2025/12/05 by Dan Hansén · 2 voices
Social Sciences · Business, Management and Accounting · #Intelligence, Security, War Strategy #Competitive and Knowledge Intelligence #Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/02684527.2025.2595032
openalex publication_date 2025/12/05 · openalex created_date 2025/12/06 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Intelligence agencies are expected to be flexible and imaginative to make sense of an uncertain world. This poses challenges for bureaucracies that adhere to values that essentially foster predictability in the interest of rationalisation. The agencies in Western democracies arguably grappled with how to bureaucratise imagination even before the 9/11 Commission urged the US IC to do so, and the grapple certainly lingers continuously. This article proposes that Pragmatism can inspire to a more flexible and imaginative intelligence bureaucracy. It discusses four basic tenets of Pragmatism and their relationship to intelligence affairs: fallibilism, anti-dualism, inquiry, and deliberation.