The great challenge for intelligence agencies in the age of Trump was dramatically highlighted this month when a senior South Korean delegation arrived at the White House carrying a secret bombshell message. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un wanted a face-to-face summit with President Donald Trump to discuss Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. Waiting to debrief… Keep reading →

If you want the military to defend this fall’s elections from Russian hackers, military cyber commanders told Congress this afternoon, you need to give it authorities, access and resources soon, military commanders told the Senate today.

Ever since the day of its creation, critics have slammed the Office of Director of National Intelligence as an expensive and unnecessary bureaucracy, a threat to the longtime primacy of the Director of Central Intelligence and a toothless tiger. Much of that changed during the joint tenures of DNI Mike McConnell and SecDef Bob Gates… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The day before intelligence analysts brief a skeptical Donald Trump on Russian interference with the 2016 elections, the Director of National Intelligence told supportive senators that he had only grown more confident the Kremlin was the culprit. DNI James Clapper not only repeated his assessment that Russia had tried to manipulate the election with… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The next Director of National Intelligence may be Pete Hoestra, the Dutch-born former head of the House Intelligence Committee, and the next Army Secretary is likely to be Van Hipp, head of consulting firm American Defense International, according to a source who advises President-elect Donald Trump on national security issues. Van Hipp, a former Army officer, first… Keep reading →

One of the major shifts in American intelligence after the terror attacks of 911 was the creation of the Director of National Intelligence and a whole new agency to serve him in his task of ensuring America’s 17 intelligence agencies (including the DNI) played well together, effectively shared information and didn’t waste too much in… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The persistent grumbles from the CIA and other bastions of the Intelligence Community that the Director of National Intelligence is just an unneeded layer of bureaucracy has caught the ear of House Intelligence chairman Rep. Devin Nunes. He promised to try and pass legislation to change this but admitted it would be “tough” to get… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: In the face of a lot of what he called “catastrophizing” about the “very volatile time for the country” known as the presidential transition, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper offers a simple message: “It’ll be OK.” Of course, that reassurance came after Clapper outlined the dark precautions that are taken on Inauguration Day, including the designation of… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: No one really knows what they’re doing in cyberspace: It’s all too new and it changes too fast. So it was refreshing — if unnerving — for two top intelligence officials to admit this morning that the US government’s lack of clarity makes it more difficult both to deter adversaries’ cyber operations and to conduct… Keep reading →

The Chinese just walked out of Anthem’s enormous data warehouse (though without encrypting their data it might as well have been a troop of Girl Scouts) with personal data on a quarter of America’s population. Assuming that the pro forma outrage and denial is a confirmation of culpability, the People’s Liberation Army and its various subsidiaries will… Keep reading →