BRUNO KAHL was certain that the Russians would not invade. The then head of Germany’s foreign-intelligence service arrived in Kyiv on February 23rd 2022, to meet Ukraine’s leaders. He never saw them. Around 4am the next morning Russian forces lunged for Kyiv. Mr Kahl had to be exfiltrated from his hotel, with the help of allied spooks, weaving through the throng of refugees heading for Poland.
He embodied the haplessness of most European intelligence services in their greatest crisis since
BRUNO KAHL was certain that the Russians would not invade. The then head of Germany’s foreign-intelligence service arrived in Kyiv on February 23rd 2022, to meet Ukraine’s leaders. He never saw them. Around 4am the next morning Russian forces lunged for Kyiv. Mr Kahl had to be exfiltrated from his hotel, with the help of allied spooks, weaving through the throng of refugees heading for Poland.
He embodied the haplessness of most European intelligence services in their greatest crisis since the end of the cold war. French spooks also flubbed the invasion, forcing the resignation of the military-intelligence chief, General Eric Vidaud. They and others disbelieved America’s and Britain’s warnings of an impending Russian attack, but lacked the wherewithal to check for themselves.
No longer, or so they hope. Middle-power democracies are now reshaping their intelligence services for a more hostile world. Most notable are countries that for decades neglected spying, trusting instead in pacifism, neutrality, remoteness or Uncle Sam. Japan is building an espionage apparatus almost from scratch. Sweden is creating a new civilian foreign-intelligence agency. Canada is debating whether to have one, too. Germany hopes to give its spooks broader authority. The Netherlands is set to hand its own spies more powers. Above all, spies are working more closely with foreign friends. “Co-operation among European intelligence services has reached unprecedented levels,” says Nicolas Lerner, head of the French external-intelligence service, DGSE.
One aim of the overhaul is to counter spying by autocratic foes. Another is to curb escalating “grey-zone” aggression by Russia, such as an explosive-laden drone found recently at Leipzig airport. Countries also need early warning of actual war, given the worries that Russia might turn on NATO or that China might invade Taiwan. And if war does break out, countries will need better military intelligence.
Underlying everything is President Donald Trump’s disdain for allies. His suspension of intelligence for Ukraine last year, albeit brief, set off alarm bells. At least one ally is making contingency plans in case America severs intelligence-sharing, says a former American intelligence official. Indeed, some worry America itself could be a direct threat given Mr Trump’s trade war and musings about annexing Canada, Iceland and (until recently) Greenland.
Britain helped to build the spy services of countries of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing partnership with America, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Its spooks are still an admired espionage aristocracy. In a recent survey of spies and experts by L’Express, a French magazine, MI6 was judged the most capable foreign-intelligence agency in Europe, followed by the DGSE. Peers admire Britain’s ability to fuse intelligence from humans (HUMINT) with signals (SIGINT) and other information from multiple agencies. The inter-agency team focused on Russia, nicknamed by some as “Russia House” (in a nod to a John le Carré novel), draws particular praise. Laggards include Austria (see chart).
Japan unlearned much of its tradecraft after the end of the second world war. Its spooks cannot operate undercover abroad and are restricted in chasing foreign spies at home. Disparate bodies share intelligence ad hoc, relying on paper copies. The body nominally in charge of them, the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office (CIRO), has typically been entrusted to former domestic security-police officers. A Japanese writer once called it a house-cat compared with the CIA “tiger”.
This summer Japan launched the National Intelligence Council, a “control tower” for its intelligence efforts, and the National Intelligence Bureau, a beefed-up version of the CIRO, to consolidate information from all sources, akin to Australia’s Office of National Intelligence, which is helping with the transformation. Next, the Japanese government wants a fully-fledged foreign intelligence agency. It is also drawing up new domestic anti-espionage laws to counter the growing threat from China, Russia and North Korea. Previous efforts faced resistance owing to the legacy of Japan’s imperial-era secret police.
Similarly hamstrung by memories of the Nazi-era Gestapo and Communist Stasi, Germany’s BND is little more than a glorified think-tank. German spies cannot break into premises, while “targeting the communications of priests, lawyers, doctors, or journalists has been off limits”, says Gerhard Conrad, a former BND official.
Parliament is expected this week to debate reforms that would strengthen the BND’s ability not only to watch but also to act. The agency will be able to, say, hack opponents or even use “kinetic means” abroad (without deliberately harming people) to make foes “feel the pain”, in the words of Martin Jäger, the BND chief. If the changes are adopted, Mr Conrad says, “We will go from being vegetarian to maybe flexitarian in a world of carnivores.”
Like Germany, Sweden did not predict Russia’s invasion. “The system captures capabilities, but doesn’t capture intent,” says Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister. On his recommendation Sweden is creating a new foreign-intelligence agency that will begin operating next year. It will produce national assessments from secret, commercial and public sources to “widen our aperture”, explains Mr Bildt.
A parliamentary committee in Canada is studying whether it too needs a dedicated foreign-espionage agency after repeated shocks, including the murder of a Sikh activist by suspected Indian agents in 2023 and, more recently, the hostility of Mr Trump, whose officials have privately threatened to eject Canada from Five Eyes. The main Canadian intelligence service, CSIS, is primarily focused on domestic threats, with only limited authority to collect HUMINT abroad. The foreign ministry’s “global security reporting programme” gathers some information, but its ambiguous status between diplomacy and espionage has caused problems.
The Netherlands, by contrast, merged domestic and foreign-intelligence functions in the AIVD in 2002. “We need to be agile and fast. That’s one of our advantages as a small country,” says Simone Smit, AIVD’s director-general. A draft law would give spooks a yearly mandate to act against “evident opponents” without prior approval for each operation.
Reading between the lines
As with military rearmament, countries are boosting intelligence both to prove their value to America, and to protect themselves if it turns away. Juicy intelligence also allows a country to barter for prime cuts from others. In Asia, partners will “expect Japan to collect intelligence on China, especially HUMINT,” says Kotani Ken of Nihon University in Tokyo. One day, some hope, Japan might become the “Sixth Eye”.
Spy chiefs insist that intelligence ties with America remain strong, even as political and trade tensions intensify. Yet there are signs of trouble, from worries about the “politicisation” of intelligence to admissions that Europeans are holding back some information. An exodus of American intelligence officials has not helped.
American intelligence remains vital to allies, not least in providing warnings of terrorist plots. If co-operation broke down, says David Gioe, a former American intelligence officer, “America would lose, but the Europeans would lose more.”
Some want more European integration. In 2024, Sauli Niinisto, a former Finnish president, proposed “a fully-fledged intelligence co-operation service” at the EU level. The Dutch government and the German defence minister have called for a European version of “Five Eyes”.
That is easier said than done. The more widely secrets are shared, the less likely they are to remain secret. And Five Eyes, an alliance of countries with a common language and a history of fighting and spying together, cannot readily be replicated by others. Yet urgent need can overcome mistrust, as happened with counter-terrorism. EU intelligence cells now synthesise ever more analysis from members, though turf battles in Brussels are a headache. When it comes to raw intelligence, “sharing at the level of NATO or the EU is almost impossible,” says Arndt Freytag von Loringhoven, a former BND deputy chief.
European countries perceive the Russian threat differently, and the risk of counter-espionage constrains the sharing of sensitive intelligence. Even so, spy chiefs say “core groups” of European agencies now work jointly to penetrate hard targets such as Russia and China—sharing assessments and co-ordinating operations. “The novelty is the concept of a common mission,” explains one. “We share the work according to who is the best athlete: we work one angle, you work another; and then we share the results.”
Spy chiefs are ambivalent about whether such changes might lead to a European Five Eyes. Mr Lerner, for one, does not rule it out in time. If it came to pass, could Britain be part of both Five Eyes with America and a putative European Eyes?
All this raises an uncomfortable question: if America poses a threat to allies’ security, should they spy on America? By convention, they are not supposed to snoop on each other. Yet in 2013 Edward Snowden, an NSA contractor who made public the American SIGINT agency’s mass-surveillance programmes, revealed that America and Britain had been monitoring the telephone calls of, among others, Angela Merkel, the then German chancellor. (The Germans may also have listened in on Barack Obama.) Mr Trump once complained that Britain’s GCHQ had eavesdropped on him—a claim denied by the agency.
“Other than the Five Eyes, I would assume that most countries have at least some collection efforts aimed at the United States, and that during times of turbulence that effort will increase,” says a former American intelligence official, who notes such work is difficult. “It generally takes years to develop the kind of collection that gives you a reliable picture of a country’s leaders’ plans and intentions.”
Spying remains an imperfect art with a long history of missteps. Strong intelligence agencies can also get things appallingly wrong (see America and Britain’s assessments of Iraq in 2003). But facing a hostile Russia, a nuclear-armed North Korea and a rapidly arming China, the middle powers are finally building their own capacity to judge which threats are real.
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