Technology & the Changing Nature of Covert Action

We’re delighted to welcome Professor Richard J. Aldrich, Professor of International Security at the University of Warwick, for the upcoming Dockrill Lecture: Technology and the Changing Nature of Covert Action.

In this lecture, Professor Richard J. Aldrich explores the evolving landscape of international relations in the tech age. As a leading expert in cybersecurity and an award-winning spy writer, Professor Aldrich delves into the complexities of covert action in the digital era. With his extensive expertise at the intersection of technology, intelligence and security, he offers unique insights into how emerging technologies are reshaping the way nations conduct covert operations.

We associate technology with sophistication and higher civilisation. So why are international relations in the tech age so barbaric? Professor Aldrich suggests that we are entering a new era of covert action that has been expanded and transformed by science, technology and cyber. We are now in a period of performative assassinations, signature drone strikes, AI driven disinformation campaigns and sabotage by privateers recruited online, together with the significant expansion of shadowy units devoted to this work. These burgeoning activities often exist at the liminal boundary of secrecy and in different spaces to the sorts of classic projects once performed by the para-military elements of spy agencies like the CIA. Digital disruption has also subverted many of the intellectual categories and organisational boundaries in this realm, including the divide between state and non-state.

Advanced technology does not result in the emergence of new norms of practice but accelerating cycles of performative violence used to create fear and intimidation. We may well be witnessing the emergence of a different and more distasteful style of conducting international affairs.

Richard J. Aldrich is a Professor of International Security at the University of Warwick. In 2019 he completed a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to investigate the "nature of secrecy" in a world characterised by increasing technology and transparency. He has recently been involved in the H2020 DigiGen project 'The Impact of Technological Transformations on the Digital Generation' and an EU Erasmus project on Cyberdiplomacy.

His main research interests lie in the area of intelligence, security and cyber communities. He has been honoured as a Distinguished Scholar for contributions to the field of Intelligence Studies by the Intelligence Studies Section of the International Studies Association.

His most recent research - conducted jointly with JD Work - has focused on 'Project Spaceman' and looks at pioneering British efforts in the area of computer security and automatic data processing in the 1970s. A related paper was published in Intelligence and National Security.

Previously he led a large AHRC project entitled "The Central Intelligence Agency and the Contested Record of US Foreign Policy" which received follow on funding. This involved a team of eight scholars at the universities of Nottingham and Warwick. Some of the work of the team was published in a special edition of the journal . Following on from this project he joined with his colleague Chris Moran to write an essay on Donald Trump and his relationship with the CIA for .

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