The General Directorate for External Security (French: 'Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure', DGSE) is France's external intelligence agency. The French equivalent to the United Kingdom's MI6 and the United States' CIA, the DGSE operates under the direction of the French Ministry of Defence and works alongside its domestic counterpart, the DGSI (General Directorate for Internal Security), in providing intelligence and safeguarding French national security, notably by performing paramilitary and counterintelligence operations abroad.

The agency was established in 1947 to combine under one head a variety of separate agencies, some dating from the time of Napoleon and some from the Free French of World War II. As with most other intelligence agencies, details of its operations and organization are highly classified, and are therefore not made public.

The Ministry of State Security (MSS), is the intelligence, security and secret police agency of the People's Republic of China, Brazil's intelligence agency is the 'Agência Brasileira de Inteligência' (ABIN), and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) is Australia’s national security intelligence service.

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