The United States’ defense and intelligence apparatus will need to relearn how to operate in contested environments as it transitions away from counterterrorism and moves toward competition between great powers, intelligence experts have warned.
The Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies will need to rapidly focus on combating threats from state actors that fall somewhere below an outright war, according to Kari Bingen, a former deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security.
“The Department of Defense does order of battle well: [things like] how many tanks [or] how many aircraft, but in this more competitive and economic space, what are the implications for national security?”
Bingen said that reorienting from the types of operating environments that the United States enjoyed throughout the Global War on Terror will be difficult, as the nation transitions to face a “contested operational environment.”
While the United States previously operated in the Middle East or Africa with relatively unchallenged superiority in intelligence, surveillance, and communications, competing with an adversarial nation such as China would be much more difficult.
The United States now faces the uphill battle of learning to fight and compete in cities filled with adversarial surveillance systems, under the threat of enemy drones, and with its communications jammed, Bingen said. The prospect is made more difficult as the nation hasn’t consistently engaged in such operations for more than 20 years.
“I would encourage the [intelligence] committee to be focused on China and that peer [or] near-peer competition, and technology,” Bingen said.
That contested environment has come to the homefront as well. This is especially true in the battle for information and influence, according to Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), who is the ranking Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee and also spoke at the Atlantic Council event.
Turner said that “outside influences” are working to undermine the United States and its democratic systems.
“There are foreign actors that attempt to, through malign intent, influence the outcomes of our democracy,” Turner said.
“It’s both a threat by foreign actors and it’s also an internal domestic threat.”
That polarization presents a direct threat to the nation, Turner said, both for everyday Americans and also for those who wield power in Washington.
“There are people who are overstepping in the intelligence community in areas where it’s [become] a partisan effort and perhaps it squelches debate when debate needs to happen,” he said.
To that end, Turner said that steps need to be taken to counter domestic threats from radicalized individuals and groups, but that extreme caution would be needed to ensure that such efforts don’t weaponize the government against Americans.
“There is a significant danger of us turning the intelligence community on our citizens, and I think it can thwart democracy and thwart the debate that we need to have to support democracy,” he said.
“There [are] always going to be those elements that we have to make sure do not harm society, but we have to be careful.”
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