Intel Cuts Mean U.S. Will Have More Blind Spots

After seeing spending double over a decade, U.S. intelligence agencies are bracing for about $25 billion in budget cuts over the next 10 years that top officials said will increase security risks.

“We’re going to have less capability in 10 years than we have today,” said Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who sits atop the 16 departments, agencies and offices that comprise the intelligence community and spend a combined $80 billion a year. “This is about risk management, because we’re going to have some risk,” he said in an interview Thursday with Bloomberg News and two other organizations.

For example, after spending enormous amounts on collecting intelligence to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the pursuit of al-Qaeda, intelligence officials and policy makers must decide whether to pay less attention to those areas, said a former intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he’s still charged with protecting classified information.

Clapper, along with intelligence and congressional officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the classified material, said that much of the savings will come from consolidating a multitude of different information technology systems which together cost about $12 billion a year.

“The focus right now is on eliminating unnecessary and redundant IT systems” across the intelligence community, Clapper told the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation’s annual symposium in San Antonio on October 17.
More Clouds

Moving toward cloud computing, single enterprises, and thin clients loaded with fewer applications will help reduce the reliance on outside vendors, help desks and contractors, the officials said. One advantage, Clapper said, is that intelligence agencies will “avoid vendors selling us the same stuff over and over again.”

Because consolidation and reliance on the cloud can create greater security risks, some of those savings are likely to be offset by greater investments in Internet security by the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency.
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