Current research project
I am currently working on a book on the ethics of espionage and counter-intelligence(under contract with OUP).
Espionage and counter-intelligence activities, both real and imagined, weave a complex and alluring story. From Julius Caesar's spies in Britain to the spies scouting medieval market towns under the cloak of their clerical habit, from Francis Walsingham's spy network to the Sun King's ciphers, from the crypto-analysts of Bletchley Park to the Cold War's intelligence war, from the NASA wiretapping scandal to the infiltration of ISIS cells by Chechen forces loyal to Putin - one could tell hundreds of anecdotes. The sources, admittedly of varying degrees of credibility, are there: books (both fiction and non-fiction), articles, special journal issues, and policy papers number in the dozens of thousands. And yet, there is hardly any serious philosophical work on espionage. This is surprising: it is odd that an issue which has proved so enduringly persistent as a practice and fascinating as an object of study should have been ignored by the one academic discipline which claims to have a lot to say on everything - indeed, which has said quite a bit on war itself, of which espionage is a handmaiden.
Granted, moral and political philosophers often make claims of the kind: `in some important sense, X is justified in harming another person Y only if the evidence at his disposal tells him that Y (e.g.) is unjustifiably harming him.' Or: `it counts in favour of a directive/decision being authoritative that it should be made on the basis of the best available evidence.' All of this seems obviously true, but what if the evidence is not available?
Faced with this problem, philosophers have tended to respond by asking whether agents are morally justified (or obliged) to do p, given that they are uncertain as to whether the facts are such as to warrant p, whether p will work, etc. My aim is different: in inquiring about espionage and counter-intelligence, I ask another though related two-pronged question, namely, what agents are morally permitted and obliged to do (a) to reduce the uncertainty under which they operate (the espionage question), (b) to protect themselves from attempts by outsiders to do precisely that (the counter-intelligence question).
In the course of the book, I address the following questions, in the context of foreign policy writ large:
1. On what grounds do members of a political community have a right that information about themselves/their political institutions/their critical infrastructure be regarded as an official secret?
2. On what grounds, if any, may a political community (via its leaders and officials) justifiably appropriate secret information about other political communities without the consent of the latter's members - in effect, spy on them?
3. On the assumption that espionage is under some circumstances morally justified, by what means may intelligence agents and services engage in it? For example, may they deceive, betray, manipulate, bribe? May they intercept communications? May they put pressure on private firms to release confidential data about their customers?
4. If a political community's official secrets are at risk of being 'stolen' by outsiders (and/or by some of its members acting on behalf of those outsiders), what counter-intelligence work may that community's intelligence services justifiably engage in to defend itself? In particular, may they deceive, manipulate, bribe their own or foreign agents as a means to uncover traitors in their midst? May they spy on their fellow citizens?
The chapters are currently as follows:
Ch 1 Setting the stage
Ch 2 Political secrets
Ch 3 Acquiring secrets: A defense of Espionage
Ch 4 Economic espionage
Ch 5 Deception
Ch 6 Treason
Ch 7 Running and recruiting spies
Ch 8 The technology of espionage and counter-intelligence
Ch 9 Mass surveillance
I am currently working on a book on the ethics of espionage and counter-intelligence(under contract with OUP).
Espionage and counter-intelligence activities, both real and imagined, weave a complex and alluring story. From Julius Caesar's spies in Britain to the spies scouting medieval market towns under the cloak of their clerical habit, from Francis Walsingham's spy network to the Sun King's ciphers, from the crypto-analysts of Bletchley Park to the Cold War's intelligence war, from the NASA wiretapping scandal to the infiltration of ISIS cells by Chechen forces loyal to Putin - one could tell hundreds of anecdotes. The sources, admittedly of varying degrees of credibility, are there: books (both fiction and non-fiction), articles, special journal issues, and policy papers number in the dozens of thousands. And yet, there is hardly any serious philosophical work on espionage. This is surprising: it is odd that an issue which has proved so enduringly persistent as a practice and fascinating as an object of study should have been ignored by the one academic discipline which claims to have a lot to say on everything - indeed, which has said quite a bit on war itself, of which espionage is a handmaiden.
Granted, moral and political philosophers often make claims of the kind: `in some important sense, X is justified in harming another person Y only if the evidence at his disposal tells him that Y (e.g.) is unjustifiably harming him.' Or: `it counts in favour of a directive/decision being authoritative that it should be made on the basis of the best available evidence.' All of this seems obviously true, but what if the evidence is not available?
Faced with this problem, philosophers have tended to respond by asking whether agents are morally justified (or obliged) to do p, given that they are uncertain as to whether the facts are such as to warrant p, whether p will work, etc. My aim is different: in inquiring about espionage and counter-intelligence, I ask another though related two-pronged question, namely, what agents are morally permitted and obliged to do (a) to reduce the uncertainty under which they operate (the espionage question), (b) to protect themselves from attempts by outsiders to do precisely that (the counter-intelligence question).
In the course of the book, I address the following questions, in the context of foreign policy writ large:
1. On what grounds do members of a political community have a right that information about themselves/their political institutions/their critical infrastructure be regarded as an official secret?
2. On what grounds, if any, may a political community (via its leaders and officials) justifiably appropriate secret information about other political communities without the consent of the latter's members - in effect, spy on them?
3. On the assumption that espionage is under some circumstances morally justified, by what means may intelligence agents and services engage in it? For example, may they deceive, betray, manipulate, bribe? May they intercept communications? May they put pressure on private firms to release confidential data about their customers?
4. If a political community's official secrets are at risk of being 'stolen' by outsiders (and/or by some of its members acting on behalf of those outsiders), what counter-intelligence work may that community's intelligence services justifiably engage in to defend itself? In particular, may they deceive, manipulate, bribe their own or foreign agents as a means to uncover traitors in their midst? May they spy on their fellow citizens?
The chapters are currently as follows:
Ch 1 Setting the stage
Ch 2 Political secrets
Ch 3 Acquiring secrets: A defense of Espionage
Ch 4 Economic espionage
Ch 5 Deception
Ch 6 Treason
Ch 7 Running and recruiting spies
Ch 8 The technology of espionage and counter-intelligence
Ch 9 Mass surveillance
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