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Decline in the United States intelligence community’s nuclear intelligence collection capabilities

Abstract The United States Intelligence Community (IC)—like all other organizations—is subject to shortcomings. While nuclear intelligence collection was the bread and butter of the IC during the Cold War, shifting national security priorities have diminished the IC's ability to conduct nuclear intelligence. Although nuclear intelligence collection remains an integral part of the IC and offices focused on countering nuclear proliferation still exist within the IC, competing intelligence collection priorities have left nuclear intelligence capabilities at a fraction of what they used to be, without the budget, personnel, or scientific expertise it once had. While the priorities of the IC have shifted toward concerns such as terrorism, renewed great power competition with Russia and China, and cyberwarfare over the past two decades, other nations have continued to grow the nuclear weapons capabilities that exist and develop new nuclear weapons capabilities. The threat of new and improved nuclear capabilities comes both from other great powers with established nuclear weapons programs, such as both Russia and China, and also from rogue states that are seeking to develop their own nuclear weapons and resisting international oversight of their nuclear weapons programs, like the cases of both Iran and North Korea, as well as previous cases in South Africa and Libya. While foreign nations have continued to pursue new nuclear weapons capabilities, the focus of the IC has been elsewhere—leaving our nuclear intelligence collection apparatus underfunded and lacking in the scientific expertise that is needed to fully understand the extent of new capabilities that have been developed since the end of the Cold War. In order to close this gap in knowledge, the IC must not only re-emphasize the importance of nuclear intelligence but also revitalize its nuclear intelligence collection apparatus in order to understand foreign nations new capabilities as they emerge.