King's College London

Professor Christoph Meyer, from the Department of European and International Studies, addressed an audience at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) on 12 December.

Prof Meyer spoke to the guests about strategic intelligence and its role in decision-making processes, drawing on his extensive research and published works on the subject. 

Prof Meyer said: “I discussed divergent interpretations among experts and practitioners of what strategic intelligence in foreign and security policy can accomplish – especially after major surprises experienced in the last 10-15 years.

“I argued that intelligence producers should be expected to do more than just state-of-the art collection and analysis, but should try harder to increase the chances that their work makes a positive difference. At the same time, we need to consider the embeddedness of producers within organisations, their relationships with consumers and should also raise our expectations of organisations and consumers of intelligence.”

Prof Meyer also analysed the real-world performance of strategic intelligence in a European context over the past 15 year where a decision-makers were often unprepared for and could only react to surprising events. He finished with three proposals for improvement before taking questions from the audience.

The talk was co-hosted by the Forum Intelligence Services in Germany (GKND) and introduced by the DGAP director Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff (DGAP) and Klaus Schmidt (GKND). Dr Aylin Matlé (DGAP) responded to the talk and the former high-ranking German and EU intelligence professional Dr Gerhard Conrad moderated the discussion.

The talk benefited from underpinning research, some of it published in the books Warning about War (with Chiara De Franco and Florian Otto, PhD CUP) and Estimative Intelligence in European Foreign Policy (with Eva Michaels, Nikki Ikani, Aviva Guttmann and Mike Goodman, EUP).