# Trump’s New Spy Chief Pulte Starts Firing Hundreds, Testing U.S. Intelligence Resilience

*Tuesday, June 23, 2026 at 6:10 AM UTC — Hamer Intelligence Services Desk*

**Published**: 2026-06-23T06:10:36.323Z (3h ago)
**Category**: intelligence | **Region**: Global
**Importance**: 9/10
**Sources**: OSINT
**Permalink**: https://hamerintel.com/data/articles/8449.md
**Source**: https://hamerintel.com/summaries

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**Deck**: Acting U.S. Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte has begun a sweeping downsizing of the ODNI, with reports suggesting hundreds of staff could be cut under orders from President Trump. The shake-up raises questions over how far the White House is willing to weaken the coordinating hub of America’s spy community. Readers will learn what is changing inside ODNI, who could lose influence, and how this might shape U.S. intelligence in a crisis.

The nerve center that stitches together America’s 18 intelligence agencies is being cut down in size by political design. Bill Pulte, President Donald Trump’s newly appointed acting director of national intelligence, has begun firing staff at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) as part of a major downsizing drive ordered from the White House.

Pulte, who took over last week, has been tasked by Trump with reducing the agency’s headcount and returning personnel to their original home agencies. Early reporting from inside the community suggests that hundreds of ODNI employees could ultimately be affected, with around 400 positions cited as potentially on the chopping block. Neither the exact timetable nor the final scope of the cuts has been formally detailed, but the direction of travel is unmistakable: a slimmer, less centralized intelligence coordinator.

For the people inside ODNI, the shift is immediate and personal. Analysts, liaisons and support staff who have spent years building cross-agency mechanisms—from terrorism watchlisting to election interference task forces—now face the prospect of reassignment, job loss or a rapid rewrite of their portfolios. Many were seconded from CIA, NSA, FBI and the Pentagon precisely because ODNI was designed after the 9/11 attacks to overcome institutional stovepipes.

Operationally, the risk is that a rapid drawdown at ODNI could fray the very connective tissue that allows the United States to move from raw signals and human reporting to joint assessments for the president and allies. ODNI’s role includes integrating inputs on Russia and China, coordinating cyber and counterintelligence responses, and managing the President’s Daily Brief. Shrinking that hub without clearly strengthening equivalent functions elsewhere raises the prospect of intelligence gaps during fast-moving crises.

Trump and his allies have long criticized what they describe as a bloated and politicized intelligence bureaucracy, arguing that agencies should focus more on collection and less on coordination layers in Washington. Returning staff to their “home” services may indeed boost capacity in some mission areas. But it also risks reinforcing the pre-2001 pattern where separate agencies guarded their data and assessments, making it harder to detect threats that cross domains, such as foreign electoral interference or combined cyber-kinetic attacks.

The timing matters. The U.S. is juggling multiple, overlapping security challenges: confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, competition with China in the Indo-Pacific and technology domains, volatile dynamics in the Middle East, and a fast-evolving cyber threat landscape. In such an environment, allies have come to rely not only on U.S. capabilities but also on the speed and coherence of its shared assessments. Any visible weakening of ODNI’s coordinating power could unsettle partners who depend on U.S.-led intelligence fusion.

Domestically, the downsizing is likely to harden political divides over the role of the intelligence community. Supporters of the move may see it as overdue discipline for a sprawling bureaucracy; critics will argue that cutting hundreds of staff from the integrator of U.S. intelligence amounts to self-imposed vulnerability. The deeper question emerging from Pulte’s early steps is whether the United States is moving back toward a looser, more fragmented intelligence architecture at the very moment its adversaries are pursuing integrated, state-directed strategies.

One line captures the stakes: in a world of linked crises, making America’s intelligence system more siloed could save money in Washington while costing clarity when it matters most.

The next signals to watch will be which specific ODNI offices face the heaviest cuts, how quickly home agencies can absorb returning staff, and whether congressional oversight committees move to slow or reshape the downsizing. Any sign of delayed threat assessments, conflicting public testimony from different agencies, or visible friction with allies on intelligence sharing will be early tests of how far this restructuring has weakened—or simply redistributed—the U.S. intelligence edge.