Spy time: the hunt for chronophages

Abstract

Time creates issues for the intelligence community in its four basic meanings: as an objective measure of the duration between events; as a subjective experience; as a component of the spacetime coordinates locating a target; and as a temporal sequence that can suggest causality or attribution. Latency measures the freshness of intelligence reports and perishability the time over which the content will be sensitive. The use of intelligence by military command is governed by time considerations as is the application and development of technology to overcome the constraints of time. The digital age, and digital media, pose new problems as well as solutions to these problems.