1 - What initially attracted you to the ICE, and what motivated you to take on the role of Director of the Permanent Secretariat?

Being the first director of the Permanent Secretariat of the College of Intelligence in Europe (ICE) was, for me, a great honour and an unforgettable experience. I accepted the role with much humility, but above all, with great enthusiasm.

A direct result of the 2017 Sorbonne speech, which I continue to regard as one of the most important speeches on Europe in recent years, the College of Intelligence in Europe project, now involving nearly thirty countries, is not only a challenge but also a significant ambition. Looking back, when I reflect on my two years leading the Permanent Secretariat of the College of Intelligence in Europe, I am proud to have been part of this endeavour and to have guided the College through its initial steps.

2 - Looking back, what do you consider ICE’s greatest achievements during your time as Director? Were there any specific initiatives or developments that you found particularly impactful?

First and foremost, I would like to pay tribute to our predecessors who were pioneers in launching this project. After the Sorbonne speech, it was necessary to bring to life an unprecedented project. This pioneering team rose to the challenge with much courage and dedication. We must not forget what we owe them.

As for me, I took up my post while we were very much under stress from the COVID pandemic. The real challenge was to buttress our project in a context that allowed neither travel nor the full mobilization of all the stakeholders involved.

Thanks to the small team working with me, whose resilience and hard work I wish to acknowledge, we reached out to each of our interlocutors (using all available means: emails, phone calls, videoconferences) to explain the project, its stakes, key milestones, and our strategy.

This initial dialogue, built on trust and empathy, enabled us, once the final COVID-related obstacles were lifted, to launch seminars, conferences, and publications quickly.

During my tenure, we launched the website. We organized the first steering committee of the College in Paris. We actively participated in the “Fabrique Défense” Forum, where we were able to present the College’s role in building an autonomous strategic culture in Europe to numerous young people. On that occasion, we organized a roundtable with senior intelligence officials. I also started a dialogue with IFRI with a view to launching a series of conferences on intelligence, and I am proud to see that project now realized, just as I am proud to see the active collaboration today between academic institutions and the College. I am aware of the significant work done to achieve this objective, and the Permanent Secretariat can only express gratitude to all those who invested in this sensitive matter.

3 – Coordinating 31 countries and their respective intelligence services in a newly established institution is no small feat. From your perspective, what was the most challenging aspect of this coordination and what impressed you the most?

Yes, coordinating the intelligence services of more than thirty countries is no mean feat. However, I believe it is easier to coordinate intelligence services than other State services, as despite our “ideological” differences, we still speak the same language and face the same challenges and threats today.

Of course, we had to convince those who had reservations about the College’s rationale, but what ultimately prevailed was a collective realization of the role that intelligence services, beyond their operational missions, have to play in building our political Europe and a shared strategic vision.

Through the numerous discussions I had during my time leading the Permanent Secretariat, what impressed me the most was the quality of the individuals I met. I discovered cultures I didn’t know, particularly those of Northern European countries, whose analysis I greatly admire. I witnessed the commitment and dedication of high-ranking officials—from Croatia, which held the presidency of the College when I arrived and offered unwavering support, to Italy, which assumed the presidency shortly before my departure with remarkable seriousness, to Romania and Spain, which were incredibly committed, especially in academic matters. I would also like to mention Germany’s key role in the initial phase of the project.

4 – What advice would you offer to continue building and strengthening European intelligence culture?

We must invest in youth, and everything that can be done to create synergies between individuals of the same generation will only strengthen a shared intelligence culture. The training programs currently developing within the College are a great opportunity and a guarantee of success for our project.

We must also innovate—create topics for synergy, invent new operational methods within the College, and develop new tools to strengthen our cohesion. As philologist and philosopher Heinz Wismann wrote, “Europe belongs only to those who dare to reinvent it,” and this applies to the world of intelligence in the first place.

The actions undertaken by the College are promising and forward-looking. I can only congratulate my successor and the team leading the Permanent Secretariat for the progress made over the past nearly three years.

5 – What is your vision for the future of ICE, and what do you hope it will achieve in the coming years?

The upheavals facing our world today profoundly impact intelligence services. The College of Intelligence in Europe must be a tool to address these changes and the disruptions we are witnessing.

It must become a mandatory step in the career paths of European intelligence officers and eventually become a true General Staff school for European intelligence (and I do emphasize European intelligence). But our ambition must go further. The College of Intelligence can also act as a trailblazer. In the face of current events which often prevent us from addressing future issues, the College must break new ground, anticipate, and imagine the unimaginable. Our different perspectives, cultures, and histories are a tremendous asset for thinking about the future together and reinventing ourselves in the face of the outside world. In this great challenge, European intelligence services are more vital than ever, and the College of Intelligence in Europe deserves all the attention it receives.

Authored by:

U. Borghoff, L. Berger, & F. Fischer, Connections QJ 23, no. 1 (2024): Preview
https://doi.org/10.11610/Connections.23.1.03

Abstract:

The actors within the so-called "intelligence community" play a central role in fulfilling Europe's security commitments by providing political and military decision-makers with critical analyses and information. The Intelligence College in Europe (ICE) is the first entity to offer both professional intelligence training and postgraduate-level academic education in intelligence and security studies for intelligence officers on a pan-European scale. In developing its postgraduate offerings, ICE has drawn upon the experience of Germany's Master of Intelligence and Security Studies (MISS), a collaborative effort between the University of the Bundeswehr Munich and the Department of Intelligence at the Federal University of Administrative Sciences in Berlin. As a main contribution of this article, the counterterrorism module (adapted from the MISS) is examined in detail as a case study of how postgraduate modules can be tailored to meet the needs of a pan-European audience of intelligence professionals.

See also:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/384159933_The_Intelligence_College_in_Europe_An_Effort_to_Create_a_European_Intelligence_Communit

The project on « European Youth Perceptions of National Intelligence Services » is the first research project to be carried out collectively, with the participation of universities from the ICE´s Academic Network. The objective of the project is to carry out a study on the opinion that young Europeans have about their Intelligence and Security Services, to measure the extent to which European youth Trust Intelligence services.

Professor Antonio Diaz (University of Cadiz), who led a similar project at the national level in 2018 en Spain, coordinates this project trying to extrapolate this study to European level. All members are invited to participate in the project, through the universities of the academic network or other universities in their countries specialized in the area of Intelligence knowledge. Quotas will be established for the number of interviews per country, gender, and age range, including that the national sample is representative of the country's population. If necessary, weights (adjustments) will be applied by gender and age according to the distribution of the adult population per country (INE, Eurostat).

There are several items cover, sociodemographic items, missions of intelligence agencies, power of intelligence agencies, trust and control. Sample population is made up of young Europeans aged 16-30 years. The potential coutries which participate, cover different types of political regimes, political cultures and geographical zones. Spain –University of Cádiz- will be the leading partner. The method used is online survey targeting adults.

The survey is conducted over a period of 15 days starting from the date the survey company receives the questionnaires. The survey will consist of 30 items, with an estimated completion time of 8-9 minutes. Due to the institutional structure varying from country to country, decisions are required on which specific agencies should be the focus of the survey.

This project is being developed during 2024 and the results are expected to be available next November.

On the 13th of May, the ICE Academic network has conducted its first ever outreach action in order to promote the work of four of its academics, who have just issued the “Routledge Handbook of Disinformation and National Security”.

The event, which has taken place within the Brussels headquarters of IRSEM (Institut de recherche stratégique de l'École militaire) Europe, the European branch of the French MoD Think Tank, has taken place in two moments:

• A high level roundtable on the theme “Disinformation and FIMI”, where one representative of NATO Public Diplomacy Division, of the French Service VIGINUM and of a Member State service have discussed on the topic before interacting under Chatham rules with a large, but selected audience of EU actors on Disinformation, FIMI and Security,
• a Spotlight event, with the three ICE co-editors of the Routledge Handbook on Disinformation and National Security,
  Dr Ruben Arcos, Dr Irena Chiru & Dr Cristina Ivan, interacting mainly with European think-tankers.

These side-by-side events were open only under invitations and were targeting only known experts of the domain. This exclusive audience has been particularly active & reactive during the roundtable, which had to be extended from the planned one hour and a half to nearly two hours. The interest of the exchanges was such that a certain number of the first attendees have decided to stay to have the chance to interact with the scientific contributors of the first Routledge comprehensive scientific publication on the Disinformation topic.

This very first ICE Academic network action has allowed ICE to highlight and promote in Brussels the joint research effort of some of its Academics and to contribute to a common strategic culture in the Intelligence & Security domain.

This event, conducted just before the Second ICE Academic Conference, which will take place soon in Spain, will pave the way for another ICE academic event, end of this year, to mark the special edition of the International Journal for Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence (IJICI) on the Common European Strategic Intelligence culture.

The Intelligence College in Europe, which is celebrating this year its fifth anniversary, is proud, on top of its core training mission (making itself a sort of “Intel Erasmus”) and its security awareness actions, to be able to promote the joint efforts of the ICE Academics.

Do you want to know the work of an intelligence officer on strategic issues?

In this case, we invite you to watch this interview of the Intelligence and Security Senior Adviser of the Munich Security Conference (MSC), Gerhard Conrad. A former BND officer and high level hostage negotiator in the Middle East, he led the EU Intelligence Centre (UE INTCEN) from 2016 to 2020, before retiring and moving towards various advising and teaching positions. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the King's College London. Additionally, he authored an interesting book in German titled: “Keine Lizenz zum Töten” (No Licence to Kill), at the Econ Publish House in 2022.

You will find the video here.

On 21 and 22 February 2022 in Paris, the French Intelligence Community organised with the College a thematic seminar on intelligence and space. Space involves much more than military and security issues. Its mastering involves daily applications ranging from communications, connectivity and synchronisation, to geolocation and meteorology. These applications are of daily use and their resilience is strategic. Before an audience made up of members of the Intelligence College in Europe, speakers from research, institutions, industry and services elaborated on the challenges that space represents now. A summary of this seminar is available hereunder.

In September 2020, the Intelligence College in Europe invited professors from three member countries (Italy, Romania and Finland) to present their vision on European security challenges in the 21^st century. They gave their input on the impact of technology on national security, propaganda and disinformation, and hybrid warfare.

The webinar showed Members share, for the most part, similar views over these three topics, and the event paved the way for further exchanges within the College.

Here is the downloadable summary of our conclusions over this webinar.

The International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence publishes its first special theme issue in its 35-year history (available here). This issue, devoted to “Europe and intelligence”, includes contributions to the first thematic seminar organized by the College of Intelligence in Europe in Berlin in autumn 2019.

The authors express themselves in a personal capacity. They do not represent the position of the Intelligence College in Europe or the intelligence communities.