The first session of the EUI International Relations Working Group features a presentation by Simon Frankel Pratt (University of Melbourne).
It is a well-discussed fact that private contractors are ubiquitous and essential components of international security today, but less well recognised that this is true of the intelligence sector just as much as it is of military logistics or force protection. Indeed, perhaps even more so—private entities, usually but not exclusively market-based, can perform almost every imaginable intelligence function to a high degree of proficiency and professionalism, and do so for a wide range of clients, both state and non-state. From the vast establishment companies of the Washington DC periphery to the mercenary spyware firms of Herzliya to the dedicated OSINT volunteers of Bellingcat, the gathering and management of concealed and instrumental information is not purely a state activity.
This paper presents some draft material from Pratt's next book, still in preparation, linking sovereign functions in the intelligence sector to a map of the 'extended intelligence community'. The extended intelligence community comprises a heterogeneous assemblage of actors and technologies, gathered into a field of practice spanning the globe. Its activities, and the services it offers, present regulatory and ethical challenges that current norms are poorly equipped to resolve. More significantly, the power this community generates illustrates how the public-private divide can be a shifting and fractured institutional and functional border, not so much a hybrid but a modular configuration continuously undergoing reconstitution. In other words, sovereignty is at least sometimes modular, and the modularity of sovereignty shows the possibility and trajectory of the distributed and fractured agency displayed by the extended intelligence community.
The Zoom link will be sent upon registration.
If you would like to receive the paper, please contact irwg@eui.eu.