Commentators noting the fifth anniversary, this month, of the launch of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have largely paid more attention to shortcomings than to what has been achieved and why the achievements are important. This is unfortunate for many reasons, not least because it is disheartening to the analysts, collectors and others who know that progress is real -- and fragile. The intelligence community operates very differently today than it used to. It still has far to go but is moving in the right direction faster than would have been possible without DNI authorities and leadership. Those who argue otherwise are ill-informed or disingenuous.

Collaboration among analysts and collectors is more extensive and more fruitful now than it was at any time in the nearly four decades that we both worked in intelligence. More collection products -- and information about the provenance of those products -- are shared more widely. More important, the information that collectors go after is far more responsive to input from analysts than in the past, and analysts now share information and insights more readily and effectively with one another and with collectors. "Analysis driving collection" used to be an unrealized goal or empty slogan; now it is an accurate description of the way the intelligence community works. This fundamental change has enabled collectors to focus on providing information that analysts say will provide crucial insights. Collectors by and large welcome the more specific guidance they now receive from analysts to close long-standing intelligence gaps.

Institutional barriers remain, but analysts across the agencies that make up the intelligence community now know more about the capabilities of their collection colleagues and analysts working in other areas, why they frame questions certain ways and how to enlist their help. Greater attention to analytic tradecraft and greater transparency with respect to information used, alternative hypotheses considered and assumptions used to close intelligence gaps have increased understanding of and respect for one another's work. This has facilitated divisions of labor, reduced duplication of effort and enhanced collaboration within and across agencies. These are fundamental changes in both analysis and collection.

Technology has helped. Five years ago, Intellipedia -- a classified collaborative tool similar to Wikipedia but used by analysts and collectors -- was a timid and limited experiment in a single agency. No one had yet imagined A-Space, a cutting-edge collaborative electronic workspace in which analysts have access to data from all components of the intelligence community, social networking software that identifies others working on similar problems and data manipulation tools that were previously available to a select few. Time magazine called A-Space one of the 50 best inventions of 2008. The Library of National Intelligence, a groundbreaking distributed repository of all disseminated intelligence reports that enable intelligence professionals to discover what we already know and how obtained information has been used, was not even a gleam in anyone's eye. Today, all are proven and widely used tools that enable analysts (and, increasingly, collectors) to work together responsibly in cyberspace.

New technologies were a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite for building communities of analysts and collectors. The sorts of collaboration that are routine today were impossible until DNI-led efforts changed policies that had prevented analysts with the same clearances from seeing or sharing large volumes of information. Such changes required finding ways to ensure the protection of sources and methods, giving appropriate attention to counterintelligence concerns, solving meta-data incompatibility problems and overcoming cultural impediments to collaboration. The intelligence community is transforming from a confederation of feudal baronies into networks of analysts, collectors and other skilled professionals who increasingly think of themselves as members of an integrated enterprise with a common purpose.

Creating the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was not a panacea. But it facilitated the implementation of measures that have markedly improved the intelligence products delivered to policymakers and others. Much has been achieved in the past five years, and our nation is safer as a result. Yet to ensure our future security, more must be accomplished, especially with regard to the sharing and integration of information across all departments and levels of government. The best way to achieve still-needed improvements is to stick with the DNI-led structure and build on what has been achieved.

Thomas Fingar, the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis (2005-2008), is a distinguished fellow at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Mary Margaret Graham, the first deputy director of national intelligence for collection (2005-2008), chairs the Defense Intelligence Agency's advisory board and is one of the National Geospatial Agency's independent advisers.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has published a paper with seven essays from leading scholars invited to respond to Scott Sagan's concluding essay Shared Responsibilities for Nuclear Disarmament in the Fall 2009 special issue of Daedalus on the global nuclear future. The paper includes Sagan's original essay and responses by James M. Acton, Jayantha Dhanapala, Mustafa Kibaroglu, Harald Muller, Yukio Satoh, Mohamed I. Shaker and Achilles Zaluar.

As Leslie Berlowitz, CEO of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, states in an excerpt from the paper's introduction:

"Renewed interest in arms control and restated commitments to the longterm goal of nuclear disarmament have clearly increased over recent years, most dramatically with President Barack Obama's April 2009 speech in Prague. With that change in focus comes an opportunity for the international community to rethink how Article VI of the NPT is traditionally interpreted and to move beyond the cycle of repeated complaints from the 'have-nots' that the 'haves' are not doing enough to disarm themselves and repeated retorts by the "haves" that they are already taking every step that is realistic or prudent. The promise of a different approach to the commitments made under the NPT forms the basis of the Scott Sagan's valuable article--"Shared Responsibilities for Nuclear Disarmament"...

"The differences in national perspectives and the differences in individual opinions about appropriate disarmament steps among the authors should not mask a commitment they all share. The contributors to this volume agree that new thinking and continued debate about how best to maintain momentum toward nuclear disarmament is to be welcomed. Only by seeking out, and taking into consideration, a cross section of views can progress toward the goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world continue... 

"Their contributions serve to expand the discussion that was started by the original Daedalus article--and together they are intended to spark renewed policy debates about how best to pursue global disarmament, debates that will be prominent at the May 2010 NPT Review Conference in New York City and in the years following that important meeting."

Leaders or representatives from 47 countries recently attended the nuclear security summit in Washington. By holding a bilateral meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama and delivering an important speech at the summit, Hu Jintao highlighted China's positive image for people across the globe and helped reverse the deterioration of US-China relations.

Obviously, it takes a long path toward establishing a global mechanism to counter nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. Many of these leaders were not quite sure whether they would come away from the summit empty-handed.

However, they decided to attend the summit mainly to respond positively to Obama, who had launched a number of initiatives to build a nuclear-free world. The same is true for Hu Jintao and his decision to attend the summit.

Hu's visit to Washington will help lead the bilateral relations toward a positive direction. Although some disputes continue between the two countries, Hu's visit to Washington will no doubt contribute to lowering U.S. hostility toward China.

Earlier, the rapid increase in GDP had stimulated some Chinese diplomats to take blind pride in dealing with their foreign counterparts. Now, it is time to rethink whether it is necessary to adhere to the well-established principle of keeping a low profile in handling Sino-American relations.

China's GDP will soon become the second largest in the world. Who is the greatest beneficiary from the pursuance of this principle over the past three decades? Needless to say, it is China.

Now, China is just halfway through its course of "peaceful rise." In the foreseeable future, the United States will remain the No. 1 power in the world. Two decades from now, who will become the greatest beneficiary if China, as the biggest developing country, is able to maintain stable relations with Washington? Obviously, the answer is China.

In his opening statement at the summit, Obama pointed out that in today's world, the world has reduced the risk of a nuclear war between big powers, but the threat of nuclear terrorist assaults is increasing. He is right. Terrorists can penetrate all places throughout the world without leaving a trace.

It is difficult for all major powers, especially the United States, to detect and prevent them from launching assaults including sudden attacks with "dirty bombs" as weapons. As such, the whole world faces the most serious security challenge.

Such a strategic assessment prompted Obama to convene the nuclear security summit as well as his earlier initiative of "a world free of nuclear weapons." Preoccupied by this assessment, he has spared no effort to promote the campaign of countering nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism.

To fight nuclear terrorism, the summit focused on establishing an international nuclear security mechanism. The United States and many countries face the threat of nuclear terrorism. China is no exception.

In case the East Turkistan separatists consider the timing is mature to intensify conflicts with Beijing, they will no doubt take whatever means necessary to penetrate nuclear facilities or acquire "dirty bombs." Moreover, the large-scale construction of nuclear power plants in China introduces more security challenges. China will be in the peak period of building such plants in the next two decades.

The ongoing construction of such plants scattered in coastal areas would expose the nation to threat. A terrorist attack on even one plant would result in consequences more serious than that of detonating a nuclear bomb over a city. Taking this into account, Beijing has adopted various measures to strengthen nuclear security in recent years.

As a positive response from China to the international community, Hu Jintao made the decision to attend the summit, which reflects that Beijing and Washington actually are sharing common interests by making joint efforts to establish a global mechanism for countering nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism.

This action indicates that Beijing regards nuclear terrorist assaults as a huge threat to national security interests and it hopes to strengthen international cooperation to limit or even eliminate this type of threat.

Also, this decision has indeed enabled China to avert a head-on collision with the United States and helped reverse a deterioration of U.S.-China relations. Based on this, we can suppose that Beijing is able to conduct strategic adjustment at a critical moment and formulate appropriate foreign policies.