The US Intelligence Community Needs a 'Wild Bill' Moment

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — The recent release of the 7^th edition of the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends Report highlights the challenges facing the United States and the U.S. intelligence community (IC) over the next twenty years.  While this report is usually not uplifting, this edition in particular warns of “more intense and cascading global challenges” ahead.  Is the IC poised to provide the insights necessary to shape the strategic environment for the United States during the next two decades?  We believe that the answer to that question is a clarion call for a “Wild Bill” moment.

Photo Credit: OSS Society

At another critical moment in America’s history, in 1941 as the world accelerated into war, President Franklin Roosevelt worried that America’s intelligence organizations were not up to the tasks ahead.  Nazi Germany, for example, was utilizing new forms of warfare including propaganda to great effect across Europe, leaving America’s existing intelligence organizations struggling to coordinate their efforts and explain what was happening at a strategic level.  To provide critical insights to American leaders and to facilitate covert operations which could help win the war, Roosevelt appointed William Joseph “Wild Bill” Donovan as the White House’s first Coordinator of Information and head of the newly created Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

Wild Bill had a reputation for seeing the world clearly, for diplomacy, for bravery, and for imagination.  He also had a reputation as an American “cowboy” who would take on seemingly impossible missions to accomplish what needed to be done.  Bill was not warmly embraced by the government bureaucracy – he was a disruptor.  To help the US and its allies win World War II, Wild Bill and his colleagues overcame many obstacles – bureaucratic, technical, political and physical — and led the first organized effort by the United States to implement a centralized system of strategic intelligence.  The organization they created became the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. Special Operations Command, and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

Today’s President should similarly worry about whether his IC is up to the tasks ahead.  The Biden Administration has provided a glimpse into its National Security Strategy expected to be released in June.

The Interim National Security Strategic Guidance avoids calling out “Great Power Competition” specifically, but recognizes that in 2021, the threats facing America and our vision for the world are grave and in many ways unprecedented.  The threats go beyond China, Russia, North Korea and violent extremism to include challenges in South America, the Middle East, Africa, climate change, the cyber domain, digital threats, international economic disruption, humanitarian issues, and weapons of mass destruction.  To meet the threat, the strategy will itself break new ground to go beyond defense to include economic security, environmental security, health security and cyber security.

Given the dynamism of these challenges and our national strategy, this is again not a moment that calls for stability or incremental improvements in the IC.  This is a moment that calls for a “Wild Bill” approach.  In 2021, America faces different threats than it did in 1941, but the costs of intelligence failure in human, economic and political terms may be equivalent, or worse.  These threats are made more dangerous by the failure of today’s IC to reinvent itself to be effective in an information-driven world.