Category: Intelligence

The Intelligence community comprises the agencies and organizations responsible for intelligence gathering, analysis, and other activities that affect foreign policy and national security.

Germany to empower it’s foreign-intelligence service, capable of holding its own in a dangerous world

Long handcuffed by court rulings, complex oversight arrangements, and stringent data-protection rules, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) has tended to operate as a simple, if reasonably effective, intelligence-gathering and analysis outfit. In a country where the Gestapo and Stasi cast long shadows, strict limits have been placed on the operations of the secret services. The original BND Act, written in 1990, was in essence a data-protection rule book. “It’s very slow, and very bureaucratic,” says a European former security official of the BND.

The BND must cease monitoring once a target once enters Germany. Foreigners abroad enjoy the same privacy protections as someone in Germany, curtailing the BND’s ability to tap phones or monitor data flows. Personal data must be redacted if the BND is to pass information to other German agencies. These “totally absurd” restrictions do not apply in other countries, says Wolfgang Krieger, a historian who has written extensively on the BND. They limit the trust placed in the BND by partner agencies—and create vulnerabilities foes can exploit. “Putin has no rules, and we respond with our Rechtsstaat [constitutional state],” sighs Marc Henrichmann, an mp on the Bundestag’s intelligence-oversight panel.

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Foreign intelligence services are increasingly recruiting ordinary citizens to carry out espionage and sabotage

“It’s not as if there’s a note saying, ‘Greetings from Russia’ or ‘Greetings from Iran,’” according to Youssef , director of intelligence and national threats at the Netherlands’ National Investigations and Special Operations unit. “Sometimes it’s simply: ‘Do you want to set fire to something for €5,000?’”

“Until recently, you mainly saw intelligence services themselves carrying out actions,” he added. “What we see now is that citizens, for payment, for adventure, or for some other reason, are lending themselves for such tasks.”

Ait Daoud warns the growing use of civilian recruits reflects a broader shift in how foreign intelligence services conduct operations — one that complicates efforts to counter their activities.

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Europe should prepare for coordinated cyberattacks to their energy infrastructure from Russia

In December 2025, a wave of Russian cyberattacks hit energy facilities across Poland, a sign that Moscow may be willing to expand its energy campaign beyond Ukraine.

Chelsea Cederbaum, a senior threat intelligence analyst at the American cybersecurity company Recorded Future, wrote “there’s a high risk of escalation by Russia over the next two years” that could included cyberattacks coordinated across wider regions of Europe’s grid, drone flights close to critical infrastructure, and Kremlin-sponsored digital disinformation campaigns designed to paint European countries as unprepared.

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Germany is preparing its foreign intelligence service for a world where the US stops information sharing

Germany wants to boost and unfetter its country’s foreign intelligence service (BND), giving it much broader authority to perpetrate acts of sabotage, conduct offensive cyber operations and more aggressively carry out espionage.

Germany wants to continue working with the Americans, “but if a [U.S.] president, whoever that may be, decides in the future to go it alone without the Europeans … then we must be able to stand on our own two feet,” said Marc Henrichmann, the chairman of a special committee in Germany’s Bundestag that oversees the country’s intelligence services.

Source:

Nette Nöstlinger, Politico: Germany plans to give spies vast new powers in rollback of postwar restraints https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-foreign-intelligence-agency-power-bnd/

Finland’s Military Intelligence Review 2026 has been published

The message for 2026 is clear: the security environment is increasingly complex and requires continuous monitoring and foresight. The public overview of military intelligence 2026 notes, among other things, the following:

  • Russia continues its efforts to restore its global superpower status, and the war in Ukraine is ongoing. Russia is continuing its defence reform, but the changes have so far not significantly increased Russia’s military capacity in the vicinity of Finland. Russia’s extensive influence in Europe has increased over the past few years.
  • The shift in power relations in the Middle East has become increasingly evident.
  • The Baltic Sea has become a central point in international politics. Tensions have increased significantly since the beginning of 2022.
  • The global security situation is characterized by a return to power politics and increasing tensions worldwide.

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An attack on Greenland “would make America weaker, not safer”

Greenland is not a marginal issue for Europeans. Threats against it cut to the heart of the idea of Europe, of sovereignty, international law and trust. Key European leaders recently stressed they are united in their position that it is up to Denmark and Greenland to decide their own fate — and no one else. The potential for a crisis is real, and what is most confounding is that this would be a crisis that is entirely unnecessary and easily avoidable.

Threatening to annex territory belonging to a NATO ally strikes at the very foundation of the alliance. NATO is not merely a military grouping; it is a community of liberal democracies that has endured precisely because its members trust — and do not threaten — one another. They consult, negotiate and resolve disputes peacefully. This shared political culture is not a luxury — it is NATO’s greatest strategic asset. It sets us apart from those that depend on threats and tricks to keep their “friends” together.

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What are the threats Canada faces today?

Alan Jones, a former Assistant Director of Operations for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) discusses the threats Canada faces, intelligence sharing, and whether or not the US poses a threat to Canada now and the extent to which that might affect intelligence sharing between Canada and the US.

Is the U.S. a threat to Canada? Former CSIS Assistant Director Weighs-in

Lithuania accused Russia’s GRU of the attempted arson on a plant that supplies Ukraine’s army

Lithuanian authorities accused Russia’s GRU military intelligence service on Friday, January 16, 2026, of masterminding the attempted arson attacks of a plant that supplies radio wave scanners to Ukraine’s army.

The group that coordinated the attack was made up of Colombian and Cuban citizens living in Russia, and had attempted similar arson attacks. They had targeted oil infrastructure in Romania, construction warehouses in Poland and buses, a post office, and a cinema in the Czech Republic.

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Chatham House Director warns ‘This does mark the end of the Western alliance’

Bronwen Maddox, Director and Chief Executive of the Chatham House international affairs think-tank, gave her annual lecture at the institution’s London headquarters on January 13, 2026, said, ‘We have had from President Trump what amounts to a revolution. He has given the US a radically new role in the world and – at the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence – a role that rejects the principles on which the US was founded: that government should be accountable to the people.’

Maddox added, ‘Most profound, we have had the rejection of principles of international law that the US helped forge – even if it often declined to apply those to itself. Venezuela brandished that rejection to the world, followed by the President’s intention to acquire Greenland.

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