Beyond States and SpiesThe Security Intelligence Services of the Private Sector

Examines how corporations use intelligence to shape and navigate the world

• Brings private sector intelligence studies to Edinburgh University Press’s Intelligence, Surveillance, and Secret Warfare series
• Radically challenges our state-centric understandings of intelligence, surveillance, and covert action
• The first book on this subsection of Intelligence Studies, which is now being taught at universities around the world.
• Of particular interest to undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral researchers; people working in what we might call traditional intelligence studies; and, importantly, industry practitioners

Scholars have long viewed intelligence as the preserve of nation states. Where the term ‘private sector intelligence’ is used, the focus has been overwhelmingly on government contractors. As such, a crucial aspect of intelligence power has been overlooked: the use of intelligence by corporations to navigate and influence the world. Where there has been academic scrutiny of the field, it is seen as a post-9/11 phenomenon, and that a state monopoly of intelligence has been eroded. Beyond States and Spies demonstrates - through original research - that such a monopoly never existed. Private sector intelligence is at least as old as the organised intelligence activities of the nation state. Beyond States and Spies offers a comparative examination of private and public intelligence, and makes a compelling case for understanding the dangers posed by unregulated intelligence in private hands. Overall, this casts new light on a hitherto under investigated academic space.