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A nuanced deployment of SID can provide significant benefits, yet in India, SID has remained piecemeal, used partially during periods of crisis rather than as part of a concerted strategy
When Brigadier General Frank Gräfe dialled into his midnight Webex call with senior colleagues from the German air force, the Luftwaffe, from his Singapore hotel room 2024, he had little reason to be concerned. This, after all, was a secure line, impenetrable to foreign threat actors. Yet just two weeks later, Europe woke up to the shock of hearing the complete audio recording of the 38-minute call, in all its granular detail about Germany’s upcoming deliveries of Taurus missiles to Ukraine, broadcast by RT, Russia’s state broadcaster. A subsequent investigation by German counterintelligence officials revealed that Russian intelligence officers had intercepted the call using the hotel’s unsecured Wi-Fi. Yet instead of keeping this intelligence secret to inform their own strategic planning, Russia took a leaf out of the Western playbook in the lead-up to and amid the war in Ukraine since 2022, electing to publicise the intercepted communications and acquire a propaganda victory over its adversaries through the use of Strategic Intelligence Disclosure (SID).
Yet in India, SID has remained piecemeal, used partially and with diminished effect during periods of crisis than as part of a concerted strategy.
Control of the information terrain through the effective use of digital media and real-time strategic communications is unanimously recognised as core to the execution of effective strategy. A nuanced approach to and deployment of SID can provide significant benefits for any government working toward this end. Yet in India, SID has remained piecemeal, used partially and with diminished effect during periods of crisis than as part of a concerted strategy. This essay seeks to outline the benefits and risks of SID, highlight cases of its recent use by global powers, and contextualise its use in relation to India’s current strategic predicament.
Global intelligence agencies have long recognised the value that SID brings to the table. Once intelligence is selectively made public and integrated as part of a wider information strategy, it can significantly augment the deployer’s coercive capacities and clout against adversaries. It can serve several interrelated objectives: the public embarrassment of said adversary to gain a psychological advantage, or to galvanise global opinion and diplomatic support in favour of one’s own narrative against another’s.
It is this logic that has rationalised the use of SID by governments. As early as 1962, the United States (US) chose to reveal imagery intelligence (IMINT) in its possession about the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba before the UN Security Council to corral global opinion in the US's favour during the Missile Crisis. From 2021 onward, Western intelligence services—namely the US and UK’s, in coordination with Ukrainian security services—embarked on a strategy of SID, at first revealing intelligence about Russian troop movements along the Ukrainian border to delay the impending military campaign, and then once the war ended, intercepting and publicly releasing communications among Russian troops and field commanders to erode the adversary’s morale—with some even being interpolated into documentary films by private artists later to deliver outsized public effect.
SID can risk the security of human agents or technological sources of intelligence collection if used without caution.
Yet SID is not a silver bullet, and must be used prudently. Publicising false or doctored intelligence under the umbrella term of ‘SID’ carries long-term reputational and strategic risk, as demonstrated by the debunked ‘slam dunk’ evidence presented in 2003 by the US before the UN Security Council about Iraq’s purported WMDs. Additionally, SID can risk the security of human agents or technological sources of intelligence collection if used without caution. However, governments have sought to bypass these challenges by relying on the public disclosure of intelligence assessments rather than raw data, or if they choose to disclose the latter, having done so after taking steps to mask its origin. Despite some of these trade-offs, however, governments have sometimes chosen to press ahead with SID against adversaries, as seen in 2018, when Turkish intelligence services chose to publicise audio and visual evidence of the Saudi state’s culpability in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, despite disclosing in the process their bugging of the embassy in which it occurred.
Additionally, SID does not have to involve avowed public disclosure alone, but may be executed in conjunction with more covert means to mask the origins of said intelligence to maintain plausible deniability through a strategy of intentional ‘leaks’ to the press or social media. Israel has utilised such a strategy in the past, at first selectively ‘leaking’ intelligence about the Lebanese Hezbollah’s possession of precision-guided weapons to Arab and global media in 2017 to force the latter to respond publicly and thereby constrain its decision-making mobility. The same strategy was repeated in 2018 with the public disclosure of intelligence about Iran’s ongoing nuclear weapons programme at the UN, despite the JCPOA agreement.
India is no stranger to SID. Among the best documented instances of its success as a strategic tool was during the Kargil War in 1999, when Indian intelligence intercepted and helped to publicly broadcast a telephone call between Pervez Musharraf and Chief of General Staff General Aziz Khan proving not only Pakistan’s active sponsorship of Mujahideen fighters that it denied supporting, but also the military’s insubordination to Pakistan’s civilian leadership led by Nawaz Sharif. According to former R&AW Chief, Vikram Sood, the disclosure of this intelligence played a crucial role in Nawaz Sharif’s efforts to wrest back control from the military, in due course contributing to the war’s end.
In more recent times, India has sought to use disclosure of information—if not intelligence—during times of crisis and conflict, usually with Pakistan, to strategic ends. Following airstrikes on terror camps in Balakot in 2019, the Indian Air Force showed media outlets satellite imagery proving that SPICE missiles had been used on Pakistani targets. During Operation Sindoor, high-quality satellite imagery confirming the damage done to Pakistani terror camps and military bases was revealed in press conferences conducted by the Foreign Secretary and representatives of the armed forces.
An ingrained culture of secrecy within India’s bureaucracy has left the intelligence community reticent to disclose the intelligence it possesses, informed by valid concerns about the possible compromise of sources and methods.
Yet key factors have hindered the effectiveness of India’s use of SID. First, SID has primarily been used as a post-facto measure to measure or prove one’s success during periods of crisis, rather than pre-emptively to undermine the enemy’s morale or cause public embarrassment as part of a concerted peacetime strategy. Second, except for the Kargil War, the intelligence disclosed has mainly involved the use of static imagery unsuited to an era of public broadcasting dominated by the 30-second, audio-visual centric Instagram Reel or YouTube short. Third, debates around SID in India have come to be muddied by domestic politicisation as a feature of its democratic politics, lending itself to exploitation by India’s adversaries—as observed in the demands for tangible ‘proof’ of India’s surgical strikes against Pakistan in 2016. Finally, an ingrained culture of secrecy within India’s bureaucracy has left the intelligence community reticent to disclose the intelligence it possesses, informed by valid concerns about the possible compromise of sources and methods. Despite the validity of the latter concern, India must not let secrecy preclude it from the advantages of a clear strategy and doctrine around SID in a more transparent era, once that intelligence is properly sanitised and selectively declassified.
What does the future of SID look like in an Indian context? First, SID must come to be seen not as a post-facto strategy of justification, but as a semi-kinetic measure meant to coerce the adversary in both peacetime and during crisis/conflict by causing it global embarrassment, and limiting its strategic choices by making its next steps public knowledge. The psychological impact of such a strategy would be immense, keeping the adversary off guard most time.
Audio-visual rich intelligence product, better suited to integration into an information warfare strategy disseminated by short-form video content on social media, films/documentaries, podcasts, and the like, may be prioritised as part of a possible strategy towards SID.
Second, the intelligence disclosed as part of this strategy must evolve beyond the use of satellite imagery alone. There are understandable reasons why such imagery has been utilised during both the Balakot operation in 2019 and during Operation Sindoor in 2025—by revealing satellite imagery that can be picked up as easily by commercial platforms like Maxar, India avoids revealing sources and methods vital to intelligence collection. Yet as the R&AW’s interception and public release of high-level phone calls in Pakistan during the Kargil War showed, Indian intelligence has the capacity to pick up on audio and even visual-rich intelligence products—and publicly disclose it to devastating effect. Audio-visual rich intelligence product, better suited to integration into an information warfare strategy disseminated by short-form video content on social media, films/documentaries, podcasts, and the like, may be prioritised as part of a possible strategy towards SID.
Third, SID and information warfare must come to be seen as the same. Intelligence may only be revealed once its disclosure is determined to draw a likely response from an adversary that ultimately constrains its strategic mobility in one way, shape, or form. It must be geared to provoke a reaction by reaching the very heart of societal, religious, civil, or bureaucratic fissures within the adversary’s polity.
The intelligence business is, by definition, shrouded in secrecy—as it must be. Yet in an era where digital communications and easy, near-ubiquitous access to public broadcasting have come to reshape the information landscape, India’s intelligence landscape must adapt. SID may not be a panacea—but it certainly goes a long way in augmenting our strategic heft and effectiveness.
Archishman Ray Goswami is a Non-Resident Junior Fellow with the Observer Research Foundation.
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Archishman Ray Goswami is a Non-Resident Junior Fellow with the Observer Research Foundation. His work focusses on the intersections between intelligence, multipolarity, and wider international politics, ...
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