The 5 Eyes intelligence partnership between Australia, the US, Canada, New Zealand and the UK is uniquely deep.

It has operated for decades, including as governments of various political hues and persuasions ruled in each of the five nations. The power of the pooled technical, geographic and human resources of the combined grouping has given its members unique ‘insight advantages’ when engaging with the wider world.

It’s success has been built on deep trust – both between the five members and within each of the member nations’ governments.

Each nation runs its own intelligence agencies, clears it people its own way, and sets its own priorities for its spy agencies. Of course, priorities overlap – China as a rising and aggressive technological and military power, conducting far reaching cyber and human intelligence operations in each of the 5 Eyes nations would be an obvious example.

Putin’s Russia would have been another obvious example of shared priorities, but that will have shifted significantly with the arrival of the Trump Administration and Mr Trump’s key appointees in the Pentagon and across the US intelligence community, leavened heavily by the US President’s own personal views and assessments of Russia and Mr Putin.

Since taking office, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has suspended cyber operations against Russia, while Trump has spoken at length about his trust in Putin, even retailing Putin’s terms for ending the war in Ukraine.  It would be hard to find anyone in an intelligence agency on the planet outside Russia – including those working for Beijing – who would assess Mr Putin as trustworthy.

And any cyber agency that thought suspending operations against Russia would buy them any credit, be reciprocated by Putin, or not simply cede the operational advantage to Russian cyber actors would be a sensible target for disestablishment on the basis of incompetence.

I’m outside government in a think tank without access to any classified information, but I find it hard to imagine Australian, Canadian, New Zealand or UK agencies following the US lead on this new approach to Russia. I also hope that their political masters recognise that all the historical and empirical evidence around Russia, Mr Putin and his intelligence agencies shows a need not just for vigilance but for concerted action. 

Based on her public statements, it seems very likely that the new US intelligence supremo – Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard – does not share this view, but instead holds views more closely aligned with the Russian government’s. The DNI is responsible for preparing the President’s daily intelligence brief.

That surfaces a foundational problem: how can the 5 Eyes work on a key international security issue like Russia with such obviously misaligned – conflicting – directions on it coming out of Washington compared to the almost certain stance of the other 4 capitals?  Political perspectives differ all the time as do priorities, but without alignment on core issues and directions, the partnership would be disabled.

Who will be comfortable sharing material gained from fragile technical means or human agents who might be put at risk if the US decides deeper cooperation with Russia requires disclosures or trade goods from the intel world?

Another misalignment is even more troubling. One of the 5 Eyes governments – the US – has an open intention to take over another – Canada – perhaps even by force. Not a great basis for trust and cooperation on the most sensitive of intelligence issues.

And unfortunately, the disconnect on Russia and the Trump Administration’s aggression towards Canada are the smaller challenges to the viability of the 5 Eyes in this time of Trump.  The larger problem is that the new US Administration, from the President down through his national security team, doesn’t trust its own intelligence agencies or an unknown number of the people in them. 

Much of this stems from Mr Trump’s feelings of persecution by the former Biden Administration, with a particular focus on the FBI but also animosity towards US intelligence agencies that assessed Russia was interfering in US elections.  But it also comes from a deeper, older conviction that powered the Trump campaign back into office in the 2024 election.  That is the MAGA project’s identification of ‘enemies within’ America who are working against the people and seeking control for themselves. 

Those ‘enemies’ include people in the judiciary, the Justice Department, the FBI, the media, intelligence agencies and other arms of the US government.  And the new Trump team’s mission is to root them out and remake government.

This belief in a ‘Deep State’ has been championed by the new FBI chief, Kish Patel, who in his book Government Gangsters describes it as ‘a cabal of unelected tyrants who think they should determine who the American people can and cannot elect as president, who think they get to decide what the president can and cannot do, and who believe they have the right to choose what the American people can and cannot know’.

Patel’s rhetoric seem to channel Mr Trump’s thinking. Throughout his campaign Trump vowed: “We will demolish the deep state”. Since taking office he has moved quickly, issuing an executive order allowing his administration to fire any executive branch officer at will. Agency heads like CIA Director John Ratcliffe and FBI Chief Patel are acting on it with sweeping workforce cuts and leadership dismissals – also seen at the Pentagon with the firing of the top American military commander and a number of other senior military leaders.

For intelligence agency people, the consequences are stark. Those who provide objective analysis which happens to not align with rosy assessments about Russia, for example, or who challenge the notion that ‘enemies within’ are actively sabotaging the US – now risk their careers and personal finances by doing so.  It is less likely that US intelligence agencies will provide uncomfortable truths to their new chiefs and the president in the White House. 

Yet that is exactly the function that intelligence agencies exist to do.  Democratic governments – and even smart autocrats – know that keeping their intelligence apparatus at arms-length from their policy making folk, and allowing it to bring forward disturbing and uncomfortable news and insights, is essential. 

Without this, leaders risk the Saddam Hussein problem – their top officials and security chiefs assure them everything is fine – like the strength of the Iraqi military on the eve of war, or perhaps even the state of illusory chemical weapons programs – when they are just making stuff up to please the boss or keep their jobs or their lives. 

Back in Iraq war days, it was the then George W. Bush Administration trying to work around the analysis coming out of its intelligence agencies that led to cherry picking of data to support the false weapons of mass destruction hypothesis.  That, at least, came about from setting up a separate outfits outside the intel world to pick the data to be used, not the wholesale distorting of agencies we’re starting to see now.

Of course, there have been other times when there have been either political differences between the five nations or troubles between a member’s government and its intelligence community – the circumstances that led to the Church Committee inquiry into the intelligence world in 1975 in America is one example, as are the scandals here in Australia that led to the two Hope Royal Commissions. The current directions and set of changes in the US look like overwhelming those.

How can UK, Canadian, New Zealand or Australian intelligence personnel – and the governments they serve – now work closely with people within the US intelligence community when they have reasonable grounds for believing that some of these very people are not trusted by their own agencies’ leadership or the US President himself?

How can we operate joint facilities like the Pine Gap facility here in Australia without the basis of trust and cooperation it requires?

While the US is working at speed to remodel how the world economy works through tariffs and shaking the foundations of transatlantic security in the form of NATO, another far reaching change looks like its underway in the closed world of intelligence cooperation. 

Having one of the five eyes looking the other way and stabbing its own intelligence eyeballs weakens not just the US – but also weakens Canada, New Zealand, the UK and Australia.

This article was first published in The Capital Brief.