“The First World War and the Birth of Modern Intelligence” -- Peter Jackson

Thursday, 5 March, 5:15pm (Humanities Research Hub, 1 University Gardens, Room 102)
Peter Jackson (Glasgow), “The First World War and the Birth of Modern Intelligence”

This paper argues that the Great War brought about a revolution in intelligence practices. This revolution was driven by two pre-war technological innovations. The first was the advent of radio as a principal form of communication. The second was the evolution of manned flight. Together these developments ensured that the information war would take place in the air and at sea as well as on (and beneath) the ground. The end result was an explosion of intelligence of all kinds. To manage this new state of affairs the intelligence agencies of all belligerent powers expanded dramatically. Large numbers of civilians - especially women - were for the first time and employed in burgeoning intelligence communities that used the latest information processing technologies. Intelligence had become an industrial enterprise in what was by 1917 a truly global conflict.

Professor Peter Jackson is Chair of Global Security at the University of Glasgow. He received his PhD in History from the University of Cambridge, and previously held academic appointments at Yale, Aberystwyth, and Strathclyde as well as visiting appointments at Sciences Po and the Sorbonne. He has served as editor of Intelligence and National Security, the world's leading journal on intelligence and security issues, and is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Historical Society. He co-authored L'essor du renseignement moderne. Une histoire mondiale de l'espionnage (Nouveau Monde Editions, 2025), and is the author of Beyond the Balance of Power: France and the Politics of National Security in the Era of the First World War (Cambridge, 2013).