[NYT] WASHINGTON ‐ Intelligence officials who brief the president have warned him about Chinese espionage in bottom-line business terms. They have used Black Sea shipping figures to demonstrate the effect of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. And they have filled the daily threat briefing with charts and graphs of economic data.In an effort to accommodate President Trump, who has attacked them publicly as "naïve" and in need of going "back to school," the nation’s intelligence agencies have revamped their presentations to focus on subjects their No. 1 customer wants to hear about ‐ economics and trade.
Intelligence officers, steeped in how Mr. Trump views the world, now work to answer his repeated question: Who is winning? What the president wants to know, according to former officials, is what country is making more money or gaining a financial advantage.
While the professionals do not criticize Mr. Trump’s focus, they do question whether those interests are crowding out intelligence on threats like terrorism and the maneuvers of traditional adversaries, developments with foreign militaries or geopolitical events with international implications.
"If Trump tailors it to his needs, that is fine and his prerogative," Douglas H. Wise, a career C.I.A. official and a former top deputy at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said of the daily briefing. "However, if he suppresses intelligence through that tailoring, that is not helpful. He is no longer making informed decisions because he is making decisions based on information he could have had but didn’t have."
Presidents have long shaped their intelligence briefings based on their interests and the issues of the moment ‐ be it a Cold War with the Soviet Union or Al Qaeda and terrorism. Other presidents have also told intelligence agencies to focus more on economics. After his election, President Bill Clinton told his briefers that he wanted more economic information. And during the recession caused by the 2008 financial crisis, President Barack Obama had an economic intelligence briefing created to supplement the daily intelligence briefing.
Mr. Trump, finding traditional intelligence briefings less helpful than his predecessors, reduced the in-person briefings to about twice a week. Those sessions from Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, and Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director, now feature far more charts and visual aids to appeal to Mr. Trump, according to a senior intelligence official.
"President Trump’s economic focus has been evident, including his emphasis on increasing NATO allies’ burden sharing and pressing allies and partners to do more in support of our common interests," said Garrett Marquis, a spokesman for the National Security Council.
The written reports are still delivered daily to John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, who conveys the highlights to Mr. Trump on days when the intelligence chiefs are not at the Oval Office, according to a former official.