Let the C.I.A. Do What It Is Supposed to Do

Amy Zegart is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and co-director of Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. She is the author of "Spying Blind: The C.I.A., the F.B.I., and the Origins of 9/11."

Updated December 22, 2014, 9:39 AM

From its inception in 1947, the C.I.A. was designed with one overriding mission: preventing strategic surprise. Its controversial interrogation program is just the latest symptom of a larger disease, the tyranny of the current. Since 9/11, rather than assessing the threat landscape of the future, the C.I.A. has been mired in the terrorist threat of the here and now. Time and energy spent on targeted killings, black sites and interrogations with water boards and rectal hydration was time and energy that could have been spent better assessing and anticipating emerging challenges like the Arab Spring, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions, or ISIS’s gathering strength. White House officials and warfighters naturally worry most about today. The C.I.A.’s job is to also worry about tomorrow.

The C.I.A. needs to fight harder to understand the future and prevent strategic surprise, and policymakers need to let it.

America needs a Central Intelligence Agency that fulfills its founding mission. This task is more challenging than ever. During the Cold War, the C.I.A. could focus on understanding one principal adversary that paraded its nuclear missiles through Red Square and operated at the speed of bureaucracy. Now policymakers feel intense pressure to respond to the 24-hour news cycle, and they expect intelligence to help them.

Meanwhile the United States confronts an unprecedented array of threats: rising states, failing states, weak states, rogue states and nonstate actors ranging from ISIS to Anonymous. Increasingly, these adversaries are moving at the speed of cyber and finding asymmetric ways to counter American military dominance. Firepower isn’t what it used to be.

National security in a post-9/11 world hinges more on what we can learn than what we can destroy -- on understanding adversaries’ intentions, capabilities, preferences, fears and weaknesses faster and better than they can understand ours. The C.I.A. needs to fight harder to understand the future and prevent strategic surprise, and policymakers need to let it.