Post #4386371

n = 60 current or former intel professionals from 25 countries (including the US) 'The Dutch service, which placed third with 97 points, owes its strong reputation to world-class cyber intelligence and counterterrorism capabilities. [The Dutch/Israelis are the 6th Eye.] '... figures published by Bild in January 2026 showing that only 2 percent of terrorist alerts in Germany originated with the BND itself, compared with 72 percent from the CIA. '[Sweden] is now establishing a new civilian foreign intelligence service, UND, but its military intelligence service, MUST, and signals intelligence agency, FRA, have long been highly regarded by their peers. 'Since then, Danish intelligence has become less sought after because the country invested less in the Russia file. '... none of the Baltic countries is singled out for having highly developed human intelligence capabilities. Estonia, for example, is praised for cyber intelligence and open-source intelligence, but not for HUMINT. '... the Baltic states had branded themselves as world-class experts on Russia, even though their information on matters essential to Baltic military security was incomplete. 'It is possible that intelligence circles also took Russia’s public nuclear doctrine — early use and so forth — too literally without sufficiently considering the information-warfare value of published doctrine. 'The same question raised by German intelligence — whether it is essentially a think tank or an operationally capable intelligence service — inevitably applies to the Baltic states as well. '... the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service assessed the likelihood of war breaking out as “fifty-fifty.” Nevertheless, the Estonian government and the Ministry of Defense had already prepared and acted as though war were certain. 'As in the Dutch case, the intelligence customer — the Estonian government — made its own operational judgment and acted accordingly'. That last bit is the most important one in any discussion on intelligence. https://balticsentinel.eu/8519691/europe-s-spy-ranking-reveals-the-strengths-and-blind-spots-of-nordic-baltic-intelligence-services