Intelligence and data resilience: A small state perspective on digitalisation and national defence towards the 2030s
Authors: Rossbach Niclas 
Published: December 2024

Due to the increased reliance of governments on digital data, it is probably safe to suggest that, without it, there would be no state left to defend. Because, without data, there might not even be a continuity of government, and consequently no state, in a time of crisis. Hence, this paper looks at critical national digital data as a key feature of national security.

This paper shows why and how the protection of digitalised critical national data is important for a country’s defence at different levels of conflict, both below and above the threshold of armed conflict. This issue can be studied from a number of perspectives. The focus in this report is on the relevance and role of intelligence services in relation to the protection of critical national data.

The choice of focus is a consequence of the following four points. First, in the current decade, digitalisation is deepening. Consequently, digital data will become even more pervasive. Various datasets will be needed for all sorts of applications. Not all data will be equally important to everyone, whether private individuals, businesses or nation-states. It will most likely still be important for intelligence services to keep their own data secret. However, critical national datais not concerned primarily with highly classified state secrets, although intelligence data can be labelled a sub-category of critical national data. While critical national data certainly is sensitive, it rarely becomes state secrets. This is simply because most of the critical national data is such data that is needed in the day-today functioning of society. For a government, critical national data is the data needed to run the county.

Second, critical national data must be protected during all types of conflicts. Keeping it safe requires abilities to perceive threats, issue warnings and then manage these threats. Unlike other defence capabilities, such as military forces, intelligence is necessary to be able to manage threats at all levels of conflict, not 17 Intelligence and data resilienceonly during an armed conflict. Hence, the relevance of the intelligence services to the protection of critical national data.

Third, the national security implications of critical national digital data are also significant. Not least, since intelligence services are consumers of open as well as public data and not only specific intelligence data. Foreign intelligence data is perhaps not essential in the ordinary – non-defence-related – day-to-day running of a democratic country, such as collecting taxes and handling welfare payments, but it is required in the defence of the country also in peace time. Nevertheless, it is necessary to discuss whether intelligence data is a sub-category of critical national data.

Fourth, the ongoing digitalisation is changing how we live, work and defendour countries. All major institutions, private and public, are experiencing or will experience these societal changes. For intelligence services, a key concern is the extent to which new digital technologies necessitate fundamental adaptation. In any case, it is likely that a digital adaptation will involve discussions on the optimal ways to protect and access intelligence data, and such deliberations are likely to be related to the overall concerns about safeguarding critical national data.

For both intelligence services and their governments, critical national data is about the same thing: the information into which it can be translated. Even if all data is not equally valuable to everyone, it should, from a national security perspective, be regarded as a strategic resource. All kinds of data can become the target of hostile cyberattacks, which can include disruptions of services as well as data theft. Data is also desirable since it has become the fuel needed to train key technologies of the future such as artificial intelligence (AI).

As always, fundamental technological shifts, such as the increased digitalisation of the 2020s, create uncertainties both among the public as well as among nations. The current wave of new digital technologies is already having an impacton international relations. Hence, the digitalisation of the 2020s and the need to protect critical national digital data is a national security concern.