Intelligence field

The intelligence field, also known as the intelligence business, the intelligence establishment, the intelligence complex, the intelligence industry, the field of intelligence, or the business of intelligence is the global industry revolving around intelligence in all of its forms. The intelligence field is composed of people, groups, and organizations who deal – directly or indirectly – with intelligence, and/or support those people that do. This industry contains; lawyers, professors and academics, diplomats, biologists, chemists, astronomers, photographers, videographers, information technology specialists, historians, economists, data scientists, graphic designers, food service workers, psychologists and profilers, essayists, intelligence analysts, c-suite executives, hackers, coders, and software developers, among others. Individuals employed by intelligence organizations are usually fully employed officers of intelligence agencies called intelligence officers. Those persons popularly called "spies" make up only a small part of the intelligence field – so small that some scholars have even argued that the work of spying, called espionage, is anachronistic and unnecessary in the modern intelligence field. In other words, just as not everyone in the film industry is an actor, not everyone in the intelligence field is a spy, or even deals with intelligence.
Hager Ben Jaffel and Sebastian Larsson write that:

"In sum, doing intelligence today could mean anything from informing high politics and producing risk assessments, to dealing with the mundanities of the everyday labor of law enforcement, to managing vast databases involving intricate computerized surveillance solutions."

One derogatory term that has been used to describe the intelligence field, especially in the United States, is the intelligence-industrial complex.

Global industry leaders

Due to the secretive, often covert, nature of the intelligence field, gaining accurate employment figures or profit and revenue figures in either the public sector or private sector anywhere is difficult for data scientists, human resources officers, or economists. From an etymological perspective, when the professions of intelligence were being developed, the intelligence field deliberately chose words that were mundane and obtuse, so their enemies would not know what these jobs really were. Job postings are even today often intentionally or unintentionally mislabeled by employers. Most of the employment figures below are best-estimates.
The one thing that is not measured below is the effectiveness of the industry leaders, because, while those measurements are often performed within the industry, those reports are mostly kept secret or classified.

Public sector

are the collective efforts of a country surrounding intelligence – but confusingly, most of the employment studies today only measure the size of individual intelligence agencies. It is inadequate to measure individual agencies alone, because, for example, the Central Intelligence Agency is only 1/18th of the entire United States Intelligence Community – meaning that the CIA is only one of 18 intelligence agencies in the United States. Comparing the size of the CIA to the size of the KGB is not adequate, because it does not include all of the other people in those governments employed in the industry.
The following are, therefore, the top leading intelligence communities where figures are found. These rankings incorporate both the number of employees and the owned physical assets of these communities, like access to satellites and deployment times:

Rank	Intelligence Community	Estimated employees	Annual budget
1	United States Intelligence Community	100,000 –200,000	$101.6 billion
2	Chinese intelligence community	?
3	Russian Intelligence Community	?
4	Israeli intelligence community	?	₪20 billion
5	Indian intelligence community		₹4,2343 crore
6	Pakistani Intelligence Community		15-20% of ₨1.8 – 2.55 trillion
7	United Kingdom Intelligence Community	15,550	£4.2 billion
8	Australian Intelligence Community	7,000 – 10,000	$44.6 million – $2.05 billion
9	France	20,000	€67 million
10	Germany	10,000	€1 billion
11	Japan	5,000
12	South Korea	60,000

The ten most powerful government intelligence agencies, when compared to the relative size of their intelligence communities, are the following:

Rank	Intelligence agency	Estimated employees	Annual budget	Country
1	Central Intelligence Agency	21,575 – 22,000	$15 billion	United States
2	Secret Intelligence Service	3,500	N/A	United Kingdom
3	Mossad	7,000	₪10 billion	Israel
4	Research & Analysis Wing	5,000	$100 – 500 million	India
5	Federal Security Service	200,000 – 500,000	?	Russia
6	Ministry of State Security	800,000	?	China
7	Bundesnachrichtendienst	6,500	€1.6 billion	Germany
8	Inter-Services Intelligence	10,000	₨200 – 300 billion	Pakistan
9	Australian Secret Intelligence Service			Australia
10	Directorate General for External Security	7,200	€1 billion	France

Private sector

Many of the companies below are involved in more industries than only the intelligence field. The following are the most powerful private sector intelligence agencies in the world:

Rank	Company	Estimated employees	Annual revenue	Country
1	Kroll Inc.	6,500	$1.31 billion	United States
2	K2 Integrity	350	$74 – 121 million	United States
3	Surefire Intelligence	50	$5 – 30 million	United States
4	Booz Allen Hamilton	34,200	$2.9 billion	United States
5	Constellis Holdings	22,000	$1 – 5 billion	United States
6	AggregateIQ	12–50	$6 million	Canada
7	Hakluyt & Company	200	£130 million	United Kingdom
8	Black Cube	50–200	$1 – 5 million	Israel
9	Earth League International	50	N/A	United States

?	Leidos	48,000	$16 billion	United States
?	CACI International	25,500	$9 million	United States
?	Science Applications International Corporation	24,000	$7.5 million	United States
?	Palantir Technologies	4,000	$3 billion	United States
?	5 Stones Intelligence	200	$15 – 16 million
?	Pinkerton	500	N/A	United States
?	Amazon	UNKNOWN	UNKNOWN	United States
?	Alphabet Inc.	UNKNOWN	UNKNOWN	United States

Criminal intelligence

Where they do exist, the leading criminal intelligence organizations are the following:

Industrial cultivation

The global intelligence field, and especially the private sector, is today increasingly diversified in its portfolio, moving away from its core industrial production and management. This industry has often branched-out into secondary and tertiary goods and services, such as union busting, policy recommendation, estimates and planning, sanctioned assassinations, mass surveillance programs, malware production and deployment, and so on. One common adage for the intelligence field is that "intelligence is as intelligence does."
However, the singular product which remains at the core of this industry is intelligence. Intelligence as information is to have some secret knowledge of something. To governments and the public sector, this information is knowledge of and/or belonging to the enemy, which will often gain an advantage in armed conflict. To the private sector, intelligence is ususally knowledge of a competitor, and/or "trade secrets" belonging to that competitor – such as blueprints and patents. However, because governments are often liable if they get caught spying on their own citizens, they will often hire-out private intelligence agencies to perform that same intelligence.
Unlike coffee, which is the core product of the coffee industry, or sugar, which is the core product of the sugar industry – intelligence is not a manufactured product, but it is nevertheless collected and cultivated in some manner.
Intelligence work can be conducted by government intelligence agencies, police forces, and military intelligence units. This work can also be engaged by private organizations, including; private intelligence agencies, multinational corporations, private investigators, drug cartels, narcotic cartels, terrorist groups, and others.