Introduction
According to Scandinavian intelligence services, foreign espionage by Russian and Chinese actors constitutes one of the main antagonistic threats facing Scandinavian societies (DDIS, 2024a; NIS, 2025; MUST 2024; SÄPO, 2024; SUPO, 2025). Espionage is the act of covertly gathering information intended to be kept secret about a counterpart to obtain military, political, and economic decision advantages on a given topic (Sims, 2022). This threat has regained relevance in recent years, with rising conflicts and geopolitical tensions. For example, in 2022, a person claiming to be a Brazilian guest researcher in Tromsø was accused of being a Russian spy (Cecco, 2022), and in 2023, two Swedish brothers, one of them a former intelligence officer, were sentenced to prison for aggravated espionage and unauthorized handling of classified documents (Euronews, 2023). In response to these developments, intelligence scholars have articulated the need for intelligence to become more “inclusive” and “interactive” (Nilsson et al., 2025, p. 8). A central aspect of such inclusivity is increased cooperation between central actors “that usually do not cooperate” (Borch & Heier, 2024, p. 277).
Traditionally, counterespionage has been a core task of governmental intelligence services (Petersen & Rønn, 2019). However, in their attempt to safeguard the Scandinavian societies, intelligence services have increasingly begun reaching out to civil society actors, including private companies, the civil sector, and individual citizens, to assist in identifying and counteracting security threats. Engaging civil society in counterespionage is not an entirely novel practice. During the Cold War, Scandinavian intelligence services launched campaigns asking citizens remain vigilant against (primarily Russian) spies. Examples include En Svensk tiger (“A Swedish tiger”; Beredskapsmuseet, n.d.) and the campaign Behåll din bit – håll tyst med vad du vet (“Keep your piece of the puzzle”; Wollstad, 2022).
After the recent reemergence of foreign espionage as a serious threat, a range of new initiatives have been launched. Recent examples include campaigns asking individual citizens to provide information about suspicious espionage-related activities and engaging university employees and funding bodies to safeguard against foreign espionage within academia (Ördén & Russtad Markussen, forthcoming; Shih et al., forthcoming; Shih et al., 2023; Snetselaar, 2023).
Mark Phythian and Peter Gill highlighted the need to interrogate fundamental questions concerning how intelligence can best be understood, particularly given that it is simultaneously practiced across multiple levels and by a diverse range of actors, as early as 2016 (Gill & Phythian, 2016). These highly inclusive approaches to intelligence have not, however, been conceptualized or critically addressed in the intelligence literature, apart from a few broader (and still scarce) studies on hybrid threats and interference (Borch & Heier, 2024; Nilsson et al., 2025; Wigell et al., 2021) and in studies on whole-of-society approaches to countering information warfare (Ivan et al., 2021). Consequently, it remains unclear what a “whole-of-society” approach to counterespionage entails, how it is practiced, and what the potential societal implications of this increased inclusivity might be.
The incorporation of civil society into security governance through things such as participatory surveillance practices has been shown to generate social mistrust and fragmentation in other national contexts (Thomas, 2017). This raises critical questions regarding the production of knowledge and accountability: who is to be held accountable, and how. Intelligence accountability is already a contentious matter, and the integration of civil society actors into intelligence production risks further complicating this landscape. Evidence from the delegation of traditionally state-held security functions to private military and security companies illustrates how such shifts can exacerbate oversight challenges and blur established lines of accountability (Swed & Materne, 2022). It is therefore essential to critically assess the potential implications an expanded role for civil society in security matters may entail.
This article starts from the premise that the inclusive, whole-of-society approach to security is widely recognized in Scandinavia, along with an increased focus on total defence and societal security. It is an approach founded on the principle that the Scandinavian countries should be able to counter a variety of threats with a palette of different means, and that state organizations and civil society actors, alike, must engage with and understand security policy (Breitenbauch & Tetzlaff, 2022). For example, in Denmark, the Danish government has been including and mobilizing civil society and business sector actors to protect and defend the state’s interests, especially in the context of cyber security.1 The whole-of-society approach lacks detail, however, with specificity regarding a whole-of-society approach to intelligence and counterintelligence especially lacking. In this context, the co-production of intelligence between intelligence services and civil society actors, individual citizens in particular, has been emphasized in recent studies. Intelligence scholars have, for example, addressed the co-production of intelligence as an emerging phenomenon to draw on the observations, expertise, and knowledge of actors who are not involved in the intelligence services (Petersen, 2019; Nilsson et al., 2025).
As we will sketch below, co-production of intelligence has so far mainly referred to counterterrorism campaigns such as the U.S. Homeland Security campaign “If you see something, say something” (Petersen & Tjalve, 2015). However, a main argument in this article is that co-production of intelligence approach is no longer solely conducted by the United States and the United Kingdom, as addressed by Petersen (2019), but is increasingly adopted by European – and specifically Scandinavian – nations. Civil society engagement through the co-production of intelligence occurs in various ways. In this article, we argue for three specific types of co-production of intelligence between civil society and intelligence services in Scandinavia: ad hoc chipping-in; formalized networks; and institutionalized partnerships.
Below, we present these concepts and discuss some of the potential societal implications of the increasing co-production of intelligence: that is, new visions of knowledge, increased responsibilization of civil society, and increasingly blurry accountability mechanisms.
We begin by presenting Karen Lund Petersen’s (2019) tripartite taxonomy of intelligence-led communication and how the role of civil society has traditionally been envisioned by the services in their communication with civil society.
Three Concepts of Intelligence Communication
In the article “Three Concepts of Intelligence Communication”, Petersen (2019) presents findings from a study of the ways in which intelligence services communicate with the public in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Denmark. Petersen argues that the mode of communication tells us much of the role envisioned for civil society in intelligence matters, since the chosen type of intelligence communication “constructs the meaning of expertise and legitimate action” (2019, p. 318). Petersen establishes an understanding of the relationship between civil society and intelligence services according to a tripartite taxonomy of awareness, advice, and co-production.
Awareness is evident in the communication of facts through publicly available threat and risk assessments. This type of communication from the services to the public is characterized by a sharp division of expertise between services and civil society; the intelligence services manifest themselves as the main holders of expertise and epistemic power, whereas civil society is envisioned as a passive receiver of facts.
The second mode of communication is characterized by the provision of advice from the intelligence services to civil society. According to this way of communicating, the services go beyond the provision of publicly available threat and risk assessments to make recommendations on how civil society should behave and act in the face of specific security threats and risks. This is evident in guidelines and public threat barometers in airports, for example, or on webpages stating which precautions and actions the public should take in response to a specific threat. These forms of communication are predicated on the idea that public expertise on security is important, and that the epistemic power to identify security threats and risks remains vested in the intelligence services. However, in this approach, the public is not considered a passive recipient but, rather, an active actor requested to act in certain ways to comply with the assessments of the authorities.
The third mode of communication is characterized by the desire for threat assessments to be co-produced between the intelligence services and civil society, as evidenced by the “If you see something, say something” campaign, specifically used by the American (and to some extent the British) intelligence services in the wake of 9/11 (Petersen & Tjalve, 2015). Here, while the intelligence services seek to manifest themselves as the principal epistemic authorities on topics of national and international security, they also expect a certain degree of expertise and responsibility from civil society when its members identify security threats.
Petersen concludes in the paper that the first type of intelligence communication was typical for the Danish/ Scandinavian approach, principally identifying the second in the British context. The third approach was for the most part identified in the United States when communicating on issues related to counterterrorism. Civil society engagement in intelligence practices is increasingly considered a part of a general whole-of-society approach to societal security in Scandinavia; civil society actors express a willingness, even a need, to engage with intelligence- and security-related matters and methods (Hartvigsen & Yauri-Miranda, 2026). As alluded to above, we assume a consensus that the co-production of intelligence is increasingly considered necessary, both in the national contexts in Scandinavia generally, and in contexts unrelated to counterterrorism – hybrid threats and counterespionage, for example, especially Russian and Chinese espionage activities.
Methodological Approach
One of this article’s chief aims is to provide specifications of co-production, the third type of intelligence communication established by Petersen, and to refine the existing typology with specific attention to the Scandinavian context. Our methodological approach is exploratory and interpretivist: we seek to identify cases from the Scandinavian context deviating from the “awareness” type of communication, serving as paradigmatic examples (Levy, 2008) of emerging forms of intelligence co-production occurring within the domain of foreign espionage.
Foreign espionage has regained prominence since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and we therefore sought to identify examples of intelligence communication from Scandinavian intelligence services in that period. Our aim was to provide paradigmatic cases capable of informing an extension of Petersen’s taxonomy, with attention to intelligence co-production and the implications of greater civil society inclusion. We have drawn cases from Norway and Denmark and excluded Sweden, which since 2022 has undergone a significant shift in its foreign policy approach following NATO accession – a shift that may also have affected how its intelligence services communicate with the public.
We have chosen three examples of intelligence communication that illustrate different aspects and types of co-production, and that raise questions of knowledge production, responsibilization, and accountability. The cases were identified through a systematic review of communication on foreign espionage from the intelligence services to the public, drawing on the webpages and social media profiles, principally LinkedIn, of the relevant services. These services communicate with the public primarily through their annual threat and risk assessments, in which the threat from foreign espionage is increasingly addressed, including in dedicated assessments (see for example DDIS, 2024a; NIS, 2025).
Seeking to identify specific, differing, types of examples of communication and outreach initiatives on counterespionage, we settled on the following three cases:
Communication from the Norwegian Police and the Norwegian Police Security Service in connection with an international military exercise in Northern Norway in 2024 (Politiet & PST, 2024) as an example of similar initiatives conducted by these bodies in connection with other international military activities in recent years.
A public “recruiting campaign” launched by the Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS) in 2024 with the aim of mobilizing individual citizens and private organizations to support the service in protecting national security (DDIS, 2024b).
Communication from the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (DSIS) on the risk of foreign espionage and knowledge security at universities from 2024 via posters at universities and bus stops (Petersen, 2026) and specific guidelines on their webpage (DSIS, 2024a).
While far from an exhaustive list of approaches and initiatives, these were chosen as manifestations of new approaches to intelligence communication in Denmark and Norway that attempt to include and engage the public. Each exemplifies the potential implications of including civil society in the production of intelligence. We have analysed the cases with attention to the ways in which civil society is envisioned by the intelligence services in each case. In the following sections, we will specify three types of co-production of intelligence in Denmark and Norway based on these examples and discuss some of the potential implications of the various types of co-production and engagement of civil society on intelligence practices.
Three Concepts of Intelligence Co-Production
The past decade has seen change in the character, size and frequency of Scandinavian intelligence services’ communication on risk and threat. Along with public expectations of more openness and insight, Scandinavian services have provided more open access and strategic communication for the public by means of written publications, social media posts, and podcasts, informing the public about the intelligence services as a workplace and about new initiatives.2 As part of this move towards increased insight and public engagement of the services in the public debate, these bodies have also included new types of communication in their toolbox more in line with Petersen’s notion of co-production than the traditional modes of communicating to establish awareness – an indication, perhaps, of a move from a realist mode of engagement, in which security matters are regarded as a state and governmental endeavour, to a constructivist mode, in which security is understood in terms of its broader societal significance (Petersen, 2019).
However, the ways in which co-production occurs between the services and civil society also vary, and the specific type of co-production influences the societal implications of such initiatives. Two factors are important when specifying the various ways in which co-production takes place: the duration of the engagement or cooperation between the services and civil society; and the degree to which responsibility and epistemic authority and power are divided or distributed to civil society.
We identified three types of co-production of intelligence in the Scandinavian context in the communication of Scandinavian (Danish and Norwegian) intelligence services during the past two years. We have categorized these into three types of co-production of intelligence: ad hoc chipping-in; formalized networks; and institutionalized partnerships.
Ad Hoc Chipping-In
In line with Petersen’s concept of intelligence communication as co-production, this first conceptualization of intelligence communication constitutes a call for the public to chip in with relevant information on an ad hoc basis when they encounter something of relevance to the services. The “If you see something, say something” campaign described above, for example, invited the public to inform the authorities should they encounter suspicious behaviour related to the risk of terrorism (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, n.d.). It has, however, been criticized for creating a general atmosphere of suspicion and a risk of reproducing problematic stereotypes due to the vagueness of what would be relevant to report to the authorities (Petersen & Tjalve, 2015). The newest campaign materials from U.S. Homeland Security specify some details of so-called “signs of terrorism” (such as “expressed threats”, “testing or probing of security”, among others) which might be important to report. These specifications are made to emphasize that the focus should be on behaviour potentially contributing to risk rather than appearance. Other international examples of this approach have taken shape in the context of crowdsourcing initiatives, where citizens engage in forecasting gaming sessions initiated by the services to provide multi-voiced assessments of future threats and risks (Herhkovitz, 2020).
In the Scandinavian context, more examples of this approach to intelligence communication surface, especially in the context of counterespionage and when responding to hybrid threats as such. An example of this approach is the campaign initiated by the Norwegian Police and the Norwegian Police Security Service in connection with the international military exercise in northern Norway in 2024 mentioned above (Politiet & PST, 2024). In a four-page pamphlet, the Norwegian authorities invited the public to chip in with information on suspicious activities related to this event; the potentially suspicious nature of these activities is further specified under the four headlines “unusual activities in the area of the exercise”, “unusual travel activities” (mainly at hotels, and infrastructural hotspots), “the attempt to acquire or spread sensitive information” (e.g., on those involved in the exercise, by means of social media platforms), and “unusual activities on technical platforms” (disruptions to internet connections during the exercise and things of this nature).
As Petersen argues, this understanding of communication as a means for the co-production of intelligence invites civil society to identify information potentially relevant to the services and to hand it over to them. Petersen also argued that this approach generally entails a spreading of responsibility for identifying and countering security matters from the services to the public and creates a more equal relationship between the intelligence institution and civil society (Petersen, 2019).
We would, however, argue that in this type of co-production the service recognizes the expertise and knowledge of civil actors when identifying security risks and threats to the minimum extent alone. The example provided above does not include a reliance on the professional expertise of civil society; rather, it reflects a wish for the institution’s capacity to gather intelligence at a specific time, in a specific place. The expertise and epistemic power to define any security and intelligence matter, and how it should be responded to, remains the province of the intelligence authorities.
Formalized Networks
The second type of co-production of intelligence reflects longer and closer commitments between the intelligence services and civil society actors than any ad hoc contribution of information, reflecting an ambition to establish a formalized network of expertise in chosen areas of relevance for the services to obtain a precise and shared understanding.
In the Danish context, the intelligence services have recently launched a “recruiting campaign” where civil society actors and small private companies have been invited to apply for affiliation in what might best be categorized as a formalized network of informants or information sources. In an open call under the banner “Do you want to help protect Denmark?”,3 the DDIS has openly reached out to the public with a call for individual citizens and private organisations to help with “general and more specific tasks in Denmark and abroad” (DDIS, 2024b; our translation). In the media, this phenomenon was titled everything from the recruitment of “citizen’s spies” (Hobel, 2024) to “luring the Danish citizens into secret spy jobs” (Ritzau, 2024b). While the DDIS does not further specify the types of tasks required on account (they are sensitive and secret), it is stated that such tasks could be drawn from a wide range of everyday and more specialized activities (Ritzau, 2024a). The DDIS also specifies that affiliated members of the network should not be called “spies” or “agents”, but rather, “informants” or simply “sources of relevant information” (Ritzau, 2024a). They also specify that while the specific mission could come with financial compensation, no one should apply for affiliation with money in mind.
In the context of the co-production of intelligence, an invitation to contribute to a formalized network of informants headed by the DDIS of this kind is interesting in many ways. Recruiting sources from civil society who possess important and relevant knowledge in the eyes of intelligence services may not be a new phenomenon. What is new, in the Danish context, is the open nature of such a call for expertise and its articulation as a sort of network-based engagement of civil-society actors.
Compared to the first type of co-production of intelligence, this type of co-production is more formalized, with association articulated as part of an enduring network of affiliation. Not much is revealed about the relationship between the services and those affiliated to them, nor how tasks and relevant missions are identified, meaning that a degree of speculation is required. But in the template for applying for affiliation, it is possible to state specific competences (e.g., language skills, expertise on specific countries or cultures, and the like). Furthermore, the applicants should state their motivation for applying and their specific knowledge, expertise, and qualifications. It is reasonable to assume, this is to say, that the services have identified certain tasks and missions, and that these require certain kinds of knowledge if expertise is to be lent to individuals in civil society, but there is an expectation that applicants may offer types and areas of expertise not already on their lists.
We would, thus, categorize this type of initiative as the co-production of intelligence: the degree to which expertise and epistemic authority are shared is higher than in the first type of co-production, and engagement with civil society is expected to be enduring. Nevertheless, the services continue to assume the role of “employer” and preserve the final responsibility for identifying and acting upon security risks and threats.
Institutionalized Partnerships
The third type of co-production of intelligence refers to an institutionalized way of creating long-term partnerships between intelligence services and civil society actors to identify, analyse, and respond to security risks and threats.
In Denmark, such initiatives take place in the context of knowledge security and counteracting the risks of foreign espionage and “unwanted knowledge transfer” – especially at Danish universities. In 2024, the DSIS launched a campaign to create awareness of this phenomenon by placing posters at universities and bus stops close to universities. With a humorous tone, the DSIS generally wanted academics to reflect on whether their research might be in danger of being stolen or transferred to and misused by foreign states – especially knowledge related to green technologies, quantum computing and defence technologies, among others (DSIS, 2024b). The campaign was followed by specific guidelines aimed mainly at universities and researchers under broad headings such as “know the threats and risks”, “know your own values and vulnerabilities”, “know the law”, “be careful when travelling”, and so on (DSIS, 2024a).
At first sight, this type of communication from the services looks more like Petersen’s concept of intelligence communication as awareness and advice. A closer look at the guidelines and the subsequent cooperation, however, suggests that something else might be at stake. The guidance pamphlets offer broad advice on how each university should act and think of the threats and risks of foreign espionage and unwanted knowledge transfer. In particular, the advice concerning how to handle international cooperation, employees, and partners has received a lot of attention from the public, with many researchers finding it discriminatory, racist, and against their core values as a globalized research community to be asked to be vigilant, especially when hiring and engaging in international partnerships with countries such as China, Russia, and Iran (Skovgaard, 2024). At university level, many universities also identified practical difficulties in the process of conducting background checks and vetting potential new colleagues on the basis of their nationality (Elkjær & Pedersen, 2024).4
The co-production of this initiative is found in the close cooperation between universities and intelligence services in specifying and operationalizing general guidelines (URIS, 2022). If the Danish authorities provided general guidelines for the process, the operationalization of those guidelines was for the most part a matter for the universities themselves (DSIS, 2024a). This initiative could therefore be viewed as a distribution of responsibility from the services to the universities when it comes to identifying the risks of unwanted knowledge transfer and foreign espionage and how the appropriate precautionary responses – background checks and vetting procedures – are conducted.
This initiative for ensuring knowledge security, highlighting the distribution of expertise and responsibility, especially self-regulation, has become known as the Danish model (DSIS, 2024a, 2024b). The emphasis on self-regulation reflects the degree to which expertise is devolved to and distributed inside civil society, in this case universities, who are mobilized to take on the responsibility of identifying potential threat actors and actions.
Potential Implications of Increased Co-Production of Intelligence
As argued above, the three types of co-production differ in terms of the duration, commitment, and degree of shared and distributed responsibility and expertise. While any societal implications depend on the specific approach adopted, all provide instances of initiatives in which civil society plays a central role in intelligence practices, which therefore also might help in fleshing out what is actually meant when emphasizing a whole-of-society approach in the context of Scandinavian intelligence.
We must, first, consider these cases of strategic communication as seeking to ensure both the democratic legitimacy of, and public trust in, the intelligence services. Indeed, all cases must also be viewed in this light. But if they are means of branding the services responsible actors in the security context, it is important to acknowledge that they constitute a visible break with the conventional notion of the intelligence services as running on inherently secretive principles. Co-production of intelligence intensifies the spotlight on the risks and trade-offs between openness and secrecy. On the one hand, including civil society in intelligence production may lead to a subsequent increase in legitimacy and public trust; on the other, there are very good reasons for the inherently secret nature of intelligence work. The co-production of intelligence requires careful consideration be paid to the necessity of the “protection of sensitive information, sources and methods, in terms of what information can be shared, under what circumstances, with whom and when” (Nilsson et al., 2025). Beyond this ever-present balancing exercise, which has been discussed and challenged thoroughly elsewhere (Born & Johnson, 2005; Hartvigsen, 2024; Leigh, 2012; Leon-Reyes, 2022; Manjikian, 2016; Van Puyvelde, 2013), we have identified three important aspects worthy of consideration by intelligence practitioners: new visions or ideals of knowledge; the responsibilization of civil society actors; and the blurry nature of any accountability mechanism. We will discuss each of these in the following sections. Our aim is not to provide answers to the many questions arising from these implications but to identify them in order to facilitate further reflection and scrutiny.
New Visions of Knowledge
In the literature, a general shift from the closed, state-centric models of intelligence knowledge production to more open, interdisciplinary, and collaborative frameworks has been reported (Ben Jaffel et al., 2020; de Werd, 2021; Lopez-Lucia & Martín De Almagro, 2024; Paicu, 2023; Petersen & Rønn, 2019; Vogel & Balmer, 2018). Similarly, co-production of intelligence calls for new visions of knowledge, with an increased acknowledgement of how external expertise reflects an embrace of a postmodern understanding of knowledge as something which is co-produced rather than given exact positivist facts about the world (Petersen, 2019, p. 323). In the context of U.S. counter-terror intelligence, Petersen asked whether we might be witnessing a development from “a hierarchical vision of knowledge to an egalitarian one” relying on the “self-governance of the many” (Petersen, 2019, p. 324). This development implies an emphasis on “dialogue, inclusion and active participation, and therefore accepts ‘negotiation’ as a baseline for any authoritative selection of security risk” (Petersen, 2019, p. 324). In the same way, we might ask whether we are witnessing a move towards an egalitarian vision of intelligence along the shift towards more co-production of intelligence in Scandinavia.
Whereas this tendency is mainly articulated as a positive development in epistemic diversity, reflexivity, and critical engagement to address the growing challenges faced by intelligence agencies (de Werd, 2021; Paicu, 2023), it also includes challenges of persistent barriers, including secrecy, trust deficits, and power imbalances (Ben Jaffel et al., 2020; Crampton et al., 2014; Petersen & Rønn, 2019; Vogel & Balmer, 2018), and it marks a development towards the spreading and widening of security actors. This is most evident in the second and third types of co-production, respectively. Hence, as stated above, the majority of employees at universities do not view themselves as part of the security apparatus, and by being drawn into this machinery, their values and norms might clash with the roles and responsibilities placed on them – when asked, for example, to take on the role of political actors in a tense geopolitical security landscape. This leads to the next implication of the co-production of intelligence: responsibilization.
Responsibilization
Engaging civil society in security- and intelligence-related matters has been highlighted in the scholarly literature on subjects such as counter-terrorism (Howell, 2014; Njoku, 2021), cybersecurity (Liebetrau & Christensen, 2019), and surveillance (Zajko, 2016). However, such engagement inherently comes with some degree of responsibility transferred from the state agency to the organization, company, or individual in civil society. That is, there is a risk of “responsibilizing” civil society actors by including them in security policies and turning them into security actors (Rønn & Ördén, 2026), or agents of securitization (Ericson & Wester, 2022). This type of governing through civil society renegotiates the relationship between the state and its citizens (MacEwan, 2017, p. 6), and security may be perceived as a duty rather than a right (Petersen & Tjalve, 2018, p. 22), as citizens are expected to actively contribute to things such as the identification of threats, the collection of information, or even the management of risks. The responsibilization of civil society and individual citizens, through which governments have aimed to share responsibilities with citizens in alignment with the neoliberal principles of partnership, collaboration, and inclusivity, has been a general trend over the last few decades (Akintayo, 2024; Eriksson, 2011). The trend is very visible in the whole-of-society approach as well, where defence becomes a concern for everyone and “a way of creating a sense of cohesion built on a common will to defend” (Montelius & Kvarnlöf, 2025, p. 14).
The responsibilization of civil society regarding intelligence matters, however, brings several severe consequences worthy of further reflection and discussion. First, there is a risk of creating stereotyped countermeasures favouring exclusion and instilling a sense of suspicion across groups in society. Citizens may become part of the state surveillance scheme, leading them and communities to become technologies of surveillance power, transferring social responsibilities into homeland security concerns (Reeves, 2012). The British counter-terrorism programme Prevent is an example of such; here, the legal responsibility of schools, colleges, and other public bodies to prevent, identify, and report individuals showing signs of extremism eventually reinforced societal suspicion of Muslims and feelings of stigmatization within Muslim communities (Thomas, 2017). As argued by Diderichsen (2019), intelligence methods, and therefore intelligence, rest on an adversarial logic characterized by militaristic language, concepts, and metaphors:
By calling something intelligence, we apply not only a word but a cognitive structure to the thing in question. More specifically, the use of that particular concept imports a cognitive structure bound to antagonistic relations and therefore risk transforming other types of relation in an antagonistic direction. (Diderichsen, 2019, p. 416)
The question here is whether it is desirable for civil society actors, which must include the individual citizen, to apply such logic to their surroundings and social relationships. The intertwining of everyday life with resistance and military action may lead to a militarization of civil society – a point particularly salient in the Scandinavian context of total defence and whole-of-society approaches (Ericson & Wester, 2022). The literature has already shown how state surveillance, or even just the suspicion of state surveillance, leads to a form of societal insecurity in which both limitations on the individual’s autonomy and free choice, and changes to democracy itself, are potential consequences (Bauman et al. 2014; Maras 2012; Parsons 2015; Peissl 2003). Involving civil society actors in the co-production of intelligence may further contribute to this chilling effect on the free expression of the individual citizen.
In addition, the responsibilization comes with an expectation that civil society actors share a common notion of “national security” (Petersen, 2019), especially in the second and third cases of co-production. But civil society actors might find it difficult to relate to “national security interests” – institutions of state and civil actors do not necessarily share a definition. Danish universities and academic staff contesting the campaign introduced by the DSIS are such examples. Moreover, even the security logics of national security may be interpreted in various ways by different actors. The legitimacy of such logics and the practices that materialize them depend on the perspective of the actor charged with dealing with them (Balzacq, 2014).
This leads to yet another question: is the responsibilization of civil society actors in intelligence-related matters feasible without prior negotiations of the meaning of national security, its logics, and its practices? Without such negotiation, relevant civil society actors holding alternative interpretations may risk exclusion from the co-production of intelligence.
Accountability
Co-producing intelligence naturally leads to questions and concerns regarding intelligence accountability, which is closely related to the issue of responsibilization. On the one hand, by co-producing intelligence and passing responsibility to civil society actors, the power of intelligence services is weakened (Petersen & Tjalve, 2018). State power, as materialized through the operations of state organizations, requires accountability if it is to be democratically legitimate (McGee, 2020; Yauri-Miranda, 2021); if responsibility, on which such power rests, is passed to external civil actors, it follows that obligations for accountability must pass with it.
The democratic accountability of intelligence services, a theme widely discussed in the literature, is already a controversial matter. Rules and regulations are not sufficient to hold the services to account (Hartvigsen, 2024; Manjikian, 2016; Petersen & Tjalve, 2018), and hence must be accompanied by a certain sense of integrity and virtue, as also argued in the broader literature on accountability in public administration (Bovens, 2010). While accountability is already a matter of diverging perspectives within the formal structures (Hartvigsen et al., 2025), including civil society actors in the production of intelligence may introduce further ambiguity about what it means to be accountable.
Additionally, intelligence agencies are usually subject to certain formal parliamentary, judicial, and executive oversight (Born & Leigh, 2005) which civil society actors operate outside of; some civil society actors even serve as accountability holders (Kniep et al., 2023). The question of whether civil society actors can be held accountable is pressing. While an intelligence service can be held accountable by a formal oversight body for unjustifiably targeting or conducting surveillance of a group or individual, it is more challenging to see how a civil society actor conducting the same type of targeting, surveillance, or intelligence assessment can be held accountable (Van Buuren, 2014). Given the evident difficulties of closing the regulatory gap, self-regulation would appear to be a potential solution to the lack of any adequate accountability mechanism; but, as has been shown in other security-related fields, such as private security and military companies, the function of self-regulation is complicated by things such as limitations on interest and the difficulty of monitoring actors’ behaviour (Swed & Materne, 2022).
Furthermore, the co-production of intelligence could potentially lead to an alignment of interests among intelligence agencies, civil society actors, and even elected officials which could significantly influence the abilities of oversight bodies. As Crampton and colleagues (2014, p. 209) point out, “at a time when coalitions of interest are emerging around political economy of intelligence, decreases in public accountability are disturbing.” The inclusion of Danish universities in attempts to counteract the risks of foreign espionage is a clear example of this potential problem. How can university staff be held accountable in, for example, a recruitment situation where potential candidates may be discarded solely based on their nationality? Does accountability towards Danish society and its national security interests trump accountability towards the international research community and its values of openness and fairness? The Danish setup articulates self-regulation as key to ensuring quality in this process. This seems, however, to be a vague and potentially vulnerable setup.
These questions should be confronted if a lack of transparency, the blurring of roles, and obscurity on the means available to challenge errors or abuses are to be avoided. Moreover, intelligence officers receive training in handling bias through analytical tradecraft (Bruce & George, 2015), whereas civil society actors do not necessarily receive such training. If harm results from the actions of a civil society actor, there may be no clear delineation of where the responsibility lies. In a worst-case scenario, accountability may be dropped, between several actors pointing at each other and blame diffused.
It could also be argued, however, that the inclusion of civil society actors in the production of intelligence furthers democratic accountability and, thus, the legitimacy of this intelligence work (Hartvigsen & Yauri-Miranda, 2026). Engagement and collaboration with civil society may enable spaces of contestation and pluralism essential to democratic accountability (Heidelberg, 2017) – spaces that no longer seem unrealistic as intelligence services increasingly draw on a range of perspectives and voices. Studies in other areas of public service have similarly shown that co-production between professionals and civil society actors strengthens accountability ties and improves working cultures (Tuurnas et al., 2016).
Conclusion
In this article, we have shown how Scandinavian intelligence services have adopted the co-production of intelligence, increasingly aligning with a traditional approach reflecting the United States and United Kingdom model in which civil society actors are envisioned as central actors in intelligence matters (see, among others, Kaleem, 2022). We also argue that this approach is applied in the context of Scandinavian counterespionage, not counterterrorism as in the U.S./UK cases, along with the current focus on total defence, societal security, and whole-of-society approaches to security matters.
Doing this, we provide three concepts and examples of co-production of counterintelligence in Scandinavia: ad hoc chipping-in; formalized networks; and institutionalized partnerships. Finally, we discuss potential implications of intelligence co-production requiring further attention, broken down into three types: new visions and ideals of knowledge in the intelligence context; increased responsibilization of civil society actors and the subsequent risk of turning civil society into security policy actors; and the adoption of increasingly blurred accountability mechanisms in the context of intelligence.
Finally, future studies would benefit from addressing the shift in Scandinavian intelligence co-production from a contextual and cultural perspective. While civil society engagement in Scandinavian intelligence has traditionally been limited, the call for co-production might seem readily implementable in a cultural context characterized by high institutional trust, social cohesion, and relative equality. That same context, however, could equally favour an echo chamber culture that marginalizes critical voices more effectively than the present arrangements do. Precisely because of this high-trust environment and the growing emphasis on total defence and whole-of-society approaches, Scandinavian countries represent a critical case for intelligence co-production.
The inclusion of civil society actors in intelligence matters may, on one hand, legitimize intelligence practice and ground democratic accountability in pluralism and spaces of contestation. On the other hand, it may accelerate a dissolution of the boundaries between the state and the public sphere – a condition in which the distinction between the implementers and monitors of security policy disappears and democratic accountability becomes an ideal without practical force (Petersen & Tjalve, 2015). The potential spread of intelligence and security logics to civil society through co-production therefore warrants careful and sustained critical attention, as the consequences for democracy may be significant.
Notes
[1] Danish Defence and Security 2024–2033, Danish Defence Agreement 2018–2023, 2023–2024, Danish Cyber and Information Security Strategy 2018, 2021, 2022–2024, Foreign and Security Policy Strategy 2019–2020, 2022, 2023.
[2] See e.g., the publication Indblik [Insight] from the Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS, 2021) and the podcast series from the Danish Intelligence and Security service Tjenesten og truslerne [The service and the threats] (DSIS, n.d.).