Originally published on September 6, 2025, in PersuMedia’s “Bottom Line and Above.”
In today’s fractured information environment, trust has emerged as a decisive asset of global power. Across governments, media, and businesses, institutional trust is eroding worldwide. According to the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer, fewer than half of respondents in 28 countries trust their core institutions—an erosion that transcends political systems and borders.
While Beyond the Spy Game: Intelligence as a Strategic Capability for Civic Resilience focuses on foreign societies, the co-authors, John Sotos and Vafa Mostaghim, note that this crisis of trust is equally evident in the United States. For intelligence professionals, that recognition underscores the need for credibility built through transparency, not control.
The paper proposes reimagining intelligence for a world where legitimacy and trust rival traditional measures of power. It introduces the Civic Foresight and Resilience Unit (CFRU)—a non-operational, analytic capability designed to map civic ecosystems rather than governments. The CFRU would monitor trust, legitimacy, and public narratives as early indicators of societal instability or cohesion.
Through case studies—from Iran’s pre-protest pessimism and Ukraine’s resilient morale, to Tunisia’s democratic backsliding and Taiwan’s adaptive resistance—the paper demonstrates how civic sentiment often predicts strategic outcomes.
Ultimately, Beyond the Spy Game reframes intelligence as a tool for strengthening civic resilience—tracking not just threats but the public’s capacity to believe, cooperate, and adapt in times of uncertainty.
- The link to the entire paper is available here.
