Dustin Carmack

Dustin Carmack is an ultra-Conservative operative and federal lobbyist who served as Chief of Staff to Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe in the Trump administration. Currently a Director of Public Policy at Meta, Carmack is the author of the Intelligence Community chapter of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, in which he proposes a draconian overhaul and politicization of all U.S. intelligence agencies, including firing non-partisan career intelligence experts and concentrating power in the hands of political appointees loyal to Donald Trump.

Previously, Carmack was a research fellow for cybersecurity, intelligence, and emerging technologies at The Heritage Foundation. Since 2008, Carmack has worked for and with the Heritage Foundation numerous times, including for more than three years as a legislative strategist and government relations deputy for Heritage Action for America. Carmack is also a close aide and confidant to both Ron Destantis and to John Ratcliffe, having served as congressional chief of staff for both of them at different points in time.

Carmack joined the Trump administration in 2020 when his then-boss, John Ratcliffe, was confirmed as the Director of National Intelligence - a nomination that was highly controversial given Ratcliffe’s brazen partisanship, dearth of national security experience, and extreme views on the intelligence community. Under Ratcliffe and Carmack’s leadership, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was significantly politicized and used to bolster Trump’s agenda, including around the 2020 election. 35 days before the 2020 election, ODNI declassified Russian disinformation on Hillary Clinton and the 2016 election despite widespread objections from across the intelligence community.

His stance on national security, cybersecurity, and China is considered “hawkish” and has raised concerns about the potential for aggressive and confrontational policies. Carmack holds extreme policy positions of his own, evident throughout his writings, such as the Intelligence Community chapter he authored for Project 2025.

Carmack’s vision of a Trump 2.0 intelligence community is underpinned by a radical removal of nonpartisan processes and people across the defense and intelligence communities to force compliance of the President’s political agenda and objectives. Carmack’s proposals include:

– Install subordinates willing to comply with the President’s agenda: “If senior leadership finds any program or operation to be inconsistent with the President’s agenda, the Director should immediately halt that program or operation.” (p. 209)

– Politicize the granting and removal of security clearances: “The DNI and CIA Director should use their authority under the National Security Act of 1947 to expedite the clearance of personnel to meet mission needs and remove IC employees who have abused their positions of trust.” (p. 213)

– Remove expert intelligence leadership oversight to expedite and close-off the intelligence verification process: “Establishing a real-time auditing capability is essential to decreasing the risk for the heads of intelligence agencies in meeting their statutory requirements to ensure that they protect sources and methods associated with the classified information their agencies collect.” (p. 222-23)

– Recruit private-sector executives with no intelligence experience into senior roles at the CIA: “The CIA must find creative ways to align mission requirements with hiring needs, recruit diverse sets of individuals with unique backgrounds, and become more open to hiring private-sector experts directly into senior positions.” (p. 209)

– Remove internal checks and oversight that serve as safeguards for U.S. intelligence and intelligence products: “The problem, unfortunately, is that certain elements in the State Department, IC, and DOD trade on risk aversion or political bureaucracy to delay execution of the President’s foreign policy goals. A future conservative President should therefore identify individuals on the transition team who are familiar with the implementation of covert action with a view to placing them in key NSC, CIA, ODNI, and DOD positions.” (p. 210)

– Forces all IC recruits to complete training on “professionalism and repercussions for abuse in the execution of duties in all degree programs at the National Intelligence University.” (p. 212)

Carmack remains a key player in the Heritage and MAGA orbit and is one of the right’s key thought leaders on dismantling and politicizing the U.S. intelligence community.