The Shallow State: Trump 2.0 is putting America’s critical intelligence liaison relationships in jeopardy

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The craft of intelligence involves the careful management of risk in the pursuit of rewards — be they geostrategic, military or diplomatic. One of the primary ways states seek the upper hand against adversaries is through the sharing of secret intelligence, or “liaison”.

This clandestine cooperation is aided by common foreign policy goals, military alliances, and, ideally, trust and shared values. The practice of sharing secrets is as old as intelligence itself and is a standard element of international relations, even if the secrets shared are sometimes extraordinary. To illustrate, if geopolitics were an ocean, the surface waves would be the sometimes-stormy dynamics of international relations, while intelligence liaison continues apace below the surface — relatively undisturbed by the political storms above. Still, occasionally, political developments are so dramatic that their torrential currents penetrate the murky depths of intelligence liaison.

Recent revelations about senior Trump administration officials using the Signal messaging app to coordinate sensitive military actions, including discussions involving strike planning in Yemen, have only deepened long-standing allied concerns about sharing intelligence with their American interlocutors. From the perspective of Washington’s intelligence liaison partners, the use of a third-party platform for operational discussions fits an all-too-familiar pattern of carelessness with sensitive information.

Even before Signalgate, there was much apprehension that American allies and partners would become more cautious in sharing intelligence during a second Trump administration out of concern that sensitive details might leak to Russia or other hostile states through willful sharing — whether via the administration’s attempts to curry favor, due to the improper handling of classified material (such as the Signal chat), or by way of indiscreet commentary and social media posts.

Crisis of trust

Prior to President Trump’s second term, the U.S. was already battling a reputational decline with respect to controlling its secrets. In 2023, a U.S. Airman placed highly classified intelligence on a Discord server. This came after a string of other high profile insider threats, such as the bombshell cases of U.S. Army Private Chelsea Manning, NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and CIA officer Joshua Schulte, that had already called the U.S. intelligence community’s ability to keep secrets into question. However, in these cases the leakers were rightly prosecuted, not swept under the rug as in the Signal chat episode. Such precedents — across administrations — alarm Washington’s partners, but the recent lack of accountability for leaks leaves them even more skeptical about what the future holds.

The concerns harbored by American intelligence partners are based on a pattern of events from Trump’s first term. In May 2017, it was widely reported that Trump shared sensitive liaison intelligence, reportedly provided by Israel, during an Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Leaving aside the fact that the recipients were Russians, this disclosure was a breach of intelligence liaison protocol in and of itself. Intelligence given by one country must not be shared with a third country (even an ally) without explicit permission. Shortly after the incident, CNN reported that CIA had decided to pull a clandestine source out of Russia due to concerns over leaks.

Later that year, the British government provided the U.S. with sensitive details about the deadly bombing at Manchester Arena’s Ariana Grande concert. However, someone in the administration leaked that information to the press, thus jeopardizing intelligence liaison — the beating heart of Washington’s broader ‘special’ relationship — with London. The disclosure prompted strong backlash from then–Prime Minister Theresa May, who reportedly confronted Trump about the breach at a NATO summit.

Missteps involving the malicious or inadvertent release of national defense information erode trust, which is the foundation of intelligence liaison, and jeopardizes ongoing intelligence sharing not only with the original liaison partner but with others who may come to view American officials as cavalier or casual with their secrets.

Leaks therefore undermine Washington’s reputation for protecting intelligence shared in liaison channels. Allies may reason that ‘if Washington is sharing this with us, then who else are they sharing our intelligence with?’ It is intelligence malpractice to endanger one’s sources and methods by sharing intelligence with adversaries, trusting secrets to indiscreet staffers, or storing information in unsecure locations — such as a Mar-a-Lago bathroom or former President Joe Biden’s garage.

A troubled partner

The last thing any intelligence service would desire is a reputation for carelessness, as it would not be easily repaired. Intelligence services do not wish to be known among the community of intelligence services as the ones who reveal one another’s secrets. As Bob Woodward quoted one CIA spokesman as saying, liaison secrecy “has the sanctity of the Bible.” Intelligence services aspire to be known as trustworthy with the secrets of others — this invites further intelligence sharing as a reputation for security and discretion develops. A reputation for secrecy is also the sine qua non of human source recruitment because an image of indiscretion would also give pause to potential sources.

Secret intelligence cooperation may sound like a contradiction in terms. Sir Stephen Lander, former Director General of the British Security Service (MI5), wrote that intelligence cooperation could seem like “something of an oxymoron” given the inherent tension between secrecy and collaboration. Indeed, intelligence agencies are hermetical bureaucracies by nature. They do not wish to collaborate unless there are tangible benefits that outweigh the operational or political risks involved.

If liaison is the unlikely platypus of international diplomacy and secret intelligence, it is well adapted to geopolitics: “It’s how things actually get done”, in the words of one intelligence veteran.

But recent dramatic American policy shifts have alarmed allies and undermined confidence in America as a reliable partner. This is nowhere more visible than in America’s “pause” on intelligence sharing with Ukraine, blinding a vulnerable partner during an existential war and causing America’s allies to rethink their most basic assumptions about American dependability.

Even traditionally stalwart NATO allies such as Canada and Denmark have come to view Washington as an unreliable partner at best and, at worst, a threat. It is likely that fraught areas of geopolitics (such as America’s newfound fascination with acquiring Greenland, consistent talk of Canada as the “51st state,” or trade wars) could bleed into heretofore routine and productive intelligence liaison relationships. If intelligence exchange were to be seen as another arrow in Trump’s transactional quiver, partners could become suspicious that intelligence was withheld either as leverage or as punishment for an unrelated issue, such as tariff or defense spending levels. While liaison is never divorced from foreign policy or the national interest, the traditional degree of separation insulates intelligence cooperation from diplomatic spats and provides an irreplaceable channel for candid communication in addition to the sharing of secrets.

These are not theoretical risks. Allies, including even Five Eyes alliance members, increasingly view the U.S. as capricious. In response, they have already begun taking action to insulate themselves from an American intelligence reduction or cut-off.

For instance, after one administration official allegedly suggested, per the Financial Times, that Canada be expelled from the Sigint alliance, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE, Canada’s NSA equivalent) took measures to reduce its dependence on U.S. intelligence. This reorientation away from the U.S. hurts Canada, but it impairs Washington’s intelligence coverage as well.

Invisible alliance

In conceptual terms, liaison is not like a military treaty alliance. Instead, it is a complicated patchwork of formal and informal agreements — the formal ones usually covering signals intelligence (e.g., the 1946 UKUSA treaty that binds the “Five Eyes” of the U.S., Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) whereas less formal or even ad hoc cooperation is more common on the human intelligence side. In practice, intelligence cooperation can take many forms, from sharing “raw” (unanalyzed) intelligence reporting to “finished” analytical assessments. It can also mean sharing tradecraft best practices, running joint operations, and even embedding officers within the headquarters of close partners to facilitate cooperation and exchange.

For those states that can find a way to develop trusted liaison relationships, the sum is greater than the constituent parts and permits increased global coverage of mutual targets of concern. Liaison cooperation has economic value as well, such as sharing the cost of maintaining expensive satellites and dividing up the enormous task of processing and translating voluminous signals intelligence. Liaison partners also benefit from diverse geography, which enables increased collection opportunities from friendly territory.

In addition to augmented intelligence collection and shared analysis, there are consultative benefits in discussing thorny problems of statecraft with trusted friends. In 1970, British Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas Home informed Prime Minister Edward Heath as to why the Americans continued to provide their British allies with copious intelligence:

“The main reason why the Americans make so much information available to is so that they may have a meaningful exchange of views on matters of common interest from a basis of common intelligence.”

Having a trusted partner to provide meaningful policy dialogue required first exchanging intelligence on key developments. However, like any human intelligence source, occasionally liaison partners share intelligence to influence as well as inform. Partners may use clandestine channels to persuade American policymakers to see a particular issue in the way that they do — perhaps in an effort to solicit American support on a diplomatic initiative, to influence a decision about security assistance, to justify weapons sales, or to reach any other goal that requires cooperation.

At times even the closest allies have sharp disagreements that can impact intelligence sharing. During Trump’s first term the U.S. threatened to curtail intelligence sharing with the UK after Westminster awarded 5G telecommunications contracts to the Chinese firm Huawei. There ensued a legitimate but heated disagreement about the wisdom of permitting a Chinese company to have a hand in Britain’s critical infrastructure — along which U.S. intelligence could foreseeably flow.

Despite the row, both sides were disagreeing from a place of information security risk management and differing assessments of Chinese technical capabilities, not politics or punishment. As one former Director of Britain’s GCHQ told me, signals intelligence liaison involves “experts talking to experts about highly technical matters,” not politicians bargaining for a better rate of exchange.

Loyalists-turned-wreckers

Despite their various concerns, foreign partners are inclined to share secrets with the U.S. because it is a wise investment in their own national security, and the U.S. often returns more and better intelligence than it receives. It is true that the U.S. outproduces its liaison partners in volume of intelligence and partners do not wish to jeopardize this flow, but, despite its resources, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) cannot replace what its allies provide.

Allies like the British, ‘Five Eyes’ signals intelligence alliance, and even some close partners outside of the Five Eyes construct have exquisite intelligence to share. They want to continue liaison with Washington because alliances are stronger when aligned on intelligence matters, and the alternatives are far worse. As one top Western intelligence officer told me, “We simply must find a way forward with the Americans. There is no other choice.”

On what basis might foreign intelligence services proceed to work with the U.S. despite their anxieties? When balancing the benefits of intelligence liaison with security and judgment concerns during the second Trump term, partners will consider several factors in deciding whether and how to share intelligence with Washington, including their threat perceptions of the geopolitical environment, the specific intelligence topic or target country, the practical particulars of the intelligence collection type, and — in their reading of Trump’s transactional nature — placing an emphasis on showing their “value” to Washington. They will also factor in their confidence in their interlocutors atop the IC. Trump’s picks of inexperienced loyalists for senior intelligence and national security roles cannot help but be noticed by the wary heads of foreign services.

Initially, U.S. partners still held out hope that Trump’s picks for senior positions might grow into the gravity of their responsibilities, but this was dashed after incidents such as the Signal chat’s flippant use of emojis in discussing life and death military operations, DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s retweeting of a post by a former contributor to RT (formerly Russia Today) with Kremlin-aligned perspectives, or the appointment of a right-wing podcaster as deputy FBI Director even after Trump’s pick to head the bureau promised to appoint a career Special Agent in the number two role. Allied confidence eroded further in late March when Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffers visited CIA headquarters, sending shivers down the spines of American and allied intelligence officers.

Morale sank even lower in early April due to the firing of at least 6 experienced National Security Council staffers, seemingly at the behest of a conspiracy theorist. The hope that nonpartisan senior military officers leading intelligence agencies would be somewhat insulated from the purges was shattered when the National Security Agency director and deputy director were abruptly fired in early April without explanation. In the private words of one senior Western intelligence official, “what the hell is going on?”

A cost for everyone

No intelligence service shares everything it knows, not even with its closest allies. There are good operational security and source-protection reasons to withhold intelligence. Thus, every intelligence and security service must “sanitize” their liaison reporting to varying degrees depending on their confidence in the discretion of the recipient.

This process involves removing source-revealing details or obfuscating the collection method in order to protect the long-term viability of that collection stream. While sanitized intelligence does protect the source of the information, the more sanitized it is the less useful it is — not least because it’s harder to vet and almost therefore impossible to assign a high confidence factor. However, if close partners started overly sanitizing their products before passing them to the U.S., the American agencies might be ordered to reciprocate in kind. That could spark an unfortunate downward spiral of intelligence withholding, but it would depend on the topic.

Every intelligence professional I spoke to agreed that cooperation on topics like counterterrorism, counterproliferation, and counternarcotics would likely muddle along, but intelligence relating to Russia may be reduced because of Trump’s apparent affinity for Putin, the Trump administration’s consistent obeisance to Russian viewpoints — which are often at odds with the assessments of U.S. and allied intelligence — and sympathy for Russian perspectives over and above Ukraine’s.

A degradation of intelligence sharing regarding Russia could leave Washington without early warning of Russian military provocations, blind to Moscow’s actions in cyberspace, or more vulnerable to sabotage. Washington’s allies are aware that the Trump administration is not receptive to certain types of warning, such as disinformation campaigns targeting the U.S., so there would be no appetite to pass this type of information along.

If partners decided to reduce intelligence sharing, it would be done unevenly across intelligence collection disciplines (or ‘INT’). For instance, signals intelligence is the bedrock of intelligence liaison. The technical collection capabilities and hardware infrastructure across the Five Eyes intelligence grouping is intertwined like hedgerows. Entirely disentangling these systems would be difficult.

One retired British general officer recalled there being a switch at a British SIGINT base under his command and no one there knew what it did or where the instruction manual was. They decided to turn it off, and 20 minutes later they received an urgent call from the National Security Agency asking if there had been a malfunction in their system. In contrast, human intelligence agencies — even those of the Five Eyes countries — could dramatically reduce liaison activity by avoiding sharing the sensitive details of ongoing operations or, on the analytical side, sharing watered down intelligence assessments if they were so inclined.

Ultimately, intelligence liaison isn’t charity. As one former senior U.S. intelligence official told me, “Liaison isn’t a ‘nice to have’; it’s essential” for U.S. security. It’s in the U.S. and its partners national interest to exchange intelligence because it underpins cooperative strategy, statecraft, and military operations in a dangerous world, but recent developments in appeasing Russia, punishing Ukraine, and careless handling of sensitive information challenge the perception of the United States as a secure and reliable intelligence custodian. As the aphorism goes, trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets. It will take years for U.S. intelligence to recover. It should start today.