Paul R. Kolbe is the Director of the Intelligence Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Relations. The Intelligence Project at the Belfer Center — home to an elite roster of former senior intelligence officers — seeks to prepare a new generation of officers for leadership in the intelligence community, to educate current and future policymakers on the uses and limits of intelligence, and to enrich the experience of Harvard Kennedy School students and fellows. The program includes an international cadre of Recanati-Kaplan fellows and the Elbe Group, which maintain dialogue between U.S. and Russian former senior intelligence and military officers.
In his role, Kolbe focuses on preparing a new generation of intelligence leaders for the public and private sectors while advancing policy-relevant knowledge in intelligence areas. Kolbe’s role is instrumental to shaping how well intelligence agencies protect nations facing traditional threats such as terrorism, great power competition and espionage — all joined by new challenges posed by cyberattacks, large-scale disinformation, and climate change. “Intelligence is central to the critical issues our world faces today,” Kolbe says.