State Intelligence

MR. DIRECTOR:

The debate surrounding the hypotheses regarding the kidnapping of former Venezuelan military officer Ronald Ojeda has highlighted the urgent need for a system of intelligence that produces strategic information for the decision-making process. It is unacceptable to consider the thesis that a state would conduct a covert operation in Chile to kidnap a defector. It is clear that intelligence is failing.

In general terms, state intelligence can be defined as useful information—not just any information—that must come from a process of collection and analysis involving all agencies of the system, led by a coordinating entity, which may require data from other institutions, services, and units of the state.

While the National Intelligence Agency (ANI) exists, we lack precisely that: a system that allows for the orderly development of information flows that integrates into a security architecture. Only in this way can we begin to design an intersectoral response to current and future security challenges.

Common crime and organized crime coexist in Chile; simultaneously, they impact the country, undermine its institutions, and harm society. The government has taken actions to combat it, and the Minister of the Interior has stated that the number of homicides has decreased. However, without coordinated intelligence that systematizes the collected data, measures, and generates feedback, it will not be possible to understand the reasons behind this and other realities. Is the decrease in homicides the result of state actions or the result of achieving a criminal equilibrium? Today, we do not know clearly.

The only certainty we have is that those who were previously in Congress and rejected discussing intelligence due to ideology only wasted valuable time that was exploited by organized crime and violent crime.

Pilar Lizana Toresano
Researcher, AthenaLab

February 23, 2024

Source: La Tercera