Ukraine Has Shown the World You Can Now Buy an Intelligence Agency “Off the Shelf”
Ukraine’s battlefield innovation has triggered a wake-up call across Western military and political circles: in the 21st century, you don’t need to build an intelligence agency from scratch — you can buy one, “off the shelf.” And Ukraine, in its war of survival against Russia, has proven it, The Gaze reports, citing the report by The Telegraph.
Amid ongoing warfare, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government has leaned heavily on commercial tech, AI, satellite data, and civilian innovation to outmaneuver a traditional military power.
The result is a decentralized but hyper-effective intelligence, surveillance, and targeting apparatus that would once have required decades of development and billions in state funding.
“President Trump will get a nasty surprise next time he tries to bully Volodymyr Zelensky,” the analysis warns. “He will threaten to cut off the intelligence – but he can’t.”
The statement refers to Trump’s recent claim that he had paused U.S. intelligence sharing with Ukraine to push Kyiv into peace talks. However, Ukraine’s growing ecosystem of non-state, digital intelligence partners has rendered such threats less effective.
“We live in a different world now where the proliferation of precision and accessibility of data means the state and the traditional large defence primes are being outmanoeuvred at every turn,” the commentary continues.
This shift underscores a deeper challenge for NATO and its allies. Their traditional approach of investing in “exquisite platforms” — billion-dollar fighter jets and complex systems with limited survivability in prolonged conflicts — is increasingly misaligned with the nature of modern warfare.
“If you are a fan, as I am, of Formula One, you will know that the car can’t even start itself without a team of highly skilled engineers,” the piece argues, comparing NATO’s high-end systems to race cars not built for the rigors of long-term war.
Ukraine, by contrast, is operating cheap, lethal, agile systems — like $80,000 surface drones capable of destroying Russian warships and aircraft. Their success is made possible by open-source data, commercial satellite imagery, and real-time targeting intelligence — often supplied by private firms.
“Data is the new oil,” the analysis notes. “There are now AI, satellite and even advertising companies who have data for sale… You can literally buy, off the shelf, an intelligence agency – as long as you know where to go shopping.”
Read more on The Gaze: How AI Is Transforming Modern Warfare: Lessons from Ukraine’s Battlefield