A political savant with a deep understanding of policy and legislation, Donald Gainsborough is at the helm of Government Curated, a watchdog group that scrutinizes the inner workings of federal agencies. The recent push by the Department of Homeland Security to sponsor a highly classified intelligence facility, known as a SCIF, at Dakota State University has raised alarms among current and former officials. The directive, championed by DHS Secretary Noem, a former governor of the state, appears to bypass standard national security planning, creating internal friction and questions about political influence. We sat down with Gainsborough to dissect the controversy, exploring the murky process behind the decision, the real-world costs and operational consequences for agencies like CISA, and the troubling precedent it sets for the integrity of federal-state security partnerships.
A 2024 DHS working group identified priority regions for new SCIFs, and South Dakota was not on that list. What criteria typically determine these priorities, and what specific change in the threat landscape could justify redirecting resources to a region with relatively few cleared personnel?
Normally, the placement of a SCIF is a deeply analytical process, not a political whim. A working group, like the one DHS convened in 2024, would look at a map of the country and overlay it with critical data points: Where are the highest concentrations of personnel with TS/SCI clearances? Where are our critical infrastructure partners? What are the most pressing and geographically specific threats we’re facing? The fact that South Dakota didn’t even make that list tells you everything. The justification that this facility is needed for a “hard-to-reach” area feels manufactured when you realize CISA had, at last count, only a few dozen cleared personnel in that entire multi-state region. For this decision to make sense from a security standpoint, you’d need to see a sudden, dramatic, and localized threat emerge in Sioux Falls that couldn’t be addressed through existing channels—which, of course, it can.
When a project is designated a “Secretary-level priority,” some staff have reported feeling pressure to create a justification despite operational reservations. Can you walk us through the internal dynamics of such a situation and explain how it impacts the standard vetting process for national security infrastructure?
It creates an incredibly toxic and difficult environment for career staff. Imagine you’re an analyst or a planner at CISA, and your entire job is based on objective, data-driven assessments of risk and need. Then, a political appointee, in this case, the senior-most one at the time, comes to you and essentially says, “The Secretary wants this, find a reason for it.” You’re explicitly told the project must proceed. The entire standard vetting process is turned on its head. Instead of a needs assessment driving a proposal, a pre-determined outcome is forcing staff to reverse-engineer a justification. It’s demoralizing. People feel their expertise is being ignored in favor of political optics, and it fosters a deep sense of cynicism that the mission is no longer the top priority.
While construction may not be federally funded, what are the typical long-term federal costs associated with sponsoring a SCIF, including accreditation, maintenance, and staffing? How does this commitment align with guidance given to other states that no federal funding is available for such projects?
The claim of “no federal funding” is misleading at best. While the university may pay for the physical construction—the soundproofing, the secure networks, the reinforced walls—the federal government, as the sponsor, is on the hook for significant and recurring costs. First, there’s the accreditation process itself, which requires federal time and resources to certify the facility meets exacting standards. More importantly, you have to staff it. A SCIF is useless without federally cleared personnel to manage it, control access, and handle the intelligence. That means stationing DHS or CISA employees nearby, which involves salaries, housing, and support costs indefinitely. This commitment is particularly galling when you see a letter from Secretary Noem to the governor of Connecticut this past April, flatly stating that DHS has “no federal funding” to help other states build these exact same facilities. It’s a glaring contradiction.
Federal sponsorship can make a university highly competitive for future classified contracts. How does a top-down directive to sponsor a specific institution, seemingly outside of the normal planning process, affect the perception of fairness and the integrity of federal security partnerships?
It utterly corrodes the perception of fairness. Becoming a sponsored institution is like getting a golden ticket. It instantly elevates a university, making it immensely more competitive for lucrative federal contracts that require handling classified information. Hundreds of universities and contractors are constantly vying for this kind of sponsorship. When the decision is made through a transparent, needs-based process, it’s defensible. But when it comes down as a top-down directive from a Secretary with deep personal and political ties to the state and the institution, it looks like political favoritism, plain and simple. It sends a message to every other potential partner that the system is rigged and that who you know matters more than the merit of your proposal. You can’t build trust in federal security partnerships on that kind of foundation.
Considering there are alternative ways to share intelligence and that the proposed facility is hours from the state capital, what is the practical, day-to-day use case for this SCIF? Please provide a detailed scenario illustrating who would use it and for what specific purpose.
Frankly, the practical use case is incredibly thin, which is why officials are so skeptical. In a real-world scenario, DHS already has established methods for sharing urgent intelligence. They can relay information at lower classification levels, which is often sufficient for state and local partners, or they can use existing SCIFs run by other federal agencies. The idea that a CISA agent or an ICE officer in the field would drive three hours from the state capital of Pierre to Sioux Falls to sit in this specific room to read a single classified report is, as one official put it, “delusional.” A more realistic scenario, if you’re forced to invent one, might involve a federal agent meeting with a specifically cleared engineer from a local energy company to discuss a classified cyber threat to their grid. But even that is a solution in search of a problem, as those interactions are rare and can typically be facilitated at other secure locations.
What is your forecast for the future of state-level SCIF development and its impact on federal-state intelligence sharing?
My forecast is that we are heading toward a more fragmented and potentially politicized intelligence-sharing landscape. The push for every state to have its own SCIF, while sounding good on paper, could create a patchwork of unequal capabilities driven more by political influence than by actual threat assessments. If decisions like the one in South Dakota become the norm, we risk federal resources being diverted to projects that serve political ends rather than bolstering national security in areas of greatest need. This could erode the trust between federal agencies and their state partners, as states without the right political connections are left behind. True security resilience comes from strategic, collaborative planning, not from top-down directives that create the appearance of favoritism and undermine the very experts tasked with protecting the homeland.
