It’s arrived! Thanks Georgetown UP and those who helped make The Intelligence Intellectuals: Social Scientists and the Making of the CIA: @markstout.bsky.social, Don Jacobs, Robert_Patman, @joemaiolo.bsky.social, @ldfreedman.bsky.social, Chris Kinsey, @stephenwalt.bsky.social, Beinecke, and more!

Our first speaker line up for the Aspen Otago National Security Forum is Chris Taylor of ASPI interviewing the Biden Administration’s emerging tech czar Anne Neuberger on the huge challenges artificial intelligence poses for espionage and analysis. www.otago.ac.nz/foreign-poli...

Is the national security system robust enough to withstand shock, and fleet-footed enough to respond to black swans? Rolfe asks whether it focuses more on the right processes than it does the right people, and if it ‘lacks imagination’, making NZers less secure.

The Intel Intellectuals is out in the Fall with Georgetown University Press. Support your starving social scientist now and donate by buying a copy: press.georgetown.edu/Book/The-Int...

Sherman Kent understood very quickly that estimating intentions and capabilities might be a thankless task. “In intelligence, as in other callings, estimating is what you do when you do not know.” 5/8

Faced with R&A or the Board of Economic Warfare, Arthur Schlesinger Jnr didn’t relish the thought of going to OSS’s thinktank. "Depressing," he said "to be in the middle of a lot of PhD’s once again." But he chose R&A because he felt more at home with polsci than economics. 3/8

You can’t write about the influence of social scientists on CIA’s intelligence estimates without questioning whether they’d have any flair for it at all. William Harding Jackson, who had written a wartime report on British Intelligence, certainly didn’t think so. 🧵 1/8

Richard Aldrich says it is "arrestingly well-researched and rich in biographical detail". The Intelligence Intellectuals: Social Scientists and the Making of CIA. Available for pre-order now: press.georgetown.edu/Book/The-Int...

We have a cover! My thanks to Georgetown University Press for their hard work. Photo of the "father of intelligence analysis" Sherman Kent in a very un-pc pose!

Very rewarding trip to D.C and NYC. Throughly enjoyed the @socintelhist.bsky.social conference at the International Spy Museum and the chance to present from my upcoming book. Made some new friends, and caught up with two old friends in NY. Still the greatest city. Stay strong America!

The University of What? Chris Moran, Richard Aldrich, Ronan Mainprize.

Council of Four: John Negroponte, Michael McConnell, Michael Hayden, James Clapper. At the Society for Intelligence Historians conference, Washington D.C.

Henry Tonks, war surgeon and lecturer at the Slade art school at the turn of last century, described his class of particularly talented but demanding students as “a crisis of brilliance”.

Looking forward to presenting “Anticipating the Bear: Discerning Soviet Intentions vs Capabilities 1942-1953” at the Society for Intelligence History Conference in Washington D.C, Feb 3-8. Getting inside the head of the adversary, early CIG/CIA.

Very much enjoying Australian historian Robert Manne’s A Political Memoir: Intellectual Combat in the Cold War and Culture Wars. Reminded me of my political philosophy professor Jim Flynn, zigging when others zagged, but always a good argument for doing so.

Wonderful trip to Cambodia, thanks to Suz Jessep and Asia New Zealand Foundation. Seeing a very unfamiliar country makes you think differently about the familiar ones. Like South Korea, Cambodia lives a reality which is somewhere between pessimism and hope.

In Phnom Penh with Suz Jessep and Farib Sos. Amazing city, so much to learn here in one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Thanks to Asia New Zealand.

By the 1940s social science was being spoken of with the same excitement AI is today. Could it provide a new strategic intelligence discipline to assess enemy intentions and capabilities? The Intel Intellectuals and the CIA. Out Fall 2025 with Georgetown University Press!