A topic that has interested me is the deep state and its influence on foreign, defense, and domestic policy. Aside from the conspiracy theories and partisan battles is a chance to update the bureaucracy where we could modify the shadow government system of the U.K. We should always have a nonpartisan mindset to the staffing of the government and I’m not going to say that partisanship is going away. People are always going to put people who they trust and there is nothing wrong with that. It’s when you have highly qualified people who can’t serve their positions because of a political tiff. This blog post is calling for a Department of Intelligence where the 17 of America’s I.C. departments are merged into 3 or 4 major departments within a newly formed cabinet.
The stories of how we vet people for government positions need a major reform for the 21st century. I wanted to call for an ambitious reform of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Helping to consolidate, reform, and update the Intelligence community will reap benefits for the U.S. in terms of the U.S. Military and Law Enforcement but also tech clusters where new technologies can be developed. New jobs and services can eventually be transferred to the corporate/private sector which creates more prosperity. The I.C. has been the whipping boy for U.S. politicians’ incompetence and failures.
This is the proposed merging of the 17 agencies into four main sectors to help reduce the redundancy and burnout that could come from all the information that these sectors collect. The four major sectors that the Hamilton Institute calls for are Cyber, Financial, Geographic, and Military. This will help consolidate the massive amount of human capital and redirect it to a single cabinet that will help dissolve the burning out and redundant information problem in the I.C.
1. Cyber – The consolidation of the cyber sectors from many agencies into one sector (D.O.I – Department of Intelligence) will help policymakers come to decisions quickly and without the turf battles with currently haunts the I.C. The two prime examples are SolarWinds’ massive breach and the hacker who tried to poison the water supply of Oldsmar, Florida. The Cyber Section of the Department of Intelligence will provide all-around counter and defensive operations for government, commerce, military, and law enforcement.
The civil liberties issues are ever-present but could be managed by FISA courts and the Judiciary Branch of the US govt. (Congress and the Senate). Issues that can and must be addressed by those two areas will help the cyber sector from being turned into a weapon against U.S. citizens.
2. Financial – The Financial sector will help with terrorist financing, narco-terrorism, and all other aspects of the financial prospects of threats against the United States particularly with bonds and stocks manipulation.
3. Geographic – The Geographic sector will look at where the resources are and set up scenarios in this new age of great power competition where the U.S. and China will start drawing lines on the planet Earth on who these resources/client states belong to. This is almost a cheat guide on why current conflicts exist and where the future conflicts will start next because economies are very hungry and staved very easily. Civil and Social unrest from Covid-19 sparked unemployment, stress, and rage from quarantine which built up distrust towards institutions. Resources being denied or cut off shows what our future looks like when industries collapse from this scenario.
4. Military – Consolidation of the Military intelligence wings into a single sector will help reduce redundancy and support flows of information within the Department of Intelligence. Conflicting areas of responsibilities and battles between 17 agencies where everyone wants to hold on will degrade collection and collaboration between different sectors.
Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, Office of Naval Intelligence, Coast Guard Intelligence
Army Military Intelligence and Marine Corps Intelligence
The Heritage Foundation has a great proposal for a fix to the U.S. intelligence community and we recommend this with our plan. It helps update the bureaucracy to help adapt to all the changes that happen in this technology-based world.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-17-intelligence-agencies-20170112-story.html
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9369/index1.html
https://www.afcea.org/mission/intel/documents/SpringIntel07whitepaper_000.pdf
https://www.intelligencecareers.gov/
Founding Purpose: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”
The mechanism for achieving this goal is Capitalism and Democracy.