Biden’s DEI mandates creating very real national security threats

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Editor’s note: The following is an exclusively adapted excerpt from Cliff Sims’s "The Darkness Has Not Overcome: Lessons on Faith & Politics from Inside the Halls of Power."

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence just sparked outrage by publishing an op-ed by a current intelligence officer claiming his experience as a crossdresser somehow makes him better at his job. Blowback over such issues is typically met with dismissive eye rolls from Democrats – and even some Republicans – who argue that conservatives should stop waging culture wars.

It’s an ironic response, considering the aggressiveness with which the left has imposed its woke cultural ideology on American institutions. But regardless of where one stands on that debate – or whether one cares at all – the Biden administration has made reaching various diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) benchmarks a top goal in its National Intelligence Strategy, and we should consider the implications of this prioritization on U.S. national security.

One of the most important roles of a leader in any organization is to set clear priorities. This is a particularly difficult challenge for the director of National Intelligence, who nominally oversees a sprawling enterprise of 18 organizations and agencies, and roughly 100,000 people.

NEW EVIDENCE SUGGESTS RUSSIA IS BEHIND THE SERIOUS HAVANA SYNDROME

As a result, the opportunity cost of making DEI a central focus is that other national security priorities – be they intelligence domains, regions or hard-target countries, non-state terrorist groups, new technologies or deciding which personnel get promoted into leadership roles – simply do not get the level of attention they