”⁹⁴ and reservations remain over the ODNI’s authority and ability to exert it,⁹⁵ the point is here that the role is designed to increase integration between the core and the periphery CT agencies.

In Britain, 9/11 resulted in the need to clarify and centralize previously fragmented roles and responsibilities. Reflecting on the most important CT changes since 9/11, Omand surmised:

The first thing [is] greater clarity of responsibilities. The role that’s played by the centre, in the Cabinet Office, which started with the Security and Intelligence Coordinator… and the setting up of the Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism inside the Home Office. How intelligence is gathered and how intelligence missions are organised across the intelligence community. The relative roles played by our own capabilities and those of partners and allies, and then finally, clarity over the responsibility for dealing with the aftermath of a serious incident.⁹⁶

Important examples of this were the Security and Intelligence Coordinator taking over the traditional responsibilities from the Cabinet Secretary, and the rationalization and refinement of Cabinet committees. These represented “a much more efficient way than the way we had it before.”⁹⁷ Another key issue was the creation of a centralized CT strategy under which greater role clarity, orientation and coordination could occur. “It had been very clear in 2002… that different departments and agencies were all working their socks off, but on agendas that they themselves set. The idea was, could you actually produce strategic direction – not command – but strategic direction. And from my time in defence, this is classic commander’s intent.” To address this, the CONTEST strategy was launched in 2003, providing the strategic argument for the increased organizational resources which were critical to increasing British CT capacity and capability, with the military influence clear again.

Numerous other trans-Atlantic nations have created national CT coordinators or councils and introduced or updated strategies to better integrate their core and periphery agencies. The Dutch introduced their coordinating counter-terrorism strategy after 9/11 and appointed a National Anti-Terrorism Co-Ordinator in 2004 to bolster CT capacity through integration of operational information and analyses with policy. It also set up a ministerial National Security Council to integrate CT efforts. In Germany, the Joint Coordination Center for the intelligence services was established in July 2004 to better integrate the intelligence services and over 30 other agencies with CT responsibilities. In 2002, France reformed its Council of Internal Security to include presidential chairmanship and internal minister presence to increase CT coordination, and in 2004 it updated its coordinating Vigipirate Plan. In the aftermath of 9/11, the EU adopted its first action plan and, in June 2002, the Framework Decision on Combating Terrorism provided the first common definition of terrorist offenses across Europe. Following the Madrid and London attacks, the EU established a Counter-Terrorism Coordinator, recognized for his “serious practical input” and “effective and precious cooperation.”⁹⁸ The EU also adopted an overarching counter-terrorism strategy based on the U.K.’s four pillars: prevention, protection, pursuit and response, which Canada later copied. Indeed, much of the EU’s new Security Union Strategy is focused on better integrating EU Member States’ CT efforts. Some of these integration efforts have been more successful than others, but they do highlight how attempts to integrate the core and periphery through coordinators and orienting strategies are common solutions at the national and multilateral levels.

This integration of the core and periphery is also clear at the operational level. One of the first realizations amongst leaders in the core U.S. and British agencies was that military forces fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq needed better intelligence. For Hayden at the National Security Agency (NSA) the: “major muscle movement… was transforming from being a SIGINT production factory to an intelligence consultancy…. We needed a living breathing operational intimacy with the people we used to call customers. We had to ramp up the forward deployment of our knowledge, skills and abilities.”⁹⁹ To achieve this, by 2006 the NSA’s new Geocell had trained 4,000 military personnel and given them access to its products and databases. This meant that SIGINT and drone video feeds could be fused in real time on target.¹⁰⁰ The NSA also embedded five-man teams in divisions, and linked brigades and regiments to the highly classified NSA.net. This took time, but according to Hayden “when we really got going, front line soldiers were tuning orbiting satellites to hone in on target to their immediate front, while folks… at Fort Meade and Fort Gordon… were tuning antennas on tactical vehicles.”¹⁰¹ The DIA also pushed analysis teams to the frontlines, as the previously siloed collection and analysis functions became much more integrated with operations: “intelligence [was] analyzed downrange, close to the fight, making the process faster and the information potentially more relevant.”¹⁰² This closer integration of collection, analysis and operations was completely different to pre-9/11, and has become best practice for trans-Atlantic special forces. Operational integration was also followed by the FBI, which sent agents onto the battlefields to conduct forensic examinations of attack sites and feed fingerprint and biometric data back into domestic databases held by DHS.¹⁰³ According to Hayden: “the playbook was coherent centralized planning [with] decentralized execution, a networked information sharing enterprise; [leveraging] and unprecedented level of collaboration.”¹⁰⁴

A Network Approach

Hayden’s comments neatly link core-periphery integration with a networked approach to knowledge. Indeed, Clapper’s efforts to integrate U.S. IC IT systems had the goal of creating a unified network; integration contributes to network formation. However, one of the most important examples of a network approach to information sharing is how CT intelligence analysis is conducted since 9/11. Byman has highlighted the different character of intelligence needed for the war on terror,¹⁰⁵ while Medina outlined the new analytical approaches needed to tackle the digital information explosion and networked global terrorism compared to the hierarchical organizations of the Cold War.¹⁰⁶ For Manningham-Butler, this forced a change to penetrating terrorist “unknowns” rather than following traditional intelligence leads.¹⁰⁷ After 9/11, Social Network Analysis and understanding the relationships between nodes became crucial to CT. SNA is a quantitative method that measures the interactions between network members to reveal actor behavior and most important nodes. The early adoption of SNA was exemplified in its contribution to the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003, but its power was unleashed with the greatly enhanced data collection tools and algorithms used against terrorists since then. Driven by the intelligence demands of deployed military forces, this shift to analyzing terrorist groups as networks rather than hierarchical organizations marked a profound change in CT analysis across the trans-Atlantic space.¹⁰⁸

A network approach is equally evident in the transformation of CT collection which began to have real impact in Iraq from 2004. For Hayden, in the Cold War, “the enemy was pretty easy to find. Just hard to kill. This was different. The enemy was relatively easy to kill. He was just very, very hard to find.”¹⁰⁹ To support the “warfighters” against terrorist networks, the NSA and GCHQ were forced to transform from their Cold War practice of passive SIGINT – waiting for an enemy to transmit and then intercept it – to active SIGINT, or commuting to the target and extracting information. This was done by re-optimizing collection platforms to focus on terrorist networks and the introduction of new assets like the MQ-9 Reaper drone. But a complete transformation of CT collection occurred when these were complemented with new mass SIGINT and communications intelligence (COMINT) collection and sorting techniques focused on revealing terrorist networks. For Hayden: “this was all about going to the endpoint, the targeted network rather than trying to work the mid-point of a communication with a well-placed antenna”.¹¹⁰ For the first time, vast amounts of metadata were collected, stored, analyzed and, if need be, interrogated. According to Aldrich, the result “was a whole new world of intelligence. Indeed, it was not really intelligence as we understood it… it [w]as a jump to light speed”.¹¹¹ Former MI5 Director-General, Sir Ian Lobban, has elaborated:

If you think of the internet as an enormous hay field, what we are trying to do is to collect hay from those parts of the field that we can get access to and which might be lucrative in terms of containing the needles or the fragments of the needles that we might be interested in.¹¹²

For former NSA Director, Keith Alexander, the mantra was “collect it all… tag it, store it and whenever you want, go searching in it.”¹¹³ The Manning and Snowden leaks revealed that most trans-Atlantic nations have their own domestic surveillance programs or agreements with the NSA.¹¹⁴ The unparalleled extent of this collection sparked serious privacy concerns and prompted increased oversight of these programs. The leaks also highlighted the security risks associated with greater sharing. But in nations with advanced capabilities like the U.S., this SIGINT and COMINT could now be fused with imagery intelligence (IMINT), measurement and signature intelligence and human intelligence (HUMINT), to produce “exquisite intelligence” on terrorists that operational forces could utilize in real time. As Oakley and Schultz have noted, driven by the demands of the military’s CT mission, this represented nothing short of a transformation of the U.S. intelligence cycle.¹¹⁵

Organizational structures also changed due to operational demands. Al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI) provide an example here. According to McChrystal, in 2004 intelligence began to report that under Zarqawi’s leadership AQI represented “a change in the nature and networking of Al-Qa’ida” based around looser specialized functional nodes and decentralized operational execution.¹¹⁶ The operational tempo that this networked organization could maintain was beyond what McChrystal’s hierarchical U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) Task Forces could match. As a result, McChrystal realized that “it takes a network to defeat a network.”¹¹⁷ To defeat AQI, McChrystal adopted a network approach to knowledge that essentially better integrated the core U.S. CT agencies with each other, and U.S. and British special forces teams, to an unprecedented degree. There were numerous factors in the gradual creation of this network, but one of the most important was that McChrystal sought to break down interagency distrust and barriers to exchange by centralizing core agencies in a Joint Interagency Task Force and posting liaison officers (LNOs) with each agency. This stood in stark contrast to pre-9/11, when “only a handful of military liaison officers were working with the CIA,” and the FBI had only one liaison at the NSA.¹¹⁸ McChrystal realized that building a network of interpersonal relationships between JSOC and the IC was key to rapid information exchange: “I learned early on that our influence in the embassies and agencies we were wooing often depended on the simple charisma, integrity and competence of our liaisons.”¹¹⁹ Breaking tradition, he sent only his best operators and analysts to represent JSOC, a significant decision given the operational pressures his task forces were under. For McChrystal, over time “ideally an LO would develop such a fantastic relationship with the NSA or NGA… that when we really needed sensitive SIGINT or IMINT on a target urgently, it would come quickly, fully and without any bureaucratic friction, on a phone call.”¹²⁰ This approach to interagency liaison was then repeated at embassies around the region. Crucially, when faced with a difficult decision to operationalize sensitive intelligence when asked not to, McChrystal took the long view: “the maintenance of the long term relationship was more important than the immediate operation.”¹²¹ The integrity of the network was prioritized over the utility of specific intelligence: “everyone needed to trust counterparts and believe in the network premise.”¹²² Ultimately, McChrystal credits this networked intelligence exchange as turning JSOC “from a collection of niche strike forces into a network able to integrate diverse elements of the U.S. government into a unified effort” that ultimately defeated AQI.¹²³

Scholars have also identified the growth of formal and informal CT networks across the trans-Atlantic space. Aldrich argues that global terrorism has forced an acceleration of formal international intelligence exchange since 9/11, while Ben Jaffel highlights the growth of formal Anglo-European CT liaison since 9/11.¹²⁴ Bures shows how informal bilateral “arrangements” are preferred for CT intelligence exchange, and Hillebrand details the growth of informal networks in EU CT policing and argues these interpersonal networks that are the real conduit of high value CT intelligence in the Union.¹²⁵ Similarly, Davis Cross argues that post 9/11 the “European intelligence space is increasingly consolidating around a trans-governmental network of intelligence professionals.”¹²⁶ Another example is Europol, which has increasingly moved into the CT sphere.¹²⁷ For one former Executive Director, Europol is currently “adopting a network approach to CT.”¹²⁸ For this former senior, the 2020 expansion of its Secure Information Exchange Network Application (SIENA) to include 49 core CT agencies indicates its growing relevance as a central node in formal and informal European CT networks. As Europol doesn’t collect intelligence but facilitates exchange between approximately 750 agencies, a network approach is central to its organizational vision as it seeks to “become like an Air BnB or Uber of intelligence.”¹²⁹ The EU’s former Counter-Terrorism Coordinator, has remarked how the 2015 attacks in Europe led member states to create “a network on the ground, prison wardens, teachers etc” to share best practices and information. Clearly then, network approaches have been consciously adopted in trans-Atlantic CT intelligence collection, analysis, and exchange since 9/11.

Outsourcing

The final evidence of post-Fordist organization in trans-Atlantic CT is found in growth of outsourced contracts and contractors. Aldrich has noted that, internationally, intelligence “has privatized at a remarkable rate” since 9/11.¹³⁰ According to the ODNI, in 2010. 70 percent of the U.S. intelligence budget was spent on contracts, with the NGA outsourcing $1.4 billion in 2006.¹³¹ Importantly though, in 2010 contractors made up 28 percent of the IC’s workforce.¹³² Details for the individual agencies are broadly similar: according to Van Puyvelde, the DIA consisted of 35 percent contractors in 2008, double the 1975 figure.¹³³ Hayden has stated this figure was about 30 percent in the CIA in 2008, and Van Puyvelde reports a similar number in the NGA, but a higher total of up to 50 percent contractors in the CIA’s most sensitive Directorate of Operations.¹³⁴ “Core” contractors provide “direct technical, managerial, and administrative support to agencies” from the mundane to the highly sensitive, including “collection and operations, analysis and production, and enterprise information and technology.”¹³⁵ Shorrock highlights that the vast growth in U.S. outsourcing post-9/11 had resulted in the value of intelligence companies rising from $980 million in 2001 to $8.3 billion by 2006.¹³⁶ The largest of these include Booze Allen, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and CACI International, but they have been accompanied by a growth in smaller, bespoke intelligence firms too. Booze Allen, one of the largest contributors of intelligence contractors, employs some 10,000 Top Secret or Secret cleared individuals. As Aldrich notes, this places it “alongside the CIA and NSA as a major employer of cleared personnel in the United States.”¹³⁷

What was the reason for this rapid expansion of intelligence contracts and contractors? For Hayden, it did not represent new growth, but “buying back capacity, buying back capability, buying back resources that had been lost… in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union.”¹³⁸ Personnel and budget cuts had heavily impacted the U.S. IC, whilst there was also a post-9/11 surge in intelligence demand, with major gaps in institutional knowledge and tradecraft skills revealed.¹³⁹ According to one former senior military intelligence officer this demand was such that: “We’ve got more mission than we’ve people.”¹⁴⁰ For Chertoff, the unpredictability of this new demand meant that the flexibility and responsiveness of the private sector was needed.¹⁴¹ Time was also a constraint: it was much easier and faster to hire already cleared personnel. Van Puyvelde has detailed how the cost of pensions and budget constraints made it easier for contractors to be hired. Clapper surmised: “Government employees are very difficult to hire one year at a time.”¹⁴² It is important to recognize that the rapid growth of contractors was an ad hoc response to operational demands, rather than a planned organizational transformation. According to one former head of Human Capital at the ODNI: “I wish I could tell you it’s by design. But I think it’s been by default, there was no other choice to turn to contractors.”¹⁴³ While this reliance on contractors was not planned, the increased reliance on contracts was, reflecting the desire of the Bush administration to outsource to the private sector.

While the comparably vast size, budget and demands of the U.S. IC dwarfs outsourcing in other trans-Atlantic nations, the same trend has been followed. The U.K. IC has utilized consultancies to manage organizational transformation, technical support, and systems, and has used private and charitable organizations to assist with counter-radicalization efforts. The Netherlands and Belgium have outsourced some of their counter-radicalization efforts. France’s DGSE is known to closely cooperate with a telecoms company to give it mass surveillance capabilities. Indeed, for effective COMINT, good partnerships with private sector telecoms companies is vital to maintaining capability and is therefore practiced by most trans-Atlantic CT agencies. Artificial Intelligence is another. Compared to the Cold War, post-9/11 intelligence agencies have been forced to build stronger relationships with the tech sector to keep apace with the information revolution – the recent deal between British intelligence and Amazon is a case in point.

Another is the In-Q-tel initiative, a hybrid CIA-private tech sector startup lab with the goal of delivering “the most sophisticated source of strategic technical knowledge and capabilities to the U.S. government and its allies. In-Q-Tel explores emerging technology and provides insight, powering its partners with the ability to better anticipate and advance national security in the twenty first century.”¹⁴⁴ In-Q-Tel’s Interface Center “brings together over a dozen experienced CIA employees who identify and communicate an unclassified set of problems to In-Q-Tel every year.”¹⁴⁵ With an investment budget of approximately $25 million a year, in its first ten years the initiative delivered over 100 technology pilots to the CIA, with 12-20 brought to fruition. In-Q-Tel is widely regarded as a success, but also commercially, with products eventually transitioning into civilian use including GoogleEarth, and cyber security companies Palantir and FireEye. As van Puyvelde concludes, “the establishment of In-Q-Tel was a pivotal moment in the history of the relationship between the intelligence community and its contractors.”¹⁴⁶ De Kerchove has since pushed the EU to follow a similar “Innovation Hub” model and other nations have followed suit.

Conclusion

Den Boer and Wiegand conclude that in CT “states copy each other only to a very limited extent” as “cultures, working procedures and priorities” remain very different.¹⁴⁷ This is only partially correct. More deeply engaged with organizational sociology, Davies argues that in fact “intelligence is one of those fields where different governments with different historical institutions, different political ideologies, different popular and political cultures, and profoundly different strategic orientations and interests have to perform very similar tasks in very similar ways.”¹⁴⁸ The evidence supports this analysis. There has clearly been a growth in CT outsourcing across the trans-Atlantic space since 9/11, complemented by the other post-Fordist solutions of centralization of management control and decentralization of decision-making; integration of the core and periphery; and networked information sharing. These solutions are mutually reinforcing – centralization of management control encourages core-periphery integration which in turn contributes to information network creation. This has been identified by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen: “it’s been the synergy, it’s been the integration that has had such an impact.”¹⁴⁹ Another example is how the centralization of CT analysis in fusion centers has gradually increased domestic partner agency participation, which in turn contributed to the emergence of a trans-Atlantic information sharing network between these centers.

Practitioners agree that trans-Atlantic CT organization has transformed since 9/11 around broadly post-Fordist principles. According to Hayden: “That’s right, what you describe there is exactly what we did.” For a former JSOC commander: “Yeah, that’s it basically;” for a former Dutch intelligence officer: “Yes, at the big operational level and on the strategic political level”. For the former head of CT in Scotland: “definitely, to an extent, yes.” For a former Belgian interior minister: “Yes… that’s broadly what happened in Belgium,” and for Chertoff: “Good points, I think some points more than others, but the idea of networks and drawing on people from outside of the organization, yes.” For Omand: “I think your post-Fordist model is very helpful.”¹⁵⁰ This conceptualization has some merit, then.

But how effective have these organizational changes been? Some CT scholars and practitioners remain skeptical. Former seniors could, conceivably, be biased. According to one former Europol Director, due to “weaknesses and systematic deficiencies” in European CT, there are “gaps every day in the ability of governments to share information effectively, mainly because the response is geared at the national level but the problem is trans-national.”¹⁵¹ Challenges remain, then. Yet, even without access to the archives there is evidence of the positive cumulative effect of this transformation. For Chertoff, since 9/11: “I have witnessed a growing convergence – especially among our trans-Atlantic partners – in the battle against terrorism.”¹⁵² For Brennan: “it’s much more difficult for international terrorists now due to intra-U.S. and international collection and information exchange… great progress [has been] made.”¹⁵³ According to another former MI5 Director-General:

… There has been too little public explanation of the depth and quality of intelligence and security cooperation within Europe. […] I’ve heard our European partnerships characterized dismissively in terms of “simple” intelligence sharing […]. But this totally misrepresents the advanced arrangements, systems and structures that European security services have together built, and that we need to continue to build on to keep pace with shifting threats and technologies.¹⁵⁴

Other evidence supports these assertions. At the strategic level, despite numerous attempts, the most credible known attempt to repeat an attack on par with 9/11 – the 2006 Trans-atlantic Airline plot – was disrupted by close cooperation between British and U.S. intelligence including fused HUMINT and SIGINT. In Britain, the scale of the post-9/11 terrorist threat CT agencies face is stark. They frequently monitor 3,000 potential terrorists and up to 500 plots, from a total of 43,000 persons of interest.¹⁵⁵ Between March 2017 and October 2020, they disrupted 27 late-stage attack plots.¹⁵⁶ While there have been some attacks, this effort is incomparable in capacity and capability to before 9/11. There is further evidence from other operations. As a result of the U.S. development of “exquisite intelligence,” Bin Laden, al-Zarqawi and al-Baghdadi are all dead, along with numerous other jihadi leaders. JSOC’s adoption of a network approach to intelligence was critical in increasing raids in Iraq from 18 a month in 2004 to 300 by 2006; AQI could simply not cope with its operational tempo.¹⁵⁷ Legislative changes, counter-radicalization efforts and heavy investments in new technologies and resources have contributed to these successes, but so have similar organizational transformations. Post-Fordist CT organization is more effective than the siloed systems that preceded it. It is time to recognize this in the literature.

That this post-Fordist transformation has been influenced by the military and business sectors is also clear. In 2015, the CIA announced a major reorganization, based on U.S. military and business best practices. According to Brennan, who instigated the reforms: “The 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act reorganized the Department of Defense in a most profound and exceptionally impactful way. It integrated the military services into regional and functional combatant commands and in place unified and streamlined command structures… the CIA needs to take a similar approach.”¹⁵⁸ To achieve the goal of a matrixed rather than a siloed organization, the CIA “secured the services of a major outside consulting company” who’s advice was “crucial”.¹⁵⁹ The controversial reforms created ten mission centers based around six regions and four functions, with the goal of allowing the CIA Director “to function much like a public sector CEO”.¹⁶⁰

The policy question now is whether post-Fordist organization can meet rapidly evolving intelligence and CT demands. As services reorientate to strategic threats, and re-optimize collection capabilities,¹⁶¹ it appears post-Fordist principles remain useful. In July 2015, reacting to Russian attempts to influence the 2016  U.S. presidential election, Brennan and other IC leaders:

decided to send some of our Russia, cyber, and counterintelligence experts to be part of a “fusion cell” that could… share information being collected by the three agencies. Within days… the fusion cell was up and running.¹⁶²

Clearly, fusion cells remain useful when the nature of the threat is a state-based and/or hybrid. Similarly, the Interagency Task Force model has been copied to address human trafficking and climate change. Experts have already called for it to be used against far right-terrorism in the U.S. And any artificial intelligence-based RIA is also likely to be at least in part determined by similar organizational solutions. Indeed, combined with effective legislation, de-radicalization programs and sufficient resources, post-Fordist CT organization is likely to prove as important in meeting this challenge as it has against global jihadism since 9/11.

Acknowledgment

Author thank Bruce Hoffman and the two anonymous reviewers.

Funding

Research funded by UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship grant reference MR/S034412/1.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Research funded by UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship grant reference MR/S034412/1.

Notes

1 Peter Andreas, “Redrawing the Line: Borders and Security in the Twenty-first Century,” International Security 28, no. 2 (2003): 78–111; Jenna Jordan, “Attacking the Leader, Missing the Mark: Why Terrorist Groups Survive Decapitation Strikes.”

2 Richard Aldrich “Strategic Culture as a Constraint: Intelligence Analysis, Memory and Organizational Learning in the Social Sciences and History,” Intelligence and National Security 32, no. 5 (2017): 625.

3 Amy Zegart, “September 11 and the Adaptation Failure of U.S. Intelligence Agencies,” International Security 29, no. 4 (2005): 78–111.

4 Frank Foley, “Why Inter-Agency Operations Break Down: US Counterterrorism in Comparative Perspective,” European Journal of International Security 1, no. 2 (2016): 151.

5 Richard Aldrich, “Transatlantic Intelligence and Security Cooperation,” International Affairs 80, no. 4 (2004): 731–753.

6 Ibid.

7 Wyn Rees and Richard Aldrich, “Contending Cultures of Counterterrorism: Transatlantic Divergence or Convergence?” International Affairs 81, no. 5 (2005): 905–923.

8 Richard Aldrich, “Beyond the Vigilant State?: Globalization and Intelligence,” Review of International Studies 35, no. 4 (2009): 889–902.

9 Michael Chertoff, Patrick Bury and Daniela Richterova et al. “Transforming Transatlantic Counter-Terrorism” Globsec Intelligence Reform Initiative (Globsec, Bratislava, 2016).

10 Richard Aldrich and Rory Cormac, The Black Door: Spies, Secret Intelligence, and British Prime Ministers (London: William Collins, 2016).

11 Frank Foley, Countering Terrorism in Britain and France: Institutions, Norms and the Shadow of the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

12 Philip Davies, “Intelligence and the Machinery of Government: Conceptualizing the Intelligence Community,” Public Policy and Administration 25, no. 1 (2010): 31, 39.

13 Byman Daniel and Benjamin Wittes, “Reforming the NSA: How to Spy After Snowden,” Foreign Affairs 93 (2014): 127; Adam Svendsen, “The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Change: Addressing US Domestic Counter-Terrorism Intelligence,” Intelligence and National Security 27, no. 3 (2012): 371–397; 165–184.

14 Deborah Barger, Toward a Revolution in Intelligence Affairs (Santa Monica: RAND, 2005).

15 Peter Chalk, “Domestic Counter-Terrorist Intelligence Structures in the United Kingdom, France, Canada and Australia,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2020).

16 Javier Argomaniz, Oldrich Bures and Christian Kaunert, “A Decade of EU Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence: A Critical Assessment,” Intelligence and National Security 30, no. 2–3 (2015): 198.

17 Monica den Boer and Irina Wiegand, “From Convergence to Deep Integration: Evaluating the Impact of EU Counter-Terrorism Strategies on Domestic Arenas,” Intelligence and National Security 30, no. 2–3 (2015): 399.

18 Raphael Bossong, The Evolution of EU Counter-Terrorism (London: Routledge, 2013).

19 Bures Argomaniz and Kaunert, “A Decade of EU Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence,” 195.

20 Ibid., 202.

21 Bures Argomaniz and Kaunert, “A Decade of EU Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence,” 196.

22 Aldrich, “Beyond the Vigilant State?” 899.

23 Thomas Renard, “Counter-Terrorism as a Public Policy: Theoretical Insights and Borader Reflections on the State of Counter-Terrorism Research,” Perspectives on Terrorism 15, no. 4 (2020).

24 Parts of this section are reproduced under licence (Patrick Bury, “Conceptualising the quiet revolution: the post-Fordist revolution in western military logistics, European Security, 30:1 (2021), 112-136).

25 Anthony King, “The Post-Fordist Military,” Journal of Political & Military Sociology 34, no. 2 (2006): 360.

26 Michael Piore and Charles Sabel, The Second Industrial Divide (New York: Basic Books, 1984); James Womack, Daniel Jones and Daniel Roos, The Machine that Changed the World (New York: Macmillan, 1990); Harland Prechel, “Economic Crisis and the Centralization of Control over the Managerial Process: Corporate Re-Structuring and Neo-Fordist Decision-Making?” American Sociological Review 59, no. 5 (1994): 723–745; Benjamin Gomes-Casseres, The Alliance Revolution, (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1996).

27 Andrew Sayer, “Postfordism in Question,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 13, no. 4 (1989): 666–695; Steven Vallas, “Rethinking Post-Fordism: The Meaning of Workplace Flexibility,” Sociological Theory 17, no. 1 (1999): 68–101.

28 King, “The Post-Fordist Military”, 367.

29 Ibid., 368.

30 Bury, “Conceptualising the quiet revolution”; Patrick Bury, Mission Improbable: The Transformation of the British Army Reserve (Howgate, Havant, 2019); Author 2021, 2019.

31 Robert K. Yin, Case Study Research Design and Methods, 5th ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2014).

32 Derek Beach, “Process-Tracing Methods in Social Science,” Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Politics, available at https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-176(2017).

33 Jason Seawright and John Gerring, “Case Selection Techniques in Case Study Research: A Menu of Qualitative and Quantitative Options.” Political research quarterly 61, no. 2 (2008): 294–308.

34 Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff, ed., The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics Technology (Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 2002), 6.

35 Interview, Michael Chertoff, 1 March, 2021.

36 Interview, Former Dutch intelligence official, 8 March, 2021.

37 Interview, John Cuddihy, former CT lead. Police Scotland, 23 February, 2021.

38 Interview, Graeme Lamb, former Director, British Special Forces, 18 March, 2021.

39 Dutch official interview.

40 Giles de Kerchove EU Consillium CY Event 8 July, 2021.

41 Richard J. Aldrich, GCHQ (London: William Collins, 2019), 505; Christopher Eldridge, Christopher Hobbs and Matthew Moran, “Fusing Algorithms and Analysts: Open-Source Intelligence in the Age of ‘Big Data’”, Intelligence and National Security 33, no. 3 (2018): 391–406.

42 Sir David Pepper, “The Business of SigInt: The Role of Modern Management in the Transformation of GCHQ”, Public Policy and Administration 25, no. 1 (2010): 86.

43 Ibid., 86.

44 Ibid., 87–8.

45 Ibid., 89.

46 Ibid., 96.

47 General Michael Hayden, Playing to the Edge (Penguin: London, 2014), 4.

48 Ibid., 13.

49 Interview, General Michael Hayden, 29 April, 2021.

50 Hayden, Playing to the Edge, 13.

51 Ibid., 16.

52 Ibid., 35.

53 Ibid., 16.

54 Andreas, “Redrawing the Line”, 92.

55 Chertoff interview.

56 Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 52.

57 Hayden, Playing to the Edge, 167.

58 Jennifer Sims, “Intelligence to counter terror: The importance of all-source fusion”, Intelligence and National Security 22, no. 1 (2007): 38–56.

59 John Brennan, Undaunted (New York: Celadon, 2020), 138.

60 Ibid., 147.

61 Ibid., 148.

62 Interview with Sir David Omand, 1 April, 2021.

63 Hayden, Playing to the Edge, 177.

64 Omand interview.

65 Ibid.

66 Frank Foley, “Reforming Counterterrorism: Institutions and Organizational Routines in Britain and France,” Security Studies 18, no. 3 (2009): 462–464.

67 Christopher Andrews, The Authorized History of MI5 (London: Penguin, 2010), 818.

68 Ibid.

69 Cuddihy interview.

70 Council of the European Union, Conclusions Adopted by the Council (Justice and Home Affairs), September 25, 2001.

71 Interview, Dutch Official.

72 Ibid.

73 Interview, Annemie Turtelboom, Former Belgian Interior and Justice Minister, 1 April, 2021.

74 Foley argues France’s centralized terrorism threat assessment body, UCLAT, has been severely curtailed by distrust amongst France’s multiple CT and lacking political will.

75 Leon Panetta, Worthy Fights (New York: Penguin, 2015), 240.

76 Hayden, Playing to the Edge, 300.

77 Ibid., 289.

78 Andrews, The Authorized History of MI5, 817.

79 Omand interview.

80 Intelligence and Security Committee Report 2006–07, 10.

81 Peter Clarke, “Learning from experience: Counter Terrorism in the UK since 9/11” (London: Policy Exchange, 2007), 24.

82 Intelligence Resource Program, available at https://fas.org/irp/budget/

83 Richard Schultz, Transforming US Intelligence for Irregular War: Task Force 714 in Iraq (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2020).

84 Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Key Facts about Contractors,” 2.

85 Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, Counterstrike (New York: Times Books, 2011), 37.

86 Chertoff, Homeland Security, 43.

87 Aldrich, GCHQ, 481.

88 Richard Norton-Taylor and Nick Hopkins, “How the Shock of 9/11 made MI5 Stronger,”

The Guardian, 11 September, 2011.

89 Aldrich, GCHQ, 485; Andrews, Authorized History of MI5, 824, 827, 835.

90 Hager ben Jaffel, Anglo-European Intelligence Cooperation (London: Routledge, 2019), 116.

91 Hayden, Playing to the Edge, 178.

92 James Clapper, Facts and Fears (New York: Penguin, 2018), 193.

93 General Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task (New York: Portfolio Penguin, 2013), 170.

94 Nick Rasmussen, “CT since 9/11” War on the Rocks, 12 September, 2019.

95 Richard Best, “Director of National Intelligence Statutory Authorities: Status and Proposals,” Congressional Research Service, 16 December, 2011.

96 Omand interview.

97 Omand interview.

98 Bernard Cazenueve, EU Consillium CT Event 8 July, 2021.

99 Hayden, Playing to the Edge, 57.

100 Ibid., 61.

101 Ibid., 58.

102 McChrystal, My Share of the Task, 117.

103 Michael Chertoff, “Terrorism 3.0: The Challenge of Crowdsourced Global Terrorism”, IICT, 12 September 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT1TyxaxT9I (accessed 16 July, 2020).

104 Hayden, Playing to the Edge, 58.

105 Daniel Byman, “The Intelligence War on Terrorism”, Intelligence and National Security, 29, no. 6 (2014), 837–863.

106 Carmen Medina, “The Coming Revolution in Intelligence Analysis: What to Do When Traditional Models Fail,” Inside CIA: Lessons in Intelligence (2004): 326.

107 Andrews, The Authorized History of MI5, 323.

108 Interview, Norwegian Intelligence officer, 23 June, 2021.

109 Hayden, Playing to the Edge, 32.

110 Ibid., 134.

111 Aldrich, GCHQ, 505.

112 John Ferris, Behind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 697.

113 Schultz, Transforming US Intelligence.

114 Julian Borger, “GCHQ and European Spy Agencies Worked Together on Mass Surveillance,” The Guardian, 1 November, 2013.

115 David Oakley, Subordinating Intelligence: The DoD/CIA Post-Cold War Relationship (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2019); Schultz, Transforming US Intelligence.

116 McChrystal, My Share of the Task, 113.

117 General Stanley, McChrystal et al., Team of Teams (New York: Penguin, 2015), 84.

118 Oakley, Subordinating Intelligence, 1; Tim Weiner, Enemies: A History of the FBI (New York: Penguin, 2013), 414.

119 McChrystal, My Share of the Task, 169.

120 McChrystal et al., Team of Teams, 180.

121 Ibid., 139.

122 Ibid., 154.

123 Ibid., 119.

124 Aldrich, “Globalization and Hesitation?”.

125 Oldrich Bures. “Informal Counterterrorism Arrangements in Europe: Beauty by Variety or Duplicity by Abundance?” Cooperation and Conflict 47, no. 4 (2012): 495–518; Claudia Hillebrand, Counter-Terrorism Networks in the European Union (Oxford: OUP, 2012).

126 M. Davis Cross, “A European Transgovernmental Intelligence Network and the Role of IntCen,” Perspectives on European Politics and Society 14, no. 3 (2013): 88–402.

127 Richard Aldrich, “Globalization and Hesitation?”; Ben Jaffel, Anglo-European Intelligence Cooperation.

128 Interview, Sir Rob Wainwright, Europol Director, 9 June, 2016.

129 Ibid.

130 Aldrich, “Globalization and Hesitation?” 5.

131 Damien Van Puvvelde, Outsourcing US Intelligence: Contractors and Government Accountability (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), 94.

132 ODNI, “Key Facts,” 2.

133 Van Puvvelde, Outsourcing US Intelligence, 94.

134 Ibid.

135 L. Elaine Halchin, “The Intelligence Community and Its Use of Contractors: Congressional Oversight Issues” 18 August, 2015, available at https://fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/R44157.pdf

136 Tim Shorrock, Spies for Hire (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009): 23–5; 264–9.

137 Aldrich, “Globalization and Hesitation?” 23.

138 General Michael Hayden, Frontline 19 August, 2010.

139 ODNI, “Key Facts”, 2.

140 Van Puvvelde, Outsourcing US Intelligence, 87.

141 Michael Chertoff, “Privatization of U.S. Intelligence”, C-SPAN 20 August, 2009.

142 Van Puvvelde, Outsourcing US Intelligence, 89.

143 Ibid., 90–91.

144 Available at www.Inqtel.org.

145 Van Puyvelde Outsourcing US Intelligence, 82.

146 Ibid., 81.

147 den Boer and Wiegand, “From Convergence to Deep Integration,” 399–400.

148 Davies, “Intelligence and the Machinery of Government,” 496.

149 J Warrick and R Wright, “U.S. teams weaken insurgency in Iraq,” The Washington Post, 6 Sep, 2008.

150 Interviews: Hayden; Chris Fussell interview, 4 March, 2021; Dutch; Cuddihy; Turtelboom; Chertoff.

151 Wainwright interview.

152 Chertoff, Homeland Security, 153.

153 “CT since 9/11,” War on the Rocks 12 September, 2019.

154 Sir Andrew Parker, comments at German Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), 1 May, 2018.

155 Dipesh Gadher, “Terrorism in the UK: number of suspects tops 40,000 after MI5 rechecks its list,” The Times, 12 April, 2020.

156 “Director-General Ken McCallum makes first public address”, 14 October, 2020, available at https://www.mi5.gov.uk/news/director-general-ken-mccallum-makes-first-public-address

157 McChrystal, Team of Teams, 218.

158 Brennan, Undaunted, 292–3.

159 Ibid., 293.

160 Ibid., 297.

161 Patrick Bury & Michael Chertoff, “New Intelligence Strategies for a New Decade,” The RUSI Journal 165, no. 4 (2020): 42–53.

162 Brennan, Undaunted, 370.