Again, I agree with @blipvertus .

DHS – 

While the 9.11 attacks and the events preceding and following it certainly showed that the American intelligence and security  community / network needed drastic reform, the creation of another trillion dollar sinkhole (trillion$ over years, of course) was probably the exact wrong answer.

If anything, the many intelligence disasters and pitfalls of 2001-2003 (what do you mean there were no WMDs in Iraq?) are caused (at least in part) by too many intelligence services not talking to each other and not effectively pooling information, interpreting trends, and sorting the false flag noise from the real threats and passing it up to people in policy making positions at the NCA level.

This was part of the reason the OSS / later the CIA was created in the first place.  Too many  intelligence agencies, too little coordination.

So naturally the correct answer is to create one more.  Not fix the ones already in place.

@dicehex – please don’t worry about it, and welcome to the forums!  😀

Military satellites are already in space to be sure, but there’s a big difference between surveillance and espionage and outright weaponization, either with strategic weapons in space (dropping nukes on people) or some kind of ASAT tech that that  actually targets and destroys other people’s assets.  This is the line we’re trying not to cross.

The only part of your post I would really disagree with is “Trump is no different than other presidents” and the “US has never cared for treaties …”  The US absolutely cares for treaties … sometimes.  It depends on the President, it depends on how free he is or isn’t in regards to Congress or elections.

At the moment, however, under the present administration, I would agree that the US is wiping its ass with trade agreements, international treaties, accords, you name it.  This was not the case nearly so bad with the previous administration.  Everything from the Paris Accords to Trump’s recent abusive relationship / remarks with Canada prove this.

@linuxnavigator – No worries at all, sir, I have a feeling we don’t actually disagree on this point that much.  I would certainly agree that cyber security is the real battlespace of the future and a primary front that our defense organizations and intelligence agencies should be focused upon – much more than say the F-22 … (that’s another whole rant) … not to mention the blatantly skewed outcome of the 2106 elections (yet another rant) … yes, I agree that cyberspace defense is beyond important.

My point is that these functions should be performed by teams and organizations under the aegis of pre-existing departments of the executive, such as the DoD, CIA, DoJ, or State Department.  Adding the new capabilities and functions is going to cost money, I get that.  Freedom isn’t free, as they love to say.  But stacking another gigantic bureaucratic mess on top of it and tripling its cost … while decreasing its effectiveness because of this also adds additional hurdles of inter-agency liaison … was just the wrong way to handle the new portfolio of threat facing the US and their allies in the 21st Century.