Val LeTellier

Val LeTellier is a veteran intelligence officer.  Before his career as a CIA case officer, he served as a State Department Diplomatic Security Special Agent. He has since worked with CACI, Booz Allen and Raytheon in creating specialized communication, virtual operations, and digital surveillance risk mitigation programs.  He recently co-founded 4th Gen Solutions to develop next generation tradecraft capabilities for IC front-line operators.

OPINION — In a rare December 2018 public address, then-British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) Chief Alex Younger, (who is now a Cipher Brief Expert) used the term ‘fourth-generation espionage’ to describe the new mindset that intelligence leaders need in order to address the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution.  He noted that “The digital era has profoundly changed our operating environment.  Bulk data combined with modern analytics make the modern world transparent.  We need to ensure that technology is on our side, not that of our opponents”.

Younger’s concerns are well founded.  The Fourth Industrial Revolution includes many new technologies that complicate clandestine activity, including “mobile devices, Internet of things (IoT) platforms, location detection technologies (electronic identification), advanced human-machine interfaces, authentication and fraud detection, smart sensors, big analytics and advanced processes, multilevel customer interaction and customer profiling, augmented reality/wearables, on-demand availability of computer system resources, and data visualization.”

In fact, the combination of ubiquitous digital surveillance and powerful data analytics is changing espionage in ways that we are only starting to understand.  Widespread automated recognition and monitoring of individuals is now possible, 'blind spots' are quickly being eliminated, events can be forensically examined to a degree never known, and an individual's future actions quickly and accurately predicted.

This comes through expansive closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera placement, 'smart city' technologies, ad-tech data, vehicular telemetry, IoT, and 5G networks enabling omnipresent personal data collection and the data analytics to make sense of it all; machine learning that enables massive data aggregation, facial recognition for real-time monitoring and post-event investigation and pattern analysis for identifying anomalies and predicating behavior.

Finally, the artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, 'multi-intelligence fusion' methodologies and correlation engines currently under development will certainly enable counterintelligence by further empowering aggregation and seamlessly integrating different sensor types.

Law enforcement and counterintelligence elements now have an exponentially growing array of digital sensors and robust analytics to collect and turn massive data pools into usable information, allowing them to increase accountability within their governments, prevent external and internal actors’ activity, and quickly investigate suspect activity.