SPECIAL REPORT — It wasn’t quite an “exit interview,“ but with just over six weeks remaining for the Biden administration, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines spoke Thursday about the Intelligence Community (IC) and a range of threats that she and her colleagues will soon turn over to the Trump administration. At an event hosted by the Council On Foreign Relations in Washington, Haines spoke about the so-called “Axis of Authoritarians,” the heightened risks during a political transition in the U.S., and the increased push to declassify intelligence for strategic purposes — as the Biden Administration did prior to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Asked by Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski about an increasing number of threats posed by Russia’s so-called hybrid warfare, Haines said, “Russia has invested money, personnel, just an extraordinary amount of effort in this area, and I think will continue to do so…we judge that to be focused on trying to ultimately deter NATO and certain countries from providing assistance and getting more involved in the Ukraine conflict in support of Ukraine.”
Haines is the seventh Director of National Intelligence, a position created in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as an attempt to integrate the work of more than a dozen agencies within the IC and better “connect the dots” of disparate streams of intelligence. As The Cipher Brief reported last week, the ODNI has come under scrutiny recently, given President-elect Trump’s stated wish to “overhaul” the IC, and his nomination of former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard to succeed Haines as DNI.
Haines defended the ODNI Thursday, arguing that her agency is critical when it comes to intelligence coordination and integration.
“If we're not connecting the dots or not bringing intelligence together, then we may actually miss the next 9/11,” Haines said. “We're going to have a situation where we're not going to see what the threat picture is, not provide the kind of indication warning that's needed, not be as successful at countering the national security threats that we face today.”
Other excerpts from the conversation follow:
Transition challenges – from one administration to the next
The way we think about it is that other actors, foreign actors could take advantage of the situation. That's a classic issue, and there are a couple of things that we focus on.
There are certain actors that are trying to pre-position themselves for a next administration. They're making judgments about what they think the policy will be, and they're looking to better position themselves for that incoming administration. And what we do in that scenario…our analysts write pieces about this. They try to provide that to the next administration as well as this administration during this period, just to highlight those issues so that they can incorporate that into their thinking. [U.S. adversaries] see the potential for us to be distracted, so they think, OK, maybe this is the moment to push in a certain area or to escalate, and will there be a counter – that type of thing. And so we also highlight that across the transition, try to make sure that people understand that. For example, the DPRK [North Korea] typically engages in some provocative action during transitions. This is one of the classic things. We're constantly looking at what might those actions be, so that we can ensure that folks are focused.
The “Axis of Authoritarians” (China, Russia, Iran and North Korea)
This is something we could spend an hour on, and it's fascinating.
First of all, if you're looking at the DPRK, China, Iran, and Russia…they're not acting as a bloc. We don't see them as a four-part alliance or something along those lines. What we are seeing without question is increased cooperation on a bilateral and sometimes trilateral level.
Our analysts would also caution in the context of a policy discussion that we don't see them likely becoming allies in the same way that we are allies with our NATO partners, for example – that level of interoperability and military collaboration and so on.
At the same time, there's no question that this is of concern to U.S. interests and other global partners’ interests during this period, and it defies an easy categorization. But there are a couple of broader points that are still worth making.
One is that it is leading to scenarios where it is more challenging for us to protect certain international norms. So if you look at counterproliferation, for example, with respect to nuclear weapons, this is a place where historically China and Russia have actually cooperated with the United States to some extent, and with European allies and others, to try to protect certain international norms that they are a party to, whether it be through the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty] or through other mechanisms. [They have] pushed back against Iran, for example, or the DPRK, in the context of UN Security Council resolutions that might sanction them for activity or things along those lines.
That's a place where I think it has gotten much harder for us to actually work with them to effectively do that. And in large part that's because Russia is now beholden, to some extent, to both the DPRK and to Iran for advanced weapons, for ammunition, for things that they need in the context of their fight with Ukraine. And as a consequence, they're less interested in pushing back against either Iran or the DPRK in this context, and are not going to take a strong position in the UN Security Council.
Another sort of obvious element of concern is just the degree to which we're seeing exchange of technology or other types of cooperation that both can effectively allow different actors within [the “Axis”] to evade sanctions or other types of efforts that are being made by us and other allies and partners to prevent them from undermining stability or our interests in different parts of the world.
There's a variety of different ways in which this is concerning.
Declassifying intelligence – to make a point
Intel diplomacy existed well before I walked into this office. In other words, this is something that we've done in different times over the history of the intelligence community and it's just that [sharing intelligence about Russian troop movements in February 2022] was at a level and a scale that was not seen previously. And that, I think, brought attention to it in a particular way.
In addition to garnering support and trying to counter disinformation that Russia was putting out, another thing that it helped with was providing the basis for preparation between our partners and allies and us for what we would do about a possible invasion.
Even within the intel community, before we started pushing the analysis out, there was some skepticism about, Is Putin actually going to do a large-scale invasion? Does this really make sense? This type of thing.
And certainly with our policymakers, they had a lot of questions. They wanted to make sure that they understood that this was what we were saying, and why and how this could evolve and so on. And then they said, "OK, well, let's start talking to allies and partners about it." I still have a memory of a moment where the president was like, "All right, you've got to get out there and start talking to our allies and partners because they have so much skepticism. We want to make sure that they're seeing what you're seeing and that they're actually ready to have the conversation about planning."
The [Europeans] weren't really even ready to engage in the planning, because they were concerned that we were kind of trumping this up. So that was the first piece of this.
And as we started to do that, we thought, "Well, how do we do this in a way that avoids essentially us being seen as a tool of the policy community?"
So we did a couple of things, and they may seem small to you, but they were meaningful at least to us. I never cleared my talking points with the policy community. Basically, I took my talking points from the analysts and provided the analysis. And when I went to, for example, NATO to provide a brief, I brought with me very senior military analysts who were able to answer questions directly. That's a sort of manifestation of what we were trying to do across the board.
And then the final thing to point out is that we actually learned a tremendous amount through that process. As the planning began, we were getting asked a lot of questions – "Well, if we do this, is it likely to deter? Is it likely to change Putin's behavior? How would the reaction be? What would be the implications?" Those types of things.
We can't do that [share intelligence] in every case. If we're not able to protect our sources and methods, we're not going to be very effective at our jobs. So we absolutely had to find ways to do this that would protect sources and methods. And this is not going to be something that we'll be able to do in every scenario.
Building trust in the IC
It's really hard. And I should say too, I put that as one of the main goals, and it's on our website: building trust and confidence [in the IC].
Here's how I think about it: One is, there is a lot we can say about what we do that isn't classified. Obviously we're having this discussion today. And the CIA's got The Langley Legacy and other things like that. There's a whole series of things that you'll find on different websites that talk about different stories, about what kinds of activities they've engaged in, and give you a sense of the kind of things that the IC does.
And I find that when I go around the country to talk to university audiences or others to try to help students think about and be inspired by the work that we do, there's a lot of misinformation, there's a lot of questions about the kind of work that we do.
I also think it's really important, in a democracy, to try your best to have as sophisticated a conversation as possible in the public sphere so that people understand why their leaders are taking the decisions that they're taking.
And increasingly, national security and foreign policy affects everyday Americans, and that is just a trend line that's been true for quite some time. What we try to do is push out analysis at a level that allows us to be public about these issues without, again, endangering sources and methods.
Russia’s “hybrid warfare”
There are different forms of gray-zone challenges that we've seen with [Russia], which continue to be a significant challenge.
If you look at, for example, information operations, and even just take the election security issue, we consistently, in all of our updates leading up to the election, indicated that Russia was our most persistent and active threat from an election influence effort perspective. And this is something that we've just seen them increasingly invest in. Iran also has done so, and so those were really in the top tier of those efforts. But Russia has invested money, personnel, just an extraordinary amount of effort in this area, and I think will continue to do so. And even though I think we are getting a little bit better at disrupting some of this activity…I don’t think it makes anybody really comfortable that we're able to counter it as effectively as we'd like to. That's for sure.
Then there's cyber activities. And while often it's China that we're talking about these days, the fact is Russia also is a significant cyber challenge. And part of the challenge that Russia poses is that in many respects, Russia creates the opportunity by not going after companies that reside in Russia who are engaging in this kind of activity. In other words, attacks, ransomware, other types of things against U.S, or European, or other partners, [Russia] does not crack down on them. It gives them kind of a safe space within which to operate, and that creates its own problem, in addition to what they may do as a state actor to support cyber activities in these spaces.
In addition, we've obviously talked about some of the sabotage issues that Russia's engaged in, in particular in Europe, that we've seen some activity there. That is another area. And largely, we judge that to be focused on trying to ultimately deter NATO and certain countries from providing assistance and getting more involved in the Ukraine conflict in support of Ukraine. Our assessments go into a whole range of different types of gray-zone activities, but that's just a few that I think are particularly pernicious.
On the value of the ODNI
If you're a policymaker or somebody in the government, why is it that you want to have an ODNI? One of the key reasons that it was set up to begin with was really classically connecting the dots, that basically there was information that the FBI had and CIA had that hadn't been shared effectively, and that was part of something that would've led to insights that would've allowed us to better provide indication of warning with respect to 9/11. And of course, it wasn't the first time that you saw that there was information in the community that hadn't been brought together in order to help people see the comprehensive picture.
You also will have seen a number of scenarios in which there are differences within the community on a particular analytic issue that is being discussed and debated. And that is part of a policy conversation.
I am biased, just to state the obvious, but I do think we're safer as a consequence of the institution that I have the privilege to lead right now.
If we're not connecting the dots or not bringing intelligence together, then we may actually miss the next 9/11. We're going to have a situation where we're not going to see what the threat picture is, not provide the kind of indication warning that's needed, not be as successful at countering the national security threats that we face today. And it's just increasingly important in my view, even more than it was 20 years ago, because the landscape has just become so much more complex and sophisticated.
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