Integrated Deterrence Requires a Unique Intelligence Mindset

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is placing much emphasis on the concept of Integrated Deterrence, which should be executed through a ‘mindset of campaigning’ in the context of strategic competition. High-quality intelligence, enabling the understanding and leveraging of adversary perceptions, is a critical condition for creating such deterrence. The intelligence community (IC) should adopt a deterrence-focused mindset and create a dedicated concept of operations for intelligence enabling deterrence, on top of its traditional roles in early warning and enabling statecraft and warfighting.

Creating sustainable deterrence rests on understanding and shaping adversary perceptions, or in other words, on strategic intelligence. Additionally, cost imposition relies on accurate tactical intelligence, enabling offensive action, while denial and detection rely on accurate tactical intelligence, enabling defensive action. Intelligence for deterrence, therefore, is required on all levels of statecraft and warfighting.

Intelligence for deterrence is therefore action-inclined and prescriptive. It must participate in net-assessment discussions about ways to influence adversary perceptions. This mindset is relevant for all function of intelligence agencies: collection, analysis, covert operations, and interaction with decision-makers.

Intelligence for deterrence is more about mysteries than about secrets. Adversaries do not necessarily have a structured plan for their contingent considerations. Intelligence agencies cannot merely reveal secrets through covert collection and to enable support successful deterrence. The challenge for intelligence agencies is extremely complicated.

However, the ‘market’ for secrets is not necessarily declining, and intelligence analysis for detection must rely on collection of intimate and reliable information. To understand adversary perceptions, intelligence must gain access to the relevant decision-making circles. This relies on covert collection and relevant analysis.

To enable the shaping of adversary perceptions and thus enhance deterrence, deep knowledge of specific decision-makers’ mindset and considerations is required. This knowledge is dependent on covert collection, alongside open-source information (OSINT) and knowledge about adversary strategic and political cultures.

Additionally, if intelligence agencies wish to conduct effective information operations to enhance deterrence these should be targeted at relevant and specific audiences. This is the same, naturally, with covert operations aimed at remaining clandestine yet transferring a deterrent message to the adversary. Identifying such audiences cannot rely solely on open-source information.

Non-government intelligence agencies alone cannot support a deterrence-based strategy. True, these agencies have become professional in exploiting and analyzing OSINT, using advanced technologies and data science methods. However, for deterring adversaries, understanding the specific context in which decision-makers act is crucial. Intelligence for deterrence is not generic and cannot be a ‘stand-alone’ product. It is created in a specific and idiosyncratic context.

Deterring Russia from broadening the Ukraine war to NATO allies, for instance, requires specific intelligence, different from that required to deter Russia from expanding its public mentions of nuclear weapons, or to deter Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Non-governmental agencies can contribute to the creation of such intelligence, but only government intelligence agencies which engage in a constant and intimate dialogue with decision-makers can conduct a comprehensive and relevant intelligence process and produce a tailored product.

Intelligence for deterrence relies on experience, as the best way to understand adversary considerations, including in response to deterrence measures. However, it mainly engages questions about future conduct of adversaries. It must imagine future and idiosyncratic events, assessing the implications of cost imposition or denial measures.

Sherman Kent has taught us to look at intelligence as an organization, a process, and a product (knowledge). While much attention has been given in recent years to intelligence process and organization, mainly in the context of integrating advanced technologies and exploitation of OSINT, the deterrence-aimed product has been overlooked.

Intelligence for deterrence, therefore, needs its own concept of operations and doctrine. A deterrence mindset in the IC requires dedicated theoretical and practical attention. Intelligence agencies are still required to provide early warning for conflicts, or to enable statecraft warfighting. However, the IC and decision-makers must adopt another mindset for intelligence, focused on integrated deterrence: preventive, enabling campaigning, integrated into strategy and operations, and foundationally competitive.

Itai Shapira is a retired colonel from the Israeli Defense Intelligence (IDI). He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Leicester, studying Israeli national intelligence culture. Itai has published academic and professional works about intelligence and strategy in Intelligence and National Security, Defense One, RealClear Defense, War on the Rocks, 19FortyFive, RUSI, and Small Wars Journal.