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In professional intelligence collection, in the world of espionage, secrets are really just a tool to gain leverage. Leverage that allows you to get what you want from an opponent. Leverage that allows you to stay one step ahead of a threat. Leverage that you use to build goodwill or good faith with an ally. It’s really just a practical and measurable tool that you can use to achieve a very specific outcome that you want.
Economy of Secrets
There’s a concept we have at CIA that helps us to frame the entire world around us, whether it’s personal relationships or geopolitics or even strategic intent. And that’s by understanding that we are all governed by what we call an economy of secrets. If you think back to Economics 101 from whether you were in high school or college, you understand that economics is all about understanding that there is a limited supply and there is always demand. The economy of secrets is the exact same way. Everybody wants access to secrets, so there is an infinite demand for the secrets that are out there. Personal secrets, trade secrets, geopolitical secrets, economic secrets, financial secrets. There’s always a demand for secrets.
And whether we want to admit it or not, we understand that some secrets we want to keep until they’re useful to us. And other secrets are so valuable, we will never share them ever. Some secrets cause significant damage to what your ambitions and your goals are. There’s never a time that you want to trade or share a secret that does grave damage to what you’re trying to achieve. The ideal kind of secrets to share are secrets that we call have a shelf life. Meaning, that over time, the secret becomes less important or less valuable because there’s a very real current time element to many secrets. What happens today is only secret until it makes it into the headlines tomorrow. You always have to be considering the relevancy of a secret when you determine what its value is.
So the best secrets to trade are the secrets that have value right now, but that value has a half life that decreases every day you move forward. So when you trade a secret with a fast half life for someone else trading a secret with a slow half life, you end up having a more valuable secret that you receive relative to the secret that you give away. That’s the economy of secrets. That’s the trading of secrets that makes it so that you can stay ahead of your competition over time. Because you’re not trading damaging secrets, you’re trading secrets that are already destined to become known to the light of day.
Information Superiority
CIA is an information gathering service. We call it intelligence, but all intelligence really is is having what we call information superiority. Meaning, the best and highest quantity of information compared to our competitors. When you have information superiority, you are deemed to have intelligence. It’s the same thing we say when we talk about an intelligent person. Intelligent people have a preponderance of information that is believable and useful to them. It’s just the same as having information superiority for CIA.
When you accept that other people have secrets and they will always have secrets, you can start applying behaviors, practices into your personal life, into your business life that make it so that you gain more secrets than you share. Gaining secrets in an economy of secrets is the same thing as gaining wealth or gaining power. It sets you up to have more success with the outcomes you’re trying to achieve.