About the author: Amy Zegart is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Instit

American Spies Are Fighting the Last War, Again

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2021-09-07 09:00:04

About the author: Amy Zegart is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University, and the author of the forthcoming book Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence (Princeton University Press).

Twenty years ago , al-Qaeda hijackers carried out the worst-ever terrorist attack on American soil, killing nearly 3,000 innocents, terrifying the nation, and forever changing the course of history—ushering in America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Yet September 11 was also something else: our worst intelligence failure in more than half a century. It was a surprise attack that should not have been a surprise. The agonizing truth is that American intelligence agencies saw the danger coming but failed to stop it because they were hardwired to fight a different enemy from a bygone era. My research found that when the Cold War ended and the threats shifted in the 1990s, America’s intelligence community failed to adapt.

Today, we face a similar challenge. Since 9/11, spies have become adept at countering al Qaeda but al Qaeda is no longer the overarching problem it once was. The global threat landscape has become much more crowded and complex, encompassing escalating cyberattacks, a rising China, Russian aggression, nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, the fallout from climate change, and more. And once again, spy agencies are struggling to keep up.