Carmack begins with a mission statement indicating that he is interested in preserving and maintaining constitutional civil liberties. This demonstrates more of the cognitive dissonance we’re coming to be familiar with, here. They (meaning the authors of Project 2025) hold fast to one idea of what they’re ostensibly about – such as respecting the Constitution – and can’t seem to grasp that the policies that they’re advocating for throughout their own agenda are almost completely antithetical to the Constitution.

“An incoming conservative President needs to use these intelligence authorities aggressively to anticipate and thwart our adversaries, including Russia, Iran, North Korea, and especially China, while maintaining counterterrorism tools that have demonstrated their effectiveness.” (Project 2025, Section 2.4: Intelligence Community, Dustin J. Carmack, page 233, paragraph 2.)

He will run into the same problem I outlined in section 2.3¹ – it’s going to be difficult to treat Russia as an enemy, when the figurehead they’ve chosen to be President is beholden to Putin², praises him regularly, and has suggested he’d “encourage Putin to do whatever the hell he wants.”³

“The American people are understandably frustrated by the fact that those who abuse power are rarely held to account for their actions.” (Project 2025, Section 2.4: Intelligence Community, Dustin J. Carmack, page 234, paragraph 2.)

I’ll remark when I stop laughing. Yes, yes we are. Now tell me why you’re supporting a 34-times convicted felon (as of the time of this writing), accused traitor, adjudicated rapist, morally bankrupt, riot-inciting fraud whom you are advocating for literally installing as a dictator? HOLD TRUMP ACCOUNTABLE.

Here’s where it takes a darker turn:

“This must change, beginning with leadership that is both committed to ensuring that these agencies faithfully execute the laws of the land under the Constitution and resolved to punish and remove any officials who have abused the public trust.” (Project 2025, Section 2.4: Intelligence Community, Dustin J. Carmack, page 234, paragraph 2.)

“Abusing the public trust” is painting with a broad brush, here. And “punish”? By what means? Fines? Prison? Death? Is it “abusing public trust” if you question the regime? I expect so.

He goes on to quote John Ratcliffe, one of Trump’s two DNIs (DNI = Director of National Intelligence):

“Prior DNIs were the head of the IC (Intelligence Community) only on paper and were routinely accustomed to yielding IC actions and decisions to the preferences of the CIA and other agencies. My ability to begin reversing that capitulation was accomplished solely because President Trump made it repeatedly clear to the entire national security apparatus that he expected all intelligence matters to go through the DNI.”

Reminder here that John Ratcliffe was picked by Trump for the top intel post on a Sunday and withdrew by that Friday, after it was found that he lied about his qualifications and background⁴. He did end up serving as DNI from 2020 to 2021. From the linked article:

“Let’s be clear about what this says: America obtained information that Russian spies believed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign fabricated ties between Trump and the Kremlin, but the US intelligence community couldn’t confirm whether that was true because Moscow may have just made it up.”

In other words, Ratcliffe acknowledged he released material that he knew would likely be harmful to Clinton and the Democrats — and helpful to Trump — without knowing its veracity.

But it gets worse: Recent news reports have revealed that Ratcliffe declassified the intelligence “against the advice of nonpolitical, career US intelligence officials who feared his doing so “would give credibility to Kremlin-backed material,” according to the Wall Street Journal.”

It’s unsurprising that Trump would give one of the top positions in the country to a man who lied about his resume – Ratcliffe was willing to lie on Trump’s behalf about Hillary Clinton. To Trump, loyalty is everything.

“As DNI, Ratcliffe doesn’t have to listen to his subordinates, of course. But the reporting further suggests that Ratcliffe, who fiercely defended Trump during the impeachment hearings as a then-member of Congress, prioritized Trump’s political interests over the interests of, well, the entire country.”

The intelligence Ratcliffe released was found to be Russian disinformation which had been rejected by a bipartisan Senate panel⁵.

I digress. A partisan liar and intelligence thief who pushes Russian disinformation to influence an election has no business being the Director of National Intelligence. Carmack continues to quote Ratcliffe and treat his opinion of the Intelligence Community as if it were the gospel (recall that Ratcliffe was also completely unqualified to be there, as well as a liar.)

“Finally, future IC leadership must address the widely promoted “woke” culture that has spread throughout the federal government with identity politics and “social justice” advocacy replacing such traditional American values as patriotism, colorblindness, and even workplace competence.” (Project 2025, Section 2.4: Intelligence Community, Dustin J. Carmack, page 236, paragraph 6.)

There’s the “woke” boogeyman again. I touched on the “colorblindness” myth in Section 1.⁶ Carmack does not make any suggestions as to how the Intelligence Community should fight “woke”ness, nor does he elaborate on what the actual problem is, other than he appears to take issue with racial sensitivity practices. I dislike the implication that those who work towards social justice are not patriots; particularly when this entire manifesto promotes party over country, and loyalty to the President rather than to the United States, which is an insult to the Constitution and the values we were founded upon. Project 2025 is not a plan written by patriots, it is a plan written by fascists masquerading as nationalists.

Carmack goes on to recommend that EO#12333, signed under George W. Bush in the aftermath of 9/11 and which focused on how we should address threats from international terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, should be updated to include more modern threats (such as cyberwarfare and information operations). I can agree with this recommendation.

“The President-Elect should choose a Deputy Director [of the CIA] who, without needing Senate confirmation, can immediately begin to implement the President’s agenda.” (Project 2025, Section 2.4: Intelligence Community, Dustin J. Carmack, page 240, paragraph 7.)

In the previous paragraph, he mentions the Director of the CIA as well should do the same.

“Not all careers in espionage are created equal, and the Director should incentivize and reward applicants who are willing to accept high risks over those who are climbing the ranks simply by doing business as usual.” (Project 2025, Section 2.4: Intelligence Community, Dustin J. Carmack, page 242, paragraph 2.)

He’s saying here that the CIA should prioritize rogue new agent applicants over longtime agents who follow the rules. Seems risky to me.

“Finally, the human resources and talent management systems for onboarding purposes at the ODNI, CIA, and some other elements of the IC are fundamentally broken. For example, according to current CIA Director William Burns, it recently took more than 600 days, on average, for a CIA applicant to receive his or her necessary security clearance. Although security clearance procedures have been somewhat improved in recent years and Burns has committed CIA to reducing that to no more than 180 days, degradation in other areas of the process has limited the IC’s capacity to attract qualified and needed expertise.” (Project 2025, Section 2.4: Intelligence Community, Dustin J. Carmack, page 244, paragraph 3.)

Whoa, red flag! He’s arguing here that the CIA should relax their security clearance background checking process for employees in the name of attracting talent and filling positions more quickly. This could certainly introduce vulnerabilities. It DEFINITELY compromises security standards, increasing the risk of insider threats, espionage, or data leaks. If individuals with insufficient vetting are granted security clearance and later compromise sensitive operations or classified information, there could be significant political fallout. This could lead to congressional inquiries, increased oversight, and legal challenges for the CIA, especially if national security is demonstrably harmed.

Of course, it’s possible that insider espionage is the point and/or of little concern – Trump famously pressured his chief of staff and White House counsel⁷ to grant – unwarranted and unobtainable by regular channels – security clearances to his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Kushner was turned down twice for security clearance⁸ before the FBI was overruled by Carl Kline, a former Pentagon employee who was installed as director of the personnel security office in the Executive Office of the President in May 2017. Kushner’s was one of at least least 30 cases in which Kline overruled career security experts and approved a top-secret clearance for incoming Trump officials, despite unfavorable information. The number of rejections that were overruled was unprecedented – it had only happened once in the three years before Kline’s arrival. 

The background check process had red-flagged Kushner for possible foreign influence. Now he’s under scrutiny for having taken $2 billion dollars from Saudi Arabia, and nobody knows why (yet.)

“It’s pretty apparent that he made and was involved in decisions that were unusually favorable to the Saudis and then he turned around, within weeks of leaving the White House, and was engaging in negotiations with them to obtain a $2 billion investment. It just raises all kinds of national security concerns for a former government official at that level – a former White House official — who never qualified, legitimately, for a security clearance.” – Virginia Canter, former chief ethics counsel for the Treasury Department and now an attorney with the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington [Source]⁸

Given the kinds of people Trump surrounds himself with and offers positions of power and influence (to say nothing of Trump himself), I don’t think it’s a good idea to even further relax whatever standards we have left for vetting someone’s suitability for viewing and handling classified information.

“In particular, the IC must restore confidence in its political neutrality to rectify the damage done by the actions of former IC leaders and personnel regarding the claims of Trump–Russia collusion following the 2016 election and the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop investigation and media revelations of its existence during the 2020 election.” (Project 2025, Section 2.4: Intelligence Community, Dustin J. Carmack, page 244, paragraph 5.)

Let’s unpack that. For a couple of years, Trump got to shout “hoax” when it was suggested that his campaign colluded with Russia. They suppressed the Mueller report. The media even reported that there was “no collusion!” both at the time, and while Trump was in office and could control the narrative. By 2021, we were seeing the truth as more and more of Trump’s cronies turned states’ evidence to avoid prison time (see Paul Manafort²⁴, who admitted colluding with Russia as part of the Trump campaign.)

From the linked article:

“The findings are part of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s fifth and final bipartisan report investigating Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. This volume is primarily focused on counterintelligence threats and the wide range of Russian attempts to influence both the Trump campaign and the election.

The report builds on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation — and while it was consistent with the Mueller Report, it in fact goes further:

The committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally behind the hack and leak operation that published stolen Democratic Party emails, and that WikiLeaks — the website that published them — played a key role and “very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort.”

Need more?

“Far from a hoax, as the president so often claimed, the report reveals how the Trump campaign willingly engaged with Russian operatives implementing the influence effort.” [Source]⁹

“The committee’s lengthy investigation further enforced Mueller’s findings that Russia engaged in a sweeping and multipronged effort to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, which has led to a bipartisan push in Washington to further address election interference threats from Russia and other foreign adversaries.” [Source]¹⁰

“Even though Republicans have repeated this ad nauseam to the point where The Free Press would blithely state it as fact, it is simply not true that the Mueller report “found no credible evidence of collusion.” [Source]¹¹

More: There was Trump-Russia collusion – and Trump pardoned the colluder. Curative journalist, professor, attorney and author Seth Abramson¹² wrote an entire book about it – “Proof of Collusion”¹³, which painstakingly details Trump’s DECADES of history with Russia.

So for Carmack to continue to carry water for the “hoax” lie is insulting.

As for the Hunter Biden laptop story – yes, a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden existed. It is also a fact that the chain of custody was irretrievably broken in between the time that Hunter Biden left his laptop at a repair shop, and the FBI came into possession of it. In fact, the shop owner made a copy of the external hard drive and it passed through Rudy Giuliani’s and Steve Bannon’s hands before coming to the attention of the public (Giuliani provided the materials to the New York Post, alleging that they had been “found” on an abandoned laptop at a computer repair business.) More about that timeline here.¹⁴ Suffice it to say, the Hunter Biden laptop story suffers from a dearth of credibility:

“The vast majority of the data — and most of the nearly 129,000 emails it contained — could not be verified by either of the two security experts who reviewed the data for The Post.” [Source]¹⁵

In short, there was no proof of corruption by the Bidens that was verifiable, and no proof that it was a Russian operation that was verifiable, despite 51 former intelligence officials signing a letter indicating that the whole thing was very LIKE Russian disinformation¹⁶. (Republicans love to claim that these bipartisan intelligence officials claimed outright that the laptop was Russian disinformation and hold that false narrative up as a smoking gun that the intelligence community is compromised/biased in favor of Democrats. In fact, they merely cautioned that the story had all of the familiar earmarks of such an operation.) And, as it turns out, they were correct (read on.)

What it turned out to be (and what was verifiably embarrassing for the Bidens), was just an awful lot of compromising pictures of Hunter Biden with prostitutes, using illegal drugs. Should the story have been suppressed by social media? No, I don’t think so. But the narrative that the Republicans at the time were pushing was simply not true, and Republicans became so desperate to manufacture a scandal from the laptop that the whole fiasco culminated in Marjorie Taylor Greene showing pictures of Hunter Biden’s penis on the House Floor¹⁷.

In short, giving oxygen to either of these deeply embarrassing lies in order to make the point that the intelligence community should endeavor to be politically neutral, should embarrass a serious person. Especially since Carmack seems to be indicating that the manufactured laptop narrative should have been given MORE partisan oxygen, and the verifiable Russian collusion should have been swept under the rug and allowed to be referred to as a “hoax”, despite actual evidence of its veracity. This is the very definition of partisanship, instilling zero faith that whatever noise made by Carmack to the contrary, the Intelligence Community will remain devoted to Donald Trump.

Additionally Lev Parnas, who worked for Trump and was central to the efforts to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden, has testified before Congress that Russian operatives made up the whole thing²⁵, and the Trump campaign ran with it, knowing it was false.

“The only information ever pushed on the Bidens and Ukraine has come from one source and one source only: Russia and Russian agents,” he said, adding that impeachment proceedings against Biden were “predicated on a bunch of false information that is being spread by the Kremlin.”

“Political leaders should avoid “manipulation-by-appointment,” a practice by which intelligence leaders are selected for their policy views or political loyalties instead of their skilled expertise.” (Project 2025, Section 2.4: Intelligence Community, Dustin J. Carmack, page 247, paragraph 1.)

Are you okay, Carmack? Blink twice if you need help! I ask, because the above statement is the EXACT OPPOSITE of everything Project 2025 has argued for in the 247 pages I’ve read so far, including yourself. Project 2025 has argued for staffing the government with partisan loyalists to the President rather than the country so often that I had to assign it its own category¹⁸.

“Corporate America, technology companies, research institutions, and academia must be willing, educated partners in this generational fight to protect our national security interests, economic interests, national sovereignty, and intellectual property as well as the broader rules-based order—all while avoiding the tendency to cave to the left-wing activists and investors who ignore the China threat and increasingly dominate the corporate world.” (Project 2025, Section 2.4: Intelligence Community, Dustin J. Carmack, page 250, paragraph 4.)

He’s suggesting here that industries involved in areas like cutting-edge technology and intellectual property are susceptible to foreign influence and theft, especially from China, so they must be mindful of that possibility (true). The mention of investors implies concern that financial motivations in China or from Chinese partnerships might outweigh considerations of national security or ethical concerns in corporate decision-making. It does seem disingenuous for Carmack to point fingers at the Left for making ethically dubious business decisions involving with China when Ivanka Trump received 41 fast-tracked trademarks from China¹⁹ after her father was elected President.

Yes, estimates suggest that China’s intellectual property (IP) theft costs the US between $225-600 billion annually²⁰. Some notable examples of IP theft linked to China include U.S. military technology including the F-35 fighter jet²¹ and naval information relating to submarine warfare; stealing trade secrets related to semiconductor manufacture and telecom; biopharmaceutical trade secrets (one example of this was insider infiltration by a Chinese scientist who worked for GlaxoSmithKline²²); information related to solar panel technology, commercial aviation, and more.

Suggesting that these corporations wouldn’t have been targeted or victimized if they hadn’t “caved to the left-wing activists” is utterly laughable, since most of these types of thefts are accomplished by cyber infiltration, forced technology transfers, insider threats, and academic espionage. Conceptually, it’s difficult to envision even a plausible example of such a scenario that isn’t akin to the Scooby-Doo gang unmasking the bad guys as left-wing activists.

Carmack goes on to discuss how analog the federal government still is in terms of storing information and managing data, which is fascinating (and not surprising). I would 100% read a whitepaper enumerating the ways that the federal government is behind in terms of technology and digital practices (although for obvious reasons, going into the level of detail that would make it interesting could point out exploitable vulnerabilities.)