Strategic Intelligence Quotes

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory which is decided in a single day. This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy's condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity.

World War II provides a string of celebrated cases of deception and manipulation.

It’s really really hard to penetrate the leadership circles of your enemy.

Captivated by its discipline, humanity forgets and goes on forgetting that it is the discipline of chess players, not of angels.

Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy.

The way the United States intelligence community operates is it doesn't limit itself to the protection of the homeland. It doesn't limit itself to countering terrorist threats, countering nuclear proliferation. It's also used for economic espionage, for political spying to gain some knowledge of what other countries are doing.

Despite unprecedented levels of technological advancement and the interconnectedness of the world, the pursuit of truth in the realms of foreign policy and national security remains a critical issue. This is because the level of 'noise' that must be sifted through has also reached an unprecedented size and scope.

What makes a Malazan soldier so dangerous? They’re allowed to think.

The purpose of an intelligence service is to avoid war, not to promote one.

Intelligence is often viewed as a profession that steals secrets and then knits those secrets together for policymakers in order to inform their judgments.

If we know that our own men are in a condition to attack, but are unaware that the enemy is not open to attack, we have gone only halfway towards victory. If we know that the enemy is open to attack, but are unaware that our own men are not in a condition to attack, we have gone only halfway towards victory. If we know that the enemy is open to attack, and also know that our men are in a condition to attack, but are unaware that the nature of the ground makes fighting impracticable, we have still gone only halfway towards victory.

Presidents get to decide how their intelligence is served up to them, and it's the job of intelligence to adjust.

[Donald Trump] has also promised an intelligence surge [in Syria]. Mike Flynn knows a lot about that. Tactically, Mike Flynn has been fantastic with intelligence when he was in the military. They'll be looking at that.

Anne Arundel County has become the world's epicenter of military intelligence and defense-related information technology.

There are people who in large measure have information that we need . . . so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country.

It is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying, and thereby they achieve great results.

Intelligence without counter-intelligence is useless.

People working on bigger ideas on a more protracted timeline will be more on the stealth side. They aren’t releasing new PR announcements every day. The bigger the secret and the likelier it is that you alone have it, the more time you have to execute. There may be far more people going after hard secrets than we think.

We all make mistakes, but intelligence enables us to do it on purpose.

A man has made great progress in cunning when he does not seem too clever to others.

The only situation a commander can know fully is his own: his opponent's he can know only from unreliable intelligence.

I think we ought to use the same formula that we used when we took out Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. We have unique resources that no other country has, especially in the air. Intelligence and the ability to find where things are. I think the governments need to get together, because this is getting very serious.

Anyone that goes to battle goes to battle knowing the mindset and tactics of their enemies.

It's the knowledge derived from information that gives you a competitive edge.