As Russia reasserts itself, U.S. intelligence agencies focus anew on the Kremlin

[Blue_Tires]

U.S. intelligence agencies are expanding spying operations against Russia on a greater scale than at any time since the end of the Cold War, U.S. officials said.

The mobilization involves clandestine CIA operatives, National Security Agency cyberespionage capabilities, satellite systems and other intelligence assets, officials said, describing a shift in resources across spy services that had previously diverted attention from Russia to focus on terrorist threats and U.S. war zones.

U.S. officials said the moves are part of an effort to rebuild U.S. intelligence capabilities that had continued to atrophy even as Russia sought to reassert itself as a global power. Over the past two years, officials said, the United States was caught flat-footed by Moscow’s aggression, including its annexation of Crimea, its intervention in the war in Syria and its suspected role in hacking operations against the United States and Europe.

U.S. spy agencies “are playing catch-up big time” with Russia, a senior U.S. intelligence official said. Terrorism remains the top concern for American intelligence services, the official said, but recent directives from the White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) have moved Russia up the list of intelligence priorities for the first time since the Soviet Union’s collapse.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/as-russia-reasserts-itself-us-intelligence-agencies-focus-anew-on-the-kremlin/2016/09/14/cc212c62-78f0-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html


About time someone started waking up...

[Igel]

1. In the '90s there was a big roll back for Russian experts.

NSA, CIA, they all froze hiring and let retirement attrit the ranks as they focused on other things or simply shifted the money away from that sort of money to other in-agency priorities. It was part of the "peace dividend."

Bush II didn't do anything to reverse the Clinton roll-back. And Obama resisted it because if everybody just talked nicely and did what he said, it would be hunky-dory. Even during the crisis in Ukraine, the US response was "let's just be nice" and assumed that somehow Russia would just be nice after it did nasty thing after nasty thing. Part is ideological, part political (in this case, "ideological" meaning that the US shouldn't be the world's policeman and not wanting to get involved abroad, "political" in that it would play badly at home, esp. since the rhetoric was that every "ukrop" is a fascist Nazi. Even the Jewish ones).