ANNUAL THREAT ASSESSMENT OF THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY March 2025
Office
of the Director of National Intelligence | March 2025
ANNUAL THREAT ASSESSMENT
OF THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE
COMMUNITY
March 2025
This annual report of worldwide
threats to the national security of the United States responds to Section 617
of the FY21 Intelligence Authorization Act (Pub. L. No.
116-260). This report reflects the collective insights of the Intelligence Community (IC), which
is committed to providing the nuanced, independent,
and unvarnished intelligence that policymakers, warfighters, and domestic
law enforcement personnel need to protect American lives and America’s
interests anywhere in the world.
This assessment focuses on the most direct, serious threats to the United States primarily during the next year. All these threats require a robust intelligence response, including those where a near-term focus may help head off greater threats in the future.
Information available as of 18 March was used in the preparation of this assessment.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................
FOREWORD.............................................................................................................
NONSTATE TRANSNATIONAL CRIMINALS AND TERRORISTS......................
Transnational Islamic Extremists................................................................................
Other Transnational Criminals...................................................................................
MAJOR STATE ACTORS....................................................................................
China.....................................................................................................................
Russia....................................................................................................................
Iran.......................................................................................................................
North Korea.........................................................................................................
Adversarial Cooperation........................................................................................
The 2025 Annual Threat Assessment
(ATA) is the Intelligence Community’s (IC) official, coordinated evaluation of
an array of threats to U.S. citizens, the Homeland, and U.S. interests in the
world. A diverse set of foreign actors are targeting U.S. health and safety,
critical infrastructure, industries, wealth, and government. State adversaries
and their proxies are also trying to weaken and displace U.S. economic and
military power in their regions and across the globe.
Both state and nonstate actors pose multiple immediate threats to the Homeland and U.S. national interests. Terrorist and transnational criminal organizations are directly threatening our citizens.
Cartels are largely responsible
for the more than 52,000 U.S. deaths from synthetic opioids in the 12 months
ending in October 2024 and helped facilitate the nearly three million illegal
migrant arrivals in 2024, straining resources and putting U.S. communities at
risk. A range of cyber and intelligence actors are targeting our wealth,
critical infrastructure, telecom, and media. Nonstate groups are often enabled,
both directly and indirectly, by state actors, such as China and India as
sources of precursors and equipment for drug traffickers. State adversaries
have weapons that can strike U.S. territory, or disable vital U.S. systems in
space, for coercive aims or actual war. These threats reinforce each other,
creating a vastly more complex and dangerous security environment.
Russia, China, Iran and
North Korea—individually and collectively—are challenging U.S. interests in the
world by attacking or threatening others in their regions, with both asymmetric
and conventional hard power tactics, and promoting alternative systems to
compete with the United States, primarily in trade, finance, and security. They
seek to challenge the United States and other countries through deliberate
campaigns to gain an advantage, while also trying to avoid direct war. Growing
cooperation between and among these adversaries is increasing their fortitude
against the United States, the potential for hostilities with any one of them
to draw in another, and pressure on other global actors to choose sides.
This 2025 ATA report
supports the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s commitment to
keeping the U.S. Congress and American people informed of threats to the
nation’s security, representing the IC’s dedication to monitoring, evaluating,
and warning of threats of all types. In preparing this assessment, the National
Intelligence Council worked closely with all IC components, the wider U.S.
Government, and foreign and external partners and experts to provide the most
timely, objective, and useful insights for strategic warning and U.S. decision
advantage.
This 2025 Annual Threat Assessment details these myriad threats by actor or perpetrator, starting with nonstate actors and then presenting threats posed by major state actors. The National Intelligence Council stands ready to support policymakers with additional information in a classified setting.
NONSTATE TRANSNATIONAL CRIMINALS AND TERRORISTS
Transnational criminals,
terrorists, and other nonstate actors are threatening and impacting the lives
of U.S. citizens, the security and prosperity of the Homeland, and U.S.
strength at home and abroad. Some transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) are
producing and trafficking large amounts of illicit drugs that are imperiling
American lives and livelihoods. They are conducting other illegal activities
that challenge U.S. security, such as human trafficking, cyber operations,
money laundering, and inciting violence. U.S. citizens—at home and abroad—are
also facing more diverse, complex, and decentralized terrorist threats. Actors,
ranging from designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations—including the Islamic
State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS), al-Qa‘ida, other Islamist terrorist groups,
and some drug cartels— to terrorists acting alone or in small cells, are likely
to pursue, enable, or inspire attacks. Finally, large-scale illegal immigration
has strained local and national infrastructure and resources and enabled known
or suspected terrorists to cross into the United States.
Foreign Illicit
Drug Actors
Western Hemisphere-based
TCOs and terrorists involved in illicit drug production and trafficking bound
for the United States endanger the health and safety of millions of Americans
and contribute to regional instability.
Fentanyl and other synthetic
opioids remain the most lethal drugs trafficked into the United States, causing
more than 52,000 U.S. deaths in a 12-month period ending in October 2024. This
represents a nearly 33 percent decrease in synthetic opioid-related overdose
deaths compared to the same reporting time frame the previous year, according
to CDC provisional data, and may be because of the availability and
accessibility of naloxone.
· Mexico-based
TCOs—including the Sinaloa Cartel and the New Generation Jalisco Cartel—remain
the dominant producers and suppliers of illicit drugs, including fentanyl,
heroin, methamphetamine, and South American-sourced cocaine, for the U.S.
market. Last year, official points of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border were
the main entry point for illicit drugs, often concealed in passenger vehicles
and tractor trailers. However, some TCOs likely will at least temporarily
change their smuggling techniques and routes in response to increased U.S.
security force presence at the border.
· Since
at least 2020, the growth of Mexico-based independent fentanyl producers—actors
who are autonomous or semiautonomous from Mexican
cartel control—has increasingly fragmented Mexico’s fentanyl trade. Independent
fentanyl producers are attracted to the drug’s profitability and
the low barriers to market entry, including the ease of synthesizing
it using basic lab equipment and few personnel.
· Colombia-based
TCOs and illegal armed groups are responsible for producing and exporting the
vast majority of cocaine that reaches the United States, some of which is
transshipped through Ecuador, contributing to an uptick in violent criminal
conflicts that spurs regional migration.
· Mexico-based
TCOs are ramping up lethal attacks in Mexico against rivals and Mexican
security forces using IEDs, including landmines, mortars, and grenades. In
2024, there were nearly 1,600 attacks on Mexican security forces using IEDs,
surging from only three reported attacks between 2020- 2021. The sophistication
of TCO tactics is reshaping Mexico’s security landscape and has heightened the
risk to security forces.
China remains the primary source
country for illicit fentanyl precursor chemicals and pill pressing equipment,
followed by India. Mexico-based chemical brokers circumvent international
controls through mislabeled shipments and the purchase of unregulated dual-use
chemicals.
Transnational
Islamic Extremists
ISIS’s most aggressive
branches, including ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), and its entrepreneurial plotters
will continue to seek to attack the West, including the United States, via
online outreach and propaganda aimed at directing, enabling, or inspiring attacks,
and could exploit vulnerable travel routes. ISIS has suffered
major setbacks and is incapable of holding ground in Iraq and Syria. In recent
years, ISIS saw the U.S. defeat of its physical caliphate in 2019, the loss of
three overall leaders in 2022, 2023, and 2025, and renewed counterterrorism efforts
this year removing leaders driving global operations. Nevertheless, ISIS
remains the world’s largest Islamic terrorist organization, has sought to gain
momentum from high-profile attacks, and continues to rely on its most capable
branches and globally dispersed leadership to weather degradation.
The New Year’s Day attacker
in New Orleans was influenced by ISIS propaganda, and separately, an Afghan
national was arrested in October for planning an election day attack in the
name of ISIS,
highlighting ISIS’s ability to
reach into the Homeland to both inspire and enable attacks.
ISIS-K in South Asia is the
group’s branch most capable of carrying out external terrorist attacks and
maintains the intent to conduct attacks in South and Central Asia, and
globally, although its capabilities vary. ISIS-K’s mass
casualty attacks in Russia and Iran in 2024, as well as arrests of
ISIS-K supporters in Europe and the United States,
highlight the group’s expanding capability beyond South Asia and
ability to inspire individuals to conduct attacks abroad.
ISIS will seek to exploit the end
of the Asad regime in Syria to reconstitute its attack capabilities, including
external plotting, and to free prisoners to rebuild their ranks.
In 2024, the ISIS spokesman
publicly hailed the group’s Africa expansion, highlighting the growing
importance of the continent to the group. ISIS-Somalia has doubled in size
during the past year, ISIS- West Africa remains the largest branch and leads in
numbers of claimed attacks, and ISIS-Sahel is expanding into coastal West Africa.
Al-Qa‘ida maintains
its intent to target the United States and U.S. citizens across its global
affiliates. Its leaders, some of whom remain in Iran, have tried
to exploit anti-Israeli sentiment over the war in Gaza to unite Muslims and
encourage attacks against Israel and the United States. Al-Qa‘ida’s media
apparatus issued statements from leaders and the group’s affiliates supporting
HAMAS and encouraging attacks against Israeli and U.S. targets.
Al-Qa‘ida in the Arabian
Peninsula (AQAP) relaunched its Inspire guide with videos and
tweets that encouraged attacks against Jewish targets, the United States, and
Europe. Inspire provided instructions for making bombs and
placing explosive devices on civilian airliners and gave religious,
ideological, historical, and moral justification for such attacks. In addition
to trying to inspire attacks worldwide and in the United States, AQAP has the
intent to conduct operations in the region and beyond.
Al-Shabaab—al-Qa‘ida’s
largest and wealthiest affiliate—remains focused on attacks in Somalia that
further its regional objectives, provides funding to al-Qa‘ida efforts outside
of Somalia, and has a burgeoning relationship with the Huthis that could
provide access to a new source of more sophisticated weapons, increasing the
threat to U.S. interests in the region.
In West Africa, al-Qa‘ida is
expanding its territorial control by gaining inroads with civilians through the
provision of services and intimidation, and is threatening urban centers in
Burkina Faso and Mali, where U.S. personnel are located.
Al-Qa‘ida’s affiliate in Syria,
Hurras al-Din, probably is exploiting the end of the Asad regime in Syria to
strengthen its position. Despite its public announcement that the group was
ordered dissolved by al- Qa‘ida’s senior leaders in Iran, Hurras al-Din members
were advised not to disarm and instead to prepare for a future conflict, noting
their continued fight against the Jews and their supporters.
Other Islamic
terrorist groups—including some with historical ties to al-Qa‘ida—continue to
pose a threat to the United States primarily in the regions where they
operate. Most of these groups generally have targeted local
governments in recent years, while Lebanese Hizballah has continued to pursue
limited targeting of primarily Israeli and Jewish individuals in and outside of
the Middle East. The U.S. Government works with partners worldwide to prevent
attacks against U.S. citizens, while watching for indications that these groups
may shift intent and build capabilities to pursue transnational attacks.
In South Asia, Tehrik-e-Taliban
(TTP) operations in recent years have focused exclusively on targeting the
Government of Pakistan, probably to avoid drawing more counterterrorism
pressure. However, TTP’s capabilities, historical ties to al-Qa‘ida, and previous
support to operations targeting the United States keep us concerned about the
potential future threat. Anti-India groups, including Lashkar-e Tayyiba,
similarly concern us in part because of their historical links with al-Qa‘ida.
Profit-motivated transnational
criminals are using corruption, intimidation, and enabling technologies to
expand their illegal activities into new markets and to diversify their sources
of income, which increase their resiliency to
U.S. and international law
enforcement and financial regulatory efforts. TCOs are defrauding U.S.
citizens, businesses, and government programs, while laundering billions of
dollars of illicit proceeds through U.S. and international financial
institutions. TCOs sometimes outsource money laundering operations and
investments to individuals and networks with legal and banking expertise to
circumvent financial regulations.
TCOs and their financial
facilitators use a myriad of methods to launder and repatriate illicit proceeds
and to evade law enforcement and regulatory pressures. Some TCOs use digital
currencies for money laundering and sanctions evasion activities because of its
perceived anonymity and weaker international regulations compared to fiat currencies.
Financially motivated cyber
criminals continue to prey on inadequately defended U.S. targets, such as
healthcare systems and municipal governments, that could have broad impact on
the U.S. populace and economy. Others have conducted attacks on critical infrastructure,
disrupting utility company business networks or manipulating poorly secured
control systems.
Ransomware actors in mid-2024
attacked the largest payment processor for U.S. healthcare transactions,
hampering prescriptions and causing extended delays in accessing electronic
health records, patient communications, and medication ordering systems, and
forcing some ambulances to divert patients to other hospitals.
U.S. water infrastructure has
become a more common target. In October 2024, criminal actors conducted cyber
attacks against both large and small water utilities in the United States,
possibly inspired by attacks against water infrastructure by Russian hacktivists
and Iranian cyber actors in 2023 that had little effect but drew substantial publicity.
Foreign and
U.S.-based human traffickers exploit vulnerable individuals and groups by
promising well-paying jobs, confiscating identification documents, coercing
victims to engage in risky behaviors and to work in inhumane conditions. TCOs
that engage in human trafficking may also engage in other criminal activity
threatening the United States, including fraud scams, drug trafficking, and
weapons and human smuggling.
· Criminal
actors, including Mexico-based TCOs, exploit migrants transiting the Western
Hemisphere to the United States through kidnapping for ransom, forced labor,
and sex trafficking operations. For example, some victims are forced to repay
their smuggling fees through debt bondage once they arrive in the United
States. These migrants are typically forced to become domestic servants, to
work in the fishing, agriculture, and meat processing industries for low wages,
or to work in illegal marijuana grow houses.
The total number of
migrants trying to reach the United States has dropped significantly since
January 2025 due to a surge in border security enforcement. While
key drivers of migration in the Western Hemisphere, such as crime, poverty, and
political repression, are likely to continue, heightened border security and
mass deportation policies probably serve as a deterrent for migrants seeking to
illegally cross U.S. borders.
Law enforcement encounters with
migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border were 14 percent lower in 2024 when compared
to the previous year, and U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions along the Southwest
border in January 2025 dropped 85 percent from the same period in 2024.
Guatemalan, Mexican, and Venezuelan nationals were the most frequently
encountered nationals at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Real or perceived changes to
immigration laws or travel polices in transit countries can trigger unexpected
spikes. Since 2021, for instance, Nicaragua has removed visa requirements for
air travelers from third countries, triggering a surge in U.S.-bound migration
from those countries through Nicaragua.
MAJOR STATE ACTORS
Several major state actors
present proximate and enduring threats to the United States and its interests
in the world, challenging U.S. military and economic strength, regionally and
globally. China stands out as the actor most capable of threatening U.S.
interests globally, though it is also more cautious than Russia, Iran, and
North Korea about risking its economic and diplomatic image in the world by
being too aggressive and disruptive. Growing cooperation among these actors
expands the threat, increasing the risk that should hostilities with one
occur, it may draw in others.
CHINA
Strategic Overview
President Xi Jinping and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) want to achieve “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” by 2049. The PRC will seek to increase its power and influence to shape world events to create an environment favorable to PRC interests, obtain greater U.S. deference to China’s interests, and fend off challenges to its reputation, legitimacy, and capabilities at home and abroad.
Beijing is deeply suspicious of
U.S. intentions and views Washington’s measures against China as part of a
concerted, whole-of-government effort, working with U.S. allies and partners,
to contain China’s development and rise, undermine CCP rule, and prevent the
PRC from achieving its aims. PRC leaders are most concerned about strong
unified opposition from the United States and its allies, and are responding,
in part, by strengthening ties with partners like Russia and North Korea.
At the same time, China’s
leaders will seek opportunities to reduce tension with Washington when
they believe it benefits Beijing, protects its core interests, and buys time to
strengthen its position.
The PRC will likely
continue posturing to be in a position of advantage in a potential conflict
with the United States. The PRC will continue trying to press Taiwan on
unification and will continue conducting wide-ranging cyber operations against
U.S. targets for both espionage and strategic advantage. China will likely
struggle to sufficiently constrain the activities of PRC companies and criminal
elements that enable the supply and trafficking of fentanyl precursors and
synthetic opioids to the United States, absent greater law enforcement actions.
China’s military operations to project power over Taiwan and its efforts to assert sovereignty claims in the South and East China Seas occur routinely with confrontations that increase concern of miscalculations potentially leading to conflict.
China has demonstrated the
ability to compromise U.S. infrastructure through formidable cyber capabilities
that it could employ during a conflict with the United States.
Beijing will continue to
strengthen its conventional military capabilities and strategic forces,
intensify competition in space, and sustain its industrial- and
technology-intensive economic strategy to compete with U.S. economic power and
global leadership.
Military
China presents the most
comprehensive and robust military threat to U.S. national security. The
People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is fielding a joint force that is capable of
full-spectrum warfare to challenge intervention by the United States in a
regional contingency, projecting power globally, and securing what Beijing
claims is its sovereign territory. A major portion of China’s military
modernization efforts is focused on developing counter-intervention
capabilities tailored against all aspects of U.S. and allied military
operations in the Pacific. Beijing will focus on meeting key modernization
milestones by 2027 and 2035, aimed at making the PLA a world-class military by
2049.
Examples of PLA advances in
2024 include the PLA Navy’s third carrier (CV-18 Fujian) beginning sea trials
and likely being ready to enter operational service in 2025. The PLA Rocket
Force probably is fielding the DF-27 ballistic missile, with a hypersonic glide
vehicle payload option and an estimated range of between 5,000 and 8,000
kilometers. The PLA ground forces are also fielding its most advanced multiple
rocket launcher, the PCH191, increasing its long-range, precision strike capability.
The PLA has improved its force
structure, readiness, and training. The PLA probably has made particular
progress in critical areas, such as modernizing key ground forces, expanding
its navy with more modern combatants, and fielding a wide variety of new missile
systems; it has also improved its electronic warfare (EW) capabilities.
The PLA has the
capability to conduct long-range precision-strikes with conventional weapons
against the Homeland’s periphery in the Western Pacific, including Guam,
Hawaii, and Alaska. China has developed a range of ballistic and
cruise missiles with conventional payloads that can be delivered from its
mainland as well as by air and sea, including by nuclear-powered submarines.
China may be exploring development of conventionally-armed intercontinental
range missile systems, which, if developed and fielded, would allow China to
threaten conventional strikes against targets in the continental United States.
The PLA will continue to
pursue the establishment of overseas military installations and access
agreements to project power and protect China’s interests abroad. Beijing may
also pursue a mixture of military logistics models, including preferred access
to commercial infrastructure abroad, exclusive PLA logistics facilities with
pre-positioned supplies co-located with commercial infrastructure, and bases
with stationed forces, to meet its overseas military logistics needs.
China is using
complex, whole-of-government campaigns featuring coercive military, economic,
and influence operations short of war to assert its positions and strength
against others, reserving more destructive tools for full- scale
conflict. Beijing will likely expand these campaigns to advance
unification with Taiwan, project power in East Asia, and reverse perceived U.S.
hegemony.
Beijing has pushed back against
U.S. military operations, such as reconnaissance and bomber flights,
freedom of navigation operations, and exercises around PRC borders and maritime
claims. The PLA regularly intercepts and shadows U.S. forces and sometimes
conducts unsafe maneuvers in their vicinity.
Taiwan and Maritime Flashpoints
In 2025, Beijing will
likely apply stronger coercive pressure against Taiwan and perceived increases
in U.S. support to the island to further its goal of eventual
unification. The PRC calls for a peaceful unification with Taiwan
to resolve the Civil War that drove Taiwan’s separation, even as it threatens
to use force to compel unification if necessary and counter what it sees as a
U.S. attempt to use Taiwan to undermine China’s rise.
A conflict between China
and Taiwan would disrupt U.S. access to trade and semiconductor technology
critical to the global economy. Even without U.S. involvement in such a
conflict, there would likely be significant and costly consequences to U.S. and
global economic and security interests.
Beijing is working to isolate Taipei by pressuring states to downgrade diplomatic ties and support China’s unification goal.
Since 2016, Taiwan’s official diplomatic
relationships have dropped from 22 to only 12, and several of the remaining
ones are vulnerable to Chinese pressure.
China is advancing military capabilities for a cross-Strait campaign while also using its armed forces to exert steady state pressure on Taiwan.
The PLA probably
is making steady but uneven progress on capabilities it would use in an attempt
to seize Taiwan and deter—and if necessary, defeat—U.S. military intervention,
and it is intensifying the scope, size, and pace of operations around Taiwan.
Beijing will continue to pressure Taipei with economic coercion and probably will increase it if it sees Taiwan taking steps toward formal independence.
It could
suspend preferential tariff terms, selectively ban Taiwan imports to China, and
arbitrarily enforce regulations.
Beijing’s aggressive
efforts to assert sovereignty claims in the South and East China Seas are
heightening tensions that could trigger a broader conflict.
In 2024, PRC tactics in the South
China Sea led to the loss of the Philippines’ unilateral access to some
disputed areas, and forced talks between Beijing and Manila in which the
Philippines agreed to concessions in exchange for access. However, Manila is
unlikely to relinquish its claims, creating potential for escalation by either side.
Tension between China and Japan
over the Senkaku Islands last flared up a decade ago. Since then, Chinese ships
have remained in proximity of the disputed islands, occasionally entering the
territorial zone, and driving responses from Japan’s Self-Defense Force to
monitor the activity.
Cyber
The PRC remains the most active
and persistent cyber threat to U.S. government, private-sector, and critical
infrastructure networks. The PRC’s campaign to preposition access on critical
infrastructure for attacks during crisis or conflict, tracked publicly as Volt
Typhoon, and its more recently identified compromise of U.S. telecommunications
infrastructure, also referred to as Salt Typhoon, demonstrates the growing
breadth and depth of the PRC’s capabilities to compromise U.S.
infrastructure.
If Beijing believed that a major
conflict with Washington was imminent, it could consider aggressive cyber
operations against U.S. critical infrastructure and military assets. Such
strikes would be designed to deter U.S. military action by impeding U.S. decision-making,
inducing societal panic, and interfering with the deployment of U.S. forces.
Economics
The PRC seeks to compete with the United States as the leading economic power in the world. To do so, the strategy calls for a centralized, state-directed, and nationally resourced approach to dominating global markets and strategic supply chains, limiting foreign competitors, and making other nations dependent on China.
PRC leaders are applying the same
strategy to bolster China’s position and become more globally
dominant in critical supply chains, both in upstream inputs it can provide more cheaply than others and in downstream production at wider scale.
China’s weak domestic
demand, coupled with its industrial policies, such as manufacturing subsidies,
have enabled a surge in cheap Chinese exports in sectors such as steel, harming
U.S. competitors and fueling a record PRC trade surplus.
China’s dominance in key supply
chains enables its use of economic coercion against countries that adopt
policies Beijing opposes. Beijing is developing an institutionalized framework
enabling more assertive and centrally controlled trade retaliation. PRC leaders
are using ostensibly unofficial or technical trade and investment barriers,
administrative regulations, logistics, and symbolic sanctions in a targeted way
against individuals, firms, and sectors, in parallel with messages to warn and deter.
PRC leaders appear to be
preparing for more economic friction with the United States, and probably are
weighing options with the new U.S. administration while looking for leverage
and other ways to prevent a major escalation and decoupling.
China’s dominance in the mining and processing of several critical materials is a particular threat, providing it with the ability to restrict quantities and affect global prices.
Beijing has shown a willingness to restrict global access
to its mineral resources—sometimes in response to geopolitical disputes—as with
its banning of exports to the United States of metals used in semiconductor
manufacturing, such as gallium, germanium, and antimony in December 2024 in
response to U.S. export controls on advanced semiconductors and chip- making
equipment. Other examples include when the PRC temporarily stopped rare earth
element exports to Japan in 2010, and Beijing’s creation of new laws codifying
its authority to restrict mineral exports. A prolonged cessation in supplies
controlled by China could disrupt critical inputs needed for U.S. industry and
technological advancements.
China has similar aims in global shipping and resource access, including in the Arctic, where melting sea ice is creating opportunities for expanded maritime transport and energy exploitation, especially along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) off Russia’s coast.
China seeks access to the Arctic’s potentially vast natural resources, including oil, gas, and minerals, even though China is not among the eight Arctic countries that control territory in the region. Beijing seeks to normalize more direct and efficient maritime shipping routes to Russia and other Northern Hemisphere areas, as a way to fuel its economic growth and energy security and reduce its dependence on Middle East energy. China has gradually increased engagement with Greenland mainly through mining projects, infrastructure development, and scientific research projects. Despite less active engagement right now, China’s long-term goal is to expand access to Greenland’s natural resources, as well as to use the same access as a key strategic foothold for advancing China’s broader and economic aims in the Arctic.
Technology
China is using an aggressive, whole-of-government approach, combined with state direction of the private sector, to become a global S&T superpower, surpass the United States, promote self-reliance, and achieve further economic, political, and military gain.
Beijing has prioritized technology sectors such as
advanced power and energy, AI, biotechnology, quantum information science, and
semiconductors, further challenging U.S. efforts to protect critical
technologies by tailoring restrictions narrowly to address national security
concerns. China is accelerating its S&T progress through a range of licit
and illicit means, to include investments, intellectual property acquisition
and theft, cyber operations, talent recruitment, international collaborations,
and sanctions evasion.
Some forecasts indicate China’s
technology sectors will account for as much as 23 percent of its gross domestic
product by 2026, more than doubling since 2018. In addition to private funding,
the PRC government is investing hundreds of billions of dollars in
priority technologies, such as AI, microelectronics, and
biotechnologies, in pursuit of its self-reliance goals.
China almost certainly has a multifaceted, national-level strategy designed to displace the United States as the world’s most influential AI power by 2030.
China
is experiencing a boom in generative AI with the rapid emergence of a large
number of PRC-developed models, and is broadly pursuing AI for smart cities,
mass surveillance, healthcare, S&T innovation, and intelligent weapons.
Chinese AI firms are already world leaders in voice and image recognition,
video analytics, and mass surveillance technologies. The PLA probably plans to
use large language models (LLMs) to generate information deception attacks,
create fake news, imitate personas, and enable attack networks. China has also
announced initiatives to bolster international support for its vision of AI
governance.
China has stolen hundreds of
gigabytes of intellectual property from companies in Asia, Europe, and North
America in an effort to leapfrog over technological hurdles, with as much as 80
percent of U.S. economic espionage cases as of 2021 involving PRC entities.
China also sees biotechnology as critical to becoming a dominant economic power and intends to grow its domestic bioeconomy to $3.3 trillion this year.
Beijing is investing heavily in collecting health and genetic data both at home and abroad in pursuit of these goals, and has shown it can be globally competitive in certain low-cost, high-volume commodities, such as biomanufacturing and genetic sequencing. Beijing has identified genetic data as a national strategic resource and is expanding state control over the country’s gene banks and other genetic repositories, positioning it to potentially lead in precision medicine and agricultural biotechnology applications.
China has made progress in producing advanced 7-nanometer (nm) semiconductor chips for cryptocurrency mining and cellular devices using previously acquired deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography equipment, but will face challenges achieving high-quality, high-volume production of these chips without access to extreme ultraviolet lithography tools.
PRC researchers also continue to explore
applying advanced patterning techniques to DUV machines to produce
semiconductor chips as small as 3nm. China leads the world in legacy logic
semiconductor (28nm and up) production, accounting for 39.3 percent of global
capacity, and is expected to add more capacity than the rest of the world
combined through 2028. These legacy chips are vital to producing automobiles,
consumer electronics, home appliances, factory automation, broadband, and many
military and medical systems.
WMD
China remains intent on modernizing, diversifying, and expanding its nuclear
posture. China’s nuclear weapons and advanced delivery systems pose a direct
threat to the Homeland and are capable of delivering catastrophic damage to the
United States and threatening U.S. military forces here and abroad.
China most likely possesses capabilities relevant to chemical and biological
warfare (CBW) that pose a threat to U.S., allied, and partner forces as well as
civilian populations.
Biosecurity
China’s approach to and role in global biological, medical, and other health-related global priorities present unique challenges to the United States and the world
The
COVID-19 pandemic that ultimately led to the death of more than one million
Americans—and multiples more worldwide—began in China, which Beijing still
refuses to acknowledge. China’s strict censorship and repression of free speech
prevented doctors treating the earliest of patients in Wuhan from warning the
world of a far more serious contagion than Beijing wanted told, slowing the
world’s preparedness and response. To this day, Beijing refuses to fully
cooperate with the rest of the international community trying to definitively
pinpoint the precise cause of the disease so it can
head off and prepare for any new disease.
Regarding COVID-19 origins,
IC agencies have continued to evaluate new information from classified and open
sources, revisit previous reporting, and consult with diverse technical experts
to increase our understanding of the cause of the pandemic. These efforts have
led CIA to assess that a research-related hypothesis is more likely than a
natural origin hypothesis.
The other hypothesis for
COVID-19—natural origin—includes many scenarios in which humans could have
been infected with SARS-CoV-2—the virus that causes COVID-19—or a close
progenitor through exposure to wild or domestic animals. China is home to a
diverse body of naturally occurring coronaviruses found in a wide geographic
area, and there is precedence for these viruses to emerge within human
populations far from reservoir locations. For example, the coronavirus that is
the closest known relative to SARS-CoV—the virus that causes severe acute
respiratory syndrome (SARS)—probably originated in Yunnan Province, according
to scientific studies, even though the first SARS outbreak detected in humans
in 2003 occurred in Guangdong Province, hundreds of miles away.
The research-related incident
hypothesis also considers a broad range of potential initial human- infection
scenarios from events in research facilities, such as government or university
laboratories, to research-related activities in the field, such as collecting
samples from wild animals.
The PRC’s dominance in pharmaceutical and medical supply production combined with lower quality safety and environmental standards than those of the United States positions Beijing to potentially restrict such exports for leverage over Washington and others in trade or security disputes.
The PRC plays an increasingly
important role in supplying pharmaceuticals and related medical supplies to the
United States, as well as the rest of the world.
U.S. imports of Chinese
pharmaceuticals—defined as medicines, vaccines, blood, organic cultures,
bandages, and organs—grew almost five-fold between 2020 and 2022 alone, from $2.1 billion to
$10.3 billion.
The PRC also might look to
uniquely provide such supplies and medical aid to countries, more cheaply and
at scales competitors cannot match, as a way to boost its global influence at
the expense of the United States. The PRC’s “vaccine diplomacy” during the
COVID-19 pandemic—it provided vaccines to 83 countries—was driven at least in
part by geopolitical considerations, such as currying favor for a new port in Burma.
Space
China has eclipsed Russia as a space leader and is poised to compete with the United States as the world’s leader in space by deploying increasingly capable interconnected multi-sensor systems and working toward ambitious scientific and strategic goals.
China has achieved global coverage in some of its
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) constellations and
world-class status in all but a few space technologies.
China’s Beidou constellation is a
world-class position, navigation, and timing capability that competes with U.S.
GPS and Europe’s Galileo service. The PLA ISR architecture and satellite
communications are areas the PLA continues to improve upon to close the
perceived gap between itself and the U.S. military.
· China’s
successful lunar sample return mission in June 2024 contributes to Beijing’s
technological prowess and national prestige while supporting its effort to land
astronauts on the Moon by 2030 and establish the first lunar base by 2035.
China’s commercial space
sector is growing quickly with aspiration to be a major global competitor to
U.S. and European space companies. For example, China launched the first set of
satellites in its low Earth orbit (LEO) proliferated constellation last year
for its own satellite Internet service to compete with Western commercial
satellite Internet services.
Counterspace operations
will be integral to PLA military campaigns, and China has counterspace-weapons
capabilities intended to target U.S. and allied satellites. China already has
fielded ground-based counterspace capabilities, including EW systems, directed
energy weapons (DEWs), and antisatellite (ASAT) missiles intended to disrupt,
damage, and destroy target satellites.
China also has conducted orbital technology demonstrations, which, while not counterspace weapons tests, prove its ability to operate future space-based counterspace weapons. China has also conducted on-orbit satellite inspections of other satellites, which probably would be representative of the tactics required for some counterspace attacks.
Malign Influence Activities
Beijing will continue to expand its coercive and subversive malign influence activities to weaken the United States internally and globally, as well as counter what Beijing sees as a U.S.-led campaign to tarnish China’s global relations and overthrow the CCP. Through these efforts, the PRC seeks to suppress critical views and critics of China within the United States and worldwide, and sow doubts in U.S. leadership and strength. Beijing is likely to feel emboldened to use malign influence more regularly in coming years, particularly as it fields AI to improve its capabilities and avoid detection.
PRC actors have increased their capabilities to conduct covert influence operations and disseminate disinformation. For example, pro-China online actors in 2024 used AI-generated news anchors and fake social media accounts with AI-generated profile pictures to sow divisions on issues such as drug use, immigration, and abortion.
China’s Challenges
China faces daunting challenges that will impair CCP leaders’ strategic and
political achievements. China’s leaders probably are most concerned about
corruption, demographic imbalances, and fiscal and economic struggles
because they threaten the country’s economic performance and quality of life,
two key factors underpinning CCP legitimacy. Despite an acute economic
slowdown, China’s leaders probably will resist making needed structural reforms
and instead maintain statist economic policies to steer capital toward priority
sectors, reduce dependence on foreign technologies, and enable military
modernization.
• China’s growth probably will continue to slow because of low consumer and
investor confidence. China’s birth and marriage rates continue to decline,
reinforcing negative population trends and a shrinking labor force.
Xi’s focus on security and stability for the CCP and securing other leaders’
personal loyalty to him is undermining China’s ability to solve complex
domestic problems and will impede Beijing’s global
leverage. Xi’s blending of domestic and foreign security threats is undermining
China’s position and standing abroad, reducing Beijing’s ability to shape
global perceptions and compete with U.S. leadership.
Strategic Overview
Russia views its ongoing war in
Ukraine as a proxy conflict with the West, and its objective to restore Russian
strength and security in its near abroad against perceived U.S. and Western
encroachment has increased the risks of unintended escalation between Russia
and NATO. The resulting heightened and prolonged
political-military tensions between Moscow and Washington, coupled with
Russia’s growing confidence in its battlefield superiority and defense
industrial base and increased risk of nuclear war, create both urgency and
complications for U.S. efforts to bring the war to an acceptable close.
Regardless of how and when the war in Ukraine ends, Russia’s current geopolitical, economic, military, and domestic political trends underscore its resilience and enduring potential threat to U.S. power, presence, and global interests.
Despite
having paid enormous military and economic costs in its war with Ukraine,
Russia has proven adaptable and resilient, in part because of the expanded
backing of China, Iran, and North Korea. President Vladimir Putin appears
resolved and prepared to pay a very high price to prevail in what he sees as a
defining time in Russia’s strategic competition with the United States, world
history, and his personal legacy. Most Russian people continue to passively
accept the war, and the emergence of an alternative to Putin probably is less
likely now than at any point in his quarter-century rule.
Western efforts to isolate and
sanction Russia have accelerated its investments in alternative partnerships
and use of various tools of statecraft to offset U.S. power, with China’s
backing and reinforcement. Russia’s relationship with China has helped Moscow
circumvent sanctions and export controls to continue the war effort, maintain a
strong market for energy products, and promote a global counterweight to the
United States, even if at the cost of greater vulnerability to Chinese
influence. Russia is also increasing military cooperation with Iran and North
Korea, which will continue to help its war effort and enhance U.S. adversary
cooperation and collective capacity. Finally, Moscow is increasingly willing to
play spoiler in Western-centric forums such as the UN as well as use
non-Western organizations like Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa
(BRICS) group to press policies such as de-dollarization.
Russia has shown it can
navigate substantial economic challenges resulting from the ongoing drains of
the war, Western cost imposition, and high inflation and interest rates, for at
least the near term by using financial and import substitution workarounds,
maintaining low debt, and continuing investments in the defense-industrial
base. Russia’s economy remains the fourth largest in the world (based on GDP at
purchasing power parity).
Russia’s sizable ground force
losses in the war have done little to undermine the strategic pillars of its
military power, to include its diverse and robust nuclear deterrent and
asymmetric capabilities, particularly in counterspace and undersea warfare.
Russia’s air and naval forces remain intact, with the former being more modern
and capable than at the start of the invasion. Russia is developing a growing
arsenal of conventional capabilities, such as theater strike weapons, to target
the Homeland and deployed forces and assets abroad—and to hold U.S. allies at
risk—during crisis and wartime. Russia’s advanced WMD and space programs
threaten the Homeland, U.S. forces, and key warfighting advantages.
Russia will continue to be able
to deploy anti-U.S. diplomacy, coercive energy tactics, disinformation,
espionage, influence operations, military intimidation, cyberattacks, and gray
zone tools to try to compete below the level of armed conflict and
fashion opportunities to advance Russian interests.
The war in Ukraine has afforded Moscow a wealth of lessons regarding combat against Western weapons and intelligence in a large-scale war. This experience probably will challenge future U.S. defense planning, including against other adversaries with whom Moscow is sharing those lessons learned.
Russia and the Arctic
Russia controls about half of all
Arctic coastline and views the region as essential to its economic well- being
and national security. Moscow wants to further develop its Arctic oil and gas
reserves and position itself to reap benefits from expected increases in
maritime trade. Russia has concerns about increasing economic and military
competition with Western countries in the region, which compounded last year
when NATO enlarged to include the last two previously nonaligned Arctic states,
Finland and Sweden.
• The
war in Ukraine has sapped Russia’s finances and available military resources to
fulfill its Arctic ambitions, prompting Russia to seek a closer partnership
with China in the Arctic, and welcoming other non-Western countries’
increasing involvement, to offset NATO countries’ perceived advantages.
• Russia’s interest in
Greenland is focused mainly on its proximity to strategically important naval
routes between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans—including for nuclear-armed
submarines—and the fact that Greenland hosts a key U.S. military base.
Military
Moscow’s massive investments in its defense sector will render the Russian military a continued threat to U.S. national security, despite Russia’s significant personnel and equipment losses—primarily in the ground forces— during the war with Ukraine.Russia’s air and naval
forces, despite suffering some losses and expending substantial quantities of
precision-guided munitions, remain capable of providing Moscow with regional
and global power projection forces, while Russia’s nuclear and counterspace forces
continue to provide it with strategic deterrence capability.
The Ukraine conflict has
led to improvements in some Russian military capabilities. For example,
Russia’s initial use of EW and unmanned systems was lacking but it adapted and innovated using EW to
more effectively interfere with Ukrainian use of radar and GPS and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Russia possesses long-range
precision strike capability, most notably submarines and bombers equipped with
LACMs and antiship cruise missiles, that can hold the Homeland at risk.
Moscow has increased its defense
budget to its heaviest burden level during Putin’s more than two decades in
power and taken measures to reduce the impact of sanctions on its military and
defense industry.
Russia has imported munitions
such as UAVs from Iran and artillery shells from North Korea to mitigate to the
impact of international sanctions, thereby sustaining its ability to wage war
in Ukraine and enhancing the threat its military poses.
Moscow will contend with
long-term challenges such as troop quality and corruption, and a fertility rate
below what is needed for replacements, but its investments in personnel
recruitment and procurement should allow it to steadily reconstitute reserves
and expand ground forces in particular during the next decade. Nevertheless,
the war in Ukraine will be a drag on those efforts as long as it persists.
Moscow will have to continually balance resource allocation between large-scale
production of equipment to sustain the war with modernization and
recapitalization efforts.
Russia and Ukraine
Russia in the past
year has seized the upper hand in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is on
a path to accrue greater leverage to press Kyiv and its Western backers to
negotiate an end to the war that grants Moscow concessions it seeks. Continuing
the Russia-Ukraine war perpetuates strategic risks to the United States of
unintended escalation to large-scale war, the potential use of nuclear weapons,
heightened insecurity among NATO Allies, particularly in Central, Eastern, and
Northern Europe, and a more emboldened China and North Korea.
Even though
Russian President Putin will be unable to achieve the total victory he
envisioned when initiating the large-scale invasion in February 2022, Russia
retains momentum as a grinding war of attrition plays to Russia’s military
advantages. This grinding war of attrition will lead to a gradual but steady
erosion of Kyiv’s position on the battlefield, regardless of any U.S. or allied
attempts to impose new and greater costs on Moscow.
Despite recruitment challenges,
Russia has regularly generated sufficient personnel to replenish losses and
create new units to sustain attacks on multiple frontline axes. While Ukraine
has increased its overall personnel intake since new legislation on mobilization
was passed in ring 2024, Kyiv has stretched its resources trying to launch new offensives—such as in Kursk, Russia—
and build more brigades while defending on all fronts.
Moscow’s rising defense spending
and investments in defense-industrial capacity will continue to enable a high
level of production of critical capabilities—such as artillery, long-range
missiles, one- way attack UAVs, and glide bombs—and ensure Russia retains a firepower advantage over Ukraine.
Both Putin and Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are interested in continuing discussions with the
United States on how to end the war and have shown a willingness to test
partial ceasefires. Nonetheless, Putin probably is attuned to the potential for
protracted conflict to drag down the Russian economy and prompt undesired
escalation with the West, and Zelenskyy probably understands that his position
is weakening, the future of Western assistance is uncertain, and a ceasefire
may ultimately become a necessary recourse. However, both leaders for now
probably still see the risks of a longer war as less than those of an
unsatisfying settlement. For Russia, positive battlefield trends allow for some
strategic patience, and for Ukraine, conceding territory or neutrality to
Russia without substantial security guarantees from the West could prompt
domestic backlash and future insecurity.
Cyber
Russia’s advanced cyber capabilities, its repeated success compromising
sensitive targets for intelligence collection, and its past attempts to
pre-position access on U.S. critical infrastructure make it a persistent
counterintelligence and cyber attack threat. Moscow’s unique strength is the
practical experience it has gained integrating cyber attacks and operations
with wartime military action, almost certainly amplifying its potential to
focus combined impact on
U.S. targets in time of conflict.
· Russia
has demonstrated real-world disruptive capabilities during the past decade,
including gaining experience in attack execution by relentlessly targeting
Ukraine’s networks with disruptive and destructive malware.
Malign Influence Activities
Moscow uses influence activities to counter threats, including by stoking
political discord in the West, sowing doubt in democratic processes and U.S.
global leadership, degrading Western support for Ukraine, and
amplifying preferred Russian narratives. Moscow’s malign influence
activities will continue for the foreseeable future and will almost certainly
increase in sophistication and volume.
Moscow probably believes
information operations efforts to influence U.S. elections are advantageous,
regardless of whether they affect election outcomes, because reinforcing doubt
in the integrity of the U.S. electoral system achieves one of its
core objectives.
Russia uses a variety of entities
such as the U.S.-sanctioned influence organizations Social Design Agency (SDA)
and ANO Dialog and the state media outlet RT in its efforts to covertly shape
public opinion in the United States, amplify and stoke domestic divisions, and
discreetly engage Americans, while hiding Russia’s hand.
WMD
Russia has the largest and most diverse nuclear weapons stockpile that, along with its deployed ground-, air-, and sea-based delivery systems, could inflict catastrophic damage to the Homeland.
Russia has developed a more modernized, mobile, and
survivable strategic nuclear force that is intended to circumvent or neutralize
future augmented U.S. missile defense and ensure deterrence through reliable
retaliatory strike potential. In addition, Russia’s vast arsenal of
non-strategic nuclear weapons helps it to offset Western conventional
superiority and provide formidable escalation management options in theater war
scenarios.
Russia continues efforts to modernize its nuclear weapons capabilities in the face of multiple failed tests of new systems.
Russia’s CBW threat is
expanding.
Russian scientific institutes
continue to research and develop CBW capabilities, including technologies to
deliver CBW agents. Russia retains an undeclared chemical weapons program and
has used chemical weapons at least twice during recent years in assassination
attempts with Novichok nerve agents, also known as fourth-generation agents,
against Russian opposition leader Aleksey Navalny in 2020, and against U.K.
citizen Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yuliya Skripal on U.K. soil in 2018.
Russian forces almost certainly continue using chemicals against Ukrainian
forces, with hundreds of reported attacks occurring since late 2022.
Space
Russia continues to train its
military space elements and field new antisatellite weapons to disrupt and
degrade
U.S. and allied space capabilities. It is expanding its arsenal of jamming
systems, DEWs, on-orbit counterspace capabilities, and ASAT missiles designed
to target U.S. and allied satellites.
Russia is using EW to counter
Western on-orbit assets and continues to develop ASAT missiles capable of
destroying space targets in LEO.
Despite its Soviet legacy, the war in Ukraine has revealed glaring deficiencies in Russia’s space-based architecture, which will continue to face difficulties from the effects of sanctions and export controls, domestic space-sector problems, and increasingly strained competition for program resources within Russia.
However,
Russia will remain a space competitor, probably by prioritizing assets critical
to its national security and integrating military space services over civil
space projects.
Moscow uses its and others’
civil and commercial remote-sensing satellites to supplement military-
dedicated capabilities and has warned that other countries’ commercial
infrastructure in outer space used for military purposes can become a
legitimate target.
Russian Antisatellite Capability
|
Russia is
developing a new satellite meant to carry a nuclear weapon as an
antisatellite capability. A nuclear detonation in outer space could cause
devastating consequences for the United States, the global economy, and the
world in general. It would harm all countries’ national security and
commercial satellites and infrastructure, as well as impair U.S. use of space
as a driver for economic development. |
Technology
While Russia’s S&T ecosystem has been constrained in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow continues to deploy nascent AI applications on and off the battlefield and has deepened technical cooperation with partners such as China in support of long-term R&D goals.
Moscow’s
use of AI to augment military operations probably will further hone Russian
tactics and capabilities in the event of future conflicts with the United
States or NATO allies.
Russia is using AI to create
highly-capable deepfakes to spread misinformation, conduct malign influence
operations, and stoke further fear. Russia has also demonstrated the use of
AI-enabled antidrone equipment during its ongoing conflict with Ukraine.
Russia’s few domestic
microelectronics manufacturers have only mastered production of
chips down to the 65nm level and has goals of mass producing 28nm chips by 2030, significantly behind global leaders.
While largely cut-off from Western supply chains, Russia has significantly expanded and deepened cooperation in several technical sectors with international partners. Russia seeks to further align its S&T efforts with China and BRICS allies in areas such as AI development and governance and semiconductor production to advance its own capabilities as well as broadly decrease Western influence.
Russia’s Challenges
Even as Russia has proven
resilient, it faces a myriad of challenges to remaining an indispensable global
player, maintaining a sphere of influence, and upholding stability at home—its
highest strategic aims— suggesting limits on its confidence dealing with the
United States and the international community. Russia has paid a heavy price in
blood, treasure, and loss of international reputation and foreign policy
options because of its large-scale invasion of Ukraine. President Putin upended
two decades of Russia’s geopolitical resurgence, created new threats to its
external and internal security, and strained its economic and military
potential, making it more reliant on China and other like-minded partners like
North Korea.
• Russia’s
military has suffered more casualties in Ukraine than in all of its other wars
since World War II (750,000-plus dead and wounded), and its economy faces
significant long-term macroeconomic headwinds and is increasingly dependent on
China.
• Russia’s aggression has strengthened European unity and prompted Finland and Sweden to join NATO. Efforts by Armenia, Moldova, and some Central Asian states to seek alternative partners highlight how the war has hurt Moscow’s influence, even in the post-Soviet space, and derailed Putin’s vision of a greater Eurasian union.
IRAN
Strategic Overview
Tehran will try to leverage its robust missile capability and expanded nuclear program, and its diplomatic outreach to regional states and U.S. rivals to bolster its regional influence and ensure regime survival. However, regional and domestic challenges, most immediately tensions with Israel, are seriously testing Iran’s ambitions and capabilities.
A degraded Hizballah, the demise of the Asad regime
in Syria, and Iran’s own failure to deter Israel have led leaders in Tehran to
raise fundamental questions regarding Iran’s approach. Iran’s consistently
underperforming economy and societal grievances will also continue to test the
regime domestically.
Tehran will continue its efforts to counter Israel and press the United States to leave the region by aiding and arming its loose consortium of like-minded terrorist and militant actors, known as the “Axis of Resistance.”
Although the demise of
the Asad regime, a key ally of Tehran, is a blow to the Axis, these actors
still represent a wide range of threats. These threats include some continued
Israeli vulnerability to HAMAS and Hizballah; militia attacks against U.S. forces
in Iraq and Syria; and the threat of Huthi missile and UAV attacks
targeting Israel and maritime traffic transiting near Yemen. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei
continues to desire to avoid embroiling Iran in an expanded, direct
conflict with the United States and its allies.
Iranian investment in its military has been a key plank of its efforts to confront diverse threats and try to deter and defend against an attack by the United States or Israel.
Iran continues to bolster the lethality and precision of
its domestically produced missile and UAV systems, and
it has the largest stockpiles of these systems in the
region. It considers them as critical to its deterrence strategy
and power projection capability, and Iran uses their sales to deepen
global military partnerships. Iran’s growing expertise and willingness to conduct
aggressive cyber operations also make it a major threat to
the security of U.S. and allied and partner networks and
data.
Iran also will continue to directly threaten U.S. persons globally and remains committed to its decade-long effort to develop surrogate networks inside the United States.
Iran seeks to target former and current U.S. officials it
believes were involved in the killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(IRGC)-Qods Force Commander Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 and previously has
tried to conduct lethal operations in the United States.
Tehran intends for its
expanding relationships with other key U.S. adversaries and the Global South to
mitigate
U.S. efforts to isolate the regime and blunt the impact of Western sanctions. Tehran’s diplomatic efforts—including at times outreach to Europe—are likely to continue with varying degrees of success.
In the past year, Iran has focused
extensively on deepening ties with Russia—including through military
cooperation for its war in Ukraine—and has relied on China as a key political
and economic partner to help it mitigate economic and diplomatic pressure. Iran
is also making progress developing closer diplomatic and defense ties to
African states and other actors in the Global South and is trying to build on
nascent improvements in its ties with other regional actors, such as Saudi
Arabia, despite continued mutual suspicion over each other’s ultimate visions
for the region.
The economic, political, and societal seeds of popular discontent could threaten further domestic strife akin to the widescale and prolonged protests inside Iran during late 2022 and early 2023.
The economy is beset by low growth,
exchange rate volatility, and high inflation. Absent sanctions relief, these
trends probably will continue for the foreseeable future.
Syria
The fall of
President Bashar al-Asad’s regime at the hands of opposition forces led by
Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—a group formerly associated with al-Qa‘ida—has
created conditions for extended instability in Syria and could contribute to a
resurgence of ISIS and other Islamist terror groups. Even if the HTS–led
interim government can bridge divergent objectives, governing Syria will remain
a daunting challenge amid the country’s economic problems, humanitarian needs
driven in part by millions of internally displaced Syrians, rampant insecurity,
as well as ethnic, sectarian, and religious cleavages.
The HTS-led interim government
forces, along with elements of Hurras al-Din and other jihadist groups, engaged
in violence and extrajudicial killings in northwestern Syria in early March
2025 primarily targeting religious minorities that resulted in the death of
more than 1,000 people, including Alawi and Christian civilians.
The leader of HTS claims to be
willing to work with Syria’s array of ethno-sectarian groups to develop
an inclusive governance model. Many of these groups remain skeptical of HTS’s
intentions, especially considering the leader’s past al-Qa‘ida association,
suggesting protracted negotiations could devolve into violence. Israeli
government officials are skeptical of HTS claims and intentions, expressing
concern that historical HTS objectives against Israel persist.
Some remaining jihadist
groups refuse to merge into the HTS Ministry of Defense, and
ISIS has already signaled opposition to HTS’s call for
democracy and is plotting attacks to undermine its governance.
Military
Iran’s conventional and unconventional capabilities will pose a threat to U.S. forces and partners in the region for the foreseeable future, despite the degradation to its proxies and air defenses during the Gaza conflict.
Iran’s large conventional
forces are capable of inflicting substantial damage to an attacker, executing
regional strikes, and disrupting shipping, particularly energy supplies,
through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s unconventional warfare operations and militant
partners and proxies, such as Hizballah, have traditionally enabled Tehran to
pursue its interests throughout the region and maintain strategic depth with a
modicum of deniability.
However, Iranian officials are
grappling with how to slow and eventually reverse their and their proxies’
recent military losses from the Israeli campaign against Iran and its regional
allies, including strikes on Iranian military targets such as air defense
systems in April and October 2024. The IC assesses Iran’s prospects for
reconstituting force losses and posing a credible deterrent, particularly to
Israeli actions, are dim in the near-term.
Iran has fielded a large
quantity of ballistic and cruise missiles as well as UAVs that can strike
throughout the region and continues efforts to improve their accuracy,
lethality, and reliability. Iran’s defense industry has a robust development
and manufacturing capacity, especially for low-cost weapons such as small UAVs.
However, the limited damage
Iran’s strikes in April and October 2024 inflicted on Israel highlights the shortcomings
of Iran’s conventional military options.
Iran has also deployed
small boats and submarines capable of disrupting shipping traffic through the
Strait of Hormuz. Its ground and air forces, while among the largest in the
region, suffer from outdated equipment and limited training.
Middle East Conflict
The Israel-HAMAS conflict
sparked by the HAMAS October 7 attack against Israel derailed the unprecedented
diplomacy and cooperation generated by the Abraham Accords and trajectory of
growing stability in the Middle East. We expect the situation in Gaza, as well
as Israel-Hizballah and Israel–Iran dynamics, to remain volatile.
Even in degraded form,
HAMAS continues to pose a threat to Israeli security. The group
retains thousands of fighters and much of its underground infrastructure, and
probably has used the ceasefire to reinforce and resupply its military and
munitions stock so that it can fight again. HAMAS is capable of resuming a
low-level guerilla resistance and to remain the dominant political action in
Gaza for the foreseeable future. Low expectations on all sides that a ceasefire
will endure and the absence of a credible post- fighting political and
reconstruction plan, portend years of instability.
While HAMAS’s popularity
has declined among Gazans, its popularity remains high among West
Bank Palestinians, especially
relative to the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The long-term Israeli-Palestinian relationship also hinges on the trajectory of an increasingly unstable West Bank.
The PA’s weak and declining
ability to provide security and other services in the West Bank, Israeli
operations in the West Bank, violence from Israeli settlers and Palestinian
militant groups including HAMAS, and a potential leadership transition in the
PA are likely to exacerbate governance challenges in Ramallah. Much also will
depend on how Israel deals with post-conflict Gaza and its operations in the
West Bank that may weaken or undermine the PA.
During the Gaza conflict,
Iran encouraged and enabled its various proxies and partners to conduct strikes
against Israeli and at times U.S. forces and interests in the region.
The Huthis have emerged as
the most aggressive actor, attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea and
Indian Ocean, U.S. and European forces, and Israel. In addition to receiving
Iranian assistance, the Huthis have expanded their reach by broadening partnerships
with other actors, such as Russia and Russian arms brokers, PRC commercial
defense companies, al-Shabaab, and Iraqi Shia militants.
· Iraqi
Shia militias continue to try to compel a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq through
political pressure on the Iraqi government and attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq
and Syria.
Further fighting between Hizballah and Israel would threaten Lebanon’s fragile stability and any political progress begun by the election of a president in January after years of trying. A resumption of protracted Israeli operations in Lebanon could trigger a sharp rise in sectarian tension, undermine Lebanese security forces, and dramatically worsen humanitarian conditions. Although weakened, Hizballah maintains the capability to target U.S. persons and interests in the region, worldwide, and—to a lesser extent—in the United States.
Cyber
Iran’s growing expertise and willingness to conduct aggressive cyber operations make it a major threat to the security of U.S. networks and data.
Guidance from Iranian
leaders has incentivized cyber actors to become more aggressive in developing
capabilities to conduct cyber attacks.
Malign Influence
Activities
Iran often amplifies its
influence operations with offensive cyber activities. During the Israel-HAMAS
conflict, U.S. private industry tracked Iranian influence campaigns and cyber
attacks.
· In
June 2024, an IRGC actor compromised an email account associated with an
individual with informal ties to then-former President Trump’s campaign and
used that account to send a targeted spear-phishing email to individuals inside
the campaign itself. The IRGC subsequently tried to manipulate U.S. journalists
into leaking information illicitly acquired from the campaign.
WMD
We continue to assess Iran
is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the
nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably
built on him to do so. In the past year, there has been an erosion
of a decades-long taboo on discussing nuclear weapons in public that has
emboldened nuclear weapons
advocates within Iran’s decision making apparatus. Khamenei remains the
final decisionmaker over Iran’s
nuclear program, to include any decision to develop nuclear weapons.
Iran very likely aims to
continue R&D of chemical and biological agents for offensive purposes.
Iranian military scientists have researched chemicals that have a wide range of
sedation, dissociation, and amnestic incapacitating effects, and can also be
lethal.
Iran’s Challenges
Iranian leaders recognize the
country is at one of its most fragile points since the Iran-Iraq war, which
probably weighs on their strategic calculus and confidence in their approach
toward the region, the United States, and U.S. partners. They face growing
political, social, economic, and regional pressures, leaving Iran increasingly
vulnerable to regime-threatening instability and external interference.
NORTH KOREA
Strategic Overview
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will continue to pursue strategic and conventional military capabilities that target the Homeland, threaten U.S. and allied armed forces and citizens, and enable Kim to undermine U.S. power and reshape the regional security environment in his favor.
Kim’s newly cemented strategic
partnership with Russia is yielding financial benefit, diplomatic support, and
defense cooperation. The partnership with Moscow also helps reduce Pyongyang’s
reliance on Beijing. North Korea’s advancing strategic weapons capabilities and
increasing access to revenue are enabling Kim’s longstanding goals of securing
international acceptance as a nuclear power, reducing U.S. military presence on
the Korean Peninsula, expanding state control over the North’s economy, and
blocking foreign influence.
· In
June 2024, Kim and Putin signed a comprehensive strategic agreement for
sweeping economic and technology partnerships. Kim also is using the
agreement’s mutual defense clause, which commits each country to provide
military assistance if either is invaded by a foreign power, to justify
deploying combat troops to fight against Ukraine.
· Kim
has no intention of negotiating away his strategic weapons programs, which he
perceives as a guarantor of regime security and national pride, because they
threaten the Homeland, U.S. forces in the region, and U.S. allies like South
Korea and Japan. He is increasing North Korea’s nuclear warhead stockpile and
improving its ballistic missile technology; for example, North Korea conducted
three launches in 2024 of what it claimed were IRBMs equipped with
maneuverable, hypersonic payloads.
· Kim
seeks to intimidate the United States and its allies into abandoning opposition
to North Korea’s nuclear weapons and its aggression toward South Korea. For
example, he responds to U.S. military planning with South Korea and trilateral
cooperation with South Korea and Japan by ordering missile launches and
threatening nuclear retaliation.
· North
Korea will continue to defy international sanctions and engage in illicit
activities, including stealing cryptocurrency, sending labor overseas, and
trading UN-proscribed goods to resource and fund Kim’s priorities, including
ballistic missiles and WMD.
Kim will act aggressively to counter activities he views as undermining the regime and threaten to use force when he perceives U.S. and allied actions as challenging North Korea’s sovereignty, undermining his power, or aiming to curb his nuclear and missile ambitions.
Pyongyang is expanding its capacity for
coercive operations and using new tactics as it becomes more confident in its
nuclear deterrent. Since coming to power, Kim generally has relied on
non-lethal coercive activities, including missile demonstrations and cross-border balloon
launches of refuse, to win concessions and counter U.S. and South Korean
military, diplomatic, and civilian activities.
· North
Korea uses threats to try to stop South Korean efforts to disseminate
information in the North, which he views as destabilizing his control. Kim
in the past has challenged South Korea’s de facto maritime boundary claims and
may do so again, raising the prospects of renewed clashes along the Northern
Limit Line.
· Kim
could escalate to more lethal asymmetric activities if he judged North Korea’s
efforts at deterrence were not working and he needed to send a stronger
message. He also could resort to these lethal activities if he believed doing
so would intimidate South Korea or the United States into changing its policies
to be more favorable to the North while minimizing the risk of retaliation.
WMD
Kim remains committed to increasing the number of North Korea’s nuclear warheads and improving its missile capabilities to threaten the Homeland and U.S. forces, citizens, and allies, and to weaken U.S. power in the Asia- Pacific region, as evidenced by the pace of the North’s missile flight tests and the regime’s public touting of its uranium enrichment capabilities.
North Korea is probably prepared
to conduct a nuclear test and continues to flight test ICBMs so Kim can
threaten the Homeland. Russia is increasingly supporting North Korea’s nuclear
status in exchange for Pyongyang’s support to Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
North Korea maintains its
CBW capabilities and may use such weapons in a conflict or in an unconventional
or clandestine attack against the United States or its allies.
Military
North Korea’s military poses a lethal threat to U.S. forces and citizens in South Korea and the region by its ability to launch massive conventional strikes across the DMZ and continued investment in niche capabilities designed to deter outside intervention and offset enduring deficiencies in the country’s conventional forces.
The North’s conventional military
capabilities also provide Kim with options to advance his political objectives
through coercion.
· The
North Korean military would struggle to execute combined-arms maneuver warfare
because its ground, air, and navy forces remain heavily reliant on Soviet-era
equipment and lack adequate training, despite the investments to improve
conventional capabilities.
· Kim
will continue to prioritize efforts to build a more capable missile force—from
cruise missiles to ICBMs and hypersonic glide vehicles—designed to evade U.S.
and regional missile defenses, improve the North’s precision strike
capabilities, and put U.S. and allied forces at risk.
Pyongyang is positioned to
gain technical expertise for its weapons developments in exchange for its
munitions sales to Moscow, which could accelerate North Korea’s testing and
deployment efforts. Combat experience in the Russia-Ukraine war also could help
Pyongyang strengthen its training and become more tactically proficient.
Cyber
North Korea is funding its military development—allowing it to pose greater risks to the United States—and economic initiatives by stealing hundreds of millions of dollars per year in cryptocurrency from the United States and other victims.
Looking
forward, the North may also expand its ongoing cyber espionage to fill gaps in
the regime’s weapons programs, potentially targeting defense industrial base
companies involved in aerospace, submarine, or hypersonic glide technologies.
North Korea’s Challenges
North Korea will continue to
struggle overcoming the damage Kim’s need for absolute control and aggressive
policies—and the isolation these create—does to the country’s economic strength
and viability. Kim has so far been able to advance his WMD and missile programs
and continue to threaten his neighbors and the United
States, but this has come at the
expense of his people and the country’s overall health. The regime’s
recentralization campaign is meant to ensure the long-term survival of Kim
family rule, but its periodic crackdowns restrict economic activity, threaten
livelihoods, and promote inefficient state controls, contributing to food
shortages and eroding civil order because of the violent crime they
increasingly encourage.
Kim will struggle to reduce North
Korea’s dependence on China—in particular, for access to international banking
and imports of critical raw materials, consumer goods, food, and the regime’s
crude oil supply—and withstand the influence this gives Beijing.
Cooperation among China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea has been growing more rapidly in recent years, reinforcing threats from each of them individually while also posing new challenges to U.S. strength and power globally.
These primarily bilateral relationships, largely in security and defense fields, have strengthened their individual and collective capabilities to threaten and harm the United States, as well as improved their resilience against U.S. and Western efforts to constrain or deter their activities. Russia’s war in Ukraine has accelerated these ties, but the trend is likely to continue regardless of the war’s outcome.
This alignment increases the chances of U.S.
tensions or conflict with any one of these adversaries drawing in another.
China is critical to this alignment and its global significance, given the
PRC’s particularly ambitious goals, and powerful capabilities and influence in
the world.
U.S. adversaries’ cooperation has nevertheless been uneven and driven mostly by a shared interest in circumventing or undermining U.S. power, whether it be economic, diplomatic, or military.
Concerns over escalation control and directly
confronting the United States, as well as some divergent political interests,
have tempered the pace and scope of these relationships. The leaders, though,
are likely to continue to look for opportunities to collaborate, especially in
areas in which there are mutual advantages and they lack other ways of
achieving their aims toward or resisting the United States alone.
Russia has been a catalyst for the evolving ties, especially as it grows more reliant on other countries for its objectives and requirements including in but not limited to Ukraine.
Moscow has strengthened its military cooperation with other states, especially Pyongyang and Tehran. Russia also has expanded its trade and financial ties, particularly with China and Iran, to mitigate the impact of sanctions and export controls.
· The
PRC is providing economic and security assistance to Russia’s war in Ukraine
through support to Moscow’s defense industrial base, including by providing
dual-use material and components for
weapons. China’s support has
improved Russia’s ability to overcome material losses in the war and launch
strikes into Ukraine. Trade between China and Russia has been increasing since
the start of the war in Ukraine, helping Moscow to withstand U.S. sanctions.
· Iran
has become a key military supplier to Russia, especially of UAVs, and in
exchange, Moscow has offered Tehran military and technical support to advance
Iranian weapons, intelligence, and cyber capabilities.
· North
Korea has sent munitions, missiles, and thousands of combat troops to Russia to
support the latter’s war against Ukraine, justified as fulfilling
commitments made in the Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership that
Pyongyang and Moscow announced in June 2024.
Cooperation between China
and Russia has the greatest potential to pose enduring risks to U.S. interests.
Their leaders probably believe they are more capable of countering perceived
U.S. aggression together than alone, given a shared belief that the United
States is seeking to constrain each adversary.
· For
at least a decade, Beijing and Moscow have used high-profile, combined military
activities primarily to signal the strength of the China–Russia defense ties.
This relationship has deepened during the Russia-Ukraine war, with China
providing Russia dual-use equipment and weapons components to sustain combat operations.
· Russia
has increased its oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to China in an
effort to maintain revenues in the face of sanctions by Western states.
· China
is using its increased cooperation with Russia to attain a stronger presence in
the Arctic and legitimize its influence there. One area of cooperation is
China’s production of icebreaker ships that enable safe passage through Arctic waters.
· The two countries probably will expand combined bomber patrols and naval operations in the Arctic theater to signal their cooperation and make it more concrete. In November, they also agreed to expand their cooperation on developing the NSR for its economic potential and as an alternative to Western dominated routes.
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