Gabbard Announces Overhaul of ODNI, With Budget and Personnel Cuts

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said the reforms were the first step in an intelligence overhaul dubbed ‘ODNI 2.0.’

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard appears during a Senate Committee on Intelligence Hearing in Washington on March 25, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will undertake major personnel and budget cuts, the Trump administration announced on Aug. 20.

The agency said the cuts would “reduce bloat by 40 percent and save taxpayers $700 million a year.”

“Over the last 20 years, ODNI has become bloated and inefficient, and the intelligence community is rife with abuse of power, unauthorized leaks of classified intelligence, and politicized weaponization of intelligence,” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced in a statement.

“For too long, bad actors have exploited and politicized our Intelligence Community to drive agendas that put their own interests ahead of the interests of the American people,” Gabbard said. “Today, we are announcing serious change to ensure the IC fulfills its responsibility to the American people and the U.S. Constitution.”

She said the reforms are the first step in a major overhaul of the intelligence community, with a focus on stamping out abuses and returning intelligence agents to their core national security mission.

“Ending the weaponization of intelligence and holding bad actors accountable are essential to begin to earn the American people’s trust, which has long been eroded,” Gabbard said.

‘ODNI 2.0’

Gabbard said that the reforms come as part of a larger initiative, which she dubbed “ODNI 2.0.”

“[It is] the start of a new era focused on serving our country, fulfilling our core national security mission with excellence, always grounded in the U.S. Constitution, and ensuring the safety, security, and freedom of the American people,” Gabbard said.

She said the ODNI and the intelligence community at large “must make serious changes.”

The announcement said that some of the initiative’s core goals are “exposing politicization and weaponization of intelligence, holding bad actors accountable, saving American tax dollars, and ... protecting the safety, security, and freedom of the American people.”

The ODNI indicated that the savings would be achieved in part through “[eliminating] redundant missions, functions and personnel, and [making] critical investments in areas that support the President’s national intelligence priorities.”

Election Interference Group

The ODNI announced in a fact sheet on the changes that the Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC), a Biden-era group that focused on alleged election interference by Russia and other foreign actors, was set to be all but shuttered, having its core functions merged with other agencies.

When the ODNI announced the center’s creation in 2022, its core goal was described as the coordination and integration of intelligence pertaining to election interference.

Now, the agency says that the body is redundant, as many of its functions are handled by other intelligence community groups. The fact sheet noted that its counterpart at the State Department has already been shuttered.

The ODNI stated that FMIC and related predecessor entities “were used by the previous administration to justify the suppression of free speech and to censor political opposition.”

Specifically, the ODNI referenced “evidence of a multi-year relationship between FMIC and social media companies that was not based on scientific or objective metrics and may have been used to weaponize intelligence against Americans, undermining civil liberties.”

This is only the latest move by Gabbard to reform the intelligence community, which has long faced allegations of overreach and abuse.

It comes just days after she announced that, under the direction of President Donald Trump, she had revoked the security clearances of 37 current and former intelligence operatives for “politicizing and manipulating intelligence.”

“Being entrusted with a security clearance is a privilege, not a right,” Gabbard wrote in an Aug. 19 post on X. “Those in the Intelligence Community who betray their oath to the Constitution and put their own interests ahead of the interests of the American people have broken the sacred trust they promised to uphold.”

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated in one instance the fiscal impact of the personnel and budget cuts. The Epoch Times regrets the error.