Although last year’s budget for national intelligence was disclosed, current year spending remains classified, reflecting a judgment by the Bush Administration that its disclosure would cause serious damage to national security.
So it is interesting to see that current intelligence spending is treated matter-of-factly in some other countries, and publicly disclosed without any fanfare at all.
In France, for example, the intelligence budget is addressed as part of the normal deliberative process.
The latest parliamentary budget report notes the precise staff levels of each of the French intelligence services, their individual budgets, and the total amount of spending on intelligence for the coming year: 743.5 million euros, with a total of 9,500 employees.
Not only that, but the parliament notes that French intelligence resources compare unfavorably with those of key allies such as the United Kingdom (3.3 billion euros, with 13,400 staff) and Germany (16,500 employees, budget not given).
This disparity could become a problem, the report notes candidly, because intelligence sharing with foreign partners is predicated on the ability of each side to provide useful information to the other.
(“En matière de renseignement, la capacité à obtenir des informations de la part de partenaires étrangers repose sur la possibilité d’en fournir en échange. Avec des services français de qualité mais dont la taille et les budgets sont sensiblement inférieurs à ceux des deux autres principaux acteurs dans le domaine en Europe, c’est la possibilité même de travailler sur un plan d’égalité qui finira par être remise en question.”)
See the French parliamentary discussion of intelligence spending here.
While current intelligence spending remains classified in the United States (though it must be disclosed by the end of next October), the Federation of American Scientists this week asked the Director of National Intelligence to declassify past intelligence spending levels dating back to the beginning of the National Foreign Intelligence Program.
Last October, Senator Kit Bond (R-MO), Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said (pdf) he is “hopeful that the top line numbers for previous fiscal years will be declassified so the public can get a full accounting of the government’s priorities over the last two decades.”
In anticipation of future known and unknown health security threats, including new pandemics, biothreats, and climate-related health emergencies, our answers need to be much faster, cheaper, and less disruptive to other operations.
To unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence within the Department of Health and Human Services, an AI Corps should be established, embedding specialized AI experts within each of the department’s 10 agencies.
Investing in interventions behind the walls is not just a matter of improving conditions for incarcerated individuals—it is a public safety and economic imperative. By reducing recidivism through education and family contact, we can improve reentry outcomes and save billions in taxpayer dollars.
The U.S. government should establish a public-private National Exposome Project (NEP) to generate benchmark human exposure levels for the ~80,000 chemicals to which Americans are regularly exposed.