Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Tuesday night ordered Colombian intelligence agencies to stop sending information to U.S. government agencies, ending decades of bilateral cooperation through the publication of X magazine. “Such measures will remain in place as long as missile attacks against ships in the Caribbean continue,” he explained. The news has not yet elicited a response from President Donald Trump or Secretary of State Marco Rubio, but the decline in intelligence cooperation is not unique to Colombia. In recent years, Britain and the Netherlands, which have less tense relations with the White House and have territories in the Caribbean, have also restricted the information they send to Washington. According to CNN, Britain is concerned that intelligence collected on its island is being used by the United States to carry out indiscriminate bombing raids. Experts say the only people likely to benefit from ending this cooperation are the persecuted: drug traffickers.
International Crisis Group researcher Elizabeth Dickinson believes that if Petro doesn’t change its mind, “it will be a huge blow to the United States, because Washington relies heavily on Colombia in its drug war.” For example, he cited figures released by U.S. Congressman Gregory Meeks, chairman of the International Relations Committee, showing that from January 2024 to June 2025, 85% of the intelligence obtained from Key West Naval Air Force Base came from Colombia. Dickinson said such tips are typically sent to seize illegal drugs heading north. Cooperation between the United States and Latin America in the fight against drugs is coordinated at its military headquarters in South Florida.
“This will be a mutual blow, because the United States has not shared military intelligence in recent weeks, not only with Colombia but also with other NATO allies in Europe,” Dickinson explained. Washington is pursuing a large-scale military deployment in the Caribbean, but these allies have not received information about President Trump’s plans in the region. For example, should allies evacuate their diplomats and consular personnel from Caracas if they are planning an attack on Venezuela? Washington has not responded. “I think countries that are cutting intelligence assistance are reminding the United States that this has to be reciprocal,” the analyst added.
Retired Lieutenant General Paulo Guevara also believes that both countries are losing valuable information. “The people who benefit the most are drug traffickers,” he says. “Drug trafficking affects many countries, is complex and variable, and moves millions of dollars. Therefore, the best means to combat drug trafficking is international cooperation. For example, Colombia disseminates information about a ship bound for the United States, Washington informs Mexico, and Mexico intercepts it on the Mexican coast,” he explains.
Meanwhile, information from the United States was essential for Colombia to understand drug trafficking networks within its territory, the official added. “When a drug trafficker captured there cooperates with the judiciary, they interrogate him. That information is very useful to us here,” he says. The official regrets that the Egmont Group, a system that allows information sharing from other countries on how money laundering and cross-border criminal assets are transferred, suspended Colombia from 2024 after Petro revealed confidential information about the purchase of Pegasus software under the previous government.
“The United States is losing a 40-year ally who has produced a lot of intelligence, but the consequences for Colombia are really dire because we will be losing resources for the war on drugs. Most of our intelligence comes from North American aid,” he added.
An official who worked closely with Colombia’s intelligence services, who declined to be named, said Colombia’s weakest points relate to the cutting-edge technology the South American country has acquired in recent years, which it would not be able to maintain without U.S. support. “North American intelligence agencies have always been leaders in cutting-edge technologies such as satellites and wiretapping, even more so than in human intelligence,” he argues.
“Our cooperation with Colombia began to expand in the 1990s, but without that technology, a significant portion of our military and intelligence services as an intermediate country would not have had access to all the information collected. We did not have the financial or technical capacity to develop that technology locally,” he asserts. This not only allowed them to track the movements of small planes and boats carrying drugs, but also provided warning information about guerrilla takeovers by former FARC guerrillas. “However, these technologies quickly become obsolete and therefore need to be constantly modernized. That is only possible if we maintain good synchronization with the US,” adds the expert.
That synchronicity with Trump and Petro is utopian. The former described the latter as part of drug trafficking and revoked recognition of Colombia’s activities in the drug war. The Colombians responded with decisions such as ending intelligence cooperation. Both governments will ultimately lose the intelligence they have built up about the power and routes of drug trafficking. And in that ignorance, the only winners are drug traffickers.
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