Strategic Minds: The Role of Intelligence Education in Advancing National Security Analysis

This unique book captures state of the art thinking and methodologies designed to advance intelligence education to produce a capable and qualified intelligence workforce.

Intelligence is evolving because it must keep pace with the many wicked threats that face open democracies. Public health threats such as the COVID-19 pandemic, threats emanating from regional instabilities from climate change, cyber-based threats from artificial intelligence, and the spread of disinformation have all shown how traditional intelligence education must evolve. Tomorrow’s workforce simply needs better education and training – which arguably are better provided by institutions of higher education that have the capacity and time to do it appropriately. While some “on the job” training will always be required, and while the profession will always need specialists in linguistics, engineering, sociology, international relations, religious studies, and the like, it is increasingly obvious that the role of a degree in intelligence studies has never been more important to the intelligence community, and by extension, to the peace and civility of the world. Put simply, intelligence education is critical to preserving democracy.

This book will be of great interest to all students, scholars and practitioners of intelligence studies, data science literacy and machine learning, ethics, security studies, foreign policy and international relations. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism.

James Ramsay is Professor of Security Studies, and Head of the Department of Security Studies and Criminology at Macquarie University. He has over 25 years’ experience in public/environmental health, security studies/intelligence, emergency management, occupational safety. Dr. Ramsay serves on the board of the International Association for Intelligence Education and as their educational practices chair.

Nell Bennett has a PhD in Political Science from Macquarie University. She is the Managing Editor of the Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, and is a Research Fellow with the Blue Security Consortium and La Trobe Asia.