While there are gaps in the United States between law enforcement and emergency management on intelligence and information sharing, those gaps also extend to other members of the intelligence community (IC). This includes U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) groupings and non-DoD military groups such as the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG)—especially as they relate to the DoD’s support to civilian authorities.
Past headlines have shown the adverse impacts from the disconnects on intelligence sharing between solo—and siloed—law enforcement entities and other groups, including federal law enforcement entities. Per U.S. Presidential Policy Directive (PPD)-8, intelligence and investigation roles at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)/Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are limited to law enforcement-driven interdiction and investigation and do not flow across all five U.S. national mission areas in all threats/hazards. Because of this, those roles are only defined in the prevention and protection mission areas in most incidents.
This article focuses on the domestic emergency management adverse impacts of the silos for intelligence curation and distribution within the United States at the federal level. It covers the various federalized DoD military groupings to include the USCG and the National Guard units and other members of our national IC like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and DHS.
On an all-hazard/all-threat basis, the tactical gaps between our nation’s collective IC and the local emergency management professionals and practitioners can limit the missions for successful emergency management and may even cause harm or death to U.S. persons. Such threats and hazards can include, but are not limited to, those that generate domestic incidents where the traditional tradecraft of the IC may come into play, such as acts of terrorism or materialized, onshore national security concerns.
It is also worth noting that these same IC groups have access to intelligence generated or adversely impacted by other threats and hazards like natural ones. This also includes cascading adverse impacts like the Key Bridge collapse in 2024 or complex aspects of human-made accidents like the massive train derailment in East Palestine, OH, in 2023.
In many countries, including the United States, the thought of intelligence sharing external to homeland security and law enforcement may be a new concept. It is quite unusual for there to be curation (collection, analysis, and distribution) of actionable intelligence beyond the traditional silos of the IC. In other countries (e.g., New Zealand), that curation of actionable EMINT is already integrated into their overall emergency management doctrine, policies, practices, and procedures, regardless of the type of threat or hazard. And such an emergency management viewpoint is much broader than the vantage point of homeland security and law enforcement by themselves.
This article focuses on the domestic emergency management adverse impacts of the silos for intelligence curation and distribution within the United States at the federal level. It covers the various federalized DoD military groupings to include the USCG and the National Guard units and other members of our national IC like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and DHS. The full article can be found at the Homeland Defense & Security Information Analysis Center’s HDIAC Journal.
