Politics & Power Quote by Chris Cannon

A politician’s compliment that quietly smuggles in a budget argument. “Our men and women in uniform” is the safest rhetorical shield in Washington: it wraps any policy preference in the aura of sacrifice, daring critics to disagree without looking callous. Chris Cannon’s line sounds like gratitude, but its real work is to authorize an expansive view of intelligence as a moral obligation rather than a contested instrument of state power.

The key phrase is “the best intelligence possible.” It’s an appeal to maximalism. Not “reliable” intelligence, not “lawful” intelligence, not “accountable” intelligence - the best possible, an elastic standard that tends to grow with new technologies, new threats, and new appropriations. The subtext is that uncertainty is the enemy and that more collection, more analysis, more coordination is inherently protective. That framing leans on a post-9/11 cultural memory in which “failure to connect the dots” became a civic nightmare, and intelligence agencies were repositioned as frontline defenders rather than opaque bureaucracies.

“Help them protect America” also does double duty. It humanizes intelligence work by tethering it to troops’ safety, while elevating the mission to national survival. The sentence sidesteps the harder questions that always trail intelligence: tradeoffs between speed and skepticism, secrecy and oversight, surveillance and civil liberties, precision and politicization. Cannon’s intent is clear: make intelligence spending and authority feel less like an abstract state expansion and more like body armor - something you don’t debate when someone’s life is on the line.