Ex- intel chief: Ideology greatly influences how politicians process intelligence
Ideology plays “a very very big role” in how political cabinet officials process and use the intelligence presented to them, former military intelligence analysis chief Brig.- Gen. Dror Shalom.
Shalom recently stepped down from his top position in the IDF intelligence apparatus after about five years but is still serving in other capacities. He made the comments as part of an Institute for National Security Studies ( INSS) virtual conference on fake news on Thursday and was a rare direct acknowledgment of the role of ideology in interpreting intelligence.
Itai Brun, a predecessor of Shalom, who is also a deputy director at INSS, asked Shalom if it is “harder to clarify what is reality now than before?”
Brun was referring to the dilemma that so many foreign and domestic actors skillfully use social media campaigns to propagate fake narratives about the world making it harder, even for intelligence agencies, to tell what is fact and what is fiction.
Shalom said it is harder to decipher the truth currently “because there is more information… and more competition. Also, military commanders and [ political] leaders have more information.”
Brun interjected: “So you are forced into more of a back and forth?”
“We always needed to cope with their ideology,” Shalom responded. “This is part of democracy” with the voters choosing leaders with a certain ideology.
Brun followed by asking, “How big is the role of ideology,” including the balance of how it impacted cabinet decisions as opposed to more apolitical professional considerations?
Shalom said, “ideology has a very very big role. Voters pick leaders… as an intelligence official, I don’t find myself upset that they don’t [ always] accept my view” due to ideology.
He explained that his role was not to press for a specific policy decision in one direction or another, but to help the political echelon pick the best option given their policy preferences.
In the past, he said that because less information was available to the public about foreign countries, such leaders needed to rely on him and intelligence more decisively regarding certain issues. Still, even now, when political leaders have more direct access to information, whether they would agree or disagree, he said they took his views under consideration.
Recent years have seen increasing criticism of leaders politicizing intelligence, though Shalom seemed merely to be acknowledging that ideology will always be part of policymaking.
Regarding the broader topic of coping with fake news, Shalom said, “clarifying what was real… was always challenging. There was always lots of information and interactions [ by actors trying to influence perception.] But there has been an increase of epic proportions” in the fake news which intelligence professionals must now cut through.
Although intelligence analysts have more information available about the world than ever before, the former IDF intelligence analysis chief said his division needed to follow a much larger number of global actors than ever before.
He explained that in the past, IDF intelligence could be very selective about following actors that were far away from the Middle East, but that in the current age of globalization, groups all over the world can have major impacts on the region regardless of distance.
In addition, he said there are a larger number of sophisticated nation- states and non- nation states that know how to present false information in a manner that makes it harder to decipher truths from falsehoods.
While he acknowledged that Israel competes in the social media influence zone like other countries, Israel was different because it has oversight of these campaigns and always tries to understand reality as it truly is.
In terms of directly combating fake news, Shalom said he emphasized increasing the volume of sensors and hard objective data gathering options.