National security is in a constant state of flux. While national interests rarely change, threats to those interests do. National security and intelligence are increasingly intertwined. Threats and change will dominate our national security landscape for a long time to come, as the operating environment remains highly unstable. The task of the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service is to serve the highest levels of national government. This means a constant need to develop expertise in these areas, with national security and intelligence-led management at the heart of activities.
We are living exceptionally uncertain times, and it is particularly difficult to predict what the future will look like. The world may never have been so complex and hazy as it is now. With the competition between great powers and tensions between states, the importance of intelligence has long been emphasized in the support for the Finnish Government’s decision-making in issues relating to national security. It is no coincidence that several European countries have strengthened their national security management and intelligence capabilities.
As the security environment becomes increasingly alarming and national security management more complex, administrative structures, processes and, for example, performance management are also facing a world in which increasingly complex threat scenarios are more difficult to define. From the perspective of foresight and intelligence, this is a significant challenge, and highlights the importance of responsible, proactive, and intelligence-led national security management. Scattered and fragmented action is not responsible policy, let alone conducive to national security.
The importance of intelligence and foresight, as well as intelligence-led management, are emphasized in the national security sector. This applies in particular to the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service, whose core processes and activities are built around data. In anticipating the future, increasingly better information management and intelligence-led management are needed, and not only within our Service. This places considerable demands on the top-level national government and public administration, and thus on security authorities, in terms of expertise and development as well as resources and recruitment.
Due to the challenges of the security environment, we need a broader and deeper intelligence base to support decision-making related to national security and foreign and security policy. Technological development poses its own challenges for national security management. Disruptive technologies create both opportunities and challenges. In the national security and intelligence context, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, 6G technology, and the location of cloud services are factors for which national solutions must be found.
An increasingly challenging issue is related to economic security. Global markets, financial flows, corporate acquisitions, economic partners, and research and innovation activities require foresight and intelligence. Thus, from the perspective of national interests and protecting national security, a multifaceted challenge is posed by strategic dependencies or, on the other hand, the goal of strategic autonomy. It is clear that Finnish national resources are not sufficient for complete self-sufficiency, nor should this naturally be the goal. On the other hand, it is clear that we must be able to understand the vulnerabilities of national interests and thus create long-term guidelines and promote strategic autonomy.
We need better-managed processes that take national security issues into account as comprehensively as possible. It is also important that we develop national intelligence activity and intelligence legislation so that we are better able to respond to the increased demands and changes in the operating environment. Actors identified as critical must take into account the national security strategy, national risk assessment, their own risk assessments, and threat information shared by the competent authorities when implementing measures to increase crisis resilience in their own activities.
The task of security and intelligence services is to provide information that enables countries to navigate the future. The current security landscape also challenges the way we define counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism, and how we scale and measure these threats. The lines between terrorism, influence operations by states, intelligence, and organized crime are increasingly blurred. This demands not only change in the culture within our Service but also in the way we work with our domestic and international partners. Our changing security environment will not wait.
Juha Martelius
Ph.D, Director
Finnish Security and Intelligence Service
Finland
Kari Laitinen
Dr.Soc.Sc., Senior Adviser
Finnish Security and Intelligence Service
Finland
