The National Security Agency recently achieved its goals to shed around 2,000 people from its workforce this year, according to three people familiar with the spy agency’s posture. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the milestone has not been made public.
The reductions include a mix of civilian employees who were terminated, voluntarily left or took deferred resignation offers, where they agree to leave government service early while still being paid for a set time period.
The figure marks a historic staffing reduction for the spy agency, one of the largest in the U.S. intelligence enterprise, and reflects monthslong pressures from the second Trump administration to downsize the federal government and clean out alleged bloat and politicization in its spy offices.
The Washington Post and The Record, the news unit of cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, first reported the NSA’s and the broader intelligence community’s downsizing goals in May.
Employees at the nation’s various spy agencies were initially extended deferred resignation offers in February.
The exact number of people remaining at NSA this year is not clear. The signals intelligence giant’s full workforce numbers are classified from public view so foreign adversaries can’t use the information to assess how the U.S. devotes resources to spying activities.
An NSA spokesperson declined to comment.
The NSA specializes in hacking and foreign eavesdropping and is deemed a “combat support agency” that faces oversight from both the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Defense Department. Other combat support arms include the Defense Intelligence Agency — which focuses on military intelligence — and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which captures and analyzes imagery from space.
The NSA’s positioning potentially subjects the agency to further reductions as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seeks to reduce DOD’s budget by some 8% over the next five years.
The agency has also been reorganizing some of its mission priorities, two of the people said, though one of them stressed this is not uncommon when new presidential administrations enter.
That said, workforce concerns have prevailed. Throughout this year, Lt. Gen. William Hartman, NSA’s acting director who also leads U.S. Cyber Command in a dual-hatted role, has held multiple all-hands calls with the agency’s workforce, where limited Q&A was allowed, said the second person.
Hartman has led NSA and Cyber Command in an acting capacity since April after the firing of Gen. Timothy Haugh, which was fueled by far-right activist Laura Loomer. The NSA’s top lawyer, April Falcon Doss, was also let go after Loomer advised that she leave the agency. Those events unfolded as leading officials from the agency and the combatant command have voluntarily departed this year.
Army Lt. Gen. Joshua Rudd, the deputy commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, has surfaced as the White House’s leading choice to head the agency and digital military command, two other people familiar with the matter said. The Record first reported Rudd’s emergence as top contender for the position.
The NSA has been facing waves of internal strain and lower morale across its workforce amid a mix of leadership gaps, program cuts and recent extensions of deferred resignation offers, Nextgov/FCW reported last month.
