The Defense Intelligence Agency has released the unclassified version of its 2025 Worldwide Threat Assessment, offering a stark summary of the national security challenges facing the United States. The report highlights threats from state and non-state actors, driven by rapid technological advancements and deepening adversarial cooperation.
From the opening statement:
"The United States is confronting an increasingly complex national security threat environment. In addition to traditional military modernization, developments in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, quantum sciences, microelectronics, space, cyber, and unmanned systems are rapidly transforming the nature of conflict and the global threat landscape. Our adversaries are deepening cooperation, often lending military, diplomatic, and economic support to each other’s conflicts and operations, to circumvent U.S. instruments of power. Transnational criminal organizations and terrorist groups are exploiting geostrategic conditions to evade authorities."
On China:
The Assessment highlights China as the primary long-term strategic threat, with significant military modernization, an expanding defense budget, and advancements in space, cyber, and electronic warfare, all contributing to elevated risk for the U.S.
On Russia
Despite Western provision of lethal aid to Ukraine, Russia almost certainly seeks to avoid direct conflict with NATO because it understands it cannot win a conventional military confrontation with the alliance. However, Moscow remains fully capable of employing asymmetric capabilities against the U.S. and allies, including cyber and information campaigns, and ultimately possesses an existential threat capability with its strategic nuclear forces that can range the U.S. Homeland.
The assessment also points out that Russia is expanding its nuclear arsenal to include air-to-air nuclear missiles and spends approximately $150 billion, or 40% of its federal budget, on defense.
On Iran:
The assessment concludes that its nuclear program continues to advance, shortening the timeline for producing missile-ready nuclear material. Over the course of the coming year, Iran almost certainly will seek to avoid direct conflict with the US but also will continue assassination plotting against current and former U.S. officials in retaliation for the 2020 death of IRGC-QF Commander Qasem Soleimani, and against Israeli and Jewish targets globally.
On Terrorism:
The terrorist threat to the U.S. Homeland remains dynamic and diffuse as terrorist groups decentralize attack plotting efforts. Over the next year, ISIS probably will try to conduct high profile attacks in the West, similar to the group’s attacks in France and Belgium approximately a decade ago. ISIS’s affiliates in Afghanistan and Al-Qaida’s affiliate in Yemen probably pose the greatest threat to the United States.
Readers are reminded that on Jan 1, 2025, an ISIS-inspired lone actor killed 14 people in a New Orleans vehicle ramming attack. This incident will reinforce ISIS’s use of propaganda to inspire future attacks.
On the Domestic Missile Threat:
U.S. adversaries continue efforts to advance their missile capabilities, threatening the Homeland, including traditional ballistic missiles, aeroballistic and cruise missiles, and novel nuclear and conventional warhead delivery systems. Both China and Russia are expanding their missile inventories and aggressively pursuing new systems, such as hypersonic glide vehicles, engineered to complicate U.S. defenses in the event of a conflict. North Korea now has developed an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of ranging the continental United States.
On Unmanned Systems:
The threat posed by Unmanned Systems to DoD interests and the U.S. Homeland will likely increase in coming years, driven by commercial demand, advances in enabling technologies, and the difficulty in attributing intent to actors using these systems. Hostile actors may leverage these factors to improve Unmanned System weaponization and surveillance capabilities against the United States.
These are just a few of the high points from the assessment. View the full document here. (PDF)
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