This is how Germany is transforming its services from analytical units into genuine intelligence agencies

Berlin. The world is changing, and Germany’s intelligence services must become more effective in countering Russian hybrid warfare, terrorism and other threats. The foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), and the domestic intelligence service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), can no longer remain mere information bureaux and must transform themselves into fully-fledged intelligence services, thereby leaving behind some of the caution of the past. Last Wednesday, the Merz government approved a major 732-page intelligence reform bill, which must now pass through Parliament. “Until this proposal, by European standards, the German services had the most limited powers of any, including in the cyber domain. Only Austria has stricter restrictions. The reform, however, brings Germany up to the 2026 standard,” explains Hans-Jakob Schindler, a security and intelligence expert and director of the CEP (Counter Extremism Project) in New York and Berlin. Germany wants to start with “active measures”, such as hack-backs to pre-emptively thwart acts of sabotage. These operations are “also designed as a deterrent. The German intelligence services cannot simply defend and analyse all the time. In the event of a massive cyber-attack on the Bundestag, for example, there may now be electronic consequences for those responsible: servers taken offline and so on,” explains Schindler, who points out, however, that these actions will remain “subject to very specific conditions: there must be a very real threat and reliable intelligence”.

German operations of this kind will therefore remain targeted and, in practice, “will occur more rarely than regularly”. Schindler agrees that the reform will aim to create German intelligence services which, whilst remaining defensive, will be less naive. For years, particularly in the field of counter-terrorism, German agencies have been criticised for their reliance on tips-offs from international partners. This situation is not due to incompetence, but to the German legal framework. “In principle, the exchange of intelligence – particularly regarding security – is not a bad thing; on the contrary, it is excellent and should be the case,” Schindler points out, “but it is not a strategy for Germany’s security, because none of these services – British, French, Israeli or American – has the remit to guarantee security in Germany. So we must also be as effective as possible on our own”, whilst recognising that cooperation remains vital and always necessary. After all, the expert adds, we must also “hopefully be able to pass on something useful to other services in turn, so that we may then receive something in return”.

The threat landscape facing Germany is highly complex. “Since 2014, and particularly since 2022, Russian operations in Germany and across Europe have become increasingly aggressive,” confirms Schindler, who also points to the intensification of hybrid activities by countries such as Iran. The domestic threat has increased across the entire spectrum: on the one hand, the neo-Nazi far right; on the other, the Islamist threat. “We have taken the strategic decision – not just Germany, but Europe and, ultimately, the Western world – to no longer combat terrorism at its source. We have withdrawn from Afghanistan, we have withdrawn from West Africa, and we have partially withdrawn from East Africa,” explains Schindler, and now “it is not illogical that we must do much more here”, at home. In the fight against radical Islamism, the reform could make a significant difference. Of course, judicial shortcomings, such as in the case of the attack on Berlin Pride in July, cannot be attributed to the work of the intelligence services. But in other cases, things could change: “Identifying someone you do not know, who is becoming radicalised, is only possible if you can use artificial intelligence and analyse big data. This is what the reform should allow,” Schindler explains. Facilitating the work of the agencies in the face of Germany’s restrictive data and privacy regulations is, in fact, one of the crucial steps. The new law is already sparking political debate and, as the director of the CEP himself points out, will have to face challenges before the Constitutional Court. The final text of the reform is therefore not yet settled. One new development is the possibility for the BND to resort to ‘kinetic means’, that is, the use of physical force. However, this is an exception reserved for situations of extreme self-defence and war. In short, the German intelligence services will not become agencies with a licence to kill in peacetime. In the near future, Berlin will not be able to carry out any Mossad-style ‘pager operations’.