Crisis of Secrecy: The Weaponisation of Ambiguity in Covert Action

Ninon de Buchet

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The strategic utility of covert action has traditionally been grounded in its ability to cause effects in a plausibly deniable manner (Duffield 2024, 4). However, recent transformations in the media and information environments have sparked a ‘crisis of secrecy’ with far-reaching implications for covert operations (Aldrich and Richterova 2018, 1003). Western governments’ ascription of a wide range of attacks to the Russian state since 2014, for instance, exemplify the growing implausibility of denial. Intelligence scholars have attributed this heightened risk of exposure to a variety of factors, the principal one being changes in the information landscape which have enabled investigative journalists to expose foreign interference, occasionally even rivalling domestic intelligence agencies in their attribution efforts (Cormac 2017, 170). Some have concluded that the decline of plausible deniability will nullify the benefits of covert activity (Cormac and Aldrich 2018, 493). Drawing on examples of suspected and confirmed Russian covert operations since the annexation of Crimea, this essay will argue that denial has largely become implausible due to credible attribution by non-state intelligence professionals using publicly available analytical technologies. It will further argue that the deterioration of secrecy in this domain has created new avenues for Russia to conduct operations below the threshold of armed conflict with NATO while cultivating an image of impunity.

The first section of the essay will explore how the proliferation of open-source and forensic investigation techniques has led to significant advances in the attribution and monitoring of Russian covert operations in Western Europe, particularly those undertaken as part of the Kremlin’s alleged ‘hybrid war’ against NATO. These attribution efforts are supported by globalised information flows, which facilitate greater interaction between independent media organisations and broader civil society. The second section will discuss how Russia has embraced implausible deniability. It will show that while sophisticated attribution efforts have significantly enhanced NATO’s collective response to hybrid warfare, the Kremlin has countered this by exploiting the strategic ambiguity generated by unacknowledged yet identifiable kinetic operations. As the essay will demonstrate, this dynamic has both positive and negative implications for the international security environment.