Private Security and Homeland Defense
Questions 2 and 3

Question 2:

The Intelligence Community is comprised of 17 agencies. These agencies work with Federal, State, Local, Tribal and Territorial partners to protect the homeland. Four of these agencies are intelligence elements of the Department of Defense Services – Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force. Please pick ONE of these Department of Defense Services intelligence elements and explain its mission. In what ways does it contribute to the intelligence cycle? Provide examples.

The Department of Defense Services intelligence element that I selected in this particular case is the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The stated mission of DIA is “provide intelligence on foreign militaries to prevent and decisively win wars” (DIA, 2020). Thus, it is important to note, from the onset, that this particular agency largely concerns itself with not only the gathering, but also the production of military intelligence. As DIA further points out, it provides key intelligence (foundational) on foreign militaries as well as the operating environment to acquisition leaders, policy makers, and warfighters. DIA is alive to the fact that today, the role that it plays is of greater relevance than it has ever been before. This, according to the agency, is more so the case given that “the re-emergence of great-power competition challenges U.S. prosperity, security, and the democratic world order we have fought to sustain since World War II” (DIA, 2020). It should be noted that in the past, the U.S. has engaged in various wars and military conflicts. In these engagements, the U.S. has deployed various strategies and tools that have been studied by its competitors. DIA is committed to ensuring that the U.S. stays ahead of the game by seeing to it that competitors do not in any way seek to exploit vulnerabilities in the American way of war or use its approach to warfighting against it. Towards this end, DIA is committed to the establishment of whet it refers to as “asymmetric capabilities” so as to ensure that the capabilities of the U.S. military in the various warfighting domains is not diminished in any way or format.

To...…end, CBP has in the past sought to partner with the private sector in diverse formats. A good example of this public-private partnership is the Reimbursable Services Program. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office – GAO (2020), CBP has since the year 2013 partnered with, amongst others, “private companies that conduct business through the ports, under its Reimbursable Services Program (RSP) to cover CBP’s cost of providing certain services at POEs.”

Secondly, in yet another example of CBP’s partnership with the private sector, CBP has in place the Donations Acceptances Program through which it accepts diverse donations from private sector players. The said donations, which could be monetary or otherwise, go into supporting the diverse operations of CBP. It is important to note that the Donations Acceptance Program, according to the Department of Homeland Security – DHD (2016), “enables CBP and GSA to explore, foster, and facilitate public and private-sector partnerships for U.S. POE infrastructure and technology improvements that may not be possible otherwise, given funding restraints.”