The Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community is an unclassified report released each year concurrent with Congressional testimony to Congress by the Director of National Intelligence. The report focuses on what the ODNI believes are the most direct, serious threats to the U.S. during the next year.
OODA leverages the details of this report in our research and reporting, every year we use this as a foundation for updates on our threat assessments and our C-Suite report. We read the report looking for surprises or changes to assessments that need to be immediately highlighted to business leaders. This year we found several interesting nuances to bring to your attention. (Download and read the full report here. )
The following jumped out at us:
- The report has a much stronger emphasis on the threat of food insecurity. The term is mentioned 3 times more than last year (7 references last year, 22 references this year). Food insecurity was called out as a driving factor in contributing to instability in just about every region. The war in Ukraine has resulted in both a decline in food exports and also degradation of fertilizer production. Meanwhile, Chinese overfishing is hitting Africa and Asian food supplies hard with 85% of global fish stocks fully exploited. There are many threats in the world today, but this one is going to make much of the world a horrible place to try to live.
- The 2022 assessment spoke of “opportunities to forge collective action with allies and partners”. There is none of that optimism in the 2023 report. This year the focus is on risks with little room for encouraging thoughts.
- Like last year, the 2023 assessment spends a good bit of time outlining threats from China, as well as weaknesses. But a new focus has been placed on PRC CCP strategies for full spectrum use of China’s power, including military, diplomatic, cyber, space, and malign influence operations.
- The Russian section of this report is informed by a full year of observation of Russian actions against Ukraine. Militarily, as is apparent to any casual observer, the war has taken a toll on Russia’s ability to equip a fighting force. The ODNI believes the lowered military power of Russia will cause them to leverage nuclear, cyber, and space capabilities for overseas influence.
- The Russia Malign Influence Operations threat is called out as one of the most serious foreign influence threats to the US because Russia “uses its intelligence services, proxies, and wide-ranging influence tools to try to divide Western alliances and increase its sway around the world, while attempting to undermine U.S. global standing, sow discord inside the United States, and influence U.S. voters and decision-making.” Note the contrast between this assessment and the new US National Cybersecurity Strategy, which hardly thinks malign influence is a threat at all.
- Regarding an assessment of the origins of Covid-19, the report just said it could have been a lab accident or an infected animal. No new information on why this is their current assessment was provided. There are other assessments on this, but the bottom line for business is that if it was a lab-related incident or a zoonotic source, both would have significant implications for leaders. No matter which of these scenarios is true it means businesses have to prepare for future events like Covid-19. And if a virus emerges from China their behavior in response will likely be the same (cover-up and no cooperation).
- The intelligence community tracks the impact of technology on geopolitics and provides a solid review, unfortunately, most of the things the report mentions on technology are really just stating the obvious. Adversaries are adopting commercial technologies fast and are using them for digital authoritarianism, digital colonialism, and malign influence.
- With all the instability and economic chaos in the world combined with ubiquitous connectivity, it is clear that international crime is on the rise. The 2023 assessment captures this well and examines key threats including major transnational criminal groups like cartels but also cybercriminals.
- The threat of global terrorism remains and is examined in the assessment with the conclusion that more instability will result in growing terrorism threats. The threat of Iran supporting terror groups is highlighted. Iran remains a threat to Israel.
Additional Thoughts
ODNI now describes the international security environment as one being dominated by a fierce vie for dominance in the global order. This is not just a struggle between great powers, but great powers, rising regional powers, and an array of non-state actors. OODA’s 2023 Almanac has described the environment as a transformation of globalization. ODNI sees this year as pivotal to determining not just the emerging conditions of the global order but the rules that will shape that order for decades to come.
Many shared global challenges face decision-makers as well. These include COVID-19 and energy and food and economic issues. ODNI calls out rapidly emerging or evolving technologies for having the potential to disrupt traditional business and society with both positive and negative outcomes. One, in particular, is in creating unprecedented vulnerabilities and attack surfaces, making it increasingly challenging to predict the impact of challenges like these.
The annual assessment is founded on the fact that geography and demographics matter in assessing nations and their situation. Culture and governance also matter and the report does a good job of capturing these forces and clearly explaining the individual assessments. Special focus areas include reports on China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and a host of transnational issues.
For a contextualization of what this report means for business decision-makers, we refer you to our condensing of the most critical issues for board leaders in the OODA C-Suite Report, which is being updated to capture insights from the threat assessment.
