Linking Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, the Five Eyes is a club that plays in a league of its own.  Starting in the middle years of the 20th century, the intelligence agencies of the five nations have shared – or pooled – much of their work, everything from cryptoanalysis to cybersecurity.  

Although the U.S. agencies are dominant, the arrangement works because it enables each partner to collect and analyze far more information than it could have alone. It also works because of a high degree of mutual trust – the belief that your partners will have your back despite the risks involved.

But thanks to its deep dependency on an increasingly volatile United States, the Five Eyes has now become brittle. 

Trampling constitutional and democratic norms at every step, U.S. President Donald Trump has been fundamentally hostile to the U.S. intelligence system from the beginning.  In his recent speech on election interference on July 16, 2027, he blamed “corrupt” anti-Trump officials in the FBI and the CIA for allegedly covering-up “evidence” about the vulnerability of U.S. election security to China and other nefarious actors. 

The Trump administration has also tried to weaponize the power asymmetry within the Five Eyes itself, vowing to “punish” select partners for failing to support Washington’s policies. 

In 2025, Canada was threatened with removal from the Five Eyes because the government in Ottawa refused to acquiesce to Trump’s tariffs. This year a leaked Pentagon memo suggested the White House threatened to withdraw support for British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands because the U.K. government showed no enthusiasm for the U.S. assault on Iran. 

Partner nations have struggled with this new reality. Last year the U.K. reportedly suspended sharing intelligence on the Caribbean with the United States out of concern that the U.S. military might be using it illegally. This year the Canadian government felt compelled to remind the Trump administration to “respect Canadian sovereignty” after a group of separatist leaders in Alberta visited U.S. government offices in Washington, D.C.  

Yet day-to-day cooperation has stayed the course, with intelligence agencies navigating tensions between their respective governments much as they have done in the past. As with NATO campaign planning and the Ukraine Contact Group,  the Five Eyes continues to have the United States as a full participant at the staff level, especially when seasoned professionals are involved.

The unpredictability of the current geopolitical moment no doubt makes it difficult to assess the future of the Five Eyes. Yet this challenge is also compounded by a set of persistent misunderstandings about what the partnership is, and what it actually does.          

Myth #1: It is purely technical

True, the Five Eyes is based on a set of memoranda that guide cooperation on highly technical issues such as signal interception and analysis. Popular representations featuring undersea cables, satellites, or radomes in remote landscapes sustain this view. 

But what ultimately enables and sustains the Five Eyes is the human factor: how professionals interpret, adapt to, and make use of the tools, systems, and resources at their disposal.

The shared workplaces, in their various forms, thus function as incubators of social and institutional relationships that extend across organizational and national boundaries. This is where professional solidarities take shape, grounded in a shared commitment to a common mission and to interests that do not always align with the shifting priorities of political leaders. It is also where trust is built, tested and repaired over time.

Myth #2: It operates under strict oversight 

The Five Eyes derives much of its legitimacy from the claim that it operates under strict democratic oversight. Intelligence agencies often cast themselves as guardians of the free world, yet they have repeatedly been embroiled in controversies over the mass surveillance of citizens’ communications.

These episodes expose a stark gap: oversight bodies often struggle to meaningfully restrain these agencies, while the agencies themselves continue to operate with limited accountability. In this light, some critics welcome the Trump administration’s attacks on intelligence agencies – and what they call the “deep state” – as the most tangible challenge to their unchecked powers. 

Myth #3: It is a closed circle of five nations

Certainly, the partnership came into being when the U.K.-U.S. intelligence partnership expanded to include materiel and personnel from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Yet what we call the Five Eyes is also a broader social and political space, encompassing a network of “third-party” intelligence agencies across Europe and beyond.

Rather than emerging solely from U.S.-led efforts during the global war on terror, many of these relationships had already reached high levels of interoperability – and trust – during the Cold War and its aftermath. For example,  Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has long maintained close ties with the U.S. National Security Agency. Partners have at times tolerated underhanded tactics. In one striking case, Denmark’s military intelligence service assisted its NSA counterpart in spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders.

Focusing narrowly on the five member states therefore obscures important insights into the wider patterns and practices of intelligence cooperation.

Myth #4: It is an anti-China bloc

Beijing has frequently portrayed the Five Eyes as a political, military, and diplomatic bloc aimed at containing China’s rise. This characterization is not entirely unfounded. A strategic rivalry is clearly in play, and China is now described as an “existential threat” and an “epoch-defining challenge” in both public and private Five Eyes discussions.

Yet the Five Eyes “alliance” is far less homogeneous than such portrayals suggest. As recently as five years ago, the government of New Zealand appeared to resist what it called the “Five Eyes-ization” of its foreign policy toward China. More recently, Canada’s prime minister traveled to Beijing to explore new strategic openings, in part as a response to pressure from Donald Trump

Lastly, the geopolitical rhetoric across many Asian democracies suggests that Five Eyes officials are not alone in their concerns about China’s rise.

Myth #5: It is now breaking apart

By any reasonable measure, Trump-driven disruptions are bad news for the Five Eyes. History shows that political and strategic divergence can and sometimes does reduce intelligence sharing. And diplomatic damage control can only go so far, particularly when senior U.S. figures – including ambassadors in Europe and Secretary of State Marco Rubio – are so consistent in taking controversial positions. Should these disruptions continue or intensify, they will likely undermine confidence in exchanged information and erode trust overall. 

Yet specialist research suggests that the human dimension of intelligence work can also absorb some of these shocks. Agencies and their personnel are not merely passive recipients of political pressure; they can resist, adapt, and navigate interference. Recent examples illustrate this dynamic, such as senior officials within the FBI who refused to dismiss employees involved in investigations tied to the January 6 U.S. Capitol attack.

More broadly, despite growing distrust and caution, intelligence agencies continue to share information, deepen cooperation, and even explore ideas such as a “European Five Eyes.” These developments suggest that, rather than acting as passive instruments, intelligence agencies can leverage a hostile political climate to pursue their own institutional interests.

Until these misunderstandings are addressed, assessments of the Five Eyes will remain incomplete, obscuring both its resilience and its vulnerabilities in an increasingly uncertain world.