This new focus on the strategic dynamics of secret statecraft complements and expands the traditional emphasis on the behavior of intelligence organizations and intelligence-policy relations in the intelligence studies field.[3]<\/a> Yet there is still little work on the operational conditions that promote success (or failure) in intelligence campaigns, and how this may enable (or undermine) strategic advantage in political competition.[4]<\/a> This gap contrasts starkly with the extensive literature on military effectiveness on the battlefield.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n While traditional warfare is an extreme form of security competition, intelligence contests depend essentially on institutional cooperation. Intelligence works by subverting institutions that improve information and collective action, such as governments, organizations, cultural practices, and software systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spies sneak into foreign societies or hostile organizations by pretending to be legitimate citizens or trusted colleagues. Spyware likewise infiltrates shared information systems by masquerading as legitimate software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is one reason why intelligence is not only prevalent in peacetime but also more challenging in war: Institutions thrive in peace but suffer in war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n War is a contest of strength and resolve in political anarchy, which tends to undermine the institutional conditions for intelligence. Intelligence, by contrast, is a contest of wits between deceivers who must cooperate to compete.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n My recent book, Age of Deception: Cybersecurity as Secret Statecraft <\/a><\/em>(Cornell 2025), presents an institutional theory of intelligence performance. It argues that the successful operational implementation of secret statecraft (espionage, sabotage, subversion, counterintelligence), in any historical era regardless of the technological state of the art, depends on a combination of vulnerable institution<\/em>s and clandestine organization<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The former refers to collective institutional resources that are shared between a deception specialist (i.e., intelligence attacker) and its target, while the latter refers to institutional resources that the deceiver can control autonomously. Vulnerable institutions provide the operating environment that a clandestine organization exploits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the monitoring and enforcement vulnerabilities of the institutional environment are exposed and a sophisticated organization can discreetly employ its clandestine capabilities, then persistent intelligence access can be maintained. When institutions are less exposed, however, then operations must become more complex to overcome access barriers, and when organizations are less sophisticated, conversely, there is greater risk of losing control of operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This view challenges a conventional wisdom prevalent in the policy discourse of cybersecurity, namely that technology gives attackers the advantage over defenders (i.e., cyberspace is offense dominant).[7]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The institutional conditions of secret statecraft are both socially and technically constructed. <\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Consider, for example, two Russian intelligence campaigns conducted nearly a century apart. In the early Cold War, the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB) recruited a spy ring known as the \u201cCambridge Five,\u201d the most famous of whom was Kim Philby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Philby rose to the senior ranks of British intelligence, and he relied on good-old-fashioned espionage tradecraft to betray numerous Western intelligence operations to the Soviets. After the Cold War, one of the KGB\u2019s descendants was the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The SVR hacked the SolarWinds company in 2019, using sophisticated technical methods to gain access to thousands of organizations and infiltrating more than a hundred of them. Yet while SolarWinds was hacked by an advanced persistent threat (APT), the human spy Philby was ultimately less advanced but far more persistent. We need an institutional theory of intelligence performance to explain why technology does not always ensure success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If technology determines intelligence performance, then the more sophisticated SolarWinds campaign should have fared better. However, Philby maintained persistent access to his targets for decades, rather than mere months, and inflicted serious damage to Western intelligence operations, rather than simply raising awareness about supply-chain cybersecurity. Institutional conditions, rather than technological sophistication<\/a>, determine the quality of intelligence performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Institutional contingency is especially salient in cybersecurity because its enabling institutions are incredibly complex.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n The conditions of intelligence performance (summarized in the table below) were relevant long before the internet (e.g., for Kim Philby), and they will be relevant long after the quantum internet (should that ever be built). Kim Philby exploited an overly trusting and thus highly exposed organizational culture in the early years of the Cold War, but a major liability was that he was also vulnerable to compromise due to the antics of other members of the Cambridge Five.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The SVR had a comparatively more sophisticated clandestine operation for running collection operations compared to the young KGB, but it was also up against a much more robust cybersecurity and counterintelligence ecosystem. The KGB and SVR were able to conduct successful intelligence operations only as long as both conditions were met. Even then, intelligence performance had only an indirect impact on politics. When conditions changed, however, intelligence performance degraded.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy Intelligence Depends on Institutions, Not Force<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Vulnerable Institutions and Clandestine Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nTechnology Does Not Guarantee Intelligence Advantage<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Institutional Conditions of Intelligence Performance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n