In a moment of rising international tensions, the accelerated loss of veteran personnel, driven by federal downsizing policies, threatens to erode capabilities forged over decades and create counterintelligence vulnerabilities that no algorithm can fill.
By early 2025, the CIA had about 22,000 employees. Since then, according to estimates from former officials cited by The Washington Post, several hundred—possibly over a thousand—have left the organization. This is the largest contraction since the cuts of the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Government itself had informed Congress in May 2025 of its intention to reduce the workforce by around 1,200 positions over several years, mainly through retirements and reduced hiring. The deferred resignation program, cuts to the Office of Personnel Management, and the fleeting push from the Department of Government Efficiency accelerated the exodus. The immediate consequence has been the collapse of the pension system: agents who until the day before were recruiting informants, drafting classified reports, or developing espionage tools must now wait up to nine months to receive their first full payment. Some have withdrawn their retirement applications as they cannot afford an extended period without income; others have resorted to savings or second mortgages.
The CIA acknowledged the saturation in a message directed to its former members: the Retirement Division is processing an unprecedented number of cases and asks for patience. Meanwhile, the Office of Personnel Management, whose staffing went from over 3,000 employees in fiscal year 2024 to about 1,980 in 2026, is seeing the average processing time increase from 79 to 109 days. The crisis is not exclusive to Langley. More than 330,000 federal employees left the Government last year, mostly voluntarily. In the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the workforce has been reduced to just over half of the approximately 2,000 personnel it had at the beginning of the current term, with hundreds of exits and reassignments. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has lost nearly a third of its workforce. However, the impact takes on a particular dimension in the intelligence services.
Artificial intelligence can process vast volumes of data, reduce analysis times, and increase the number of consulted sources with an effectiveness that human analysts cannot reach. It can identify patterns, translate languages in real-time, and cross-reference information en masse. But it cannot replace the experienced officer who has spent years cultivating sources in hostile environments, interpreting cultural nuances, detecting lies in a conversation, or understanding power dynamics that do not appear in any open report. The stability of these experts constitutes an essential asset. An intelligence service is not remodeled with each change of government. Its personnel are usually highly qualified professionals, and mostly apolitical; their loyalty is to the institution and to national security, not to a specific administration. Indiscriminate cuts, especially when driven by ideological or political prejudices, undermine that effectiveness. Turning the intelligence community into a partisan battleground weakens the ability to anticipate threats and provide independent analysis to those in power.
Even more serious is the counterintelligence risk. Unleashing hundreds or thousands of former agents who know state secrets and who, in many cases, feel resentful due to delays in their pensions or the perception of having been discarded presents an unnecessary danger. A former official who left the agency last year bluntly summarized it: “We are creating a huge counterintelligence risk.” Retired officers are subject to restrictions on the jobs they can take, but financial and professional frustration can make them attractive targets for adversarial services.
Recent reports indicate that Chinese intelligence agencies and media are closely monitoring the exodus and the economic difficulties of retirees, seeking recruitment opportunities. The traditional discretion of intelligence agents should not serve as a shield to hide institutional failures. As a senior former official pointed out, if retired military personnel were told they had to wait a year or more for their pensions, Washington would descend into chaos. The same logic must apply to those operating in the shadows.
The CIA leadership defends its current management and states that the agency is focused on regaining its core mission of recruiting spies. It has recently brought in the largest class of operations officers in two decades. This renewal effort is necessary, but it cannot immediately compensate for the loss of institutional memory and human networks built over decades. Democratic Senator Mark Warner, a prominent member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has questioned the delays and has reminded that the least the Government can do is guarantee retiring personnel the benefits they deserve.
The lesson is old and yet easily forgotten. Intelligence services are not private companies that can be restructured according to market fluctuations or the ideological priorities of the moment. Their most valuable capital lies in people who have dedicated their lives to an invisible, dangerous, and unrecognized job. When they are treated as expendable numbers, it weakens not only the operational capacity of the present moment but also the resilience of the state against future crises. Artificial intelligence will be a powerful tool, but it will never replace the judgment, intuition, and loyalty forged in years of service. Preserving that stability is not a corporate privilege: it is a national security imperative.
Adalberto Agozino holds a PhD in Political Science, is an International Analyst, and is a Lecturer at the University of Buenos Aires.
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