The US Annual Threat Assessment

What is it and why should you care?

Every year since 2006 (and I’m sure in some capacity before that), the US intelligence community has released its Annual Threat Assessment. This is an unclassified document that anyone has access to; which is nice because we paid for it! People may agree or disagree with the specific threats addressed or the order in which they are presented. But regardless of that, this document can provide some insight into how the American government is perceiving certain threats for the coming year, what their priorities are, and whether or not anything you’re doing might be viewed as a threat. As you might expect, this document changes over time as specific threats arise or are relegated to the back page of the newspaper, and is shaped by the priorities of the administration in power at the time. Let’s highlight some of the evolving factors in this report, starting with…

2006

Since the beginning of the published report, there are themes that carried through for most or all of the available years or reports. This report, any for many years after, are very focused on the United States Central Command, or CENTCOM. This is the strategic command that governs operations in the Middle East. Since these are early days of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, it makes sense that a large part of the American intellegence apparatus was focused here like the Eye of Sauron.

Several other key theats idenfitied in this first report that are carried through the years are: energy security; cybersecurity (particularly related to critical infrastructure); ecomonics; global health; state and non-state actors with increasing access to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and chemical, biological, readiological, and nuclear (CBRN) capabilities; and conventional regional powers/state actors such as China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc.

2009

This year’s report is the first time we see inclusion of domestic terrorism as a concern, as well as the first time climate change is cited as a threat to global security, and specific economic concerns in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis are included. While I’m by no means a devout supporter of Obama, the addition of these points to the list of threats is still meaningful and shows some degree of awareness to issues outside of those important to CENTCOM and the GWOT. It’s worth pointing out that while domestic terrorism is brought up, it is only in the context of domestic terror threats “inspired by al-Qa’ida.” There is no mention of white nationalist and other far right extremist ideologies; and there won’t be for more than a decade.

2011

The term “uneven economic recovery” makes its debut this year. Anyone paying attention to the financial sector in this era undoubtedly heard the term “K-shpaed recovery.” This is when certain economic sectors recover while others continue to suffer, and it’s why everyone tells you the economy is doing better even though it doesn’t feel like it. For example: the stock market will be continuing to gain value while wages stagnate and jobs are eliminated.

Also appearing in the 2011 report is water scarcity as a specific downstream effect of climate change, as well as transnational organized crime (TOC). The international drug trade, human trafficking and certain acts of terrorism can now be put under the general TOC category. Which doesn’t seem like it would matter, but ends up being an important distinction for the ways law enforcement, miltary, and intellegence overlap, share information, and receive funding.

2012

Climate change is omitted this year by name, but the downstream effects related to it, like resource scarcity and erratic weather, are still there. It returns the following year, so I’m willing to believe this is just a language or style choice this year by whomever prepared that section as opposed to a deliberate act of removal.

This year also marks an apparent deisre to standardize the format of these annual reports, as they follow more or less the same format from this point on. It may not be big deal on any given year, but if you spend your morning like I did looking for changes in the report from year to year, this is really helpful.

2013

The term climate change has returned! Again, it wasn’t really gone in 2012, but the specific language was abscent.

A new subsection is introduced: “China’s Monopoly on Rare Earth Elements.” In general, China is at the center of a global logistical empire feeding them the raw materials for computer chips and all the consumer electronic gadgets around your house. There is some interesting foreshadowing here since we would find out in 2020 just how delicate the worldwide logistic chain is as costs and wait times for parts and materials went up by an absurd amount. The CHIPS and Science Act was passed in 2022, attempting to bring some of that manufacturing capability back home. But had we heeded the warnings of experts, we could have acted sooner and avoided at least some of those disruptions altogether.

This year added another minor formatting change that I appreciated: a table of contents. Can you belive we went the last several years of reports without one?

2016

Under the category of “emerging and disruptive technology,” artificial intelligence (AI) is listed this year. There is too much about AI to go into here and the landscape has shifted rapidly since this first threat acknowledgement. There’s general AI vs. specific AI, large language models (LLMs), and NVIDIA seeing their stock soar when they emerged as the leading chip supplier used for producing AI models. Even in the last 7-10 days things have changed dramatically again as the Chinese AI model Deepseek is shaking up the AI market for reasons I haven’t fully delved into yet (and seriously impacting the aforementioned NVIDIA stock).

The other point worth mentioning in this report is that global diplacement is recognized as a potential threat to global security. The driving force listed in this report is increases in global conflicts forcing the migration of people to less hostile areas, but everything said would just as easily apply to climate refugees despite climate change not being listed as a factor for migration.

2020

There’s no report this year. I have to imagine this is due to COVID coming onto the US scene early this year, so that became the primary focus. A quick search of the interwebs shows that the Department of Homeland Security still had their own threat assessment that year, but one from the intelligence community is not readily available.

2021

Things get interesting this year. There is a press release saying the report is available, however clicking the link will lead to a “404 error” as the file has either been misplaced or removed. Additionally, Biden signed an Executive Order early in his term mandating the creation of an intelligence assessment specific to climate change; the results of which can be seen here. (I feel it’s also worth noting that the above executive order that prompted this report has been removed from the White House website at the time of writing.) The report covers global security concerns related to climate change up through 2040. It’s worth a read, but the TLDR version is that the expectation is for regional conflicts to increase as areas become less habitable, resources become more scarce, and that people will move in order to avoid those things. Effects will be more pronounced in “developing countries,” as is standard for most externalities generated by an inherently extractive and expolitative system. And, big surprise, we’re also not doing enough or acting quickly enough to slow the worst outcomes of climate change, let alone reverse it. New conflict zones will open up as warming temperatures expose resource rich areas of the arctic (in case you wondered why the question who controls Greenland has entered the discussion).

2022

Another big change becomes evident this year, marked by the GWOT no longer taking top billing in the report. Up until this time, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as conflicts in the wider CENTCOM region, have been the stars. With the witdrawl from Afghanistan, our attention now shifts to competion with near-peers in a multipolar power struggle. No longer is US intelligence focused primarily on the Middle East. The net they cast now grows wider as China and Russia reassert themselves on the global scale, exercising both hard and soft power around the world.

Two more noteworthy pojnts are adding “COVID origin assessment” to the report (which can also be seen in subsequent reports, too), and we finally get the barest nod to domestic terrorism that is does not stem from “Islamic extremism” by way of the “Foreign Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists.” This is not an overt acknowledgement of domestic terrorism brought about by white nationalists or neo-Nazis, but it’s as close as we’ve ever gotten; or are likely to get in the near future.

2023

We get one more incremental step towards recognizing the threat of domestic terrorism this year as “foreign” is replaced with “transnational” to create “Transnational Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists.” It’s still more than a little disappointing that this language somewhat absolves the US of their responsibility in creating these extremists, painting America almost as the victim. As if the problem were originating outside of the US and infecting the people here like a disease through the interwebs. This is clearly not the case as these elements have always been around since the founding of the country, and go through a repeating cycle of having more or less influence on American politics. Let us not forget that there was a non-insignificant number of pro-Nazi sympathizers in the US even after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, claiming our beef was with Japan and not Germany, despite the two being allies.

Conclusion

We should soon be seeing the release of the Annual Threat Assessment for 2025. What will it contain? It’s a great question. You can see how the document has evloved since 2006 and changed with the priorities of the adminstration in power. I would expect almost a complete removal of climate change as threat to global security, as the current adminstration refuses to even acknowledge that it’s real, let alone that it’s a problem (becuase listening to experts is “woke”). I would also not be surprised if domestic terrorism is linked with groups like Antifa or Black Lives Matter, support for Palestine or trans rights, and immigration (which we’re more or less already seeing by intending to set up a concentration camp in Guantemo Bay for undocumented migrants and referring to people coming accross the border as an “invasion”). Remember that this is, generally speaking, a policy setting document. It tells you what the US government considers a threat to security, which in turn reflects where money and resources will be allocated by law enforcement, military, and the intellegence apparatus. Even if you don’t aggree with their assessment, it’s nice to know which way the Eye of Sauron is pointing.