Seeing The Invisible: National Security Intelligence In An Uncertain Age

Intelligence is critical to ensuring national security, especially with asymmetric threats making up most of the new challenges. Knowledge, rather than power, is the only weapon that can prevail in a complex and uncertain environment awash with asymmetric threats, some known, many currently unknown. This book shows how such a changing national security environment has had profound implications for the strategic intelligence requirements of states in the 21st century.The book shows up the fallacy underlying the age-old assumption that intelligence agencies must do a better job of connecting the dots and avoiding future failures. It argues that this cannot and will not happen for a variety of reasons. Instead of seeking to predict discrete future events, the strategic intelligence community must focus rather on risk-based anticipatory warnings concerning the nature and impact of a range of potential threats. In this respect, the book argues for a full and creative exploitation of technology to support - but not supplant - the work of the strategic intelligence community, and illustrates this ideal with reference to Singapore's path-breaking Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning (RAHS) program.

Table of Contents:
The Plan of the Book; Understanding National Security; The Complex and Uncertain International Security Environment; Strategic Intelligence Assessment and Surprise Attacks; Ancient and Modern Assessments: Common Problems; Reinforcing Intelligence Failures; Technology and Intelligence; Structure and Organization -- The Weakness of Centralized Intelligence; Faint Signals; More Faint Signals Being Missed?; National Security Intelligence and the Front Line Requirements; Open Source Intelligence; Anticipating Future Threats: The Problem Areas; Anticipating Future Threats: The Areas of Strength; The Singapore Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning Process; Rethinking National Security Intelligence; Appendix: National Security and Education: Thinking Across the Boundaries of Time and Specialization.

About the Author :
Tom Quiggin, M.A, C.D., is a court qualified expert on jihadism and currently is a Senior Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for National Security at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Singapore. He has 20 years of practical experience in a variety of intelligence positions. He has worked in an intelligence capacity for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Armed Forces, the United Nations Protection Force in Yugoslavia, Citizen and Immigration Canada (War Crimes), the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (The Hague), and the Privy Council Office of Canada. He was also a qualified arms control inspector for the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty and the Vienna Document. He holds a Masters Degree in International Relations. He has a number of other publications on security and terrorism matters in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore, the UK, and the USA.

Review :
"Tom Quiggin has written a timely book for the national security community. Political extremism is likely to supplant transnational terrorism as a key factor in national security. State run intelligence institutions are going to have to improve their strategic level analytical capabilities to meet this new challenge and many others. This book outlines the changing needs of national security intelligence, the complex international environment in which it operates, and the ways that will have to adapt to counter the multiple emerging asymmetric threats. Lessons for intelligence have been learned on the front lines of counter terrorism, but we still need fundamental change to meet the future." Rohan Gunaratna Author of Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror Columbia University Press "This is one of the most original, broad-ranging, and indeed exciting books to emerge in the new era that juxtaposes asymmetric and non-traditional threats with distributed and innovative combinations of open sources and methods. Tom Quiggin fully understands that in the age of distributed information the concept of "central intelligence" is not only obsolete, but that effective intelligence cannot be achieved without the full cooperation of all organizations -- governmental as well as non-governmental. This work is in my view the first major work in the new generation of intelligence and national security studies and will inform those who have to make the decisions and carry out the work, not only in government, but in the private and non-profit sectors where much of the innovation is occurring. With the author being most persuasive to the effect that "connecting the dots" for discrete event predictions is not within the capacity of the existing strategic intelligence community, anticipatory warning systems such as horizon scanning must not only be implemented for all forms of threat including communicable diseases, but they must be created with the full participation of all elements of society." Robert David Steele CEO, OSS.NET, Inc.