A Typology of Entities Practicing Intelligence

• In Event: Intelligence in Democracies: Dynamic or Dormant

Abstract

In the social sciences, the term intelligence --activity relating to the collection, analysis, and use of information to provide advantage to decision-makers -- has no universal definition. Baron convened leading scholars for workshops hosted by the National Intelligence University and the International Association For Intelligence Education in 2023 exploring the definitions of intelligence. Macpherson and Hastedt provide an overview of the definitions of national security intelligence in their 2023 article: What is Intelligence?: A New Quantitative Approach to an Old Question. Yet, published works fail to provide a unifying framework for understanding intelligence practiced by governments, businesses, criminals, and other organizations. In this paper we address this lacuna by employing an interdisciplinary approach.

The use of syndromes in medical pathology helps scientist to develop disease typologies providing a pathways for understanding phenomena. Bennett writes that there are many pathways a disease may take “and it may exhibit varying symptoms and degrees of severity”. Pathologists, scientists who studies the causes and effects of diseases, identify clusters and outcomes or syndromes to classify manifestations of diseases. Just as there is no single type of cancer there is no single type of intelligence.

There are many organizations that conduct information collection, analysis, counterintelligence, and covert action activities that collectively have been called intelligence. Government intelligence services, law enforcement, corporations, not-for-profit entities, criminal enterprises, and other non–state actors all collect and devise strategies to gain advantage over their adversaries using intelligence. While there appear to be significant similarities in what is described as intelligence, there are important differences. Just as there is no single type of cancer there is no single type of intelligence.

In this paper we present distinct types of intelligence each warranting their own definitions. We propose a typology based on the organization conducting the intelligence activity. We believe organizational categories are collectively exhaustive yet they are not mutually exclusive. These organizations may be further elucidated according to a typology demonstrating organizational capacity and autonomy variables.

Authors

• Andrew Macpherson, University of New Hampshire

• Frederic Baron, National Intelligence University