Trump’s Threat to U.S. Intelligence | Foreign Affairs
Trump’s Threat to U.S. Intelligence
Disruption and Demands for Loyalty Would Undermine National Security
Peter Schroeder
January 17, 2025
Peter Schroeder is Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. He was an analyst and a member of the Senior Analytic Service at the Central Intelligence Agency and from 2018 to 2022 served as Principal Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council.
On January 21, 2017, the day after his inauguration, U.S. President Donald Trump visited Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It was one of his first official actions as president and an opportunity to reset relations with the intelligence community. Just ten days prior, he had accused intelligence agencies of helping to leak a report that claimed that Russian operatives had his personal and financial information.
But Trump quickly went off the rails, setting the tone for his relationship with the intelligence community for the rest of his first term. Standing in front of the CIA Memorial Wall—the agency’s most important and solemn location—Trump offered remarks that resembled a campaign event, rambling from one random topic to another, including how big the crowds were at his inauguration. The juxtaposition of Trump’s complaints about the media with the rows of stars representing agency staff who died in service appalled many officers. It was an own goal that bred suspicion and mistrust for the next four years.
As Trump prepares for his second inauguration, the intelligence community is again likely to be ill at ease. With a more organized and stable management team, the president-elect could aim to harness the IC to secure the homeland and U.S. interests abroad. But his nominations so far for director of the CIA, director of national intelligence, and director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation suggest that he is prioritizing loyalty over expertise. Driven by political grudges, Trump might launch an all-out attack on what he has called the “deep state”: ostensibly a secretive group of government bureaucrats collaborating to obstruct the Trump agenda, including officers illegally spying on Americans and leaking information to the media.
Agency officials should try not to get caught up in Trump’s bluster. History shows that the IC has often been able to succeed, even when it has had a difficult relationship with the president. And despite Trump’s first-term flounders, he oversaw important intelligence achievements, such as the killing of the Islamic State leader and founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
But the IC is likely to face a range of risks during the next administration, including to its personnel and organizations, collection and use of information, authorities and missions, and foreign partnerships. It will have to navigate near-term crises and avoid any longer-lasting damage to the community’s institutions and capabilities. The IC can do so, in large part, by focusing on its core objective: uncovering information that protects the country and thus proving its essentiality. But it will have to work hard to ensure that tensions with Trump remain petty bureaucratic fights rather than no-holds-barred brawls that undermine American national security.
DRAINING THE SWAMP
Trump’s threat to the intelligence community begins with its most basic resource: people. The president-elect’s intent to curb the influence of the national security bureaucracies and downsize the federal government is likely to drain the IC’s human capital and, therefore, its overall effectiveness. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump’s picks to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, have argued for a large-scale reduction of the federal workforce that would inevitably affect intelligence workers. Trump himself has promised to fire what he calls “corrupt actors” in national security.
It is still unclear if and how reductions in the federal workforce would be applied to the intelligence community. But if the Trump White House cuts too deeply, or makes cuts in critical areas, it will undermine IC capabilities. Personnel reductions, for example, could weaken skill sets that the IC is trying to grow to address future threats from actors such as China, or in sectors such as advanced technology. Even if he makes no cuts at all, Trump’s hostile rhetoric could undermine the IC’s functionality. As in his first term, talented and capable midlevel IC officers may leave rather than work for a president that demands loyalty, a trend that will only be exacerbated by broader pressure on civil servants.
Personnel are difficult to replace in intelligence given the unique nature of the job, with its specialized tradecraft, knowledge, and expertise. In October 1977, for example, then CIA Director Stansfield Turner abruptly fired some 800 operations officers, tanking morale at the agency and setting back human intelligence operations for years to come. After the fall of the Soviet Union, IC personnel were cut by 25 percent, the CIA budget declined by 18 percent, and the agency instituted a hiring freeze for analysts, operations officers, and technologists. The effect of these cuts reached into the late 1990s and into the 2000s, hampering the IC’s ability to deal with the burgeoning threat from global terrorism. Today, it might be even harder to replace lost staffers. In October 2021, CIA Director William Burns noted that it took the CIA over 600 days, on average, to process and onboard new officers. Trump could also deter qualified candidates from applying to begin with. Few people, after all, will be thrilled about working for a president who demonizes their jobs.
Even if Trump does not cut the size of the IC, his reforms could worsen its human capital. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the presidential transition, argued that Trump should instruct his CIA director to replace the heads of mission centers and directorates—the bodies that oversee agency work in different areas—to ensure that the CIA’s activities align with the Trump agenda. If this plan comes into being, many talented managers would likely be replaced with officers viewed by the director as more loyal or partisan. Project 2025 also called for permanently relocating parts of the agency outside the Washington, D.C., region to lessen the CIA’s influence—an act that might, again, push talented people out and disrupt the symbiosis between intelligence and policy. The America First Policy Institute, a think tank founded in 2020 by former Trump officials, has also proposed rules of conduct that would require intelligence officers to sign an agreement not to “abuse their national security credentials for political purposes,” even after leaving government service. Such unclear and open-ended standards would probably breed risk aversion in operations and analysis among IC staffers.
At a minimum, then, the administration’s efforts will likely create churn that distracts the IC from its primary missions. Even potentially useful reforms, such as giving the director of national intelligence greater authority over the community’s budget, would create turf battles among the 18 agencies in the IC. Leaders focused on defending their resources and budgets—as well as their own jobs—are less likely to effectively work together.
CHILLING THE FLOW
During his first term, Trump demonstrated disregard for the intelligence community’s output. He posted a classified satellite image on Twitter. He publicly told agency heads to “go back to school” after he disagreed with their annual threat testimony to Congress on Iran. In his administration’s waning days, he absconded to Mar-a-Lago with highly classified intelligence documents.
These tendencies alarmed intelligence professionals. And, unfortunately, there is a very good chance they will be back. Trump’s main agency nominees, for example, share his disregard for the community’s output and prize political loyalty. Director of National Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard is a longtime critic of U.S. intelligence findings. FBI director nominee Kash Patel has created a list of “deep state” enemies to purge. Even CIA director nominee John Ratcliffe, the least controversial of the three, has a partisan track record. Ratcliffe is Trump’s former director of national intelligence, and in early January 2021, the IC’s analytic ombudsman reported that Trump-appointed intelligence officials, including Ratcliffe, had politicized analysis on China’s and Russia’s interference in the 2020 presidential election. This week, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson replaced Republican Representative Mike Turner as chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence because of, according to Turner, “concerns from Mar-a-Lago.” Turner voted to ratify Biden’s election in 2020 and has been an advocate for U.S. support for Ukraine. One member of Trump’s transition team focused on the CIA, Robert Greenway, has argued that the president’s current daily intelligence briefing, in which the intelligence agencies provide coordinated assessments directly to the president, be replaced with a system routed through lower-level White House political appointees. Such a system would raise the odds that Trump hears only what he wants to hear, instead of what he needs to hear.
Should Trump and his team behave with such disregard, their attitude toward the IC will likely lead to weakened information sharing, with agencies restricting the flow of material for fear that it may be misused. Intelligence officials are responsible for the lives of human agents as well as for expensive, irreplaceable collection platforms, and they may worry that the erosion of the protections for their agencies’ information will put those lives and assets at risk. Doing so will make it harder to connect the dots on key national security challenges. The resulting consequences could be dire. For example, the 9/11 Commission report, released in 2004, found that failures in information sharing (particularly between the CIA and FBI) were a major factor contributing to the IC’s failure to uncover and prevent the attacks.
Even the perception of politicization will increase the risks of self-censorship. Officers may become hesitant to push forward information that does not align with the president’s agenda. Alternatively, they may become more entrenched in their original analyses, treating any other assessment as one intended to serve the administration’s political interests rather than one objectively based on the available information. This dynamic was present in the analysis of China’s interference in the 2020 presidential election, according to the IC analytic ombudsman’s January 2021 report. According to the ombudsman, CIA managers were entrenched in their judgments that China had not attempted to undermine Trump in the 2020 election and tried to suppress alternative assessments. Just like the perception of a conflict of interest, the perception of politicized intelligence can distort the analytic process, undermining debates essential to solving difficult problems.
PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES
The politicization of the IC comes with risks beyond just losing staff and fostering internecine battles. Intelligence officials are likely to be concerned about the long-term effect that Trump’s policies will have on their agencies’ roles and authorities, leading to caution and hesitance that harm operational effectiveness. The CIA, in particular, has a long memory of operations pushed by the White House that eventually blew back on the agency, such as the Iran-contra scandal in the 1980s and the use of torture during the “war on terror.” Both led to years of investigation and publicly dented the agency’s reputation. Given Trump’s record of pursuing policies for personal benefit—his first impeachment took place after he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden—intelligence officers are especially likely to scrutinize his involvement in or direction of their operations, worried that political motivations or overreach could land them before Congress. Such reticence was already present during Trump’s first term. According to Wired, Trump tried to enlist the CIA to overthrow Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, only to be met by tepid support and unenthusiastic implementation from bureaucrats worried about the backlash.
Trump’s unconventional foreign policy views and willingness to antagonize allies are also likely to create challenges for intelligence sharing with foreign partners. Project 2025 recommended that the White House seek more control and oversight of foreign intelligence partnerships, rather than leaving these under the control of the intelligence agencies. Trump’s nomination of Gabbard has raised concern among U.S. allies, given her comparatively friendly approach toward Russia and former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (whom she met in 2017). In July 2024, several foreign officials told Politico that Trump advisers had informed them that the once and future president was considering reducing intelligence sharing with NATO partners as part of a plan to scale back support to the alliance. In May 2017, The New York Times reported that Trump had even passed Israeli-derived intelligence to Russia’s foreign minister in an Oval Office meeting.
Healthy intelligence partnerships benefit the IC. Foreign governments gather and pass on insights and information that U.S. agencies lack the access or resources to collect. But if partners worry that the U.S. president or the director of national intelligence will not protect what they share, or that it will be used in support of harmful policies, they might stop. If so, it will not just be the IC that suffers greatly. Strained intelligence partnerships and reduced information sharing make it more difficult for administration as a whole to use U.S. intelligence as a policymaking tool, such as by providing it to allied governments in support of initiatives. Washington, for example, warned of the Russian invasion of Ukraine long before it happened in February 2022, helping build momentum for powerful international sanctions.
MAKING PEACE
Many intelligence officers are undoubtedly anticipating Trump’s second term with trepidation, remembering the bookends of his first four years—his inaugural CIA visit and the Capitol insurrection. But IC officers have varying political views, and when it comes to their work, most are apolitical. Instead, they want to focus on their mission: ensuring the safety and security of the American people.
If Trump wants to, he can harness that focus and energy to secure the United States at home and abroad. And with a less chaotic transition, and more experience, Trump is better prepared to work with the IC this time than he was during his first term in office. But Trump maintains a disdain for federal bureaucrats and holds an enduring grudge about the investigation, led by the IC, into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. And the path he is signaling, through his rhetoric and appointments, is confrontation.
If Trump does ultimately choose antagonism, U.S. intelligence agencies will face serious challenges in executing their daily operations and in focusing on their core missions. But intelligence professionals will still have a job to do, and perhaps their best defense is to do it well. In 1961, the failed CIA-led Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba nearly torpedoed the agency’s relations with the newly inaugurated President John F. Kennedy. But the following year, the IC regained some of Kennedy’s trust after providing information that the Soviet Union was delivering nuclear missiles to Cuba. Even skeptical, antagonistic presidents often change their tune when they realize that they need the IC’s insight or capabilities.
The IC also has numerous oversight mechanisms it can use to make it harder for Trump’s team to misuse intelligence—in ways that go beyond advancing policy objectives. They are ones that have developed parallel to its unique roles and authorities. Its sprawling, secretive bureaucracy does not lend itself to White House micromanaging, particularly given that Trump is not known for focus and persistence. Much of the IC’s work will continue in the shadows, no matter what policies Trump pursues.
And ultimately, Trump’s presidential term is only four years. He is full of bluster, but his bark is often worse than his bite. The key for intelligence officials will be to avoid distraction and find a way to stay focused on the core missions. By doing so, they can ensure that Trump’s disruptions are temporary—not a sea change for the community.