President-elect Donald Trump’s promises to destroy what he calls the “deep state” predate his first term in the White House. The sentiment raises fears in the intelligence community that there will be purges of career professionalslink slot online, and that intelligence designed to protect American lives will be twisted to fit Mr. Trump’s personal interests.

During his first term, Mr. Trump believed he was undermined by public servants in the national security apparatus and vowed to appoint officials in his next administration who would shatter any resistance to his will and carry out his plans without question. The Project 2025 blueprint for the intelligence community offers little clarity into what Mr. Trump might have in store for the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., as it is limited to cataloging a litany of misperceptions about the agencies and grievances against individuals, such as the former C.I.A. director John Brennan and the former director of national intelligence James Clapper, both of whom left public service at the close of the Obama administration.

It is still unclear if Mr. Trump’s attacks on intelligence institutions are part of a scheme to expand presidential power or are a more visceral and scattershot assault on agencies he believed were disloyal during his first term. Will Mr. Trump be satisfied with servile leadership managing a functioning bureaucracy? Or is he seeking to dismantle the system of checks and balances and make executive agencies directly responsive to his personal demands? At minimum we can predict chaos, incompetence and a move toward cronyism, wherein people like Elon Musk potentially misuse intelligence for personal or commercial benefit.

Mr. Trump’s nominees so far offer a mixed message. The selection of John Ratcliffe as C.I.A. director appears to be largely orthodox. However, the nominations of Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence and Kash Patel as director of the F.B.I. send a very different signal: that Mr. Trump may be interested in wrecking the operation of the intelligence community.

Ms. Gabbard is wholly unqualified for the job. She has never directed or managed anything, and has embraced conspiracy theories and championed Russian disinformation.

She has labeled intelligence agents “rogue,” a word Mr. Trump has used to describe employees across the federal government. For students of intelligence, the term has a familiar ring. During congressional investigations of the C.I.A. in the 1970s, the Democratic senator Frank Church christened the agency a “rogue elephant,” suggesting it was out of control and engaged in illegal activity. Following the ensuing investigations, Mr. Church changed his mind, instead believing that the problems uncovered stemmed from unchecked presidential power.

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