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

2026.02.18 / NatSec.ca

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

2026.01.22 / NatSec.ca

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”

2026.01.19 / NatSec.ca

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?

2026.01.17 / NatSec.ca

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

Watch this video on YouTube

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

2026.01.16 / NatSec.ca

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.

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

2026.01.13 / NatSec.ca

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.

Canada urgently needs it’s own foreign intelligence service

2025.12.30 / NatSec.ca

The following is an excerpt from a December 30, 2025 Globe and Mail article by:

Jody Thomas – retired in 2024 as national security and intelligence adviser to the Prime Minister. She is now a senior adviser with Counsel Public Affairs, and
Patrick Lennox – an associate fellow of the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.

It’s true that Canada has been able to coast along without this capability to this point. We have relied on our Five Eyes partners to share their products collected and analyzed for their own purposes with us. Our diplomats have filled gaps through their reporting. We’ve excelled at foreign signals intelligence and allowed CSIS to collect security intelligence abroad. But in the storm of the current geopolitical environment, this approach is quickly becoming a glaring vulnerability. Our sovereignty and resilience demand that we discover and know for ourselves what’s happening to us in the world.
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