For decades, counterintelligence (CI) has been viewed as the exclusive domain of federal agencies — the realm of the FBI, DoD CI units, and other three-letter organizations. But in today’s threat environment, where foreign intelligence activities blend seamlessly with criminal tradecraft and commercial activity, that model is no longer sufficient.
State and local law enforcement
The challenge is simple: hostile intelligence activity is no longer limited to embassies and defense installations. It now unfolds in research labs, shipping ports, university partnerships, and seemingly benign business ventures in small towns across the country. If we continue to treat CI as a purely federal responsibility, we risk missing the earliest warning signs of foreign collection activity—signs that are most likely to show up first at the local level.
The Threat Has Gone Hyperlocal
China, Russia, and other adversarial states have embraced unrestricted and ubiquitous approaches to intelligence collection. They no longer rely solely on formally trained intelligence officers. Instead, they recruit business contacts, students, and researchers—individuals who blend into the background of everyday life and rarely trip federal surveillance thresholds.
This is why local law enforcement officers may be the first and only people positioned to notice something’s wrong:
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A foreign national showing up repeatedly at a restricted facility perimeter.
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A visiting researcher asking probing, off-topic questions at a local campus.
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A suspicious drone flying over a defense manufacturing plant.
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An unexplained cargo transfer at a small private airstrip.
To a local patrol officer, these might appear odd but non-criminal. To a trained CI professional, they could be precursors to a serious compromise. The current problem is that there is no consistent mechanism to connect those dots.
Bridging the Intelligence Gap
The Bureau has done impressive work with programs like “See Something, Say Something,” but that framework is still heavily tilted toward counterterrorism. In a world where foreign governments are building long-term intelligence operations inside American communities, we need a CI equivalent.
That means:
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Training local police and sheriffs on CI indicators and collection tradecraft.
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Developing secure channels between federal CI entities and state/local departments.
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Normalizing CI briefings for fusion centers and local joint task forces.
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Building trust between federal and local law enforcement so that suspicious activity is neither dismissed nor ignored.
These aren’t small changes — they’re cultural and structural. But they’re long overdue.
Why Cleared Professionals Should Care
Even if you work at the federal level, this matters. If the local police department near your cleared facility isn’t CI-aware, you’re exposed. Counterintelligence isn’t just about protecting classified information — it’s about recognizing and responding to hostile influence, surveillance, and infiltration attempts before they escalate.
The front line of that defense may no longer be a SCIF—it may be a local patrol car responding to a call near your site perimeter.
a 21st-Century CI Model
Foreign intelligence threats no longer operate exclusively in the shadows of embassies or federal installations. They operate in parking lots, campuses, small businesses, and local neighborhoods. And they often start small: a camera where it shouldn’t be, a question that doesn’t make sense, a document request that feels off.
If we want to defend the country against 21st-century espionage, we need a 21st-century CI model—one that starts at the local level. America’s best warning system may already be in place. We just haven’t connected it to the CI mission yet.
