Before the September 11th attacks on the United States, espionage developed very little from the cold war school of training. Enemies, before 9/11, were clearly defined by geographical borders making espionage adapt to a changing world much more slowly.

Al Qaeda was a new kind of enemy. It is an enemy based on religious ideology and as such, can survive and reproduce across geographical borders.

A new kind of spy technology was needed to conduct effective espionage.

So let me get to my question. How has the United States Intelligence community adapted since the attacks of September 11th? Have they adapted at all?

Is the CIA now training and recruiting agents in Arabic instead of Russian? Instead of recruiting ivy league kids fluent in German, Russian or Chinese, are they now recruiting Harvard grads of Arab, Persian or Mediterranean decent?

Or has the CIA been replaced by a new secret agency unknown to most of the public?

I'm sure the NSA's espionage is still on top. But what about Delta Force? Or Black Ops? Whose commando tactics seem ill-equipped to face an enemy made of dispersed cell networks.

Who is training the new generation of western spies and how are they doing it?

If anyone knows of any books or sources on the subject, I'd love to know where I can find information as I find the adaptation of espionage very interesting.

The CIA has always been recruiting Arab speakers and training others in Arabic because of the Oil trade. They are still recruiting and training Russian speakers, albeit in smaller numbers. What has changed, and this started happening before 9/11, was the proportion of Arabic assets within the CIA. This is a trend that began in the early 90's, as a response to the collapse of the USSR and what then seemed like the end of Russian aspiration for global hegemony. Of course, 9/11 was a great system shock and I have no doubt it has sped this process up.

Current espionage is different from what it was during the cold war (which ended around 1990). Keep in mind that in adaptation, knowledge builds upon knowledge and is seldom completely discarded. For example, in the cold war, agents were trained on various bug planting devices and how to plant them. Today, the CIA has a bug that looks like a real bug, that flies like a real bug and the training involves how to fly this bug into position. So the basic process of needing to secretly "listen in" is the same, but the technology available to achieve this end goal continues to change and improve in all sorts of ways.

Probably the biggest change in espionage is the realization that one needs to "continually evolve" both in operational terms as well as technological. It is a race between countries to adapt faster than your opponent because he who adapts the quickest is most likely to achieve the desire results.

Also keep in mind that terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda have very limited resources in terms of technology, financial funding, and human resources. This means that they are far less effective at executing counter-espionage techniques than say the USSR is.

In regards to Delta Force and Black Ops, these are not really intelligence organizations but instead operational branches of existing military branches. They have adapted well in terms of using special bombs in Afghanistan that suck oxygen out of caves, or laser guided weaponry. Commando style tactics can be highly effective against terrorist infrastructure, if the forces employing them are provided with sufficient preliminary intelligence (which is the big challenge today). I am referring to effectiveness in both securing new intelligence assets, and delivering damage to enemy operational capabilities (again, counter-espionage is less significant in this kind of conflict).

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