With a rapidly evolving and increasingly complex security environment, the United States faces its most diverse set of challenges in the last fifty years, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
The recently issued “National Intelligence Strategy 2014” (NIS) highlighted various “dangerous, pervasive and elusive threats”—terrorism, transnational crime, unauthorized intelligence disclosures and budget constraints—from both state and non-state actors that will challenge American interests at home and abroad.
To counter these challenges, the NIS outlined several mission objectives needed to deliver timely, insightful and relevant intelligence. Three of these objectives—strategic intelligence, anticipatory intelligence and current operations— build off of the previous NIS published in 2009 that also highlighted similar mission objectives needed to produce effective intelligence results.
With terrorism continuing to pose a significant security threat to the US homeland, both counterterrorism efforts and anticipatory intelligence will play important roles within the IC. The NIS indicated that, “The dynamic and diverse nature of the terrorist threat will continue to challenge the US and our interests and will require continued emphasis on targeting, collection, and analysis.”
The potential threat posed by Al Qaeda is specifically addressed in the NIS, which highlights the organization’s continued efforts to plot against the US and its ambition to obtain weapons capable of enormous destruction, stating, “Al-Qaeda, its affiliates and adherents continue to plot against US and Western interests, and seek to use weapons of mass destruction if possible.”
This assessment arrives on the heels of a US military operation that targeted the Al Qaeda Central Khorasan group in Syria, an entity intelligence sources told Homeland Security Today is Al Qaeda’s version of US Special Forces – battle-hardened, elite Al Qaeda leaders and jihadi warriors. While little information about the group has been released, reports state US officials believe the extremist group was nearing the final stages of planning an attack against the United States, though the identity of the target and time of the attack hasn’t been disclosed.
Although terrorism remains a high priority topic within the Intelligence Community (IC), budget constraints and unauthorized intelligence disclosures also continue to pose complex challenges. While intelligence spending has greatly increased since September 11, 2001, between 2012 and 2014, the budget for the National Intelligence Program has shrunk significantly from $78 billion to $52 billion due to the controversial budget sequestrations.
According to Clapper, this reduction in intelligence funds has greatly reduced the IC’s ability to carry out core functions, such as human intelligence, and when combined with recent intelligence leaks, has created a “perfect storm” degrading the intelligence capabilities of IC.
According to the NIS, challenges from unauthorized disclosures from insiders and others will degrade the IC’s ability to conduct intelligence missions and may impact the dynamics of international and domestic politics by constraining American influence at home and abroad.
The recent controversy surrounding the disclosure of thousands of classified documents by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has greatly impacted the intelligence community by revealing once secret mass-surveillance programs, their functionalities and targets. This has caused a major rift between the US and its international partners (particularly Germany) who were targeted by these programs.
The Snowden leaks have shown the major risk posed by the insider threat to the IC, demonstrating that human behavior from employees and contractors can often be as damaging as the threat of external actors.
[Editor’s note, also read the report, Snowden’s Treachery: Understanding the Costs to America’s National Security, in the current issue of Homeland Security Today]
The NIS also noted that the changing technology environment will continue to act as a catalyst for the “rapid emergence of changes” in how intelligence is collected and how it could potentially be compromised. Because technology is constantly evolving, particular importance should be placed on cybersecurity and cyber intelligence.
“State and non-state actors use digital technologies to achieve economic and military advantage, foment instability, increase control over content in cyberspace, and achieve other strategic goals—often faster than our ability to understand the security implications and mitigate potential risks,” the NIS said. Further, “To be more effective, the IC will evolve its cyber capabilities, including our ability to attribute attacks.”
To achieve more effective cybersecurity and cyber intelligence, the IC must also improve its understanding of key foreign cyber threat actors and their intentions, capabilities and operations.
The IC’s counter-intelligence initiative seeks to stem the exploitation and theft of American technologies, data and information; which has caused damage to intelligence capability under the Snowden leaks and operations from traditional actors such as China.
As the complexity of these threats continue to challenge the IC, the NIS said that, “We must continue to evolve as an integrated Community, advance our capabilities in technology and tradecraft, and push for improvements in both mission and enterprise management, through initiatives such as IC Information Technology Enterprise.”
The NIS said safeguarding intelligence and promoting information-sharing are key to improving the IC’s mission and enterprise objectives, and that collaboration among the various IC entities helps to not only plug any information sharing gaps, but also to reduce duplication of intelligence operations that may be simultaneously pursued by various IC members, which in the end will yield better intelligence results as highlighted as part of the enterprise objectives in the NIS.
“Improving our information sharing and safeguarding capabilities, as mutually reinforcing priorities, requires strengthening our people, processes, and technologies,” the NIS said.
With the complexity of the challenges the IC faces, improving cooperation among the various agencies will be required to address both traditional and non-traditional threats. Additionally, with global power becoming more diffuse, the IC must be properly attuned to the multi-tier environment of these threats, whether they come from nation-states or non-state actors. This requires the realization of current budget constraints as well as intelligence shortfalls, which will continue to hinder current and future operations.
“The Intelligence Community exists to provide political and military leaders with the greatest possible decision advantage,” Clapper said. “We understand, now more than ever, that the best way to accomplish our goal is thorough integration of all national intelligence capabilities.”
http://www.hstoday.us/
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