2 unimaginable that Moses sent 12 men “who were heads of the children of Israel” without food or other provisions.2 Yet discussion regarding this subject is absent. If intelligence requires funding, like the rest of the national security establishment, then every nation must allocate a budget. Various studies aiming to estimate national defense spending already exist. Some countries issue so-called white papers, while research institutions, such as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), have elaborate methodologies to determine the spending of countries that do not self-report. While each entity has a particular estimate regarding the world’s spending on defense, none have ventured into a more nuanced subset of national security – intelligence. This thesis is a study to determine the approximate size of the world’s national intelligence industry.
It uses two separate indicators to determine size.
The first
indicator is intelligence spending by individual nations. The second indicator of size is intelligence personnel under employment by individual nations. For the purposes of this study, the components of the intelligence industry are, broadly speaking, services or agencies that are direct divisions of a recognized government. Understanding the size of the world's intelligence industry is significant for three reasons. First, there is no existing study with the purpose of discovering the approximate size of the global intelligence industry. Second, understanding its size can be useful for allocating resources by US intelligence agencies. Third, knowing the size of the world's intelligence industry would be helpful to educational institutions for their own planning. As the intelligence studies field grows, knowing the relative level of demand for professionals in this market will likely support these institutions in recruiting practices. 2
Numbers 13:3 (New King James Version).