Intelligence First

The Duke of Norfolk knew that he would have the upper hand in terms of overwhelming military strength in the upcoming battle. But in another respect, he was at a significant disadvantage—intelligence.

Because of a series of previous setbacks, fewer people in non-police areas were willing to cooperate with the Britain, and the difficulty and cost of bribing them had increased significantly.

Even more critically, the reliability of the intelligence provided by these individuals was highly questionable. Their intelligence often contradicted each other, and sometimes, even the same person would provide blatantly contradictory information. This could be because they weren't professional intelligence officers and therefore couldn't effectively distinguish between fact and fiction; it could also be because these guys wanted to swindle more money and deliberately fabricated this nonsense; or, of course, there's the possibility that they were simply on the rebel side, intentionally misleading the Britain for the rebels' benefit.

Of course, considering that much of what those guys sent was contradictory and utterly nonsensical, it didn't seem like something a truly malicious rebel would do (excluding malicious acts like trying to scam money). So, it's more likely that they had already been discovered by the rebels, but the rebels saw how stupid they were and deliberately kept them around to mislead the Britain.

In short, all intelligence outside of lawless zones is unreliable, even laughable. Take, for example, the portraits of the rebel leader Russell. There are more than ten different portraits of him, each with the same appearance, and even the gender is different. In some portraits, Russell is even depicted as a tall female warrior with slightly pointed ears, chestnut hair, and green eyes.

The Duke of Norfolk knew, of course, that most of these portraits were nonsense; Russell couldn't possibly be some mythical creature. But he still ordered his soldiers to take copies of all the portraits (including the one of the pointed-eared girl)—just in case one of them was real? Just in case Russell really was the Joan of Arc of Ireland?

As for the quasi-security zones, the intelligence work there is just as terrible, and compared to non-security zones, the intelligence in the quasi-security zones is even more troublesome. Many members of the "security forces" are two-timing individuals; the information obtained from them cannot be completely trusted, nor can it be completely disregarded.

Ironically, they were exceptionally diligent in reporting intelligence. For example, there was a detective captain named Jarvis who submitted enough intelligence about the rebels every month to fill a book. Of course, in that book, there might not even be a single page that could be guaranteed to be true and reliable. And in that amount of true intelligence that could fit on a single page, there might not be a single sentence that was actually useful. And of those useful sentences, even fewer were promptly picked out from this pile of garbage and actually came in handy.

In short, obtaining effective intelligence from them is an enormous task. Therefore, the intelligence department has been requesting an increase in personnel to improve its ability to process various types of information.

"Just dealing with Jarvis alone, I need two more clerks. That idiot even reported that the east family's male dog raped the west family's female dog as intelligence!"

As for the security district, the main task at present is to catch spies and criminals.

For a time, especially after the great success of the first major sweep, the work of catching spies in the guerrilla districts was quite successful, almost eradicating them completely. However, after the failure of the second major sweep, the situation changed drastically. Many people, mainly the Ireland, began to have a pessimistic view of the Britain prospects in the war. In order to "keep a way out," many began to play both sides, turning a blind eye to the new infiltration by the rebels. As a result, spies in the guerrilla districts became a problem again.

"If we can't do a good job with intelligence, we will become blind again. And everyone knows what will happen to a blind person, no matter how strong or healthy, on the battlefield. So the first thing we need to arrange at this meeting is intelligence work." The Duke of Norfolk said this to his officers and other officials at the preparatory meeting before the great sweep.

"As everyone knows, the next round of operations is approaching, so we need to intensify our intelligence work. In the security zone, all suspicious individuals must be arrested immediately as a precaution. It's better to arrest a thousand innocent people than let one guilty person go free. The entire security zone must be mobilized immediately. Even if we can't catch all the spies in a short time, we must isolate them and prevent their information from getting out! Understand?"

"Understood!" the officials replied, standing up.

"Furthermore, our intelligence gathering on the rebels is unlikely to improve significantly in the short term, so our current focus should be on preventing the rebels from obtaining information about us. Gentlemen, our adversaries are cunning and formidable. They have practically blinded us. How can a blind man defeat a sighted man on the battlefield? The only way is to blind them as well, and then use our greater experience gained from being blind to overwhelm them," the Duke of Norfolk continued. "So, how do we blind our adversaries as well? Do any of you have any ideas?"

"We've tightened security to prevent any information about our mobilization from leaking out?" an official said.

"If our operation doesn't require the use of those 'Irish Security Force,' then there's still a possibility," another officer said, shaking his head. "Those 'Irish Security Force' are full of two-faced bastards. If we let them know something in the morning, by noon, those rebels will basically know everything."

"Exactly, unless we lock all the 'Irish Security Force' guys up in their barracks and don't let them run around."

"How is that possible? We already have limited manpower, otherwise we wouldn't need them. Now we have to specifically assign people to keep an eye on them, it's better to..."

After speaking for a while, the Duke of Norfolk and the others finally spoke up, "I've noticed that everyone's thinking has gone astray. Alright, now I'll ask you all, what methods are available to make someone with perfect eyesight blind?"

Blindfold him.

Gouge out his eyes.

The Duke of Norfolk shook his head. "You are all so inexperienced. Think about how they blinded us? What other methods did they use besides blindfolding and gouging out our eyes?"

Everyone fell silent.

The Duke of Norfolk looked at everyone, shook his head, and sighed, "There is another way, which is to fill his eyes with even stronger light! Just like mountain climbers who experience snow blindness in the snow-covered mountains, it's not because the light is too weak that they can't see, but because the light is too strong."

Let's look at how our enemies blinded us. Besides blindfolding us—preventing us from seeing things—and gouging out our eyes—killing some of our spies, what else did they do? They used our spies to give us a bunch of useless intelligence, deafening us with noise, and blinding us with all this nonsense.

Gentlemen, our enemies, though despicable, are extremely formidable. Please remember this. There is much we can learn from them. I don't know how you gentlemen have done it, but I myself study their methods and techniques every day until late at night. The more I study, the more I realize how much I can learn. I hope you will also actively learn from our enemies.

Our enemies have now infiltrated us to an all-encompassing degree. As I just said, if the 'Irish Security Force' find out the news in the morning, the rebels will definitely know by lunchtime."

At this point, the Duke of Norfolk paused, looked around at everyone, and then said, "In that case, why don't we take advantage of this and fill their eyes with a large amount of information, a mixture of truth and falsehood, so that they too will be blinded this time?"

So everyone started clapping.

For a period afterward, the Society of United Irishmen received a massive amount of intelligence almost daily regarding British Army movements and orders. The sheer volume of this intelligence was overwhelming, and often contradictory. This chaotic information left even the Society of United Irishmen bewildered. For example, there were at least seven or eight different accounts of the British Army attack direction, and numerous conflicting reports regarding Britain logistical preparations and troop deployments at various outposts. In their efforts to sift through this jumble of information to find truly reliable details, the Federation's intelligence chief fell ill, as did many of the staff working on the front lines.

"It seems the enemy intends to exhaust our comrades with this garbage information." Chairman Russell urgently convened an intelligence meeting. "But comrades, we can't follow the enemy's lead. They've released countless pieces of information, some true, some false. We can't foolishly read them all, nor can we foolishly ignore them all. Doing so would be falling into their trap. We must devise a way to efficiently filter out the useless information. Only then can we defeat the enemy. I'll start with a preliminary idea: we can categorize these sources based on their past performance, and then make choices based on that categorization..."