In the last couple days German media and parts of the political establishment got all excited over the fact that Bundestag representatives of the party Die Linke have been (and continue to be) watched by the German domestic intelligence service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz. Although good PR is not one of the domains of secret [...]

Recently I became a member of The Atlantic Community, a not-for-profit initiative based in Berlin and Washington, D.C. Apart from being an excellent source for political analyses the website provides the opportunity to join transatlantic debates on key issues of international politics and globalization.
I strongly recommend to take a look at the different features of [...]

Sometimes it’s just funny what happens when checking facts is a mere luxury. You may use this story as a good example for staying suspicious when it comes to secondary research based on open sources. And this is how it goes:
Last weekend the German Minster for Economic Affairs stepped down, and a new one was [...]

Imagine you were the leader of an organization that is a spin-off of a current competitor. That competitor would have had to suffer hard in the past because your organization had violated basic rules you both share. Imagine that the only power you had is the power of words. Imagine that the most important asset [...]

“Only ethics can save CI profession in France and elsewhere in the world.”
Guy Gweth wrote a very interesting posting I just discovered citing some recent scandals in France where ethical and legal boundaries have been crossed. Now the French government plans to “asepticize the sector” by some certain measures, as Guy reports:
1- Obligatory licence for [...]

“Duplicity” with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen will be on the big screen in March this year. Ex-CIA and Ex-MI6 working for competing companies fall in love, get in trouble and end happy (it’s a Hollywood movie, isn’t it?).
I guess the film will have two effects on our profession: finally, we won’t have to repeat [...]

The man is in office for only three days now, but - what a relief: substance and style differ drastically not only from his predecessor but from the common image of a typical politician as well. Barack Obama transforms the rules of the political leadership game by taking the red pill - to speak in [...]

“One irony of working the open source side of the intelligence business is that the better we do, the less we can talk about it.”
Said Michael Hayden, former CIA chief, on the growing importance of open source intelligence in the area of national security.
At the same time he confirms my assumption why Competitive Intelligence is [...]