From Iran War to Intelligence Purge — The Systemic National Security Cost of Trump's Presidency

In the early hours of July 14, 2026, Ling Shi Xia Tan (a translation and commentary channel) published a translated version of a deeply argued piece from The Hill — written by William S. Becker, a former senior official in the Wisconsin Department of Justice — that opens with a direct assertion: Donald Trump himself is the single greatest threat to U.S. national security. The value of this commentary is not in whether its conclusion is too absolute — in Washington's opinion marketplace, anti-Trump voices are hardly scarce — but in the breadth of evidence it marshals across ten mutually independent dimensions. Taken together, these dimensions depict not a single decision gone wrong, but a national security institutional structure that is simultaneously deteriorating along multiple axes.

Rapid Weapons Depletion and a Window of Pacific Vulnerability

Trump's self-selected war against Iran is consuming America's stockpile of precision-guided munitions at a rate that exceeds earlier projections. An assessment by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) warns that this has "created a window of vulnerability for a potential conflict in the Western Pacific" — rebuilding ordnance reserves will take at least three years. This means that should a military crisis emerge in the Indo-Pacific theater, U.S. forces would find themselves at a disadvantage in ammunition readiness.

The deeper problem is not the consumption itself, but the temporal gap between the rate of consumption and the rate of replenishment. When adversaries perceive this gap, the credibility of deterrence begins to erode. The Iran war's drain on U.S. munitions stockpiles is, in essence, a reverse operation of the stated strategic pivot from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific — Trump is doing the opposite of what his public declarations claim.

The Rapid Erosion of the Alliance System

The commentary catalogs the allies Trump is currently alienating:

• Publicly berating NATO allies France, Britain, Italy and Germany for "not supporting his strikes on Iran"
• Openly insulting Italy's leadership
• Directing aides to cut off trade with Spain
• Antagonizing Belgium over interference in a World Cup match involving the U.S.
• Threatening to seize Greenland from Denmark, by military force if necessary — which produces an institutional consequence: the other 31 NATO members have an obligation to defend Denmark, a fellow ally, against aggression by the President of the United States

Trump is simultaneously operating on two tracks with the alliance system: demanding that allies provide support for a war he initiated, while threatening the same group of allies with trade retaliation and territorial aggression. Placing "if you're not with me, you're not an ally" alongside "if you're not with me, I'll punish you" does not inspire loyalty — it accelerates a multi-directional centrifugal drift within the alliance.

The Systematic Hollowing of Intelligence and Law Enforcement

The core weight of the commentary falls on Trump's personnel operations within the intelligence and law enforcement apparatus:

FBI Attrition

Since the beginning of Trump's second term, approximately 300 FBI agents working on national security matters have left their posts. This exodus has been described as a "purge" and has significantly degraded the Bureau's capabilities. More telling than the numbers is the direction of the attrition: it is not performance-driven meritocracy, but a politically motivated expulsion.

Investigative Resource Reallocation

260 FBI analysts have been reassigned to focus on a "priority investigation" into the 2020 election — not to probe external threats, but to find evidence supporting Trump's claim that the election he lost was actually one he won. This internal redistribution of national security resources — from defending against external adversaries to serving an internal political agenda — is a hallmark signal of institutional capture.

The Rapid Politicization of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Real estate developer Bill Pulte has been appointed acting Director of National Intelligence. He immediately fired more than 50 intelligence experts and has promised further cuts. The commentary notes that this has fueled speculation that he may declassify intelligence about alleged Chinese "interference" in U.S. elections, enabling Trump to declare a national security emergency to manipulate midterm election rules.

DHS Mission Drift

White House adviser Stephen Miller's stated goal of deporting one million immigrants per year has become the core mission of the Department of Homeland Security — described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "racist and cruel" — with little connection to homeland security itself. An agency responsible for border protection and national security has had its center of gravity shifted from managing external threats to internal social control.

Pentagon Morale Collapse

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, with the United States at war, fired 15 senior military officers. The continuous departure of "adults in the room" is leaving the military decision-making layer increasingly bereft of figures capable of presenting counter-arguments to the President.

Uncontrollable Escalation in the Security Environment

The commentary cites an ABC News report: the Trump administration intercepted an encrypted communication that appeared to be an "operational trigger order" from Iran to its "sleeper agents." Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy warned: "If Iran ever decided to go all out and risk everything, now would be the time."

This is not ordinary alarmism. When the United States is in the following state — its top intelligence agency temporarily run by a real estate developer, its FBI counterterrorism analysts investigating the 2020 election, its Department of Homeland Security chasing immigration targets — its intelligence analysis capability and warning-response chain are both at an abnormal level of vulnerability. In this state, even if the intelligence is real, whether the chain from intercept to response is still functioning is itself a question.

One Variable, Not Many

When all the above dimensions are placed together, the core value of this commentary lies not in revealing secrets — all the data comes from public reporting — but in placing these variables on a single causal table. Conventionally, national security threat analysis divides "external adversaries" and "internal governance" into two separate boxes: external threats on the X-axis, internal vulnerabilities on the Y-axis. But this piece places Trump himself at the intersection of both axes — he has not made a mistake on the X-axis, nor suffered a problem on the Y-axis; he is simultaneously generating risks on the X-axis and vulnerabilities on the Y-axis, and they amplify each other.

When external threats, alliance erosion, and internal governance degradation are all occurring simultaneously under the same president and mutually reinforcing each other, the priority of judgment is no longer "which threat is the greatest" but "who is generating all the threats at once."

A Week of ICE Lethal Force — The Killing of a Colombian Driver in Maine as an Institutional Microcosm

The Hill commentary listed DHS's mission drift — from homeland security to immigration enforcement — but offered no operational details. An Associated Press report translated by Ling Shi Xia Tan on the early morning of July 14 provides a vivid, even brutal footnote: ICE agents shot and killed a 26-year-old Colombian driver with a valid work permit in Maine — at least the ninth fatal use-of-force incident during Trump's second term.

The "War-Funding-War" Logic of Enforcement

Several details in the report point to a systemic issue. Maine's independent Senator Angus King quoted Homeland Security Secretary Noem's characterization: the man had "weaponized his vehicle" — a framing that predetermined the incident's classification. But witness Boucher offered a different account: he heard gunshots, saw the vehicle spin, and clearly heard the victim say "I tried to stop." There were no body-camera recordings from the ICE agents on scene — and Maine State Police asked the laundromat where the witness worked not to release its surveillance footage.

When enforcement actions are not simultaneously recorded, key witness video is requested to be withheld, and the person killed held a valid work permit and Social Security Number, the gap between the official "characterization" of the incident and the facts is already exposed. This is not an isolated law enforcement accident — it is the product of the broader discretionary authority ICE agents have been granted under the current political environment. DHS's mission target has been set at "one million deportations this year," and under this numerical pressure, the on-scene judgment standard of ICE agents shifts from "is there an immediate lethal threat" to "is this person on the deportation list."

The Second Such Incident in a Week

The report reveals that one week earlier (July 7), ICE had already shot and killed 52-year-old Salgado Araujo in Houston — he was leading a construction crew to a worksite when federal agents in unmarked vehicles pursued and shot him. Two fatal incidents in one week, both with independent third-party testimony that the victims "did not actively attack." This is not an increase in enforcement intensity — it is an actual lowering of the threshold for the use of lethal force.

Nine Deaths — Numbers and Structure

Since Trump's return to the White House, at least nine fatal ICE enforcement incidents have occurred. Over the same period, ICE arrest numbers have surged — more than 10,000 people were arrested in five days at the end of June. The Trump administration is using "arrest volume" as the core metric of DHS performance, and the logical chain between "arrest volume" and "lethal force incidents" is direct: when the target is a number, frontline officers' risk awareness declines in response to pressure to meet the quota.