ABSTRACT
Intelligence has grown exponentially over the last decade. America and its closest allies now spend over a $100 billion a year on intelligence. In this chapter, we suggest that the dominant explanation of this dramatic expansion – the spectre of ‘new terrorism’ – reflects a misapprehension. Instead it is globalisation that has driven the acceleration of intelligence and which, by equal turns, also presents stark challenges to the future of intelligence agencies. Globalisation has accelerated a wide range of sub-military transnational threats, of which the ‘new terrorism’ is but one example. Most importantly, the blurring of international borders has impacted intelligence agencies across the world. Economic reforms designed to stimulate international trade and investment have rendered national borders increasingly porous. Meanwhile the longpromised engines of global governance intended to manage the attendant problems remain weak. In their absence, the dark underside of a globalising world is increasingly policed by ‘vigilant states’ that resort to a mixture of military power and intelligence power in an attempt to address these slippery problems. Yet the intelligence services cannot meet the improbable demands for omniscience made by governments, nor can they square their new enforcer role with vocal demands by global civil society for improved ethical practice.
