Clapper and the Sprawling Intelligence Bureaucracy

Yesterday’s confirmation hearing for Lt. Gen. James Clapper, who is poised to take over as the new director of National Intelligence, highlighted a fundamental challenge facing America’s intelligence community (IC). How much, and in what ways, should the sprawling intelligence bureaucracy be streamlined or, conversely, remain decentralized with built-in redundancies?

This question affects at least three dimensions of intelligence work: data storage and sharing, analysis, and intelligence collection.