EACH YEAR, THE OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR of National Intelligence presents an annual Worldwide Threat Assessment to the president, Congress, and the American people. These documents—the classified and unclassified versions—serve as a sober inventory of the threats we face across a broad spectrum, from state and non-state actors such as Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and ISIS to “shared domains” like climate change, health security, migration, and global economic instability. The reports have also provided analysis on transnational challenges ranging from potential cyberattacks, to the effects of artificial intelligence, to the dangers of disinformation, to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
These reports are not mere academic exercises. They inform Congress about what threats, capabilities, and potential problems need attention and resources, and they help various governmental agencies—especially Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, and Commerce, as well as many others—plan and prioritize. They inform everything from appropriations and budgets to the president’s foreign policy to the deployment of soldiers and the planning assumptions of commanders in the field.
This year, one of the main threats to American national security isn’t a foreign actor, a new technology, or a global trend. What the ODNI ought to consider including in this year’s report—and what the Senate Intelligence Committee should certainly ask about—is the ongoing reduction of personnel, resources, and capabilities across multiple elements of the intelligence community. These drawdowns directly affect the capacity to generate actionable, relevant intelligence not only for senior policymakers, but especially for military commanders who rely on timely, corroborated, and nuanced insights to make life-or-death decisions.
In today’s multi-domain battlespace, intelligence is the sine qua non of mission success. Commanders in the field—whether responsible for tactical maneuvers or long-term strategic planning for a whole slice of the globe—refuse to accept “single-source intel” because no single stream can be trusted in isolation. When asked to send our nation’s sons and daughters into harm’s way, commanders need a mosaic of sources—human sources, signals intercepts, cyber reconnaissance, analysis of overhead platforms, open-source analysis, and diplomatic reporting—fused together to provide decision advantage. Diplomats need the same things when conducting high-stakes negotiations. When Gen. Stanley McChrystal led the creation of a Joint Special Operations Command intelligence fusion cell in my area of operations in Iraq in 2007, breaking down institutional barriers to bring intelligence sources and experts from different government departments together, we became significantly more capable in targeting our enemies and helping our Iraqi friends. It was this lesson on how to bring intelligence teams together for greater success that I took with me for the rest of my military career.
Yet over the last few months, major U.S. intelligence agencies have undergone sweeping reductions. As a former commander in a major theater, I can predict with confidence that those cuts will likely leave our generals and admirals to operate with fewer analysts, lower-quality information, reduced collaboration and cooperation, and a shrinking margin for error.
THE DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, which once had about 17,000 personnel—nearly half serving overseas—provides essential intelligence support to military combatant commands and embassies. But as the Department of Defense cuts 5 to 8 percent of its civilian workforce, hundreds, possibly thousands, of these skilled professionals are being lost through attrition and buyouts. That hits field-based support especially hard. DIA analysts who serve in combatant commands are rare and valuable. Any unnecessary loss of senior DIA officials in the field doesn’t just create an unexpected brain drain in a key position, but also can make it more difficult to train a long-term replacement who knows the area and speaks the language. Experienced DIA officers with regional, cultural, and language familiarity to replace those taking a buyout are often very difficult to find, and leaving holes in these international positions is extremely risky.
Reports indicate the National Security Agency is eliminating 1,500 to 2,000 civilian positions—roughly 8 percent of its staff—including cryptologists, analysts, and mathematicians. NSA’s global signals intelligence operations depend on this talent, not only for interception but for interpretation and integration with other intelligence sources.
The proposed staffing cuts at the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence & Analysis are so stark that Sen. Gary Peters, ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, raised alarms about whether I&A—as well as DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency—can continue to fulfill its cybersecurity mission. I&A—tasked with linking federal intelligence to state and local fusion centers during times of crises—is collapsing from a 1,000-person staff to just 275 people, a 75 percent cut. That effectively guts the only federal entity with a nationwide intelligence fusion mandate.
Though numbers are closely held, reductions across DOJ have significantly hit the FBI’s intelligence branch, weakening counterterrorism operations, disrupting domestic threat detection, and reducing the bureau’s ability to collaborate with partners across government. Friends in the FBI have told me that many of their limited resources are being shifted from their primary functions to support immigration roundup requirements, further exacerbating a reduction in manpower in key protective areas.
The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) is a small but important team of about 300 analysts tasked with translating classified intelligence from over 190 countries into diplomatic action. A reported 20 percent personnel reduction in that office may seem minor in raw numbers, but it significantly weakens America’s ability to integrate intelligence into administration action geared toward well-executed foreign policy.
Media reports that the Central Intelligence Agency is preparing to eliminate 1,200 positions, or more than 5 percent of its estimated workforce, through buyouts and early retirements. Sources familiar with the agency told me that more than 500 senior employees have already opted out, and those on “probation” (the youngest members of the team) have been fired. The loss of both senior officers and new hires not only reduces human and country analysis (human intelligence) but severs mentorship pipelines, hinders the future growth of the organization, and puts significant strain on those middle-managers who are left to do the work.
While all these cuts are causing churn and personal anxiety within each agency, my concern is what these cuts would mean during crises. Certainly, they will make for reduced analytical depth, as fewer analysts means fewer perspectives and less specialization. Remaining analysts are overworked. Groupthink creeps in. Institutional memory fades. A loss of redundancy will cause critical corroboration to suffer. Every IC element maintains a field presence, from DIA teams embedded with combatant commands to CIA case officers around the world to NSA listening posts in critical locations. Cuts to field staff, who are often closest to the fight, will likely create blind spots in regions we can least afford to ignore. Decision-makers may be forced to act on incomplete or stale intelligence—or to hesitate too long because the intelligence has slowed down.
Hardest to measure, but by no means the least important effect, is the erosion of morale. Buyouts, dismissals, and leak investigations have created uncertainty and anxiety across the IC, not just with the employees themselves, but with their families. Those serving in government now report severe rates of burnout, and we are already seeing the best and brightest increasingly looking to the private sector, where they can make more money, but won’t be keeping our country safe.
FROM THE MILITARY PERSPECTIVE, this is an especially dangerous time.
While I am no longer wearing the uniform, I suspect most commanders would say that this is the most contentious and complex environment our military has ever faced. Having experienced similar drawdowns firsthand when I served in less dangerous times, I know these reductions degrade readiness. When an analyst who has spent years learning a region’s tribal dynamics or a specific problem set is lost, that knowledge doesn’t simply transfer. When a team loses a seasoned liaison officer, interagency trust sours. When morale craters, mission tempo drops. And when redundancy disappears, commanders are often forced to make decisions with greater uncertainty—risking either operational delay or deadly miscalculation.
We cannot pretend that intelligence reductions are merely budgetary adjustments. They are strategic decisions that have cascading consequences. As the great American strategist Bernard Brodie put it, “Strategy wears a dollar sign.” Every diplomatic negotiation, every counterterrorism raid, every cyber operation, every operational maneuver or simple drone strike begins with intelligence.
If decision-makers expect commanders to protect Americans, deter adversaries, and win in contested environments, if they expect military forces to really be “lethal warriors,” then they must ensure our intelligence community remains strong—globally present, multidimensional, and properly resourced. Cutting resources means we will be operating blind in future crises. It’s a mistake our adversaries won’t make.
Just imagine a ransomware attack synchronized with a foreign disinformation campaign during a national election, and the DHS fusion center and CISA have been gutted. Imagine an Iranian or Houthi missile launch, and due to loss of regional analysts, CENTCOM doesn’t get enough warning before the missiles hit American bases. Imagine a terrorist cell preparing to strike a target in one of our major cities, and the FBI is focused elsewhere or lacks the resources to act. Imagine Russian hybrid activity in the Baltics, and the DIA forward cells lacking the depth to validate it, embarrassing us in front of our allies and diminishing the power of our promises.
These are small samples of what can happen on any day with the threats we face. And these examples aren’t even close to the most dangerous ones imaginable.
It isn’t too late to reverse these cuts. We can predict their dangerous effects—but that might be the last threat we see clearly.