FBI Director Kash Patel and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Intelligence agencies are supposed to speak truth to power. Top intelligence officials failed that test in their testimony this week. But analysts down in the trenches, while responsive to President Donald Trump’s interests, still seem to be doing their duty.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard delivered the intelligence community’s annual “threat assessment” to Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday. The headline was that both officials downplayed the national security danger of the now-notorious discussion on a Signal commercial messaging chat of planned military operations in Yemen.
Gabbard told a Senate committee Tuesday that “no classified information” was shared on the chat, which inadvertently included journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic. Pressed by House members Wednesday about sensitive details shared about planned strikes on Houthi targets, a cagey Gabbard answered, “My testimony is I did not recall the exact details of what was included there.” Ratcliffe similarly told senators on Tuesday that he didn’t recall chat details and said, “I haven’t participated in any Signal group messaging that relates to any classified information at all.”
The comments echoed a broader administration effort to rebut criticism of the “Houthi PC small group” Signal chat that both officials joined. But a subtler picture of how Trump’s priorities are reshaping the presentation of intelligence comes in the 30-page threat assessment document that Gabbard shared with Congress.
Compared with last year’s version, the assessment shows a different ordering of threats to emphasize drug criminals a new focus on Greenland, and discussion of the Ukraine war that accords with Trump’s negotiating strategy.
Intelligence analysts take pride in their nonpartisan professionalism, and there’s no indication they have been pressured to change any specific evidence. Much of the underlying analysis of Russia, China, Iran and other topics is consistent with last year’s assessment, with some passages repeated verbatim. But a comparison of the 2024 and 2025 assessments shows that priorities can shift, for better or worse, depending on who’s in power.
The most striking change is the primacy now given to “Foreign Illicit Drug Actors.” This was a top Trump campaign issue, and it’s the first threat analyzed in this year’s assessment. Last year, “Foreign Illicit Drugs” was relegated to Page 36. Both reports described Mexico-based “transnational criminal organizations” (TCOs) as “the dominant producers and suppliers of illicit drugs.”
With the Trump administration weighing military actions against the Mexican drug cartels, this year’s threat analysis adds a new look at their paramilitary capabilities, including land mines, mortars and grenades.
Kudos to the analysts for mentioning several facts that show the Biden administration’s success in combating drugs and migrants. The report notes that in the 12 months ending in October 2024, there was a nearly 33 percent decline in opioid-related overdose deaths compared with the previous year. The analysts also found that law enforcement encounters with migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border were 14 percent lower last year than in 2023. Those numbers might come as news to Trump, who constantly belittles Joe Biden’s drug and border policies.
The Trump administration’s obsession with Greenland gets some support in the assessment. The China section includes a new warning that “China’s long-term goal is to expand access to Greenland’s natural resources, as well as to use the same access as a key strategic foothold for advancing China’s … aims in the Arctic.”
A new section highlighting “Russia and the Arctic” includes a similar focus. “Russia’s interest in Greenland is focused mainly on its proximity to strategically important naval routes between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans — including for nuclear-armed submarines — and the fact that Greenland hosts a key U.S. military base,” the report says.
The sudden attention to Greenland leaves the reader wondering whether analysts understated the issue in the past or it’s now being hyped because of Trump’s interest — or perhaps the threat has just evolved over time. Whatever the case, the novel emphasis raises questions about how the analysts compile their reports.
A new section on “Russia and Ukraine” appears to back Trump’s rationale for a negotiated settlement of the war. “Continuing the Russia-Ukraine war perpetuates strategic risks to the United States of unintended escalation to large-scale war, the potential use of nuclear weapons,” and other dangers, the analysts note.
Kyiv is on a losing course if the war continues, the analysts argue. Russia won’t achieve “total victory,” but it “has seized the upper hand … and is on a path to accrue greater leverage to press Kyiv and its Western backers to negotiate an end to the war that grants Moscow concessions it seeks.” Meanwhile, there is “a gradual but steady erosion of Kyiv’s position on the battlefield, regardless of any U.S. or allied attempts to impose new and greater costs on Moscow.”
The analysts document the “heavy price” paid by Russia, with a startling new estimate that it has suffered “750,000-plus dead and wounded,” producing more casualties than in all its other wars since 1945. Even so — and despite “a willingness to test partial ceasefires” — the analysts make a hardheaded judgment that “both leaders for now probably still see the risks of a longer war as less than those of an unsatisfying settlement.”
Policymakers always want intelligence analysts to support their views, but what they need is the unvarnished truth. The text of this year’s threat assessment shows the analysts giving priority to Trump’s concerns but not, so far as I could tell, fudging the facts.