The judgments that I will offer the Committee in these documents and in my responses to your questions are based on the efforts of thousands of patriotic, highly skilled professionals, many of whom serve in harm’s way. I am pleased to report that the Intelligence Community is even better than it was last year as a result of the continuing implementation of reforms required by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. This Statement is, in part, a product of our moving forward with the transformation of US intelligence, including more innovative and rigorous analysis and wider and more far-reaching collaboration.
You will see from the testimony that many of the key topics I touch on are not traditional “national security” topics.
Globalization has broadened the number of threats and challenges facing the United States. For example, as government, private sector, and personal activities continue to move to networked operations and our digital systems add ever more capabilities, our vulnerability to penetration and other hostile cyber actions grows. The nation, as we indicated last year, requires more from our Intelligence Community than ever before and consequently we need to do our business better, both internally, through greater collaboration across disciplines and externally, by engaging more of the expertise available outside the Intelligence Community.
Many of the analytic judgments I present here have benefited from the increasing integration of collection and analysis. Our systematic effort to synchronize requirements across the national intelligence, defense, Homeland security and federal law enforcement communities ensures collection assets will be better utilized and the collection community will be able to mount efforts to fill the gaps and needs of analysts. This more integrated Community approach to analysis and collection requirements is part of the DNI’s plan to transition the IC from a federation of independent intelligence organization to a more integrated enterprise; the beginning results of this new approach are reflected in the more nuanced and deeper analysis of the challenges and threats facing the US.
