Does US Intelligence Matter Anymore?

Trump, like Stalin, ignores facts and warnings to his—and our—great peril

The latest dreary news about the hollowing out of U.S. intelligence under the Trump administration came yesterday via The Steady State, an organization of some 400 former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security.

There, David Abramson, a 25-year veteran of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), a relatively tiny organization that has often proved more prescient than its far bigger CIA brother, detailed how, beginning in July 2025, “the State Department dismissed some of its most experienced intelligence analysts merely to appease the Trump Administration’s demands for cuts.”