ABSTRACT
The future, or rather the perception of the future, always tends to reflect the present, and our inability to take into account fundamental changes, even though history is made up of them, as is our limited ability to see the complex indirect consequences of technological, social and cultural change. The discussion of the future of intelligence has in past decades tended to reflect the dominating perceptions of the nature of security and threats, from the late Cold War paradigm of the 1980s. The century of intelligence represents a unique period in first of all European and North American history, fuelled by the combination of ideology, industrial technology and a fatal interpretation and employment of the Clausewitzian concept of war. The development of information technology and patterns of information exchange has been the single technological and social factor with the most direct impact on the conduct and potential of intelligence.
