Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community
– February 5, 2024
– Published by Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)
Foreword Excerpt from Document:
“During the next year, the United States faces an increasingly fragile global order strained by
accelerating strategic competition among major powers, more intense and unpredictable
transnational challenges, and multiple regional conflicts with far-reaching implications. An
ambitious but anxious China, a confrontational Russia, some regional powers, such as Iran, and
more capable non-state actors are challenging longstanding rules of the international system as well
as U.S. primacy within it. Simultaneously, new technologies, fragilities in the public health sector,
and environmental changes are more frequent, often have global impact and are harder to forecast.
One need only look at the Gaza crisis—triggered by a highly capable non-state terrorist group in
HAMAS, fueled in part by a regionally ambitious Iran, and exacerbated by narratives encouraged by
China and Russia to undermine the United States on the global stage—to see how a regional crisis
can have widespread spillover effects and complicate international cooperation on other pressing
issues. The world that emerges from this tumultuous period will be shaped by whoever offers the
most persuasive arguments for how the world should be governed, how societies should be
organized, and which systems are most effective at advancing economic growth and providing
benefits for more people, and by the powers—both state and non-state—that are most able and
willing to act on solutions to transnational issues and regional crises.
New opportunities for collective action, with state and non-state actors alike, will emerge out of
these complex and interdependent issues. The 2024 Annual Threat Assessment highlights some of
those connections as it provides the IC’s baseline assessments of the most pressing threats to U.S.
national interests. It is not an exhaustive assessment of all global challenges, however. It addresses
traditional and nontraditional threats from U.S. adversaries, an array of regional issues with possible
larger, global implications, as well as functional and transnational challenges, such as proliferation,
emerging technology, climate change, terrorism, and illicit drugs.
China has the capability to directly compete with the United States and U.S. allies and to alter the
rules-based global order in ways that support Beijing’s power and form of governance over that of
the United States. China’s serious demographic and economic challenges may make it an even
more aggressive and unpredictable global actor. Russia’s ongoing aggression in Ukraine underscores
that it remains a threat to the rules-based international order. Local and regional powers are also
trying to gain and exert influence, often at the cost of neighbors and the world order itself. Iran will
remain a regional menace with broader malign influence activities, and North Korea will expand its
WMD capabilities while being a disruptive player on the regional and world stages. Often, U.S.
actions intended to deter foreign aggression or escalation are interpreted by adversaries as
reinforcing their own perceptions that the United States is intending to contain or weaken them, and
these misinterpretations can complicate escalation management and crisis communications.
Regional and localized conflicts and instability, such as from the HAMAS attacks against Israel and
Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza, will demand U.S. attention as states and non-state actors
struggle in this evolving global order, including over major power competition and shared
transnational challenges. From this, conflicts and bouts of instability from East Asia to Africa to the
Western Hemisphere—exacerbated by global challenges—have greater potential to spill over into
many domains, with implications for the United States, U.S. allies and partners, and the world.
Economic strain is further stoking this instability. Around the world, multiple states are facing
rising, and in some cases unsustainable, debt burdens, economic spillovers from the war in Ukraine,
and increased cost and output losses from extreme weather events even as they continue to recover
from the COVID-19 pandemic. While global agricultural food commodity prices retreated from
their 2022 peak, domestic food price inflation remains high in many countries and food security in
many countries remains vulnerable to economic and geopolitical shocks.
At the same time, the world is beset by an array of shared, universal issues requiring cooperative
global solutions. However, the larger competition between democratic and authoritarian forms of
government that China, Russia, and other countries are fueling by promoting authoritarianism and
spreading disinformation is putting pressure on longstanding norms encouraging cooperative
approaches to the global commons. This competition also exploits technological advancements—
such as AI, biotechnologies and related biosecurity, the development and production of
microelectronics, and potential quantum developments—to gain stronger sway over worldwide
narratives affecting the global geopolitical balance, including influence within it. The fields of AI
and biotechnology, in particular, are rapidly advancing, and convergences among various fields of
science and technology probably will result in further significant breakthroughs. The accelerating
effects of climate change are placing more of the world’s population, particularly in low- and middle-
income countries, at greater risk from extreme weather, food and water insecurity, and humanitarian
disasters, fueling migration flows and increasing the risks of future pandemics as pathogens exploit
the changing environment.
The 2024 Annual Threat Assessment report supports the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence’s commitment to transparency and the tradition of providing regular threat updates to
the American public and the United States Congress. The IC is vigilant in monitoring and assessing
direct and indirect threats to U.S. and allied interests. For this requirement, the IC’s National
Intelligence Officers—and the National Intelligence Council that they collectively constitute—work
closely and regularly with analysts across the IC. This work diagnostically examines the most
serious of both the immediate and long-term threats to the United States, along with the evolving
global order and other macro-trends, that will most influence the direction and potential impact of
these threats.
The National Intelligence Council stands ready to support policymakers with additional information
in a classified setting.”
Contents:
Introduction – 3
Foreword – 5
State Actors – 7
- China – 7
- Russia – 14
- Iran – 18
- North Korea – 21
- Conflicts and Fragility – 24
- Gaza Conflict – 24
- Potential Interstate Conflict – 25
- Potential Intrastate Turmoil – 27
Trannational Issues – 30
- Contested Spaces – 30
- Disruptive Technology – 30
- Digital Authoritarianism and Transnational Repression – 31
- WMD – 31
- Shared Domains – 33
- Environmental Change and Extreme Weather – 33
- Health Security – 33
- Migration – 35
- Non-state Actor Issues – 36
- Transnational Organized Crime – 36
- Human Trafficking – 37
- Global Terrorism – 38
- Private Military and Security Companies – 40
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Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community - February 5, 2024
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