The National Intelligence Program received a total appropriation of $50.5 billion in fiscal year 2014, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence disclosed yesterday, as required by law. The Military Intelligence Program was funded at $17.4 billion in FY 2014, the Department of Defense said. Current and past intelligence budget disclosures can be found here.
Marshall Erwin, a former analyst at the Congressional Research Service and the CIA, said that in principle, the intelligence community should be able to “absorb recent cuts quite easily.” But “whether the IC will actually absorb cuts without degrading capabilities is a separate question. While it has the means to do so, thus far decisionmakers have not proven up to the task.” He presented his perspective on trends in intelligence spending in “Doing Way More with Much Less: Intelligence by the Numbers” on the new blog Overt Action.
Overt Action is part of an effort by Erwin and several colleagues “to create a venue for intelligence professionals to more effectively engage in public debate.”
[Update: On July 31st, following significant backlash, Google announced that it was temporarily “rolling back” this feature “while we work on implementing stronger guardrails.”] Google’s motto famously used to be “don’t be evil.” However, its latest feature has just made being evil a whole lot easier. On July 30th, without much fanfare, Google Earth unveiled […]
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