ARGUMENT: Think smallThink Small: Why the Intelligence Community Should Do Less about New Threats
A week into his administration, President Joe Biden announced that he was “putting the climate crisis at the center of United States foreign policy and national security. Joshua Rovner writes that, in so doing, the president injected new urgency into an old question: What counts as a national security threat?
A week into his administration, President Joe Biden announced that he was “putting the climate crisis at the center of United States foreign policy and national security,” and directed the intelligence community to draft a national intelligence estimate on the implications of climate change.
Joshua Rovner writes in War on the Rocks that, in so doing, the president injected new urgency into an old question: What counts as a national security threat?
He adds that for intelligence agencies, the traditional answer has revolved around foreign military powers and that after the Cold War, the intelligence community’s focus shifted to terrorism and support for military operations, including those involving humanitarian interventions and state-building campaigns.
Recent years have witnessed an even more profound change.
A growing chorus of analysts argues that security is not primarily about guarding the nation from hostile states or great powers. War is in decline, they say, and acts of terrorism against Americans are rare. The real dangers are transnational threats like climate change and pandemics. Nothing has a more tangible effect on the safety and well-being of American citizens. The odds that any of us will be affected by war or terrorism are vanishingly small. The odds that all of us will suffer from transnational security threats are rising.
If these observers are right, then the intelligence community requires an overhaul of its organizational culture, its analytical tools and methods, and its relationship with private sector researchers. Critics have proposed the creation of new positions, like a national intelligence officer for climate change, that would help coordinate analyses of actorless threats and send a signal of the community’s new priorities. At a deeper level, they urge the intelligence community to abandon its obsession with secret information, and take advantage of the openly available analytical tools and private sector knowledge that will help it come to grips with overlapping transnational security challenges. Agencies possessing classified information should elevate open sources, cultivate durable relationships with academic researchers, and share their findings. This will be hard, because it represents a cultural break for institutions that are dedicated to stealing secrets and temperamentally shy about working with anyone without a clearance.
These recommendations seem commonsensical, even obvious, Rovner writes. “But there are problems with all of them. Even if we recognize that “security” means more than protection against military threats, it is not clear that reshaping intelligence will help matters. It could make them worse.”
He concludes: “Today’s traumas, especially COVID-19 and climate change, are once again creating pressure to change how the intelligence community operates. But perhaps, in this case, it should think small.”
