Cultivating Success

SPENCER PETERSEN/U.S. DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

Active wars and regional conflicts. Mounting tensions in the South China Sea. Reverberations from a pandemic. Competition between the world’s two largest economies. Record refugee and migrant flows. The complex and emerging security challenges facing the Indo-Pacific and the world require novel solutions, especially in an age of artificial intelligence (AI).

Intelligence diplomacy may be an increasingly useful tool for solving regional and international security dilemmas. It could, for example, offer an innovative approach for how the intelligence community helps maintain a Free and Open Indo-Pacific.

Intel diplomacy can be defined as the collaborative effort among governments, levers of national diplomatic, informational, military or economic power, and/or private entities to gather, analyze and manage data to create tailored and general products for maximum public benefit. Intel diplomacy can serve as a systematic yet adaptable process providing a cohesive, whole-of-society approach to highly complex security problems. 

Democratic governments and societies should invest in robust intel diplomacy using three primary means:

• Move beyond the notion of sharing intel products to cultivating institutional knowledge.
• Pursue transparency and public-private partnership to provide intelligence as a public good.
• Embrace technology in the arsenal of democracy while prioritizing democratic rights over mission expedience. 

The application of intel diplomacy to maritime domain awareness (MDA), which is central to Indo-Pacific security, offers insights into its value.

Cultivating institutional knowledge

At the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore in June 2024, then-United States Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin highlighted efforts by the Quad partnership of Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. to enhance other nations’ “operational picture of their exclusive economic zones” through the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA). The White House has described the IPMDA as offering a “near-real-time, integrated, and cost-effective maritime domain awareness picture” for partners in the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean region. 

Threats such as illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing continue to worsen worldwide, threatening the economic and food security of all nations, according to retired U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Scott Clendenin. In the Indo-Pacific, MDA requires applying analytic expertise against rapidly evolving actors amid a tremendous volume of shipping traffic. For context, 30% of global trade passes through the Malacca Strait and 40% of global shipping container traffic transits the Taiwan Strait, according to a 2024 Boston Consulting Group analysis.

The IPMDA would benefit further by shifting its focus from providing near-real-time intelligence to cultivating multilateral institutional knowledge, particularly given the massive volume of data relating to commercial, military and unidentified maritime traffic at any given moment. 

Building on initiatives such as the IPMDA, democratic governments should take the lead by developing and managing shared databases, or knowledge gardens. These would provide not only the ability to tell decision-makers what happened but also impart a deep understanding of how activities, people, places and things fit within a broader context — and why they matter. 

Deeper institutional knowledge is not at odds with real-time intelligence. Instead, intel diplomacy — focused on the longer-term work of shared databases, standards and processes across countries and organizations — is foundational to generating intelligence in real time. This vision of cultivating institutional knowledge is consistent with statements by U.S. defense leaders, as exemplified by Austin’s charge to create “overlapping and complementary initiatives and institutions” that are “propelled by a shared vision and a shared sense of mutual obligation.” 

The U.S. and other democratic nations are moving in the right direction but need to innovate more, cultivate deeper knowledge and extend that knowledge to more partners with a shared vision. 

Providing intelligence as a public good

Intel diplomacy should be outward-facing (international) and domestic-facing (public sector to private sector, and vice versa). The actors involved in intel are not limited to government or military representatives; they also should come from other levers of national power, particularly informational and economic sectors, as well as the nonprofit and private sectors.

Adm. Samuel Paparo, Commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), made a compelling argument at the 2024 Shangri-La Dialogue for “collaborative efforts beyond military means.” He urged militaries, civilian institutions and the private sector to share “resources, expertise (and) planning across agencies.” This approach makes sense: Any threat to national security eventually threatens civilian society. This reality is ever more apparent in societies connected by shared technologies, where civilians are on the front lines of cyberattacks, manipulated information campaigns and vulnerable supply chains. 

Applied to MDA in the Indo-Pacific, intel diplomats should promote publicly available, data-rich dashboards, using the best commercially available solutions to display incidents, trends, reports and assessments produced by government agencies, corporations and private citizens.

Embracing technology, democratic rights

Human-computer teaming shows great promise in achieving better security outcomes. The U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) Defense Innovation Unit recently led a challenge to identify potential IUU fishing using computer-vision algorithms to comb through a large volume of satellite images in minutes. Within USINDOPACOM, the Joint Mission Accelerator Directorate is working on a promising suite of capabilities designed to increase the U.S.’s ability to work alongside Allies and Partners. They include the Joint Fires Network, which matches targets and weapons across a theater, and the Integrated Mission Network, which shares planning data across the military’s four-star commands. Together they will form the foundaton of a nascent system for global command and control of U.S. and allied forces across land, sea, air, space and cyberspace domains in fast-paced future conflicts. The DOD strives for data that is “visible, accessible, understandable, linked, trustworthy, interoperable and secure,” buttressed by a “disciplined approach to Responsible AI.” Additionally, the DOD has updated its directive on autonomy in weapon systems to demonstrate its commitment to safe and responsible leadership in developing and fielding new technologies. Applied to MDA, these developments in multilateral partnerships, AI and computer vision show that Allies and Partners are on the cusp of new possibilities combining machine computing power with human creativity and insight. 

Generative AI, computer vision and large language models can collect and analyze previously unimaginable volumes of data. These tools will not, however, supplant humans in setting priorities, making value judgments and forming coalitions. While embracing new technology, intel diplomats should heed its limitations and potential misuses. In the case of Russian propaganda, one researcher noted that generative AI can reduce the cost of such campaigns but is not a “magic bullet.” What is considered disruptive today may become commonplace or even ineffective — perhaps sooner rather than later. Intel diplomats should continuously adopt new technology, working across governmental teams to ensure that AI and autonomous systems uphold democratic values and laws, not undermine them.

Future Framework

Numerous initiatives are underway among the U.S. and its Allies and Partners to meet the region’s most pressing challenges. In the realm of MDA, the Indo-Pacific is seeing increasing political will and financial resources. Like-minded nations should capitalize on and expand these gains to invite all willing participants to uphold a Free and Open Indo-Pacific.

Through intel diplomacy committed to protecting national sovereignty, regional security and human rights, Allies and Partners can reduce confusion surrounding new technologies and increase the likelihood of harnessing their benefits. Cultivating institutional knowledge, providing intelligence as a public good and embracing technology while prioritizing democratic rights offers a framework that is sufficiently systematic and adaptable to move forward confidently through the increasing complexities of today’s security landscape.