According to reporting in AHA News, CISA has announced the creation of ANCHOR-CI (Alliance of National Councils for Homeland Operational Resilience – Critical Infrastructure), a new advisory body intended to foster collaboration, coordination, and information sharing between federal agencies and critical infrastructure stakeholders.
The structure targets a persistent vulnerability in U.S. infrastructure defense: the gap between threat intelligence held by federal agencies and real-time operational awareness held by private sector operators of power grids, water systems, transportation networks, and communications infrastructure. ANCHOR-CI appears designed to create a formal mechanism for bidirectional intelligence flow—federal threat warnings moving to operators, operator field observations moving to DHS and CISA.
This matters because critical infrastructure systems operate in silos. A cyber intrusion detected in one regional power grid may not be visible to operators 500 miles away without coordinated reporting channels. Similarly, federal agencies may lack granular visibility into how adversary activity manifests at the operational level. Delays in this exchange cost time—and time is what defenders need most during active intrusions.
The advisory structure suggests DHS and CISA have identified coordination breakdowns in past incidents or exercises. Whether those breakdowns were technical (incompatible reporting systems), procedural (unclear escalation chains), or cultural (trust gaps between government and private operators) remains unstated in available reporting.
WHAT TO WATCH: Monitor whether ANCHOR-CI generates published threat-sharing protocols, timeline commitments for information exchange, or classified intelligence distribution procedures. Public statements from participating infrastructure sectors (energy, water, transportation) will signal whether operators view the body as genuinely operational or bureaucratic theater. Any post-establishment cybersecurity incident will test whether coordination has actually improved under stress.
