Advocates of Collaboration: Assembling Cyber Intelligence in the UK

This thesis explores the role of collaboration in cyber intelligence in the UK. The project responds to calls for the use of a wider range of methodologies in intelligence studies by using actor-network theory as an approach to conducting empirical research and analysing material. This involves viewing cyber intelligence as an inherently socio-technical process, leading to an account of this phenomenon that is more ‘social’ than that found in the technically oriented cyber security literature, while emphasising material factors that can be absent from mainstream intelligence studies accounts. This thesis uses interviews with practitioners and autoethnographic reflection on the research process to explore the everyday workings of cyber intelligence in the UK. Analysing cyber intelligence as an actor-network shows how this phenomenon transcends perceived boundaries between the private sector and the public sector. This challenges the assumption that intelligence is primarily a modality of state action and that the key actors are government agencies. Through the analysis of specific moments of intelligence sharing, the thesis draws out the importance of ad hoc, personal relations in what can otherwise be conceptualised as a formalised, technical process. The thesis examines how people working in cyber intelligence describe their practices and ultimately themselves, drawing on actor-network accounts of claims about expertise and genealogies of key concepts to explore how these descriptions are bound up in claims of expertise at the intersection of competing professional worlds. This account emphasises the work that goes into creating the personal relationships that interviewees view as crucial for intelligence sharing and collaboration. It explores how participants in these processes engage in acts of translation to create associations between different groups. Finally, it examines the role played by material objects such as badges and buildings in enabling these collaborative relationships.