2025/07/21 by Ehud Eiran, Ofer Guterman, David Siman-Tov · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Intelligence, Security, War Strategy
paper · doi:10.1080/02684527.2025.2526932
openalex publication_date 2025/07/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/25
This article investigates the rise and decline of early warning as a priority task for intelligence agencies. The article shows that shifts in the prioritization of early warning are shaped by a combination of material, institutional, ideational, and technological factors, as well as by focusing events – rather than simply reflecting the rise and fall of external threats, as commonly argued. The changing external threat environment leads to the rise and decline of early warning, but the pace and natures of the change are determined by other variables. Using previously unexamined primary sources, as well as other ‘public-facing’ sources, the paper investigates the case of strategic early warning for war in Israel’s Defense Intelligence (IDI) from 1948 to 2023, to illustrate this argument. In doing so, it adds an empirical contribution to the understanding of a central aspect of an important non-Anglo-American intelligence community.