Charles Lee on 38 North discusses how North Korea gathers intelligence on the United States:
With regard to intelligence collection against the United States, however, North Korea leans heavily on OSINT [open-source intelligence] —a readily available and potentially valuable source of reliable intelligence. Public statements from US officials and powerbrokers, in particular, can have added significance when they provide insights into US military courses of action. Corroboration through other intelligence disciplines can amplify the value of these statements. If, for example, North Korea were able to acquire and leverage long-range ISR platforms like the United States and its allies, it could exploit geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) to better ascertain whether US forces were actually postured for preventive military action. Without such capabilities, North Korea greatly appreciates OSINT exploitation. …
Like their American adversary, North Korea’s intelligence analysts assign measures of analytic confidence to their intelligence sources—namely, the statements of US officials, power-brokers and other influential voices on US Asia policy. High-confidence intelligence can serve as effective guideposts for policy decisions. For example, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s claim that North Korea will never relinquish its nuclear weapons likely sent a strong signal to North Korean intelligence officials that this represents the summary judgment of the American IC at-large based on its vast instruments of collection. North Korea may have read his opinion as “we, the US IC, assess with high confidence that North Korea will never relinquish nuclear weapons.” When viewed alongside the absence of US/South Korean military action, Pyongyang could have been convinced that such an intelligence judgment may have led the US to abandon the goal of denuclearizing North Korea. In other words, the DNI may have unwittingly served as a credible, high-confidence source for North Korean intelligence on US intentions. It is entirely possible that this may have emboldened North Korea to continue its aggressive pursuit of missile and nuclear development.
An interesting problem in communications. Do our officials carefully decide, with each statement with regards to North Korea, whether to lie or not? But there’s more: for those of us who think war is merely trying to blast the other guy to smithereens, think again: communications with the enemy is an important aspect of war, because the cessation of war can only come with the agreement of the other side – or his extinction. The latter is not likely and may not make you popular with your neighbors.
But communications with the North Koreans is a very delicate dance that requires years of experience to intepret – and even then we’re never sure we’re right.
