Major threats include China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, international economies, and health and food security.
Hearings are being held Wednesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee and Thursday before the House Intelligence Committee, where the Director of National Intelligence, the directors of the CIA, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency will testify. The congressional members will be briefed on the 2023 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, in which they report on worldwide threats to America’s national security.
In the unclassified foreword of the report, the officials state, “During the coming year, the United States and its allies will confront a complex and pivotal international security environment dominated by two critical strategic challenges that intersect with each other and existing trends to intensify their national security implications. First, great powers, rising regional powers, as well as an evolving array of non-state actors, will vie for dominance in the global order, as well as compete to set the emerging conditions and the rules that will shape that order for decades to come. Strategic competition between the United States and its allies, China, and Russia over what kind of world will emerge makes the next few years critical to determining who and what will shape the narrative perhaps most immediately in the context of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, which threaten to escalate into a broader conflict between Russia and the West.
“Second, shared global challenges, including climate change, and human and health security, are converging as the planet emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic and confronts economic issues spurred by both energy and food insecurity. Rapidly emerging or evolving technologies continue to have the potential to disrupt traditional business and society with both positive and negative outcomes, while creating unprecedented vulnerabilities and attack surfaces, making it increasingly challenging to predict the impact of such challenges on the global landscape.
“These two strategic challenges will intersect and interact in unpredictable ways, leading to mutually reinforcing effects that could challenge our ability to respond, but that also will introduce new opportunities to forge collective action with allies and partners, including non-state actors. The 2023 Annual Threat Assessment highlights some of those connections as it provides the IC’s baseline assessments of the most pressing threats to U.S. national interests. It is not an exhaustive assessment of all global challenges. This assessment addresses both the threats from U.S. adversaries and functional and transnational concerns, such as weapons of mass destruction and cyber, primarily in the sections regarding threat actors, as well as an array of regional issues with larger, global implications “
As the Lord Leads, Pray with Us…
- For the federal agency officials to be forthright and transparent in their information to Congress.
- For wisdom for the members of the Senate and House committees as they evaluate the threat assessments.
- For the president and his administration to seek God’s guidance as they respond to international risks and threats.
Sources: CBS News, JustTheNews
