Understanding State Threats
Project Live
PROJECT TEAM
Matthew Redhead
Royal United Services Institute
Matthew Redhead is a senior associate fellow at RUSI. He is a former civil servant, management consultant and senior leader in financial crime intelligence in the private sector.
He has served as a government official at the MoD, and on secondment at the Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT) at the Home Office. He also has extensive experience in financial services, having trained as a ‘front office’ banker for HSBC in the 1990s, and worked for seven years in various senior roles in that same bank’s financial crime risk function, leaving as Global Head of Strategic Intelligence in April 2018. He is currently a freelance writer and consultant on issues relating to national security, intelligence and economic and financial crime and security.
PROJECT SUMMARY
In the last decade, states have faced a rising tide of hostile activities from other states and their proxies, often referred to as ‘state threats’. In a series of SOC ACE supported workshops in 2023, a taskforce of experienced experts and practitioners from fields including organised crime, financial crime and cyber security, identified the need for a more nuanced definition of state threats, and a better grasp of the scale, scope and character of current state threats faced at present. This project seeks to address these two issues, firstly looking at the language used to discuss state threats or similar concepts (e.g., hybrid, greyzone), and, using a clearer conceptual framework, map out the current character of state threats.
Key findings include:
The importance of covert, clandestine or coercive activities as a ‘marker’ of state threats.
Weaknesses in current alternative definitions (such as hybrid threats) which focus on only one aspect of the challenge (e.g., mixed vectors of attack), and tend to focus more on military or near war situations.
The breadth of weaponised vectors used by various states, as well as the importance of recognising ‘strategic cultures’ of hostile activity.
The widening use of state threats as a tool of statecraft beyond ‘usual suspects’ such as Russia and Iran, and the risk of ‘state threats proliferation.’
It is hoped that results from this research will form a foundation for policy discussions on models of effective policy response. The project’s research paper is expected in the Spring of 2024.
PUBLICATIONS
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Publications from this project will be posted here when available
ENGAGEMENT
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Tom Keatinge, Suzanne Raine and Dr Jason Shepherd, ‘Power, Wealth and State Threats’. RUSI Suspicious Transaction Report Podcast, 23 June 2023.