So far, the Biden administration isn’t saying much about the aims of its radical-candor intelligence strategy. But three explanations seem likely.

The first has to do with inoculating the world against information warfare by getting the truth out before the lie. The essence of U.S. and allied intelligence disclosures has been “Don’t believe a word the Kremlin is going to tell you. It’s all a con.” The Russians are deception pros, and in previous episodes—as recently as the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the 2016 U.S. election—they’ve had the upper hand. Putin’s strategy has been to flood the zone with falsehoods, spreading disinformation early and often. Psychology research suggests why this is so effective: Once lies are believed, they are hard to shake, even in the face of overwhelming facts. The first-mover advantage in information warfare is huge. Getting the truth out before the con helps rally allies and shore up support in the U.S. and abroad.

Revealing intelligence also generates friction for Putin, knocking him off-balance. Instead of calling the shots and managing the Ukraine crisis on his schedule, Putin has to react to Washington. And instead of acting with impunity, he has to spend his most precious asset—time—worrying about his own intelligence weaknesses. How do the U.S. and its allies know what they know? What will they do with this advance knowledge? What Russian-intelligence vulnerabilities must be fixed? The more Putin stews about his own intelligence lapses, the less attention he can devote to hurting others. U.S. Cyber Command adopted a similar approach in 2018 called persistent engagement. The idea is simple but powerful: Weaken an adversary’s offense by making it work much harder at defense. Putin is an ideal target for this kind of strategy. He’s a former Russian-intelligence operative with a paranoid streak who obsesses about domestic enemies, not just foreign ones. You can take the man out of the KGB but not the KGB out of the man.