As overdose deaths fall, complacency becomes the greatest threat

For people of a certain age, recent reports that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and other intelligence agencies are experiencing deep cuts or even elimination are unsettling.

For those of us born in or around the 1980s, 9/11 was the singular, defining event of our generation. Most of us still remember where we were when the attacks happened and live with the long shadow it cast in the years that followed. 

The creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was one of several post-9/11 reforms, along with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, designed to prevent another catastrophic intelligence failure. While its official mission is to lead intelligence integration across 18 parts of the intelligence community, its deeper purpose is to ensure the U.S. never again fails to identify emerging threats before they are fully formed. 

Years ago, I interviewed for a role in the office’s National Counterterrorism Center, the entity charged with leading the nation’s counterterrorism efforts and widely regarded as a model for information sharing and collaboration across the government. During the interview, one of the panelists asked me what I considered to be the greatest terrorist threat to the U.S. At the time, ISIS was ascendant, and groups such as al Qaeda and Boko Haram remained serious, if diminished, threats, along with domestic extremist movements. That was probably the answer they expected.

Instead, I argued that the clearest danger to the U.S. wasn’t any particular terrorist group, but........

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