In the recent decades, despite the proliferation of studies and objects for analysis, what is the relationship between surveillance and intelligence studies? This study builds an epistemological nexus between both studies showing that they can be related and contrasted in many fashions. In a first approach, intelligence studies can be interpreted as a synecdoche of the surveillance world, a part of the “whole”, where exceptionality and governmentality trends converge to administrate and regulate the distribution of power in a sociopolitical order. In a second approach, both fields maintain a dialectic relationship that has not been fully explored, especially if we consider the digitalization, the informational and the nomadic aspects of surveillance nowadays that in turn affect intelligence analysis.

Using examples from the evolution of the intelligence communities in Spain and Brazil, we show how this field can be connected to surveillance studies. In turn, the exhibition of these examples can give us some clues to contrast vertical and institutionalized forms of surveillance, in the face of liquid assemblages that have proliferated beyond the range of state forms. Hence, this dialogue helps to re-contextualize the potentials of intelligence studies and question the limits of this field as a privileged space of decision making in the recent decades.