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Counterintelligence is a hush-hush business that’s seldom discussed publicly, but there are few lines of work more vital to our national security. Blunting foreign espionage, the rampant theft of America’s defense and trade secrets, above all, represents an urgent mission for our intelligence community.

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Bipartisan warnings about the outmoded state of U.S. counterintelligence have mounted in recent years, amid the biggest upsurge in foreign espionage against our country in history. Communist China represents by far the biggest espionage threat we face, dwarfing even the robust Soviet spy threat during the Cold War, but the number of countries adept at stealing our secrets runs into the dozens.

Unfortunately, the second Trump administration appears to be asleep at the wheel regarding the foreign espionage threat to our peace and prosperity.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who possessed no intelligence experience before taking over as the boss of the intelligence community, hasn’t spent much time on counterintelligence, which needs urgent reform. Gabbard’s comments in her contested Senate confirmation testimony in January, in which she refused to condemn Edward Snowden, the IC contractor who fled to Moscow in 2013 with over 1 million classified U.S. documents, raised concerns in counterspy circles.

As DNI, Gabbard oversees the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, which, as this column has explained, is functionally a chief with few Indians. The NCSC has existed since 2001 under various names, yet lacks statutory authority, while what’s needed is a bona fide domestic intelligence service, lacking law enforcement powers, in charge of national-level counterintelligence. The FBI is our lead counterintelligence agency, representing a historical accident more than design, but the FBI lacks strategic focus, while the current arrangement places too much power in the bureau’s hands, representing an unacceptable threat to civil liberties.

The recent proposal from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, regrettably heads in the wrong direction by granting more power to the FBI in the national counterintelligence mission, including rolling the NCSC into the bureau. This is a bad idea, particularly after the FBI in 2016 proved its vulnerability to partisan interference with its politically catastrophic Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence inquiry into President Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Moscow.

For her part, Gabbard’s instincts regarding counterintelligence don’t appear any better. Based on recent reports, her intent is to weaken the already bureaucratically anemic and understaffed NCSC. This comes on the heels of an NCSC reorganization a few months ago, which dramatically cut the center’s staff, including slashing the number of internal directors from five to just one. Counterintelligence appears to represent an afterthought in the second Trump administration.

Staffing matters, and Gabbard deserves credit for at least appointing a new NCSC chief, because it took the Biden administration over 2 1/2 years to bother to appoint anyone to head the center. However, her choice, George “Wes” Street, a former Army counterintelligence investigator, is known to very few senior intelligence officials in Washington. At a minimum, Street lacks the broad intelligence community experience possessed by previous NCSC chiefs. Street seems to have been chosen more for his fealty to Gabbard than his professional qualifications.

The internet may not be real life, but social media matters today. The NCSC’s longtime feed on X, which represented an important outreach to the public, particularly private industry, regarding counterintelligence awareness, dramatically cut back its postings since Gabbard became DNI. This week, the feed was deleted, being replaced by one that appears to be Street’s personal account.

Simply put, the second Trump administration is endangering our national security with Gabbard’s downgrading of the national counterintelligence mission. However, there are smart reform ideas within the Republican tent. Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR), the astute chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, last week announced the Strategic Enhancement of Counterintelligence and Unifying Reform Efforts Act.

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Under Crawford’s proposed SECURE Act, the national counterintelligence mission would be consolidated and strengthened, with a new center under the DNI, possessing the personnel and authorities the NCSC lacks. “We’ve kind of got a disjointed counterintelligence apparatus that just doesn’t work well together,” Crawford said, and any U.S. counterspy veteran who isn’t playing political games would nod in agreement.

Crawford has offered an intelligent, forward-thinking proposal for Washington to finally get counterintelligence right. The foreign espionage threat, already serious, is rising fast and may soon be too big to defeat. Let’s hope Congress and the Trump White House are listening.

John R. Schindler served with the National Security Agency as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer.