Countering Private Intelligence Companies
Archisman Goswami
Once more, as in centuries past, wars are rather easily started and then fought without perceptible restraint – remarked noted strategic theorist Edward Luttwak in his 1995 essay on the re-emergence of what he glumly termed ‘Post-Heroic Warfare’. “Present circumstances call for even more than a new concept of war, but for a new mentality that would inject unheroic realism into military endeavour precisely to overcome excessive timidity in employing military means”.
Luttwak’s assertions, capturing the strategic zeitgeist of the post-Cold War era and written primarily in relation to contemporary military tactics, could well have been written yesterday. The attempted mutiny by Wagner mercenaries in Russia this summer, and the subsequent mysterious death of its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin testifies to the fact that the modern global security arena is characterised both by the resurgence of state competition, and the increased salience of private security actors and the “weaponisation of everything”. As strategic competitors to India such as China openly championing their strategy of ‘Unrestricted Warfare’ and blurring the lines between state and the private sector in national security affairs, there is yet time to acknowledge the ‘unheroic realism’ and lack of ‘perceptible restraint’ still guiding hostile strategic interactions in our brave new decade.
Perhaps nowhere are these confluent facets- a lack of restraint, the blurring of lines between state and non-state actors in the security arena, and the ‘weaponisation of everything’– more evident than with regards to private intelligence companies (PICs), whose role within geopolitical competition has remained relatively understudied in comparison to its martial counterpart, private military companies (PMCs). Like the latter, the former provides plausible deniability for both states and high net-worth individuals (HNIs) willing to pay the requisite fees for their services. As such, the expanding role of PICs presents novel counterintelligence risks and opportunities for countries such as India, which must contend with the possibility of their use by countries such as China, but also to a lesser extent, Pakistan. This article seeks to identify some of these risks and outline recommendations to counter them from an Indian perspective.
PICs: A brief explainer
The emergence of PICs dovetails that of the modern national intelligence service in the 19th century. As early as the 1860s, Pinkerton, among the world’s oldest PICs still in operation, was tasked by the administration of Abraham Lincoln with conducting counterintelligence operations against the Confederacy during the American Civil War – a responsibility that it pursued alongside “strikebreaking” and “unionbusting” workers on behalf of individual tycoons and wealthy corporations during America’s so-called ‘Gilded Age’. In line with this temporal setting, the popular image of a privately-hired spy remains associated with that of the stereotypical private investigator – a Chandleresque, trench-coated and trilby-hatted shadowy figure skulking around a street corner.
Over a century on, PICs maintain a close – though not always even-tempered – relationship with governments, often being provided with legal/political protection by the latter in exchange for their services and the promise of plausible deniability in intelligence operations. In the 1990s, the fledgling Russian Federation, under Boris Yeltsin, tasked US PIC Kroll in 1992 with tracking down funds siphoned away from the state during the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the same company being contracted by the Filipino and Kuwaiti governments to gather intelligence on Ferdinand Marcos’ and Saddam Hussein’s secret bank accounts respectively. More recently, governments such as Iran and China have been known to use PICs to spy on dissidents and conduct covert operations against adversary states. However, this relationship has not been universally equanimous. The so-called ‘Trump dossier’, supposedly containing kompromat on the then newly-elected President of the USA, Donald Trump, was released in 2017 by spy-for-hire Christopher Steele- contracted by Fusion GPS, a Washington DC-based “opposition research firm”. Beyond governments, HNIs may also seek to defend their interests or target governments using PICs, with private intelligence operatives hired by Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, claiming in 2019 to have obtained evidence of the Saudi government hacking his cell phone.
With their centrality thus established in both politics and business, it is no wonder that the private intelligence sector today is a multi-million-dollar industry. In London, seen by many as the PIC capital of the world, the private intelligence industry is estimated to be worth as high as $19 billion, serving clients ranging from finance and legal firms, high net-worth individuals, and even governments. PICs such as Hakluyt, Black Cube, and most notably, firms such as Bellingcat have all made their mark on the modern global security landscape. As the lines blur between civilian society and its associated legal, financial and political institutions on one hand, and the strategic realm on the other, it may be forecast that PICs will only grow in terms of both financial and geopolitical importance. It is in this regard that India, with its growing clout on the global stage and status as a regional power, must account for the new counterintelligence challenges posed by the deployment of PICs by adversary states for strategic gain.
PICs: India and Counterintelligence challenges for the 2020s
With national security in the 21st Century necessitating greater liaison between governments and the private sector, one of the accompanying risks of such public-private partnership may be argued to be the increased scope it offers for PIC interference. Indeed, like most other global powers, India in recent years has expanded technical cooperation between the state and the private sector, particularly in the fields of cybersecurity and space technology. While central to India’s national security needs, the pursuit of public-private partnerships must be done in consideration of the ease it provides to PICs, hired by adversary states, to access state secrets. Unlike intra and inter-governmental interactions, the private sector lends itself to greater internal transparency – something which may be exploited by PICs. Given the fact that PICs themselves operate in the free market, their cohabitation of this space with private companies with close ties to the government holds the potential to allow the compromise of strategic interests, and give India’s adversaries a competitive advantage – comprising a significant counterintelligence challenge in the process.
A more imminent risk lies in the use of PICs by adversary states to interfere in India’s political and electoral processes, or those of countries. While ‘covert action’ as conducted by PICs remains among the most opaque aspects of their activity, their forays into the spheres of disinformation and election interference have been well recorded in recent years, ranging from ‘Team Jorge’s’ alleged interference in Kenya’s recent elections on behalf of key candidates, to the hiring of PIC ‘Team Alpha’ by South Korea’s intelligence agencies to interfere in the country’s own elections. Global precedents aside, India is no stranger to the involvement of PICs in electoral processes, with political candidates having long been alleged to have used Indian PICs to gather information on their rivals, much like their international counterparts. The weaponisation of PICs by adversary states such as China, however, may lend a more sinister touch to such activities, with the use of PICs to spread disinformation, or to support/undermine specific candidates having key national security implications for India.
Beyond the dissemination of black or grey propaganda, however, PICs may be actively used to harm or harass Indian diplomats, or persons of interest on behalf of hostile states, but also high net-worth individuals and economic offenders based abroad. Once again, precedent points towards the possible use of private spies by economic offenders based abroad to obfuscate or subvert legal proceedings aimed at their extradition back to India. Similarly, PICs may be used to stalk or otherwise badger Indian nationals and diplomats, particularly in third countries where law enforcement have been known to demonstrate laxity towards such issues. Possibilities range from simple stalking and physical surveillance, to more intimidatory tactics such as the staging of break-ins, or hacking/tapping sensitive computer systems or phone lines. The use of such tactics- which may serve to help both hostile states such as China seeking to undermine Indian strategic interests, or absconding tycoons seeking an edge in legal cases filed against them in foreign courts- must be accounted for by central agencies developing new counterintelligence strategies against private spies.
Future Scope and Recommendations
Using PICs, or any private security actor more generally, is always a double-edged sword. While they may provide governments with plausible deniability to avoid embarrassment or diplomatic retaliation, their mercenary nature may equally present challenges the nation’s strategic interests, especially if the balance of power between themselves and the state tips towards the former due to existing circumstances- as the mutiny by Wagner mercenaries in Russia this summer and the subsequent mysterious death of its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in a plane crash shows. It is with these considerations in mind that one may present the following recommendations for Indian counterintelligence practitioners in dealing with them.
First, third-party individuals or organisations with reliably tied in with Indian strategic interests may be used to liaise with large PICs and to develop contacts within them. In Western countries, particularly the UK, US and Canada, where the private intelligence industry is more organised and active, these intermediaries may include industrialists, journalists, and other influential figures with connections within both local diaspora communities and the financial/political establishment. Brokers such as these may be used to provide information about the distinct functioning of PICs in relation to their local environments, while facilitating access to their internal plans- even as they add to the distance between these companies and India’s local diplomatic presence to avoid embarrassment or the compromise of information. These tactics of adaptive denial would also aid Indian authorities in developing a better understanding of PICs, and the risks and opportunities they pose in terms of counterintelligence.
Second, and from a legalistic standpoint, India may consider amendments to domestic laws regulating private detective/intelligence agencies. While the government did pass the Private Detective Agencies (Regulation) Bill in 2007, which from a counterintelligence perspective, reflected some limited efforts to prevent their use by adversary states against Indian interests- for instance, only allowing Indian citizens to operate as registered private detectives in the country, and making such agencies register with the government. Sixteen years on, however, the insufficiency of these measures are clearer than ever.
The emergence of insider threats have made questions surrounding citizenship increasingly irrelevant in the counterintelligence sector- as seen in the recent arrests of former naval officer Ashish Pathak and freelance journalist Vivek Raghuvanshi for spying for unnamed foreign powers. The existing laws may be amended by introducing provisions for random and regular ‘re-vetting’ of private detectives/ spies, and the provision of additional powers to the Intelligence Bureau to investigate the activities of such agencies operating at home.
Third, the national security establishment may consider establishing specialised units to advise and oversee the security procedures implemented by private companies working with the government on sensitive projects. Regular auditing of these partners security procedures, liaising with their insider threat detection units (and aiding their establishment if non-existent), and the development of common strategies would not only prevent the risk of foreign PIC operatives compromising India’s interests, but also increase trust and cooperation between the state and its private partners on joint projects.
Offensive tactics may also be considered when dealing with hostile PICs, and the government may be well advised to countervail them by utilising other PICs itself. However, if it chooses to do so, it would be worth considering the potential counterintelligence risks of their use- including the potentiality of information being compromised by these mercenary actors, and the associated risks of increased access to the state by private actors driven by profit.
The interplay between market forces, represented by PICs, and better-defined state actors, is one that despite its apparent novelty, simply illustrates the broad spectrum of actors that India has had to deal with in the past, and will have to continue dealing with in the future. For New Delhi to be successful in this endeavour, it will have to acknowledge their associated risks and opportunities- and account more explicitly for them in its future pursuit of counterintelligence.
