U-2 aerial recomnaissance image of Soviet missile bases under construction in Cuba shown to President Kennedy on 16 October 1962 shortly before the Cuban Missile Crisis – John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum (public domain image)

(5) ESPIONAGE & INTELLIGENCE

Knowledge is power – and war.

Espionage and counterespionage, intelligence and counterintelligence, agents and assets, spies and spycraft, black ops and covert ops, codebreaking and cryptanalysis, deception and disinformation, reconnaissance and surveillance, sabotage and subversion, stealth and subterfuge, honeypot and wetwork.

HUMINT or human intelligence as the thing we usually think about as espionage or intelligence, SIGINT or signals intelligence as the thing that usually is espionage or intelligence, and also all the abbreviated forms of intelligence – COMINT, GEOINT, FININT, IMINT, MASINT, OSINT.

Psychological warfare and terror lead naturally to the overlapping subject of espionage and intelligence, in turn incredibly prolific subjects worthy of their own top ten, or indeed several top tens.

Spies have been dubbed the second oldest profession, after pr0stitution as the oldest profession -with considerable overlap between them. Both desciptions as oldest or second oldest professions are more anecdotes than serious analysis, but certainly espionage or spies can be traced back to the Bronze Age ancient history in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

And that’s just because that’s when written records began, as one could almost certainly trace espionage or at least intelligence back to Stone Age prehistory, with the scouting or tracking that can reasonably conjectured to have accompanied prehistoric warfare.

Espionage or spies are mentioned in the two definitive ancient works of Western literature – the Bible and Homer – and very much as a fundamental part of war, as it was in that definitive work of strategy, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.

In the Bible, the Israelites didn’t just launch into their conquest of Canaan cold. Not surprisingly given the short distance involved between Egypt and Canaan, part of that famous forty years in the wilderness was spent sending spies into Canaan – once again with that overlap with the oldest profession, as two such spies were aided by Rahab, widely read to be a harl0t.

Espionage or spies are also mentioned in the Iliad, not surprisingly given it is Western literature’s most famous siege – and of course the Trojan War was famously won by an act of deception or subterfuge, orchestrated by one of Western literature’s great deceptive characters, Odysseus (who is essentially characterized by deception and subterfuge throughout the Odyssey as well).

The Art of War identified spies as a fundamental part of war or military strategy – “The Art of War identifies five types of spies that are essential for gathering intelligence and achieving victory: local spies (citizen informants within the enemy’s territory), inward spies (recruited double agents within the enemy ranks), converted spies (recruited defectors converted to serve your side), doomed spies (expendable fabricators used to spread disinformation; acts as decoy for counter-intelligence), and surviving spies (spies that provide accurate intelligence after gathering information from the enemy).”

Espionage and intelligence have been and continued to be as fundamental to war as military force, indeed inextricably intertwined with the disposition and use of military force. Deploying force without adequate espionage or intelligence of enemy forces is effectively going in blind, such that going in naked would be preferable and perhaps less tempting fate for ambush or defeat. It would be interesting to identify how many military failures are ultimately intelligence failures – my own belief is that it would be a substantial proportion or part.

Even so, some might argue that espionage and intelligence are not of themselves types of war or substitutes for military force in war. To which I would respond firstly that these are special mentions but secondly and more fundamentally, that espionage and intelligence have assumed a role of such importance in warfare that they can be regarded as a type of warfare – espionage or spy warfare, intelligence warfare, deception warfare and so on.

A large part of the world wars – arguably a predominant part for signals intelligence, codebreaking, and cryptanalysis – could be called intelligence warfare, with the Cold War even more so, as a war in which espionage or intelligence indeed substituted for or pre-empted military force to large extent.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (TOP TIER)