Many former U.S. intelligence officers like myself have recently been asked some variation of the question, “What should Joe Biden do to restore a broken intelligence community?”
It’s a good question. America’s intelligence apparatus has all the problems of the rest of the federal government—an aging and unrepresentative workforce, the sunk costs of expensive legacy investments, and a staid bureaucratic culture, to name a few—as well as some that are uniquely its own, such as the declining value of information in a world that’s inundated with it and the increasingly difficult proposition of keeping anything secret in an era of radical transparency. Worse, after four years of contemptuous denigration from its most important customer and having suffered the shameless politicization of its most senior leaders, Biden will inherit an intelligence community that is decidedly demoralized.
