This is one of the rare areas to come out ahead, at this stage, of the military programming bill (LPM) which plans defense spending by 2030 and was presented on April 4 to the Council of Ministers: intelligence.
While a large part of the traditional capability field of the armies (aircraft, navy, armour, etc.) must be subject to target reduction compared to the forecasts of the previous LPM (2019-2025), the field of intelligence, which increasingly integrates cyber, appears to be the big winner of the cruel arbitrations of the executive, linked in particular to inflation.
As confirmed by the Minister for the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, in an interview with Sunday newspaperon April 16, if the LPM is voted as is, “it will double the resources allocated” to the intelligence services under its supervision compared to 2017. A considerable leap for the military intelligence directorate (DRM) whose weaknesses the war in Ukraine had brought to light, for the defense intelligence and security directorate (DRSD ) – the armed forces’ counter-intelligence service – but above all for the already very powerful Directorate General for External Security (DGSE).
While for 2023, the combined budget of these three services is around 500 million euros in payment appropriations, including more than 400 million for the DGSE alone and 60 million for the DRSD, this envelope should increase to 1 billion per year by 2030, we detail at the minister’s office. That is a total of 5 billion euros by 2030, or even 9 billion by adding the new resources allocated to cyber (+ 4 billion). Resources backed by several normative developments, which could mark a major shift in France in terms of cyber intelligence collection.
The delicate big gap of the DGSE
If the DGSE thus remains at the head of the budgetary effort, it is in particular because of the infrastructure expenditure linked to its move to Fort Neuf in Vincennes by 2028, but also because of its central position within the French intelligence apparatus in the collection and exploitation of data for other services.
With the war in Ukraine, the DGSE also finds itself engaged in a delicate wide gap between the strengthening of its European system, the Indo-Pacific which has become a presidential priority, and its ordinary activities (counter-terrorism, fight against proliferation, etc.)
The subject is less highlighted, but a significant part of the new credits of the LPM should also irrigate the National Agency for the Security of Information Services (ANSSI). Under the supervision of the Prime Minister, it is responsible for everything relating to “defensive” cyber, that is to say the protection of France’s network infrastructures. However, a good part of the normative measures of the LPM precisely concern the extension of its means of collecting technical data. A shift that is anything but trivial in a context of proliferation of hybrid conflicts, where cyberattacks of criminal and state origin are exploding.
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