Colombia’s President, Gustavo Petro, ordered Colombia’s intelligence services on Tuesday night to suspend sending information to US agencies, ending decades-long bilateral cooperation through a post in X. “Such action will continue as long as the missile attack on boats in the Caribbean continues,” he explained. The News has not yet received a response from President Donald Trump or his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, but reducing intelligence cooperation is not something exclusive to Colombia. In recent days, both the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, which do not have a tense relationship with the White House and have territories in the Caribbean, have restricted the intelligence they send to Washington. According to CNN, the British fear that information they collect on their islands will be used for indiscriminate bombing by the United States. Experts say the only ones who benefit from the end of this cooperation are those who are supposedly being persecuted: drug traffickers.
Elizabeth Dickinson, a researcher at the International Crisis Group, believes that if Petro does not change his mind, “it will be a very strong blow to the United States, because Washington depends so much on Colombia in the war on drugs.” He cites, for example, a figure revealed by Congressman Gregory Meeks in the US Congressional Committee on International Relations, according to which 85% of the intelligence information received from the Key West Naval and Air Force Base, between January 2024 and June 2025, came from Colombia. Such information usually goes toward the seizure of illicit drugs headed north, Dickinson explains. In this military headquarters in South Florida, cooperation between the United States and Latin America in combating drugs is coordinated.
“It would be a tit-for-tat, because for several weeks the United States has not shared military intelligence, not just with Colombia, but with other NATO allies in Europe,” Dickinson explains. Although Washington is developing a significant military presence in the Caribbean, these allies have not received information about Trump’s plans in the region. If it plans to attack Venezuela, for example, would the allies have to evacuate their diplomatic or consular staff from Caracas? And Washington is not responding. The analyst adds: “I think countries that cut off intelligence assistance remind the United States that this must be reciprocal.”
Retired Vice Admiral Paulo Guevara also believes that the two countries are missing out on valuable information. “The biggest beneficiaries are the drug dealers,” he says. “Drug trafficking affects many countries, is complex, variable and generates millions of dollars. Therefore, the best tool to combat drug trafficking is international cooperation. For example: Colombia passes information about a ship bound for the United States, Washington notifies Mexico, and it is intercepted on the Mexican coast,” he explains.
On the other hand, the officer adds, it was necessary for Colombia to obtain information from the United States to understand drug trafficking networks in its territory. “When a drug dealer is arrested there and cooperates with justice, they interview him. This information is very useful to us here,” he says. The officer regrets that since 2024, the Egmont Group, a system that allows the sharing of information from other countries about money laundering or how transnational crime moves its assets, has suspended Colombia, after Petro revealed confidential information about the purchase of Pegasus software in the previous administration.
The Vice Admiral adds: “The United States is losing an ally of 40 years that produces a lot of intelligence, but the consequences for Colombia are truly catastrophic, because we will be left without resources to fight drugs. A large part of our intelligence is funded with North American assistance.”
An official who has worked closely with Colombian intelligence services, but cannot reveal his name, points out that Colombia’s weakest point relates to the advanced technology that the South American country has acquired in recent years, which it will not be able to maintain without US support. “North American intelligence agencies have always been a leader in sophisticated technology, such as satellites or communications interception, much more than human intelligence,” he asserts.
He confirms: “With Colombia, cooperation began to grow in the 1990s, and a large part of the military and intelligence services, as the intermediary state, would not have been able to access all the information collected without that technology. We did not have the financial capacity or the technical ability to develop that technology locally.” Using it, it was possible not only to follow the movement of small aircraft or boats loaded with drugs, but also to alert information about the rebel seizure of power by former FARC fighters. “But these technologies quickly become outdated, so you have to constantly update them, and this is only possible if you maintain good synchronization with the United States,” the expert adds.
This conjunction with Trump and Petro is just utopia. The first described the second as a member of drug trafficking, and he endorsed Colombia’s work in the war on drugs. The Colombian responded with decisions such as ending intelligence cooperation. Both governments would eventually lose the information they had been building about drug trafficking powers and routes. In light of this ignorance, the only ones who win are the drug dealers.
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