CrossGov.com on America's Security State Under Strain: A Half-Size ODNI, an NSC Under 50 Staff and Allies Rationing Intelligence
Washington’s national security machinery is being asked to do more than at any point in a decade, with an active war in the Gulf, a Russia policy pulling in two directions and a Taiwan question that won’t sit still. It’s being asked to do it with fewer people, fewer allies sharing in full, and less money from Congress. CrossGov.com, a site that covers US government with a federal focus, has been documenting that gap piece by piece. Put the pieces together and a clear picture comes out.
The pressure: more commitments, thinner staff
Start with headcount, because everything else runs through it. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has been cut to about half its size, and Jay Clayton is the third intelligence chief in a year. At the White House, Marco Rubio is now national security adviser on a permanent basis while the NSC runs with fewer than 50 policy staff. For a body meant to coordinate the whole government on war and diplomacy, that’s a skeleton crew.
Foreign aid went through a bigger reset. After USAID, GAO counts 6,780 awards ended, and the State Department has taken over $52 billion in assistance.
What decides the outcome: who still trusts Washington
Capacity can be rebuilt. Trust is slower. CrossGov’s piece on Five Eyes under strain describes allies now sharing intelligence with the US case by case, instead of by default. That’s a quiet change with long consequences, because the alliance’s value was always its automatic quality.
Allies are also hedging with their wallets. Europe is writing “Buy European” into its defence spending, and the US is threatening to pull Buy American waivers in response. At NATO’s Ankara summit, the communique was kept short for Washington’s sake, while the Europeans put €70 billion behind Ukraine and $40 billion into counter-drone work.
Ukraine itself shows the new model. There’s been no new US aid since 2024. American weapons still arrive, but Europe pays for them through NATO’s PURL sales mechanism. Washington has moved from donor to vendor.
What it means: policy by deal, and deals that point both ways
With a thin staff and wary allies, policy starts to look transactional. Russia is the clearest case. US sanctions are moving in both directions, with the EU’s 22nd package and Britain’s 600 listed tankers doing most of the squeezing. The Graham Russia Sanctions Act takes effect on October 19, in the same news cycle as a diesel deal with Putin. Both are US policy at once.
Arms sales follow the same logic. Saudi Arabia got its F-35 approval, while Taiwan’s $14 billion air defence package was frozen after the Xi summit. And at the Pentagon, the acquisition overhaul runs into GAO’s numbers: 12-year weapons timelines, a cancelled frigate and a Columbia-class submarine running late.
So the system is short of people and short of trust, and the deals it makes are pulling in different directions. Those three things explain most of this year’s security headlines better than any single decision does.
Where to go from here
None of these threads is finished. The sanctions act, the Taiwan package and the next NDAA all have dates attached, and CrossGov tracks them in its archive with the watchdog figures alongside.
The headlines will keep coming. The capacity behind them is the story.