Exactly how many intelligence agencies does the Empire have? It seems there are a lot of them. I wonder if each of those agencies has its own role and specializations in the grand scheme of things.
BTW, does the Empire has an agency specialized in codecracking?
Not all that many, actually. Strictly speaking, there’s just Admiralty Intelligence (the military intelligence function that benefits from having military minds doing the job; they know what to look for and what’s important in military terms) and Imperial State Security (whose five four directorates cover all other intelligence needs).
If one were to really stretch a point one might add the Office of Investigation and Pursuit to that, but that’s like calling the FBI[1], say, an intelligence agency because they perform infiltration and investigation of organized crime. It’s a very different sort of work.
As for specializations, Admiralty Intelligence aside, while the Directorates may all be part of the same organization, they do specialize. First Directorate is counterespionage and (post 1513) counterasymmetrism[2]. Second Directorate (“ExSec”) does forward intelligence: if agents are out there doing espionage, infiltration, reconnaissance, preemption, assassination, and sabotage, they’re probably from Two. Third Directorate (“IntSec”) is intelligence security, protecting the rest of ISS from infiltration and other threats. And Fourth Directorate is internal security and surveillance.
And then there’s the Fifth Directorate. Which doesn’t exist. If it did exist, it might be a special directorate which handles existential threats and lesser apocalypses under conditions of extreme secrecy and exigent ethics.
But it doesn’t. Of this we are assured.
Not a whole agency. They prefer to organize by function rather than by capability, and codebreaking is a function that every part of ISS is likely to need from time to time. There’s a cross-Directorate Cryptanalysis PWG[3] where most of the crypto boys are, but it’s all part of the same organization.
This isn’t the greatest example because the FBI do handle counterterrorism and counterespionage, which in the Empire aren’t OIP’s responsibility. They belong to First and Third Directorate. ↩︎
Counterterrorism, sort of. Their mandate goes beyond terrorism to include all forms of asymmetric warfare, even the ones no-one’s thought of yet. ↩︎
Primary working group. What the field agents call agent cells, the proxy adhoc calls working groups. ↩︎
Thank you kindly for a detailed and comprehensive answer 
Interesting. Wondering how the works and purview of the First Directorate differ from the Fourth.
The Fifth Directorate handles “lesser” apocalypses. It makes me wonder which agency is responsible for “greater” apocalypse. Perhaps it falls under ambit of the Black Fleet?
I suppose the Imperial intellignece agencies will handle signal intellignece in a similar fashion. Does the Empire have the NSA-equivalent?
Have thought the Black Chamber can be counted as one of agencies of the Empire. It seems I’ve been wrong.
How many “themes” the Repository of All Knowledge has under its remit?
has→have. It seems the message cannot be edited once it has been replied 
I think the proper parsing of the phrase
is that it handles existential threats (which are the largest possible apocalypses) and other apocalypses lesser than existential threats.
But there’s room for ambiguity.
It’s a question of focus. Fourth Directorate is mostly preventative, and inward-focused. They do a lot of routine but necessary work in areas like infrastructure security, for example, and preventing passive (such as SIGINT and IMINT) espionage, but they also keep an eye out for subversion and sedition, and other internal threats that have sneaked past the outer lines of defense. This makes them reactive, for the most part.
First Directorate, on the other hand, leans outward to intercept and deal with foreign active espionage (i.e., spies, saboteurs, assassins, etc.) and asymmetric threats (terrorism et. al.) well before they get that close.
It’s rolled into the Directorates: as I said, they prefer to organize by their role in the overall intelligence picture rather than by their methods, so it’s handled by more cross-Directorate PWGs like the Passive Observation PWG.
It’s a little confusing because there are two unrelated groups which both call themselves the Black Chamber. The senior existential threats people inside the Fifth Directorate, who are part of an agency if not one in their own right, and Special Acquisitions over at the Repository, who aren’t.
(Since neither Fifth Directorate nor Special Acquisitions likes to be examined too closely, they’re both quite comfortable with the confusion this causes. )
The big themata are Acquisitions (collecting new information and artifacts), Aesthetic (specializing in art), Archivist (collation and preservation of the collection), Athenaeum (responsible for their facilities), Censorious (protectors of intrinsically dangerous informationÂą), Curatorial (librarians, curators - basically the people who run all the libraries, museums, and galleries under their aegis), and Decryptic (responsible for research and theory).
Smaller ones come and go over the ages, but these are the ones that stuck around.
This doesn’t mean censorship as we know it, to be clear. It means imprisoning hideously dangerous information-life that will pwn your brain and wear you around like a finger-puppet if you accidentally comprehend it.
The closest to censorship as practiced on Earth is done by the Archivists, who decide what gets placed in the Library of Lies, which placement doesn’t stop anyone from reading it. It just slaps a big label on it to the effect of “this is both STUPID and DANGEROUSLY WRONG, and if you believe it, YOU WILL BE TOO”.
I think the proper parsing of the phrase is that it handles existential threats (which are the largest possible apocalypses) and other apocalypses lesser than existential threats.
But there’s room for ambiguity.
Thank you for correction! Had thought existential threats include all types and degrees of possible apocalypses, but I think your parsing is the correct one.
It’s a question of focus. Fourth Directorate is mostly preventative, and inward-focused. They do a lot of routine but necessary work in areas like infrastructure security, for example, and preventing passive (such as SIGINT and IMINT) espionage, but they also keep an eye out for subversion and sedition, and other internal threats that have sneaked past the outer lines of defense. This makes them reactive, for the most part.
First Directorate, on the other hand, leans outward to intercept and deal with foreign active espionage (i.e., spies, saboteurs, assassins, etc.) and asymmetric threats (terrorism et. al.) well before they get that close.
Thank you so much for satisfying my curiosity. Your polity is so fascinating and well-structured.
Wondering if there’s any standard equipment used by the Fifth Directorate. To face existential threats, they must be well-armed and well-prepared. Could they call upon the Black Fleet in a pinch? Though it will probably be an overkill. May you please explain relationship between the Fifth Directorate and the Black Fleet?
Are there any organizations that ISS considers competitors? OPSEC, perhaps?
How the Admiralty Intelligence relates with the Startarchy? There might be some overlaps with their portfolios.
It’s rolled into the Directorates: as I said, they prefer to organize by their role in the overall intelligence picture rather than by their methods, so it’s handled by more cross-Directorate PWGs like the Passive Observation PWG.
Thank you for clarification!
It’s a little confusing because there are two unrelated groups which both call themselves the Black Chamber. The senior existential threats people inside the Fifth Directorate, who are part of an agency if not one in their own right, and Special Acquisitions over at the Repository, who aren’t.
(Since neither Fifth Directorate nor Special Acquisitions likes to be examined too closely, they’re both quite comfortable with the confusion this causes.
How lovely. Are the Acqusitions and Special Aquisitions distinct agencies? Or is the latter under the jurisdiction of the former?
What exactly is the Imperial Hand, if they aren’t included in the Imperial agency apparatus?
The big themata are Acquisitions (collecting new information and artifacts), Aesthetic (specializing in art), Archivist (collation and preservation of the collection), Athenaeum (responsible for their facilities), Censorious (protectors of intrinsically dangerous informationÂą), Curatorial (librarians, curators - basically the people who run all the libraries, museums, and galleries under their aegis), and Decryptic (responsible for research and theory).
Smaller ones come and go over the ages, but these are the ones that stuck around.
That is truly awesome! Curious to know how the Censorious performs their jobs if their “games” are so dangerous. Don’t they need military-grade equipment and training at the bare minimum?
Are all themata and their agents unarmed?
If you don’t mind, may you please provide some examples of research and theories of the Decryptic? What is their role in the grand scheme of things?
Thank you kindly.
They have the usual intel equipment (which is often pretty sparse - there’s only so loaded out you can be when you’re supposed to be acting covertly, fancy pocket gadgets notwithstanding), but the nature of their missions tends to be really variable, so it’s hard to standardize. For example:
Not much overlap, you know?
They also have a tendency to end up getting really weird at the worst times, so if a Fifth Directorate agent goes to the quartermaster and says something like, “I need a poison angel, a deck of marked playing cards, five hundred feet of buckycable, eight micrograms of antimatter, and an original Picasso rolled up and concealed within a salami sausage,” the quartermaster will just sigh and say “Early or late period on that Picasso?”
Bear in mind that their job is much more to prevent existential threats than to face them. If their missions succeed the way they prefer them to, the threat itself is successfully averted before it ever becomes a major issue, and the galaxy keeps on spinning without any idea that there was anything to worry about.
If an ex-threat does manage to become fully manifest, they can call on pretty much any resource necessary to deal with it, but if that becomes necessary, that’s a big failure on their part.
There’s not really a direct relationship. The Black Flotilla’s part of the Imperial Navy’s Capital Fleet - it’s just the classified one that holds all the non-intelligence ships that they’d rather keep off the books and out of sight: a motley collection of superweapons for the most part.
Externally, pretty much all the rest of the intelligence organizations in the Worlds and others involved in the Great Game. Internally? They have a friendly rivalry with Admiralty Intelligence in the areas where their responsibilities overlap, but they’re not really competitors; they know they’re on the same side.
Much the same as it is with the rest of the Imperial Military Service; they’re its data acquisition organization. They like to keep a clear line of demarcation, so their portfolios don’t overlap in general, although in time of war, Intelligence does work particularly closely with Data Warfare and Indirection & Subtlety.
Special Acquisitions is a specialist group inside the Acquisitions Theme, yes.
A Hand is over and above the normal operation of the Imperial Service. They’re special plenipotentiary agents of the Imperial Couple - since they can’t be everywhere, they can empower these highly trusted agents to speak with their voice and authority to take care of matters that regular channels can’t: combined auditors, troubleshooters, diplomats, marshals, and spies.
(And when I say plenipotentiary - well, the usual Warrant that empowers them reads something along the lines of:
What the bearer does is at my order and in my Voice, for the good of the Empire. Render him every assistance.
Linariel II, Coronal
.)
Well, as unarmed as any random Imperial, which is usually not entirely. But a few security guards and groups like Special Acquisitions aside, they’re librarians in a very polite society, and as such rarely need more than a stern and disapproving look to deal with problems they encounter day to day.
They do need certain things to do their job, but while the level is at least equivalent, it’s very different in type. You can’t shoot ideas, after all, and military training doesn’t prepare you for books that read you back.
But they are well-provided with cognitive enhancements, mental firewalls, and at-a-distance handling equipment, and trained to cultivate extremely high levels of mental discipline and focus.
There are various small sub-themes doing Repository-specific research, but most of what they do is very “meta”, for want of a better word. They train a lot of the best cross-field synthesists, because there is a vast spectrum of knowledge out there, and the Repository is where it all comes, sooner or later.
The synthesists of Decryptic are the ones trained to reflect on this with the context of the whole collection, or as much as they can hold at once, and find obscure correlations between distant pieces of data, or between today’s new entry and things that have been sitting in the stacks for a millennium, or in completely different areas no-one would ever have thought of comparing. Or they find holes: hidden or obvious, but still gaps in the big picture of All Knowledge that need someone to look into them and find what’s there.
And by doing this, they guide researchers all over the Empire to investigate these correlations that they’d never have found on their own, and discover whole new vistas of knowledge thereby.
Dealing with the terrorists themselves, on the other hand, can safely be left to First Directorate or regular military. 5D agents are much too rare and expensive to waste on such routine work. ↩︎
What’s that? I found one reference on the main site, which didn’t give any details.
A tame mini-god which kills things dead.
A “tame mini-god” and “kills things dead” sound like metastable mutual conditions at best.
Kills only things on the target list. A weakly godlike entity that killed what it felt like would not qualify as “tame”.