A guest post by Davide Barbieri*
A Report from the Conference: “Intelligence in the Knowledge Society”
The Romanian Information Service (SRI) were keeping both eyes on the unstable political situation in neighboring Moldova, which added to the crisis in Ukraine, another related source of concern. Parallels with the “frozen conflict” in Transnistria abounded, and geopolitics seemed to be the main topic this year.
Personally, I had the confirmation of the need to establish a more solid epistemic framework for intelligence analysis. In fact, the lack of a quantitative approach may limit the falsifiability of the work of analists, and therefore a wider scientific acceptance.
I have to thank again the organizers, and in particular Lt Gen Florian Coldea (SRI deputy director), who chaired my panel (“New patterns of terrorism and war: from extremism to radicalization”) together with my colleague and co-author Elaine Pressman.
*Davide Barbieri, PhD, is a Research Fellow in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and Surgical Specialties at the University of Ferrara, davide.barbieri@unife.it