Automatic budget cuts are threatening to cause “insidious” damage to US intelligence services and leave the country more vulnerable to cyberattacks and terrorism, the country’s leading intelligence official warned yesterday.
James Clapper, director of national intelligence, said that the US risked the same sort of “downward spiral” in intelligence capabilities that it witnessed before the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington .
In testimony for the Senate intelligence committee, Mr Clapper indicated that cyberattacks were now the most pressing threat to US security, ahead of Islamist terrorism, although the likelihood of a major attack remained “remote”.