Tulsi Gabbard is doing what no one in Washington has had the courage to do in decades: cut the intelligence bureaucracy down to size. In a sweeping overhaul announced Wednesday, the Director of National Intelligence revealed she is slashing the ODNI workforce by nearly half, a move projected to save taxpayers over $700 million annually.
The message couldn’t be clearer: the post-9/11 experiment that created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has grown into a bloated, politicized monster. Instead of delivering timely, apolitical intelligence to presidents and lawmakers, the ODNI morphed into a swamp of leaks, abuse, and weaponized operations aimed at Americans themselves.
Gabbard didn’t mince words. “Over the last 20 years, ODNI has become bloated and inefficient, and the intelligence community is rife with abuse of power, unauthorized leaks of classified intelligence, and politicized weaponization of intelligence,” she said. The mission now? Strip ODNI back to its original purpose: find the truth, and provide objective, unbiased intelligence to the President.
Today I’m launching ODNI 2.0 – the first step toward bringing about transformational change that is based on cutting bloated bureaucracy, rooting out deep state actors, and restoring mission focus.
When implementation is complete, ODNI will be more agile, efficient, and… pic.twitter.com/QlTa2wSr6y
— DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) August 20, 2025
The first head to roll is the Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC) — the same outfit tied to Big Tech censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020. What was marketed as a “foreign threats” unit turned out to be an election interference shop, working hand-in-glove with Twitter, Facebook, and Google to shut down reporting damaging to Joe Biden’s campaign. The ODNI fact sheet lays it out bluntly: FMIC’s activities weren’t based on objective intelligence, but on weaponizing information to undermine civil liberties.
It’s a staggering admission — and it vindicates years of suspicion. The intelligence community wasn’t defending democracy; it was meddling in elections. The so-called “Russian disinformation” label slapped on Hunter Biden’s laptop was part of the same coordinated effort.
By dismantling FMIC, Gabbard isn’t “gutting election security,” as the media will inevitably howl. She’s removing redundancy — because legitimate foreign influence monitoring already exists in the National Intelligence Council and the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. What she’s actually ending is government-run censorship masquerading as counterintelligence.
But Gabbard isn’t stopping there. Just 24 hours before this restructuring, she revoked the security clearances of 37 intelligence officials implicated in the Russia-collusion hoax. Earlier this year, she stripped clearances from the infamous “51 intelligence officers” who falsely branded the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinfo. As she put it: “Being entrusted with a security clearance is a privilege, not a right.”
This is the kind of accountability the intelligence community has evaded for far too long. For years, Americans watched unelected bureaucrats lie, leak, and collude with Democrats to tip the scales of elections. No more.
