Leapfrogging: Terrorists and State Actors | Small Wars Journal

"A significant alteration in the intelligence environment since the 9/11 terrorist attack is national intelligences’ liaison with foreign services. Prior to 9/11, the US has remained staunch allies with the Commonwealth nations including UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Post 9/11, the US embraced a host of other foreign intelligence services to combat global terrorism.[xxiv] These new relationships include even adversarial countries such as Syria.[xxv] While the US has vast technical collection platforms at its disposal, the global war on terrorism demands human intelligence expertise in specific languages and cultures for which the new alliance partners are in some cases better suited.[xxvi] But these alterations did not come without risks. "