KCSI Digest - Nov 2026 | King’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence

October 2026 Digest

Contents:

Events
Conferences
Call for Papers
Recent Publications
Podcasts

Events:

Allies at War: How the Strufggles Between Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World
3 November 2026
Clements Center for National Security, Austin, TX

On November 3, 2026, the Clements Center for National Security and the LBJ School of Public Affairs will host “Allies at War: How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World” with Tim Pleydell-Bouverie, British historian and author. Join us at 12:15 – 1:30 pm in the Bass Lecture Hall, in The LBJ School of Public Affairs.

Tim Bouverie is a historian and journalist. His first book Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War was a Sunday Times Bestseller and was shortlisted for the prestigious Orwell Prize. The book has been translated into eleven languages and is regarded as the first major narrative account of appeasement. Tim’s latest book Allies at War: The Politics of Defeating Hitler published in April 2025 to critical acclaim, with The Guardian calling it “a revelatory study of second world war alliances”, and The Independent writing that it was “A powerful and well-researched study of an alliance that was often fractious or worse.” In March 2026, Allies at War won the Duff Cooper Prize.

More details here.

Lord Ricketts: Peace Makers: The Men and Women of the Foreign Office in WWII
6 November 2026
Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, Cambridge UK and online

Peace Makers tells the story of the men and women who served in the Foreign Office in London and in embassies around the world during the Second World War. In London, the officials led by Sir Alec Cadogan were not only dealing with daily crises but thinking ahead to shape the future peace. A small team led by Gladwyn Jebb ensured a central British role in the design of the UN and post-war European security structures, while William Strang led Allied planning for the occupation of Germany. British embassies oversaw evacuations, endured lengthy internment, nurtured relations with allies, competed with Nazi agents for influence in neutral states, and organised escape lines for Allied PoWs. The war also changed the Foreign Office. Women proved highly effective at replacing men in support roles and promoting British interests in tough places abroad. Their achievements helped sweep away the barriers to women serving in the senior diplomatic ranks.

Lord Peter Ricketts was a British diplomat for more than forty years and rose to be the Permanent Under Secretary of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Head of the Diplomatic Service. He was also the UK’s first National Security Adviser and Ambassador to France. He is now a member of the House of Lords, the Chairman of the Franco-British Council, and Vice Chairman of the Royal United Services Institute. He is much in demand as a commentator on foreign affairs, appearing regularly on the BBC, Sky News, Times Radio, and LBC. He has written for the FT, the Times and the New Statesman. His first book, Hard Choices: The Making and Unmaking of Global Britain, was published in 2021. His latest book, Peace Makers: Shaping the Modern World: The Men and Women of the Foreign Office in WWII, was published in 2026.

More details here.

SCIF After Hours with CIA’s Amy Heald
9 November 2026
Intelligence and National Security Alliance, Chantilly, VA

Join 150 colleagues from across the intelligence and national security community for an evening of candid conversation and connection at INSA's SCIF After Hours withAmy Heald, Chief of Staff, Office of the Director, CIA. The evening kicks off with a networking reception, followed by a fireside chat between Ms. Heald and INSA President Suzanne Wilson Heckenberg. Topics for discussion include: Technology Modernization: How the Agency is evolving how it acquires and fields emerging technology, Compressing Acquisition Timelines: Getting mission-critical capabilities into operational use faster, Strengthening Industry Partnerships: How DIB companies can better align their innovation pipelines with the IC’s most urgent tradecraft and technology priorities.

More details here.

The New BND Law
10 November 2026
German Spy Museum, Berlin

The Federal Intelligence Service (BND), founded in 1956, is facing the biggest reform in its history. The goal: to transform from a defensive to an operational service. This is due to the increased threat, particularly from Russia. The Chancellor's Office also wants to reduce the BND's dependence on US intelligence agencies. Until now, the BND has only been permitted to gather and analyze information.

The BND (Federal Intelligence Service) is to be granted significantly more powers in the future. These include sabotage operations to weaken enemy armed forces, as well as monitoring internet traffic originating in Germany and en route to other countries. Data can be analyzed using artificial intelligence, and facial recognition software is to be deployed. The foreign intelligence service will also be permitted to engage in hacking, hackbacks, and cyberattacks. Furthermore, it will be allowed to defend itself against drones flying over its own properties using "appropriate means." The service will also be permitted to enter private residences to install espionage equipment or to secretly manipulate and sabotage devices, such as weapon parts, to render them harmless. Informants and spies will also be authorized to commit certain crimes abroad.

There are concerns and worries about the use of AI – but also about the potential use of the US police software Palantir. This raises the risk of data flowing to the USA. Let's get started with many questions for our experts about our future security!

More details here.

Queens of Code: NSA’s Pioneering Women
12 November 2026
The International Spy Museum, online

Their work helped lay the foundation for many of the technologies that power the digital world today, even as they had to keep their work secret for over 50 years. They are the origin story for women in technology. They are the Queens of Code.

These women worked in information technology at the National Security Agency in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s and helped shape the early days of computing. The new book Queens of Code: Inspiring True Stories from NSA’s Computing Women, tells the stories of these trailblazing computing women at the forefront of innovation, contributing to groundbreaking advances in software development, big data processing, search capabilities, mainframe computing, microelectronics, cybersecurity and much more. Join us to hear from the author Eileen Buckholtz, a former Master Computer Scientist with the NSA; Maureen McHugh, whose 33-year career as a computer scientist and senior manager included serving as the senior liaison to the US Senate in the Legislative Affairs office; and Sherri Ramsay, former Director of the NSA/Central Security Service Threat Operations Center and a former Board of Directors member of the Armed Forces Communications Electronic Administration. Following the presentation, you’ll be able to ask questions via our online platform.

More detailshere.

Dr. Matthew Hefler: Churchill and de Gaulle: Secret Intelligence and the Failure of Franco-British Relations
13 November 2026
Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, Cambridge UK and online

Why did Britain and France fail to seriously cooperate after the Second World War, despite calls from leaders on both sides of the Channel?

Drawing on international intelligence archives, Dr Matthew Hefler reassesses Franco-British relations and reveals the great power rivalry, clandestine diplomacy, and covert political action that drove apart two of the leading figures of the twentieth century, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle. Intelligence material shows that Winston Churchill had turned against an alliance with France. With his clear sense of the challenges facing British post-war grand strategy, Churchill opted instead to consolidate control of the Middle East by promoting plans for a Greater Syria, establishing a Jewish state, and permitting a campaign of subversion designed to oust the French from the region. The strategy brought him up against de Gaulle – whose intelligence services had penetrated the operation – as well as his own Foreign Minister, Anthony Eden, who led a secret effort to block Churchill’s policy and salvage Franco-British relations. Churchill and de Gaulle follows a sweeping, Churchillian effort to preserve the British Empire and Britain’s great power status – and the ending of the Entente Cordiale.

Dr Matthew Hefler is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Statecraft and Strategic Communication at the Stockholm School of Economics, and Project Lead of the AJI Intelligence and Security Programme at the Ax:son Johnson Institute for Statecraft and Diplomacy. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Geopolitics, University of Cambridge, and a Co-Convenor of the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. He is a specialist in international history and intelligence history, and his research explores the role of intelligence and secret services in statecraft and international diplomacy. He received his PhD from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, where his dissertation was shortlisted for the Michael Dockrill Prize in International History by the British International History Group (BIHG). Matt’s research and writing can be found in Intelligence and National Security, Engelsberg Ideas and The Conversation Canada. He is the editor of the collection Intelligence and Contemporary Conflict: Communication in Diplomacy, Statecraft and War. His first monograph explores intelligence and Allied relations during the Second World War and is entitled Churchill and de Gaulle: Secret Intelligence and the Failure of Franco-British Relations.

More details here.

Inside Intelligence: Making Sense of Public Revolts in Embattled Democracies
18 November 2026
Johns Hopkins, online

Join Michael Ard, director of the MS in Intelligence Analysis program, for a conversation with Martin Gurri about what public protests and political unrest reveal about the health of democracy and how intelligence analysts can interpret these movements in an increasingly complex information environment.

Gurri, a former CIA analyst and current visiting fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, will examine what drives mass demonstrations and why some uprisings lead to political reforms or leadership changes while others result in repression, instability, or renewed authoritarianism. Gurri is the author of The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium. He spent nearly three decades as director of research and visual analysis and senior analyst at the U.S. Government’s Open Source Center. He now works in the private sector as chief analyst at Fifth Wave Analytics, where he focuses on geopolitical analysis and develops and delivers courses on analysis and open-source exploitation. He is also a frequent contributor to The Free Press, City Journal, New York Post, and other publications.

More details here.

General Matthew Jones. Chief of Defense Intelligence
20 November 2026
Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, Cambridge UK and online

Lieutenant General Jones grew up in Portsmouth and studied history at the University of Cambridge, commissioning into the Intelligence Corps in 1998. Over the years his operational service has included deployments to East Timor, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the wider Middle East, and Afghanistan. He commanded 4 Military Intelligence Battalion and 1^st Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Brigade, and was the Chief of Staff of Force Troops Command and 6^th (UK) Division. In 2021, Lieutenant General Jones was assigned to the Ministry of Defense in Whitehall as Head Military Strategy and Plans and subsequently undertook the role of Director of Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance. In that capacity he was responsible for the defense elements of intelligence collection and counterintelligence, intelligence operations, and training. Appointed as Chief of Defense Intelligence in July 2026, Lieutenant General Jones oversees the entirety of defense’s intelligence enterprise.

More details here.

Prof Richard Noakes: A secret radar war? Psychic powers, technoscience, and the military in Britian, 1930-1970
27 November 2026
Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, Cambridge UK and online

Historical studies of the role of psychics in military and intelligence services typically focus on Cold War-era US and Soviet research programmes to study and harness the alleged ability of ‘remote viewers’ to relay, via extrasensory perception, information about enemy military installations. British military and intelligence services appear to have shown little interest in this research until the early 2000s, and even this was short-lived. But had the British military and intelligence services always been so circumspect about psychics? They were prepared to use astrologers in psychological warfare against the Nazis during the Second World War but only because they believed Hitler and leading Nazis appeared to take astrological forecasts seriously.

This presentation will demonstrate that a more complex picture emerges when we take a broader view of what psychic effects were involved, and when we distinguish between official and unofficial positions on the controversial phenomena. Professor Richard Noakes will explore the trajectory of one such psychic phenomenon – water dowsing – which, during the 1940s–60s, British scientific, military, and government officials took much more seriously than historians have assumed, and which suggests the need for a more nuanced understanding of the status of ‘crank’ and ‘unorthodox’ practitioners.

Prof Richard Noakes is Associate Professor of the History of Science and Technology at the University of Exeter. He is a Cambridge (and a Corpus) alumnus, having taken his BA in the Natural Sciences Tripos (History and Philosophy of Science) in 1992 and a PhD in the history of science in 1998. He was a Leverhulme Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Leeds (1999–2002), a British Academy-Royal Society Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the History of Science (2002–2007) and took up his Exeter post in 2007. He has published widely on the history of physical sciences, telecommunications, psychic phenomena, and science popularisation.

More details here.

Conferences:

Berlin Security Conference
3-4 November 2026
Vienna House Andel’s Berlin, Germany

The Berlin Security Conference is one of the largest European security and defense policy events. The congress and exhibition, held every autumn since 2001 in Berlin, draws participants from European and non-European countries, the European institutions, and NATO. The 25th Berlin Security Conference will take place at the Vienna House Andel’s Berlin on 3-4 November 2026. Organised without governmental affiliation or reliance on public budgets, the event maintains autonomy to take an objective position on the topics discussed.

More details here.

The Israeli Intelligence Studies Conference 2026: Intelligence Under Pressure
4 November 2026
Jerusalem, Israel

Intelligence institutions today operate under conditions of sustained and compounding pressure. Political actors increasingly seek to instrumentalize assessments to legitimize predetermined policy positions, eroding the analytical independence that underpins institutional credibility. A broader crisis of trust — between agencies and the publics they serve, between allied partners, and within government itself — has further complicated the conditions under which intelligence can be produced and acted upon. Meanwhile, the shift from strategic to tactical and operational support has strained agencies designed for a different era, while the proliferation of artificial intelligence and open-source data has disrupted longstanding methodological assumptions, creating new capabilities alongside new vectors for error and overreliance. This conference explores the theme “Intelligence Under Pressure”: how agencies sustain analytical rigor, institutional independence, and operational relevance when the conditions for doing so are most adverse — and what is at stake for national security and democratic governance when they do not.

More details here.

Netherlands Intelligence Studies Association International Conference 2026
2-3 December 2026
The Hague Conference Center New Babylon, The Netherlands

Resilient Intelligence in an Era of Democratic Backsliding: With authoritarianism on the rise, democratic societies face mounting pressures on their security, governance, and institutional integrity. Intelligence and security services play a crucial—yet contested—role in safeguarding democracy and the rule of law. This conference explores how intelligence and security services can remain resilient, independent, and legitimate within a democratic framework. We look forward to welcoming a diverse and interdisciplinary group of contributors to engage in a discussion on the future of intelligence in resilient democracies.

More details here.

Call for Papers:

Special Issue: Psychology and Intelligence: Intelligence and National Security
Abstracts Due: 1 November 2026
Initial Submission Deadline: 31 December 2027

Intelligence and National Security invites submissions for a special issue on Psychology and Intelligence. From psychological analyses of world leaders to deception and disinformation through the activation of cognitive processes and biases, psychology has played a strong role within the field of intelligence. This issue seeks to highlight how psychology has informed intelligence practices and their wider impacts on the field.

This special issue offers an opportunity to explore the ways in which foundations in psychology have had and continue to offer additional applications to the study of intelligence. Leadership assessment at-a-distance techniques have been carried out on world leaders to better understand their decision-making and offer opportunities for strategic engagement. Likewise, these techniques may offer insight into the decision-making of intelligence leaders, which remains largely unexplored. Heuristic and cognitive processing play a critical role in how people interpret information. As a result, these can also have widespread impacts on intelligence gathering and analysis while also playing a fundamental role in deception and disinformation. They also have serious considerations regarding how intelligence customers consume intelligence products.

The goal of the special issue is to highlight the often-overlooked aspect of the role that psychology has and will continue to play within the intelligence studies field. We invite research paper submissions that address, but are not limited to, the following themes: