ODNI Cut to About Half Its Size as Jay Clayton Becomes the Third Intelligence Chief in a Year

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence had about 2,000 staff in January 2025. After five rounds of layoffs and reassignments, it has “little more than half” that, according to officials quoted by Federal News Network in July 2026. Senator Tom Cotton, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, has proposed capping it at 650.

ODNI also has its third leader in a year. Jay Clayton, the former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, was confirmed as director of national intelligence on 28 July by 51 to 47 and sworn in on 3 August. On 4 October the President named him to lead a new federal AI task force as well.

ODNI 2.0

In August 2025 Tulsi Gabbard, then DNI, announced “ODNI 2.0”: a cut of more than 40% of staff, saving over $700 million a year. Two offices that looked ahead at long-term trends, the Strategic Futures Group and an external research council, were closed. The Foreign Malign Influence Center, the counterproliferation centre and the cyber threat intelligence centre were folded into other parts of the office.

Earlier, in May 2025, Gabbard had fired the acting chair of the National Intelligence Council and his deputy, after the council produced an assessment of Venezuela’s links to the Tren de Aragua gang that contradicted the President’s public claims.

Gabbard resigned in May 2026, effective at the end of June. Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, served as acting DNI until Clayton arrived, and ran the fourth and fifth rounds of cuts.

The wider community

The cuts weren’t limited to ODNI. The CIA planned to reduce its workforce by about 1,200 positions over several years, and the NSA and other agencies by thousands, according to AP reporting in 2025. In August 2025 the Defense Secretary fired the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, after a DIA assessment of damage from US strikes on Iran was leaked. The head of the NSA and Cyber Command, Gen. Tim Haugh, had been fired in April.

The budget didn’t shrink

Spending tells a different story. The National Intelligence Program request for fiscal 2027 is $81.9 billion, the same as the year before. The Military Intelligence Program request jumped from $33.6 billion to $50 billion. So the money is flat or rising while ODNI, the office meant to coordinate it, gets smaller.

Congress is writing the rules. The Senate Intelligence Committee approved its fiscal 2027 Intelligence Authorization Act, S. 4615, by 14 to 3 in May. It includes a ban on Chinese-made products in the intelligence agencies, a task force on warning of a Taiwan crisis, and new oversight of AI. The House committee’s bill, H.R. 9624, was marked up in July. Neither has passed its chamber.

Why it matters

ODNI was created in 2004 after the 9/11 Commission found that the agencies hadn’t shared what they knew. Its job is integration: setting priorities across 18 agencies, building the budget and producing joint assessments. Critics always said it had grown too large and added a layer of bureaucracy. Supporters say a small ODNI leaves the big agencies, CIA and NSA, to set their own direction again.

Clayton’s challenge is to show that what’s left can still do the job, as Section 702 runs on borrowed time, covered in our FISA post, and the midterms test the government’s capacity to warn about foreign influence with the influence centre folded away.