Intelligence Communities, Scientific Communities and Epistemic Community

A growing number of countries are adopting the American concept of ‘Intelligence Community’, either as an informal term or with an institutional dimension. This is the case in France, where the notion of community has been defined by Law. However, the term covers conceptual realities that differ greatly from one country to another. Once the common ground of the notion has been identified in a definitional and comparative effort, the article examines the connection between these intelligence communities and the ‘scientific communities’ composed of universities and academic research through so-called ‘outreach’ mechanisms. Once intelligence/academic research interactions have been described, two questions emerge: can we imagine an epistemic community encompassing both intelligence services and academic production, and can intelligence communities be described as epistemic communities ?