INTELLIGENCE – A SPECIAL KIND OF KNOWLEDGE

During my six years as an intelligence professional in the Swedish Military and Security Directorate (Militära Underrättelse och Säkerhetstjänsten – the MUST) I produced and consumed intelligence assessments of different scope and focus. During this time my curiosity about the phenomenon of knowledge within intelligence analysis grew. I tried to make sense of and categorise what the contribution of the intelligence service really was to the political policymaking process. At the same time there was (and still is) a vibrant debate among scholars and practitioners over the problems of intelligence analysis. The debate on intelligence analysis is primarily concerned with the issue of why it often comes to ‘wrong conclusions’. Additionally, the debate is concerned with the question of why intelligence services seem ineffective in providing timely intelligence to policy decisions, and what could make the analysis and input to policy more efficient.

My initial curiosity later changed to a more critical reading of intelligence and its special kind of knowledge. The intelligence service – not only in Sweden but also all over the world – produces knowledge on security issues, conflicts, war and complex political processes. The knowledge is often produced within a tight time frame, with only some of the relevant information available, which makes the intelligence analysis task more challenging and difficult. In spite of these difficulties intelligence knowledge is used to contextualise, explain and predict events in the real world. Its fundamental aim is to underpin strategic action and help security policymakers to make informed decisions; consequently it has a great impact on how security issues are understood and how security and foreign policy is shaped. Yet history shows that on numerous occasions intelligence has affected policy outcome in the wrong direction and grave consequences have followed.

In my critical reading of intelligence products, I noticed what seemed like peculiarities. For instance, the text of the assessments seemed to contain a high degree of repetitiveness in wording and substance. Furthermore, the conclusions seemed to be articulated as objective truths. They were formulated with objective truth claims and the arguments and evidence in support of the conclusions were mostly diffuse or hidden in the background of the text.