“One side’s intelligence failure is often the other’s information security success“
“One side’s intelligence failure is often the other’s information security success” is what Michael Herman stated in his book about intelligence failures1. This has been the case since the emergence of states and governments. Since then, leaders have actively been trying to collect intelligence on other states, while at the same time protecting their own sensitive political decisions from being disclosed 2. Both in peace and wartime, states try to predict and surveil other state’s actions by analysing collected data 3. The adequate collection and analysis of data are ever more important when states have a volatile relationship and escalation is lurking 4. Yet, these endeavours are not always successful. In the late 1940s, most states started establishing so-called ‘intelligence institutions’ solely for the collection, processing, and distribution of intelligence on competitors. Despite this dedicated system, intelligence failures still occur 5.
Although there are different kinds of intelligence failure, the most common and well-known one is the ‘warning failure’. Here, intelligence is not able to detect an attack; due to failure in collection or failure in analysis 6. Yet, it is quite undeniable that intelligence fails in case of a ‘warning failure’, for instance, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. But what if intelligence misses important information without direct or vital consequences? Would it still be considered a failure? The study of when something is a failure or not is quite relevant in this day and age, as looking at the past can help with future intelligence operations.
An example of such an event without direct or vital consequences is the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who died of a heart attack while traveling on his train in the morning of December 17th, 2011. It was not until 48 hours and a North Korean state media announcement later that the United States State Department released a press report acknowledging his death. Apparently, the American intelligence services had failed to pick up any signs of this notable moment, even though they were aware that Kim Jong-il had been struggling with his health for a while and would likely not stay alive very long. The following days, American and Asian officials were on high alert for any hints that the country could start to fracture, but this did not happen.
Similarly, in 2020, there was a lot of uncertainty on the whereabouts of the leader of the north side of the Asian peninsula. There were rumours on the presumed illness and death of the country’s current leader Kim Jong-un after he missed state celebration on the birthday of his grandfather and founder of North Korea, Kim Il-sung.
Yet, those were not the only ‘failures’ concerning the detection of significant developments in North Korea by American Intelligence. North Korean authorities managed to construct a facility to enrich uranium at a site under regular satellite surveillance and helped build a nuclear reactor in Syria in the midst of the Iraq war without tipping off American intelligence.
Despite the use of various technical tools such as satellites, spy planes, highly sensitive antennas along the borders and information from defectors, the American intelligence agencies prevail to fail to penetrate the existing leadership. An aggravating factor is the ultimate culture of secrecy. The North Korean government is isolated and it shares sensitive information only with a small circle of officials. Altogether, this makes North Korea a challenging intelligence target.
Given these points, the question arises if the death of Kim Jong-il was a so-called ‘intelligence failure’ or rather just a demonstration of the limitations surrounding the gathering of intelligence about this secretive country?
Was the unanticipated death of Kim Jong-il an international intelligence failure?
The answer to this question depends largely on one’s conception of what an ‘intelligence failure’ entails. Nowadays, as Paul Pillar, United States intelligence expert and professor at Georgetown University, contends:
“[Intelligence failure] tends to get used, extremely broadly, to refer to anything that surprises us or, even more broadly, any sudden bit of news about events overseas when that news does not come to us from our own governments.”
Therefore, in the broadest sense, the unanticipated death of Kim Jong-il was indeed an intelligence failure.
Yet, there is plenty of room for debate whether this event should be seen as an intelligence failure. A first aspect to consider is the role and responsibility of intelligence agencies. Do intelligence agencies need to know everything? John Gentry, professor in Security Studies, observes the trend in literature on American intelligence services to extensively focus on failures. Critically reflecting on this tendency, he poses the question of whether the basic problem does not actually lie with repeated failures, but rather with unrealistic expectations of what intelligence agencies are capable of achieving 7. This ties in to another important question to ask when talking about intelligence agencies’ responsibilities. Is it actually possible to know everything in the first place? Paul Pillar, for example, does not see a legitimate basis for applying the label ‘failure’ to the death of Kim Jong-il. Simply due to the impossibility for Western intelligence services of knowing everything about a country like North Korea that is highly secretive in nature and closed off from the rest of the world. From that perspective, an event cannot be called an intelligence failure if the information was near to impossible to retrieve in the first place.
A second aspect that may be relevant in judging something to be an intelligence failure constitutes the consequences. One perspective may argue that a lack of intelligence on a certain matter should only be called a failure when this lack poses serious security threats to other countries. This would have happened if, for example, the death of Kim Jong-il would have brought about real changes in North Korea’s conduct – which would have increased the regime’s unpredictability and potentially caused internal instability. Such a change would have significantly increased security risks for the international community. Another way in which the lack of knowledge would have presented serious security threats internationally is if the international community had planned on invading North Korea to bring about comprehensive regime change. However, none of these scenarios have happened; the succession by Kim Jong-un has neither resulted in substantial regime change nor in great internal instability.
A third aspect that plays a role in one’s understanding of an intelligence failure is the context in which we perceive other countries’ behaviour. Even though we may think we produce relatively objective security threat assessments on other states, the reality is that we are influenced by our perception of the world and of other states. We tend to interpret the behaviour of our allies more positively and trust them more easily than regimes that we view as our enemies 8. This does not mean that threat perceptions are unfounded; adversarial regimes may certainly pose threats through their past and present actions. However, threat assessments may not accurately reflect reality as they may be heavily influenced by our subjective understanding of ‘the Other’. Particularly in the case of foes, this fear has led to exaggerated threat assessments, triggering exaggerated security responses, as for example the case of the Cold War has shown 9. In the case of North Korea, taking into account contextual factor gives rise to the following question: does one only deem the death of Kim Jong-il a failure because of the (perceived) danger that North Korea presents to other countries, or can one classify his death as an intelligence failure regardless of the country? Suppose Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, had suddenly died, and United States intelligence services would only know 48 hours later, would it also be classified an intelligence failure? In other words, is an intelligence failure only linked to the act of incorrect or incomplete knowledge or more so to the context of the failure?
Evidently, there are multiple lenses through which intelligence failure can be examined. Whether it be through an epistemic lens, a consequentialist one, or a more constructivist lens – all angles have a different view. The question remains, which angle is right? And is there even a right angle?
It turns out that the question of whether something is and intelligence failure or not is a tricky one that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no.
Where one argues that the inability of picking up on Kim Jong-il’s death is an intelligence failure, another would not agree to this label since it is impossible to know everything about such an opaque country like North Korea. Yet, a third might suggest that something can only be called an intelligence failure when it has major security implications, which turned out not to be the case with Kim Jong-il’s death. Moreover, context also plays a role – does one only classify the death of Kim Jong-il a failure because of the (perceived) danger that North Korea presents to other countries, or can one classify his death as an intelligence failure regardless of the country?
Concerning context, there is another important question left to ask. Namely, whether it is right to isolate the specific case of Kim Jong-il’s death from the bigger picture. Are we not just failing on understanding and knowing what North Korea is up to in general? Does this ‘larger’ failure mean that every aspect of (lack of) North Korean intelligence gathering implicitly becomes a failure? As one former CIA agent pointed out, the CIA’s inability to pick up hints of Kim Jong-il’s death seems comparatively minor. However, he argues:
“What’s worse about the US intelligence is their failure to penetrate deep into the existing leadership of Northern Korea. The US intelligence agencies get information from defectors, but their information is often old. They get midlevel people, but they do not know what is happening in the inner circle.”
In addition, we can also ask ourselves to what extent labeling something as a failure (regardless of whether it was a failure or not) can be considered as a strategic political tool. Is it possible that people, actors, or even complete governments label something an intelligence failure only to get more resources at their disposal or to attempt to influence public opinion?
It seems the only ‘failure’ here might be our contrasting understandings of what intelligence is, needs to be, and can actually be. Did the United States actually fail anything or did North Korea simply succeed in keeping a secret, but we do not like to admit it? However, lack of success is not the same as failure, as these labels may help us move forward and learn from our history. If we never admit defeat in our past, we will never win in our future.
1 Herman, M. (1996). Intelligence Power in Peace and War. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, p. 227.
2 Herman, M. (1996). Intelligence Power in Peace and War. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
3 Stout, M., & Warner, M. (2018). Intelligence is as intelligence does. Intelligence and National Security 33, 4, 517-526.
4 Clausewitz, C. v. (1984). On War. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
5 Gentry, J. A. (2008). Intelligence Failure Reframed. Political Science Quarterly Vol. 123, No. 2, 247-270.
6 Herman, M. (1996). Intelligence Power in Peace and War. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
7 Gentry, J. A. (2008). Intelligence Failure Reframed. Political Science Quarterly Vol. 123, No. 2, 247-270.
8 For an explanation of the underlying psychological principles, see for example Stangor, Jhangiani, & Tarry (2017), chapter 11, section 54: Ingroup Favoritism and Prejudice. [Stangor, C., Jhangiani, R., & Tarry, H. (2017). Principles of social psychology: 1st international edition. BC Open Textbook Project.]
9 For example, Herman (2011, p. 888-889) explains that American intelligence services tended to underscore ‘worst case’ scenarios when forecasting Soviet military capabilities. One of the consequences of such dynamics was the exaggerated US Air Force estimate of the so-called ‘missile gap’, which in turn affected the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Security responses included the crash deployments of US missiles in Britain and Turkey. [Herman, M. (2011). What difference did it make? Intelligence and National Security, 26(6), 886-901.]
sintgroupfive.wordpress.com 