INFORMATIONAL STATE IN CRISIS: NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE DIGITAL AGE

INTELIGÊNCIA NACIONAL NA ERA DIGITAL

Abstract

National intelligence activity is undergoing a structural crisis marked by tension between the excess of available data and the scarcity of analytical insight, between the tradition of secrecy and the growing need for democratic openness, and between the informational power of states and that of large technology corporations. This work seeks to understand how these contradictions express structural transformations in the global information regime, approached from the perspective of the Political Economy of Information. To this end, the diagnosis of the crisis in intelligence agencies is connected to the concepts of information regime, informational power, informational state, and information asymmetries, developed in the field of Information Science. Methodologically, this is exploratory and analytical research, based on a literature review in the areas of Intelligence Studies and Information Science. The results indicate that the informational state faces inherent tensions that cannot be resolved by technological modernization or bureaucratic restructuring but demand a reconfiguration of the policies and information regimes in which intelligence agencies are embedded. It can be concluded that Information Science offers important theoretical tools to interpret and broaden the debate on the contemporary intelligence crisis, contributing to the discussion on informational power and democracy.