Trump deepens NATO’s crisis of trust on sharing intel

Intelligence sharing among NATO countries is in danger as members become increasingly wary of one another, and the earthquake unleashed by Donald Trump risks making things worse, current and former alliance and security officials from across the alliance told POLITICO.

There have long been strains caused by distrust between the alliance’s traditional Western members and newcomers from the ex-communist east. That grew worse following Russia’s attack on Ukraine, when pro-Russia Hungary, joined recently by Slovakia, are seen as unreliable, said eight current and former NATO and security officials with knowledge of intelligence sharing at the alliance. Many were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. 

But now the U.S. shift toward Russian under Trump is shaking the core of the alliance — prompting countries to wonder about the risk of sharing intelligence with Washington, said five of the officials.

The confusion around the reliability of the U.S. worsened this week, with reports that it temporarily cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine to put pressure on Kyiv to come to the negotiating table with Russia.

“There are a lot of whispers in the halls of NATO about the future of intelligence sharing within the alliance,” said Julie Smith, U.S. ambassador to NATO under Joe Biden until November, adding she had “heard concerns from some allies” on whether Washington will continue to share intel with the alliance.

According to Daniel Stanton, a former official at Canada’s foreign intelligence service CSIS, “at a time when they actually need more intelligence, there will be less going into it.”

“There’s less of a consensus about who the common enemy is” and “people are going to be more reticent to share,” Stanton said. 

Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has also caused concern, said Gustav Gressel, an analyst at the National Defense Academy Vienna and former European Council on Foreign Relations fellow.

Gabbard has echoed Russian talking points over the wars in Ukraine and Syria, and she met with former Syrian President Bashar Assad, who had been isolated by the international community for his use of chemical weapons against his own citizens.

Last month, the Financial Times reported that top White House official Peter Navarro is pushing to cut Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, a forum that also includes the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand and is considered the most intimate multinational intelligence-sharing group in the world.

Several officials said the U.S. shift hadn’t yet affected intelligence sharing but expressed fears that it could do so soon. 

One current NATO official said that following the catastrophic White House meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Trump on Friday, there were “naturally a lot of questions.” But staff were “keeping calm and carrying on,” the official added.

“Of course there is corrosion because of the approach on Ukraine,” the same current official said, “but we remain of the view that Trump has no real issues with NATO beyond spending … so that’s something.”

A former NATO official confirmed that a lot of intelligence sharing was happening bilaterally rather than in meetings among all NATO members. “That was always the case if the going got tough,” they added.

Some officials denied the recent shocks to the alliance had impacted intelligence sharing.

“Intelligence folks can share and talk to each other under conditions that others cannot,” the official said. “We haven’t seen any reduction in that.”

Who controls information

Intelligence sharing among NATO’s 32 members has never been as close as among Five Eyes, mainly because of fears of leaks and suspicions that some national intelligence agencies could have been penetrated by the Russians.

Allies “don’t really share their crown jewels when it comes to formats like that … We knew they were coveted by hostile services,” said Stanton, the former Canadian intelligence official. 

Sharing intelligence can be very powerful, as happened when the Biden administration trumpeted about Russia’s preparations to attack Ukraine, which played a decisive role in alerting allies and rallying a response.

But three years on, and with a decisive political shift under Trump, the future role of U.S. intelligence is in question.

“The question now is whether intel sharing will remain a key feature of transatlantic work at NATO, given the questions allies have about whether or not the U.S. is impartial in its handling of the war in Ukraine and future negotiations,” said Smith, NATO ambassador from 2021 to 2024. 

The wariness about Washington is something new.

NATO countries agreed last year to boost and share more intelligence based on technical retrieval — from electronic and satellite surveillance and signals interception. 

When it comes to HUMINT — information collected by real-life spies and their sources — the sharing has always been more circumspect and based on “circles of trust” between small groups of partners and on a strict need-to-know basis. 

Sharing information has always been “the best thing about NATO,” said a former official, saying it improved collective security and helped smaller countries get up to speed on threats.

National governments “are the owners of the information” and determine who they’ll share with, said Robert Pszczel, a former Polish diplomat and NATO official.

Cutting ties to Moscow

In the years after the fall of communism, Western intelligence services were especially cautious about sharing significant intelligence with their counterparts in the former Warsaw Pact countries as they joined the alliance.

And doubts have persisted about some Central European agencies — notably Hungary’s security services since the political rise of Russia-friendly PM Viktor Orbán. 

These suspicions have affected access granted to Hungary since the Ukraine war broke out — with Slovakia also becoming an issue following the return to power of pro-Kremlin populist Robert Fico in 2023 — according to six officials.

Gressel, of the National Defense Academy Vienna, said information on Russia, China and technical intelligence about the adversaries’ weapons systems are being exchanged bilaterally or within smaller groups.

“Hungarian intelligence is only informed about urgent counter-terrorism threats, nothing else,” said Gustav. “You do not want that information to go to Moscow.”

But it’s not just Budapest and Bratislava that face mistrust.

A former Bulgarian government official said that Sofia was currently not receiving all intelligence information over fears there are “Russian assets in key services.” 

Wariness over sharing intelligence is nothing new.

In an interview with POLITICO last year, Richard Dearlove said that when he was chief of Britain’s MI6 between 1999 and 2004 he was highly selective about what he would share with Germany’s BND, fearing it would leak to Russia. “There was certain highly sensitive stuff we wouldn’t have given them in a month of Sundays,” he said. 

Pszczel said that there were other past examples when countries considered some members suspect. “For example, in Greece during the regime of the colonels,” he said, referring to the right-wing military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974.

But none of those worries involved the United States.

Jamie Dettmer contributed reporting from Kyiv. Antoaneta Roussi reported from Brussels. Amy Mackinnon reported from Washington.