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The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (ARPA) and S&T should focus primarily on challenging technology problems. Avoiding duplication of what is already being done well in the private sector in such areas as practical defense cyber intelligence and artificial intelligence research would help to focus the agencies on the complex shadow tasks at hand while simultaneously freeing limited resources for advancement in other areas.

President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and PIAB Intelligence Oversight Board. The President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB) is charged with providing the President with an independent source of advice on the IC’s effectiveness while offering insights into the IC’s future plans. The Board is meant to have access to all information needed to perform its functions and to have direct access to the President. The Intelligence Oversight Board is a standing committee within the PIAB. These entities should be tasked with giving independent, informed advice and opinion concerning major matters of national security focused on long-term, enduring issues central to advancing and protecting American interests. This should include taking a broader, deeper look at critical trends, developments, and their implications for U.S. national and economic security relying on unclassified and open-source information.

The Importance of Space. With China developing increasingly capable space and counterspace technologies and Russia taking more aggressive action in space, space has emerged as the latest warfighting domain. In response, the DNI created the Office of the Space Executive (OSX) in 2018 as an experiment to promote greater integration of IC space activities without incurring excessive overhead. The DNI mandated greater collaboration across the enterprise without adding personnel, altering authorities, and increasing budgets.

The Space Executive’s design reflects the original design principles of the ODNI. The ODNI was explicitly not designed to be a departmental headquarters with command and control of the 18 agencies’ vast bureaucracies. Rather, it was designed to be small and lightweight with a mission to coordinate and integrate the critical activities of the IC’s 18 agencies without creating new bureaucracy. That goal should remain in force, and calls by outside entities or Congress to add new centers and layers should be rejected.

The Office of the Space Executive has been recognized as an effective governance model and has spawned similar efforts, including the Election Threats Executive, Economic and Threat Finance Executive, and Cyber Executive. With this in mind, the following initiatives should be pursued:

• Expand collaboration with partners. For too many decades, the IC and DOD have acquired and operated satellites independently. To improve their ability to meet the threat posed by China and Russia, the IC and DOD should: