Trump’s Civil Service Cuts Are Now Putting Americans in Danger

The hollowing out of the federal workforce could make it much harder to manage the conflict in Iran, as well as future crises.

As the United States continues to pursue war with Iran, the infrastructure that would have helped respond to threats has been hollowed out by the Trump administration’s efforts to dramatically shrink the federal government. The overall loss in institutional knowledge wrought by massive personnel cuts and other efforts to decimate the civil service might not just affect the future of this war, it risks the government’s ability to manage an array of future conflicts.

President Donald Trump has expressed shock at Iran’s targeting of its Gulf state neighbors, saying that “nobody could have predicted” the attacks on countries such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. But that assertion comes as the agencies that oversee diplomacy and conflict operations have seen a significant loss in expertise. This brain drain could have long-lasting consequences beyond just the ability to predict conflict dynamics.

“You need good career, nonpartisan expertise for your policy to work and for your operations to be the most effective, and when you’re gutting that career federal workforce, you are really constraining your ability to get to good outcomes,” said Jeff Greene, who worked in the Biden administration as head of the cybersecurity division at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, and served as the chief for cyber response and policy on the National Security Council.

Over the past year, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and politically appointed agency leaders have worked hard to gut the federal bureaucracy. The Trump administration has made dramatic cuts to CISA, a branch of the........

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