The Infrastructure of American Global Intelligence in the Cold War

• In Event: The Diverse Foundations of American Global Power

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of “intelligence infrastructure” to refer to the network of physical-material installations which states must construct to conduct many of the most important forms of modern surveillance. States that seek a global surveillance capability must construct a network of physical sites, many located on foreign soil, that enable it to do everything from intercept communications to obtain overhead imagery to detect nuclear weapons tests. This infrastructure of intelligence is an understudied and underappreciated foundation for modern power. I illustrate the scope and centrality of this logistical-intelligence effort through an overview of the sprawling American network of foreign sites for intelligence collection during the Cold War, drawing on initial findings from declassified digital and in-person archival material. The paper then builds on insights from scholars of built environment and infrastructure to develop three distortive legacies of building and maintaining a global intelligence infrastructure: binding U.S. policy to personalist dictators; inducing U.S. support for European colonialism and opposition to decolonization; and, inflating the geopolitical stakes of crises in peripheral areas. I conclude with a brief discussion of lessons for analyzing the forms and extent of Chinese intelligence infrastructure today.

Author

• Austin Carson, University of Chicago