Data is democratizing, and American spy agencies are struggling to keep up.
First, technological breakthroughs are transforming the threat landscape by generating new uncertainties and empowering new adversaries. During the Cold War, America had one principal enemy: the Soviet Union. The Cold War was a dangerous time, but it was simpler. America’s top intelligence priority was clear. Every foreign policy decision was viewed through the lens of “What would Moscow think?”
In the old days, spy agencies in a handful of powerful countries dominated the collection and analysis of information. They were the only organizations with the resources and know-how to build billion-dollar satellites, make and break sophisticated codes, and collect information at scale. In 2001, the National Security Agency intercepted about 200 million foreign emails, phone calls, and other signals a day. Few countries or companies could come close.
This kind of publicly available information is called open source intelligence, and it is becoming increasingly valuable. When US Navy SEALs conducted their secret nighttime raid on Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani compound, Pakistan’s military didn’t detect a thing. But a local information technology consultant named Sohaib Athar did. Hearing strange noises, he took to Twitter. “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1 a.m. ,” he posted.
The third challenge posed by emerging technologies strikes at the heart of espionage: secrecy. Until now, American spy agencies didn’t have to interact much with outsiders, and they didn’t want to. The intelligence mission meant gathering secrets so we knew more about adversaries than they knew about us, and keeping how we gathered secrets a secret too.
It used to be that adversaries threatened from abroad and we could see them coming; military mobilization took time. Now they can attack privately owned critical infrastructure like power grids and financial systems in cyberspace—anytime, from anywhere, without crossing a border or firing a shot. In the 20th century, economics and security politics were separate spheres because the Soviet-bloc command economies were never part of the global trading order.
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