World Geostrategic Insights Interview with Barry Zulauf on the emerging non-traditional threats to the United States security, challenges in coordination of intelligence activities and AI’s impact on intelligence analysis.
Dr. Barry Zulauf is the President Emeritus of the International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE), adjunct Professor Of Applied intelligence at Georgetown, and teaches at other prestigious universities. He retired from the federal government, most recently serving as the US Defense Intelligence Officer for Counternarcotics, Transnational Organized Crime, and Threat Finance, until November 2025. He was also head of the Solutions Division at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), led the creation of the intelligence wing of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) after 9/11, and served as Analytic Ombudsman for the Intelligence Community.
Barry Zulauf agreed to answer the questions ONLY in his capacity as a professor and as President Emeritus of the International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE). The views expressed are his own and do not represent those of any U.S. government agency or organisation.
Q1 – As a long-time intelligence educator, what do you see as the biggest emerging non-traditional threats to the United States?
A1 – I have been an intelligence educator, or teaching in closely related fields, for more than 40 years, starting in the 1980s at the height of the Cold War, through the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the pivot to the Global War on Terrorism after 9/11 int into the early 21st Century, to confronting strategic competition from China, and now to the rise of non-state actors threatening the U.S. Through much of that time, the same model of international relations, built – at least mostly – around nation-states posing a military and at times economic threat was the constant. Slight shifts depending on which nation was the greater threat. The military and intelligence response from the United States and our allies didn’t have to change much. As I tell my students, we are now in a fundamentally different era. The deadliest threats today come from non-traditional sources, not from nations or military forces, or even regular economic patterns. The nexus between long-existing international organized crime, the development of synthetic drugs – in particular synthetic opioids like Fentanyl – are killing tens of thousands of Americans each year. A 9/11 every couple of weeks. While the death and destruction from a nuclear attack, should it ever happen, are far higher, the reality of deaths from international criminal drug trafficking are with us right now. We ought to re-think the way we organize our military, diplomatic, intelligence, and law enforcement efforts to better deal with that problem.
Q2 – Based on your academic research, what is the link between drug trafficking and broader national security issues?
A2 – Speaking from an entirely academic perspective, there was a time that drug trafficking was considered “Just” a law enforcement problem. Drug deaths in the U.S. were fewer than traffic accidents. Trafficking was criminal but not connected to threats from other nations. Considered “handlable” by U.S. border control forces and law enforcement, both in partnership with source nations and domestically. For example, Mexican and Colombian cartels operated from these nations to smuggle drugs into the U.S. The Cartels did not represent a political or military threat. There were issues surrounding differing levels of cooperation for drug law enforcement efforts with source nations – Colombia and Mexico among others. Different concerns, international terrorism – especially after 9/11 attacks – challenges from other nations, especially China and Russia, were considered much more central threats to national security. More appropriately the focus of U.S. intelligence and military capabilities.
The arrival of synthetic opioids, like fentanyl, changed all that. Once below 30,000 deaths per year, hovers around 100,000 – that is a 9/11 every couple of weeks. Somewhere near 70,000 deaths due to synthetic opioids like Fentanyl alone. FAR above other causes of death, including traffic accidents. Number one killer of the 18 – 35 year-old demographic. The scale alone makes it a national security threat.
Unlike cocaine and heroin – which originate from coca plants and opium poppies, primarily in Colombia and Mexico – synthetic opioids begin with precursor chemicals which come primarily from Communist China. China is the world’s number one supplier of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and related substances. There is some debate about whether the precursor chemicals for opioids – many of which also have entirely legitimate uses – are smuggled into the U.S. with the knowledge of or even the complicity of the Chinese authorities. The addition of China, probably the major national security challenger to the U.S, into the realm of drug trafficking also raises drug trafficking to the level of a national security threat to the U.S.
Finally, the cartels themselves are increasingly violent, beyond the ability of Mexican authorities to control them.
Q3 – What are the main challenges in coordinating intelligence activities between defense agencies and law enforcement in the fight against transnational criminal organizations?
A3 – Defense intelligence agencies are optimized to deal with threats as they happen, or in the best case, to anticipate threats. The whole point of intelligence in the national security sphere is to give warning to decision makers in time for them to act to prevent the harm. Decision advantage. Much of that work is necessarily done in secret, not in the public eye. The endgame is often violent, using lethal force.
The whole point of law enforcement intelligence is to identify the perpetrators of crime after the fact, and to gather information openly and bring it into the courtroom. The endgame is arrest, prosecution, and punishment. Almost everything in this environment is done at the unclassified level.
Of course, that was the pre-9/11 way things were. For 25 years, the balance between defense intelligence and law enforcement has been changing. The long battle against Islamist terrorism forced the two to cooperate. The main barriers have been technical – the machines in both worlds didn’t communicate well with each other, classification – it was hard to share classified insights with law enforcement, culture – defense and law enforcement had very different ways of doing business, and mission – defense intelligence was about enabling the best use of military force while law enforcement intelligence was focused on identifying criminals and bringing them to justice.
Much of the process of intelligence is, however, basically the same. Different variations on the intelligence cycle. Both gather information – defense through human and technical collection, law enforcement through investigations, both carried out analysis and provided products and services to decision makers. It was the last step, delivery to decision makers, where the two worlds parted. Law Enforcement intelligence went to support police executives, prosecutors, and the like. Defense intelligence was consumed by warfighters and policy makers.
The similarities are still there, and what divides the two worlds is breaking down in the face of the new, non-traditional threats we are facing now.
Q4 – You have held positions in many different agencies, including Naval Intelligence and the DEA. How have these different experiences shaped your overall view of the mission of the U.S. intelligence community?
A4 – I certainly don’t speak for any of those organizations, since I am retired. I would say that each of the agencies in which I served had their own specific organizational culture, world view, and way of doing things. I’m sure that the other agencies, those in which I did NOT serve, have their own as well. One thing that all agencies, in my experience, have had is a common commitment to the security of the United States, supporting the Constitution, and working within the law. Few, if any, other nations have so much transparency about intelligence activities. Americans can see almost everything – barring technical details, sources and methods, national secrets – that makes us informed citizens and better able to make decisions in the voting booth when we go from time to time to choose our leaders. For the nearly 40 years that I have worked in intelligence I have always been able to consider myself one of the good guys. I think I have made a difference. That gives me a lot of satisfaction over my career.
Q5 – How has the rise of digital currencies and complex global financial networks changed the intelligence community’s approach to monitoring illicit finance?
A5 – Upon reflection, I don’t think I can answer that, now that I am retired and don’t speak for any agency.
Q6 – What is the right balance between human-centric intelligence methods and the growing reliance on big data and artificial intelligence in information collection and analysis?
A6 – I teach intelligence analysis at the graduate level for Georgetown University, and used to teach at the undergraduate level for James Madison University. AI is the flavor of the month now, as big data analytics was before it. To be honest, AI has the potential to change analysis fundamentally in ways no other technological change has. AI – by which most of us really mean Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, can do a lot of things humans can’t do well, or can’t do efficiently. AI can process vast amounts of information, can summarize, can synthesize, can recover and display. All those functions the currently available AI can do faster, and probably better, than humans. The promise is to relieve human analysts from all that labor, AND giving us the possibility to keep up with the vastly increased amount of information currently available. Doing so will free analysts from those chores, yes, but give us more time to do what is essentially human, be creative, provide insight, examine context, and wrestle with elements of truth vs. falsehood. Those aspects of analysis, plus the immeasurable role emotion plays in human affairs, will – in my view – always need to be done by humans. AI might be able to mimic some of that, but it is not specialized to do it.
Dr. Barry Zulauf – President Emeritus of the International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE).