34 JUNE 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL company. Public diplomacy officials are already well tuned to pick up the public and social media moods and are therefore well prepared to report. The second shortcoming has to do with getting the information back to policymakers. This is a governmentwide problem that exists across multiple agencies represented at post. Although the embassy team functions under the direction of the chief of mission and should be collaborating in the service of a common goal, much falls apart in the process of reporting back to agencies in D.C. Generally, policymakers there who need to have actionable and relevant information are consigned to picking it up in a piecemeal fashion as they can. For this reason, I believe strongly in a single, unified, and best-in-class U.S. government cloud-hosted solution that all agencies represented at post must use for reporting purposes. Such a system would synthesize once-atomized cable-based reporting in real time with translated and annotated foreign press and social media synopses, in order to present an AIenhanced knowledge base for all agencies to draw from. The use of AI, in particular, would eliminate the practice of cable reporting that has often devolved into translation of public source foreign media with a slender commentary wrap. That then allows U.S. diplomats to focus on the highest value-added activities of human intelligence reporting. The reporting would be coupled with comprehensive profiles of foreign intermediaries in the public and private sectors showing all touchpoints for U.S. government engagement. Such a system would simultaneously present the latest 30,000foot view of the state of play in any given country—but also allow for deep data dives into individual profiles, all of which are constantly being refined by new data flows. The game of telephone (which quite literally represents some of the current reporting) is no longer adequate for this critical role for our U.S. diplomats. We have entered a new era for the U.S.’s posture and image abroad. And learning how to support it and to report back on its impact may well be the greatest contribution to national security a U.S. diplomat can make. n
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