The Intelligence Community Doesn’t Warn About All Attacks Against the US Homeland. Why Not? – By Cortney Weinbaum (Defense One) / Oct 20, 2022
A simple policy change could help defend America against threats to non-military targets.
Russia and China attack the U.S. commercial technology and scientific research sectors through persistent cyber intrusions and the theft of protected scientific information and intellectual property. Both countries peddle disinformation—knowingly false information and propaganda—on U.S. social-media platforms, sometimes with the witting or unwitting assistance of social media influencers, to shape Americans’ views. Yet members of the commercial sector and the American public do not receive intelligence that could warn potential victims about the methods and goals of foreign governments.
The “attack surface” for foreign threats against the U.S. increasingly includes entities— business, organizations, people—that are not part of the U.S. government or military. But too many of these potential victims are unaware of threats against them, are not warned with intelligence reporting about such threats, and lack information about options to protect themselves.
U.S. intelligence agencies have a duty to warn individuals if intelligence reveals a threat of bodily harm against them, like kidnapping or murder. It may be time to expand this duty, to warn of nonviolent threats too, including those of cyber attack, intellectual-property theft, and disinformation campaigns. This was one major finding of a new RAND study that my team conducted in the wake of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
The duty-to-warn policy and its implementation mechanisms are governed by Intelligence Community Directive 191. The Director of National Intelligence, or DNI, has the authority to modify ICD 191. Expanding it to nonviolent threats could create a policy environment for providing intelligence as a service to the American public. This policy change could allow the DNI to signal that the IC is attempting to address the plight of the commercial and nongovernmental sectors as the targets of persistent attacks from foreign actors. The DNI could then tell intelligence analysts to nominate intelligence warning products for release to specific entities or the public at large.
