She has been increasingly sidelined within the Trump administration over her anti-interventionist views — particularly after she posted a video last spring warning about a nuclear holocaust. Recently, Gabbard has been left out of planning for high-profile military operations in Iran and Venezuela.
Democrats, for their part, have accused Gabbard of politicizing her role by targeting current and former U.S. analysts she alleges skewed their judgments to undermine Trump, and of improperly injecting herself into domestic investigations of election security issues that are outside her office’s mandate.
“There is a lot of concern from folks I’ve talked to,” warned one former national security official. “If In-Q-Tel goes to ODNI, it’s just going to die.”
Those interviewed say the move would likely require some support from Congress to be successful, which Gabbard may not have.
In a statement, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that In-Q-Tel has a strong track record of success as is, and suggested that moving the fund under ODNI would only complicate its ability to execute its mission.
“At a time when winning the technology race is critical to our economic and national security, I do not support moving In-Q-Tel further away from day-to-day missions and subjecting it to even more bureaucracy that will only slow the pace of innovation and support to our warfighters,” Warner said.
Others who spoke with POLITICO shared a similar sentiment: that the CIA has a better sense of what cutting-edge technology the U.S. national security community really needs, because it not only analyzes the plans and capabilities of foreign powers like Russia and China — but also conducts operations to steal their secrets.
ODNI, by contrast, is more broadly a coordinating body for information gathered by other spy agencies.