It’s spy vs. spy vs. spy

technical intelligence operations, like signals intelligence, or code-breaking, or imagery intelligence. Intelligence is not mysterious: It is secret information, which, by definition, requires secret means to obtain. Sometimes there’s not that much difference between publicly available information in The New York Times, for example, or in the Harvard Gazette, and in intelligence briefings — and when that happens, policymakers rightly ask what’s the point of intelligence briefings if they can read the same or similar information in the press? The purpose of intelligence is to provide policymakers, decision-makers, with something extra — something they can’t obtain, read, or see on the news or some other way. So, at its most basic, the purpose of intelligence is to help policymakers make their decisions. It’s to be able to know about enemies’ intentions and capabilities, and it is to be able to know about threats on the horizon. It doesn’t always work, as we’ve seen recently, but that’s the aim.

Pazzanese:  Is it always conducted by one government or state against another?
Walton: Not necessarily. Intelligence existed even before there were states, as we understand them today — it goes back to the ancient and nomadic worlds. Today, intelligence is also being conducted in another way outside of governments and states: With the privatization of intelligence, with big businesses like Facebook, hoovering up data, intelligence exists in the private sector as well as the government. In fact, big companies like Facebook now know arguably more about people than even the government, in some cases. So that’s a form of intelligence. It doesn’t have to be state-to-state. But traditionally, for the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, it was state-to-state, yes.

Pazzanese: What do you make of news that the FBI opened an investigation into whether the president of the United States has been working on behalf of Russia? In the history of Western espionage, has there been anything comparable to a major world power like the U.S. possibly being controlled by an enemy agent like Russia?

Walton: I think what we’re seeing unfolding on the news every day right now is, potentially, the greatest intelligence or espionage scandal in modern history, maybe in history, full stop. The Kremlin has managed to get a candidate who’s very favorable to itself in