Every democratic society needs effective intelligence services, working together in an international community and subject, like any public body, to appropriate controls.
It is an unavoidable necessity in the intense competition that characterises the precarious international political, economic and military order. A country led by a former secret service colonel invades its neighbour, but its initial plan fails because the intelligence of the latter’s allies had forewarned him and enabled him to prepare his defence. Another country, which believed it had one of the best military intelligence systems in the world, is surprised by an attack that kills 1,200 of its citizens, leaves its population traumatised and unleashes a war. Cyber-attacks on companies and institutions occur daily: on the one hand, industrial espionage; on the other, the work of blackmailers; on top of the above, episodes of, or preparations for, “hybrid warfare”.

History, film and media offer examples of the many facets of intelligence: civil (or political) and military; economic and industrial. From the Bible or the Japan of “Kagemusha” to the Second World War, the invasion of Ukraine or the attack of 7 October 2023. Why did Trevor-Roper, the great British MI-5 historian, despise his compatriots, Graham Grene and Le Carré, famous cultivators of espionage novels? Is there anything left of the romanticism of “Kim of India” in the life of the modern spy? Did the novels of John Buchan have anything to do with it, do those published today, attributed to former members of the most diverse services?

The course approaches a range of topics related to intelligence, with a primary focus on the following questions. What services do a medium-sized power, a company or a public institution need today? How are spies – or analysts – recruited; what capacities are sought? What talents, skills, values and training do contemporary intelligence services look for? How do spies think, how is intelligence produced, who gets to know how much? Who controls the services in constitutional states with a separation of powers and the obligation for the executive, parliament, judges, the press, other services to cooperate with one another? Do we have the right legislation?

The course emphasizes the questions over the answers and (the possible) empirical approaches to latter. It seeks to nourish the “sociological imagination” of students, to awaken their awareness of an inescapable, existential, public and private need.