Security Chief Talks Terror

At the dawn of a new political administration, the United States faces evolving security threats that must be addressed through dynamic intelligence practices, the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, said in a speech at the Harvard Kennedy School yesterday.

“With weapons of mass destruction that could result in the death of many, many people—chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons—we assess the likelihood of each,” said McConnell, who became the second director of national intelligence in 2007. “The likelihood of nuclear attack is less but is not eliminated.”

Cyberterrorism is yet another rising danger, McConnell said.

“The cyber threat is the soft underbelly of the United States,” McConnell said. “The United States depends on the cyber infrastructure more than any other on Earth.”

He said that the American financial system is especially vulnerable to a type of cyber-terrorism he referred to as “data destruction.”

Part of the government’s plan to meet growing security challenges must include increased cooperation between different agencies that collect intelligence, McConnell said.

“It is large: we are 100,000 people. It is global: we spend in the neighborhood of $48 billion a year,” McConnell said of the intelligence community, which includes entities like the intelligence-gathering agencies of the military, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “That’s a very complex enterprise to operate—my job is to make sure it’s integrated.

McConnell said that the lack of communication among these separate agencies has been a major weakness in American intelligence since well before 2001, adding that “we designed our own system to make the attacks of 9/11 successful.” Still, he added that in recent years, the intelligence community has taken steps to make itself more effective.

“The idea is always being willing to make yourself more agile, because you have to be ready to make decisions, and today’s decisions happen at the speed of light,” McConnell said.

McConnell also noted that the intelligence agencies have shifted their focus so that terrorism is now considered a legitimate threat. He noted that the FBI—which is considered both an investigative and domestic intelligence agency—has made the prevention of terrorist attacks its “primary focus.”

As director of the nation’s intelligence-gathering agencies, McConnell, a former Navy admiral, is charged with presenting the president with his daily intelligence briefing. He was also involved in the publication of “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World,” a projection of the threats that the United States is likely to face over the next 17 years, which was released over the summer.

This most recent version of the report, which is produced every four years to aid the incoming presidential administration, warns of rising food prices, increased competition for energy sources, scarce water resources, and biological weapons as emerging national security threats.