The Intelligence Profession Has No Autopilot
Tulsi Gabbard’s resignation gave the administration the opportunity to select a DNI who understood intelligence as a profession. The choice of Bill Pulte as acting director points the other way.
Last month, Tulsi Gabbard resigned as head of the U.S. intelligence community (IC) to address family medical issues, with her departure set for June 30. Gabbard’s time in office was turbulent, marked by her marginalization, conflicts with subordinate agencies, staff turnover, and office cuts. Shortly after, President Trump announced he would appoint William J. Pulte, the current head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as acting intelligence director, while Pulte would continue to serve in those other federal roles.
Today’s news makes the problem harder to miss. We are seeing a startling lack of regard in this administration for whether leadership appointees have any real experience as intelligence professionals. Pulte’s appointment exemplifies this pattern, and many other agency heads have been chosen seemingly with little regard for their intelligence experience. The broader pattern undermines professionalization across the enterprise, warps the talent pipeline, and weakens the country’s ability to detect and understand threats. So the deeper question is this: Does the United States still believe intelligence is a profession?
The “Helicopter Fallacy”
Let’s start with an analogy that might seem ridiculous on its face. During my career in the Marines, I often relied on Marine aviators for support. It ranged from parachute insert training from helicopters and other aircraft to hops from one place to the next. Despite the many hours I spent in and around military aircraft for these purposes, none of that made me a pilot by exposure. I’m not one. I would never claim to be. I’m certainly not qualified to lead an aviation squadron, or better yet, set service-level aviation standards and evaluate their implementation. Now let’s flip this to intelligence. Senior governmental and military leaders are constantly exposed to intelligence products and briefings. Some take absorbing it more seriously than others. But even the most dedicated intelligence consumer does not automatically become a knowledgeable steward of intelligence tradecraft by osmosis. In fact, quite the opposite. After all, they’ve got their own big jobs to do – the intel briefing fights for life daily on every busy executive’s calendar. I call this the “helicopter fallacy” – “that general over there is really good at flying helicopters; surely they can also be the head of an intelligence community element!”
Exposure is not expertise.
The U.S. Navy in 2026 Remembers that Expertise Matters
Several of the military services are coming back around to the idea that domain expertise is required for senior leadership posts. For example, the U.S. Navy recently announced that its amphibious warfare vessels would no longer be commanded by aviators, only by surface warfare officers. The rationale was that aviators don’t have sufficient surface expertise to do the role justice – part of the reason that the Navy’s amphibious shipping is “in poor condition” and many of these vessels “are not on track to meet their expected service lives.” The approach seems to be to get the right leaders with the right expertise and background in charge, and see if things don’t come around. The armed services remember that expertise matters in ships and aircraft, because bad things happen when you pretend it doesn’t. They should also remember it in intelligence.
What Intelligence Professionalization Is and Does
Rather than a parochial guild-protection scheme, my argument is that intelligence is a profession, like commanding ships or piloting aircraft. Building and maintaining a professional, independent intelligence apparatus based on clearly understood standards and processes protects decision-makers from convenient answers, whether political, military, or diplomatic. Disciplined collection and analysis mean customers can be confident that the information in an intelligence product was properly sourced and that appropriate confidence levels can be assigned. Dissenting views and alternative analyses must be protected, particularly with hard targets and contested assessments. Professionally trained analysts and collectors, following a defined and legitimized process and drawing on a wide range of sources, provide the best possible warning against strategic surprise. And this process must be insulated from external political pressure. When all these things happen routinely, policymakers can be confident they are receiving appropriately analyzed, fused, and caveated intelligence information to help them make the decisions required by their offices. Sometimes the information will not be welcome – that’s the point. Decision-makers have an obligation to hear it anyway, and then, if they choose, ignore it or make a choice that doesn’t follow from the recommendations. As the saying goes, the buck stops with them. Intelligence doesn’t make the decisions, but when it’s done right, it helps those who do make better decisions.
What Happens to the Intelligence Talent Pipeline
Picking intelligence leaders is also more than a simple human resources matter. In the military, one can often hear discussions of flag and general officer assignments that leave observers scratching their heads, thinking, “Why did general/admiral X get assignment Y? They have no experience or background in field Z.” It’s often explained by saying, “Any senior leader can do assignment Y. That’s why they are called general officers.” I disagree. Gabbard had served in the military and in Congress, but never as an intelligence professional.
Gabbard’s ODNI tenure involved major restructuring and staff cuts, including the loss of organizations such as NIU, which exists to enhance intelligence professionalization. Many of her “ODNI 2.0” changes will make it harder for future intelligence professionals to deepen their craft. NIU’s transfer to the Pentagon at the end of the month removes it from the IC, with many faculty and staff leaving rather than transferring with it. With this as the context and setting, the new National Intelligence College, as part of NDU, will be challenged to prove its continued effectiveness in educating IC leaders from a perch outside of the community. Gabbard’s proposed changes would cut nearly 50% of ODNI, redefining offices responsible for foreign influence, cyber threats, and intelligence education. These moves risk weakening the professional infrastructure, especially when led by individuals who may not fully understand the field. Such reforms risk damage to the IC’s future, creating a more disconnected, less effective professional environment.
ODNI is far from the only example. The National Security Agency (NSA) / U.S. Cyber Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) have also been similarly affected. Let’s begin with Fort Meade. A Senate-confirmed commander was in place at NSA and U.S. Cyber Command at the beginning of the second Trump term, only to be abruptly removed in April 2025. Nearly a year later, the Senate confirmed Gen. Joshua Rudd, a distinguished Army officer whose public record was stronger in special operations and Indo-Pacific command than in intelligence or cyber. Both organizations, critical to U.S. cyber defense and signals intelligence operations, were in a state of avoidable churn for nearly a year, disrupting continuity in senior leadership. For more, I wrote about the issues surrounding NSA and Cyber Command leadership in an early January 2026 ToL post you can read here.
At DIA, the Senate-confirmed career military intelligence officer (and NIU alumnus) who led the organization was removed from his position in mid-2025 after a preliminary DIA assessment reportedly contradicted the administration’s public claims about the effects of military strikes on Iran. DIA, which exists to provide all-source defense intelligence, warning, and analytic judgment for senior defense leaders, was leaderless for the better part of a year until Lt. Gen. James Adams III, whose public biography emphasizes aviation command, requirements, and programs-and-resources assignments rather than a career in intelligence, became DIA director in spring 2026. The point of discussing all of this? Repeated, avoidable turbulence at the pinnacle of these military intelligence agencies changes culture, and not in a good way.
A smaller version of this, seen from inside the profession, unfolded in Marine Corps intelligence. In the late 2000s and 2010s, efforts aimed at professionalizing and unifying Marine Corps intelligence following post-Gulf War reforms and lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan. However, with the rise of “informationization” of service intelligence, cyber, and communications in the late 2010s, Marine Corps intelligence was absorbed by a new three-star staff officer at Headquarters Marine Corps. Eventually, a helicopter pilot in that role also took over intelligence functions. This shift made career paths to top intelligence roles seem unavailable, discouraging talented intelligence officers from staying or advancing, and leading many to leave or switch to cyber or information operations. This process started nearly a decade ago; Marine Corps intelligence has not yet recovered.
Presidents may ignore intelligence. They are not entitled to an intelligence community designed to flatter them.
The Next DNI
So that brings us back to the opportunity: the next DNI. Here are a few questions any viable candidate for the role should be able to answer at or before confirmation: How will you protect analytic dissent within your organization and other IC agencies? What happens when intelligence produced by your organization and other IC agencies contradicts political preferences? How will the DNI rebuild trust inside its workforce and with allies and partners? And what is your plan for preserving professional education and career pathways for IC personnel?
Whoever the next permanent DNI is, they will inherit more than an office space at Liberty Crossing and a sprawling Intelligence Community to oversee. They’ll also be inheriting a test. The test is that intelligence can either be managed like any other political staff function, or it can be led as a profession whose first duty is disciplined truth-telling. It is the decision-makers’ prerogative to ignore intelligence. But they are not entitled to an intelligence community designed to flatter them. The announcement of acting DNI Pulte on June 2 unfortunately points in that direction. Citizens should not allow their IC to function in that way.
I can't imagine still working for the IC.