Analysis & Opinions

Intelligence Project team members Maria Robson-Morrow, Katie Tucker, and Judit Gaspar were interviewed on the Business of Intelligence Podcast about their research into corporate intelligence professionals and services.

Bystander video feeds show scenes of fire and destruction, flames engulfing pipelines and smoke billowing from oil tank farms. In one clip, a twin-tailed aircraft flies slowly over a burning refinery. It loiters, banks, and then plunges precisely into the top of a tall, hydrocarbon filled distillation tower followed by explosions and more fire.

Kyiv is turning the tables on Russia by striking at its hydrocarbon lifeblood. Ukraine’s justified and effective homegrown response to Putin’s two-year campaign of attacks on the nation’s energy infrastructure shows Russia that what goes around comes around.

Demand for intelligence vendors is substantial and increasing. In 2022, global cyber threat intelligence was estimated to be a $4.93 billion industry, and U.S. security services was a whopping $48.1 billion. Geopolitical and security risk intelligence is an unquantified but essential and rapidly growing part of the story. But how do you know whether an intelligence vendor aligns with your company’s needs, risk tolerance, and ethics? The authors, from Harvard University’s Belfer Center’s Intelligence Project, have developed a database of 70 vendors that corporate intelligence professionals identified as informing their work. Their systematic analysis of this dynamic ecosystem revealed four key questions for corporate decision makers to ask in order to maximize their return on vendors.

Note: The authors have compiled a checklist accompanying this article, which can be viewed and downloaded from the Belfer Center’s website here.

As more and more corporate teams leverage private intelligence vendors to understand geopolitical and security operating conditions, it is critical for executives and their intelligence teams to ask the right questions. How should private sector entities ensure that intelligence vendors operating around the world aligns with their needs, risk tolerance, and ethics?

Calder Walton writes that if proved, Victor Manuel Rocha's espionage would place him among the longest-serving spies in modern times. Allowing him to operate as a spy in the senior echelons of the U.S. government for so long would represent a staggering U.S. security failure.

Early after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, as Russian troops threatened Kyiv and Russian cruise missiles destroyed targets across the country, Oleksandr Kamyshin, Head of Ukrainian State Railways, received direct customer feedback that the bathrooms at one of his stations were filthy.

THE UKRAINE DIARIES — When I first visited Ukraine with The Cipher Brief in May, just ahead of the much-anticipated third Ukrainian counteroffensive, western commentators and media had raised expectations for dramatic Ukrainian breakthroughs. By contrast, Ukrainian military and civilian leaders were confident of success, but more muted in expectations. They did not predict or expect a Russian rout. Rather, knowing what they faced and that the going would be tough, they saw this as one phase of a long campaign.

Calder Walton writes that China's clandestine services are on the front line of Beijing's grand strategy: to keep the Chinese Communist Party in power and to make China the world's leading and self-sufficient military and economic power. The aim is to invert the technological landscape so other countries depend on Chinese, not western, technology.

Who can be surprised that Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin met his timely end? Many have cited variations of the quote attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson that if you try to kill the king, you better not miss.

Calder Walton recounts the succession of intelligence failures against the West over which Russian President Vladimir Putin has presided, the greatest of which being his decision to invade Ukraine.