Quote:ANNUAL THREAT ASSESSMENT OF THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

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.
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Iran will remain a regional menace with broader malign influence activities, and North Korea will expand its WMD capabilities while being a disruptive player on the regional and world stages.

WMD

China is reorienting its nuclear posture for strategic rivalry with the United States because its leaders have concluded that their current capabilities are insufficient. Beijing worries that bilateral tension, U.S. nuclear modernization, and the PLA’s advancing conventional capabilities have increased the likelihood of a U.S. first strike.

China is building hundreds of new ICBM silos.

SPACE

China is steadily progressing toward its goal of becoming a world-class space leader, with the intent to match or surpass the United States by 2045. Even by 2030, China probably will achieve world-class status in all but a few
space technology areas. China’s space activities are designed to advance its global standing and strengthen its attempts to erode U.S. influence across military, technological, economic, and diplomatic spheres.

TECHNOLOGY AND ECONOMICS

China is central to global supply chains in a range of technology sectors, including semiconductors, critical minerals, batteries, solar panels, and pharmaceuticals. In a speech in April 2020, Xi noted his intentions toincrease global supply chain dependencies on China, with an aim of controlling key supply chains and being able to use those supply chain dependencies to threaten and cut off foreign countries during a crisis. China’s dominance in these markets could pose a significant risk to U.S. and Western manufacturing and consumer sectors if the Government of China was able to adeptly leverage its dominance for political or economic gain.

Some other areas of concern are the battery, pharmaceutical, and solar panel manufacturing sectors. For example, PRC-based firms are on track to control 65 percent of the lithium-ion battery market by 2025, with the PRC dominant in all parts of the supply chain; China produces 40 percent of the world’s
active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), the key ingredients in medicinal drugs; and China’s global share across all the manufacturing stages of solar panels now exceeds 80 percent and is set to rise to more than 95 percent during the coming years.

CYBER

China probably currently represents the broadest, most active, and persistent cyber espionage threat to U.S. Government and private-sector networks. China’s cyber pursuits and its industry’s export of related technologies
increase the threats of aggressive cyber operations against the U.S. homeland, suppression of the free flow of information in cyberspace—such as U.S. web content—that Beijing views as threatening to the CCP’s hold on
power, and the expansion of technology-driven authoritarianism globally.

MALIGN INFLUENCE OPERATIONS

Beijing will continue expanding its global intelligence and covert influence posture to better support the CCP’s political, economic, and security goals. China is attempting to sow doubts about U.S. leadership, undermine democracy, and extend Beijing’s influence, particularly in East Asia and the western Pacific, which Beijing views as its sphere of influence. Beijing largely concentrates its U.S.-focused influence efforts on shaping U.S. policy and the U.S. public’s perception of China in a positive direction, but has shown a willingness to meddle in select election races that involved perceived anti-China politicians.

PRC actors have become more aggressive with their influence campaigns, probably motivated by their view that anti-China sentiment in the United States is threatening their international image, access to markets, and
technological expertise. Beijing’s growing efforts to actively exploit perceived U.S. societal divisions using its online personas move it closer to Moscow’s playbook for influence operations.

Beijing is intensifying efforts to mold U.S. public discourse—particularly by trying to shape U.S. views of sensitive or core sovereignty issues, such as Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong—and pressure perceived political opponents.

China is rapidly expanding and improving its artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics capabilities, which could expand beyond domestic use.

(Russia) MALIGN INFLUENCE OPERATIONS

Russia presents one of the most serious foreign influence threats to the United States, because it 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. Moscow probably will build on these approaches to try to undermine the United States as opportunities arise. Russia and its influence actors are adept at capitalizing on current events in the United States to push Moscow-friendly positions to Western audiences. Russian officials, including Putin himself, and influence actors routinely inject themselves into contentious U.S. issues, even if that causes the Kremlin to take a public stand on U.S. domestic political matters.

Russia’s influence actors have adapted their efforts to increasingly hide their hand, laundering their preferred messaging through a vast ecosystem of Russian proxy websites, individuals, and organizations that appear to be independent news sources. Moscow seeds original stories or amplifies
preexisting popular or divisive discourse using a network of state media, proxy, and social media influence actors and then intensifies that content to further penetrate the Western information environment. These activities can include disseminating false content and amplifying information perceived as beneficial to Russian influence efforts or conspiracy theories.

SPACE

Russia will remain a key space competitor, but it may have difficulty achieving its long-term space goals because of the effects of additional international sanctions and export controls following its invasion of Ukraine, a myriad of domestic space-sector problems, and increasingly strained competition for program resources within Russia.

Russia warned during a UN meeting in October 2022 that commercial infrastructure in outer space used for military purposes “can become a legitimate target for retaliation.”

Russia is investing in electronic warfare and directed energy weapons to counter Western on-orbit assets. These systems work by disrupting or disabling adversary C4ISR capabilities and by disrupting GPS, tactical and satellite communications, and radars. Russia also continues to develop ground-based ASAT missiles capable of destroying space targets in low Earth orbit.

IRAN

NUCLEAR ISSUES

Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities that would be necessary to produce a testable nuclear device. Since the assassination in November 2020 of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran has accelerated the expansion of its nuclear program, stated that it is no longer constrained by any JCPOA limits, and undertaken research and development activities that would bring it closer to producing the fissile material for completing a nuclear device following a decision to do so. If Tehran does not receive sanctions relief, Iranian officials probably will consider further enriching uranium up to 90 percent.

CYBER AND MALIGN INFLUENCE OPERATIONS

Iran’s growing expertise and willingness to conduct aggressive cyber operations make it a major threat to the security of U.S. and allied networks and data. Iran’s opportunistic approach to cyber attacks makes critical
infrastructure owners in the United States susceptible to being targeted by Tehran, particularly when Tehran believes that it must demonstrate it can push back against the United States in other domains. Recent attacks against Israeli targets show that Iran is more willing than before to target countries with stronger capabilities.

NORTH KOREA

WMD
Kim remains strongly committed to expanding the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal and maintaining nuclear weapons as a centerpiece of his national security structure. Public statements have reinforced North Korea’s intent
to enhance its ability to threaten both South Korea and the U.S. homeland.

North Korea probably is preparing to test a nuclear device to further its stated military modernization goals to facilitate “tactical nuclear operations.”

In September 2022, North Korea codified a law reaffirming its self-proclaimed status as a nuclear power, establishing open-ended conditions for nuclear
use, command and control, and rejecting denuclearization.

North Korea’s CBW capabilities remain a threat, and the IC is concerned that Pyongyang may use such weapons during a conflict or in an unconventional or clandestine attack.

CYBER

North Korea’s cyber program poses a sophisticated and agile espionage, cybercrime, and attack threat. Pyongyang’s cyber forces have matured and are fully capable of achieving a range of strategic objectives against
diverse targets, including a wider target set in the United States.

Pyongyang probably possesses the expertise to cause temporary, limited disruptions of some critical infrastructure networks and disrupt business networks in the United States.

In one heist in 2022, Pyongyang stole a record $625 million from a Singapore-based blockchain technology firm.

[Section on Climate Change and Environmental Degradation]


HEALTH SECURITY

Our Assessment of the Origins of COVID-19

The IC continues to investigate how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, first infected humans, maintaining a Community of Interest across agencies. All agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible explanations for the origin of COVID-19: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident.

Beijing continues to hinder the global investigation, resist sharing information, and blame other countries, including the United States.

BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

Global shortcomings in preparedness for the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns with biosecurity, fabricated public claims about U.S. biological weapons development fueled by U.S. adversaries, as well as continued questions
surrounding the origins of the COVID-19 virus, may inspire some adversaries to consider options related to the development of biological weapons.

Rapid advances in dual-use technology, including bioinformatics, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, and genomic editing, could enable development of novel biological weapons that complicate detection, attribution, and treatment.

ANOMALOUS HEALTH INCIDENTS

We continue to closely examine Anomalous Health Incidents (AHIs) and ensure appropriate care for those affected. IC agencies assess with varying levels of confidence that most reported health incidents can be explained by medical conditions, or environmental or technical factors, and that it is unlikely that a foreign actor—including Russia—is conducting a sustained, worldwide campaign involving hundreds of incidents without detection. This finding does not change the fact that U.S. personnel are reporting real experiences, nor does it explain every report. The IC continues to actively investigate the AHI issue, focusing particularly on a subset of priority cases for which it has not ruled out any cause, including the possibility that one or more foreign actors were involved.

ADDITIONAL TRANSNATIONAL ISSUES

New technologies—particularly in the fields of AI and biotechnology—are being developed and are proliferating faster than companies and governments can shape norms, protect privacy, and prevent dangerous outcomes. The convergence of emerging technologies is likely to create potentially breakthrough technologies not foreseeable by examining narrow science and technology areas, which could lead to the rapid development of asymmetric threats to
U.S. interests.

Advances in semiconductors and high-performance computing are driving military and technological breakthroughs, but also are heightening the risk of technology surprise because high-performance computers will help address longstanding research and development hurdles.

China may now have two exascale systems using older generation, domestically designed processors—neither of which have been officially acknowledged or subject to independent benchmarks—and plans to build more by 2025. Exascale computers are capable of solving massive scientific challenges that would have been impossible with previous generation supercomputers.

As of June 2022, China had 173 of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, a third more than the United States, which accounted for 128 supercomputers.

MIGRATION

In the Western Hemisphere, push and pull factors that drive migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean to the United States—such as deteriorating socioeconomic and security conditions in certain countries, misperceptions of U.S. policies, and employment opportunities in the United States—probably will persist through 2023.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted the largest flow of refugees into European countries since World War II, with more than four million Ukrainians registering for protections under the EU Temporary Protection Directive—including more than one million in Poland.

Foreign Illicit Drugs

U.S. law enforcement is seizing increased quantities of fentanyl, and the majority of the more than 100,000 annual deaths from drug overdoses in the United States stem from fentanyl.

Mexican TCOs obtain the majority of precursor chemicals needed to produce fentanyl from China through mostly Chinese and Mexican chemical brokers and are able to circumvent international controls through mislabeled shipments and buying unregulated dual-use chemicals.

GLOBAL TERRORISM

U.S. persons and interests at home and abroad will face a persistent and increasingly diverse threat from terrorism during the next year. Individuals and cells adhering to ideologies espoused by ISIS, al-Qa‘ida, or the transnational Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists (RMVE) movement pose a significant terrorist threat to U.S. persons, facilities, and interests. Iran and Lebanese Hizballah remain committed to conducting terrorist attacks and could seek to do so on U.S. soil.

Transnational Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists

Transnational RMVEs continue to pose the most lethal threat to U.S. persons and interests, and a significant threat to a number of U.S. allies and partners through attacks and propaganda that espouses violence. Transnational RMVEs are largely a decentralized movement of adherents to an ideology that espouses the use of violence to advance white supremacy, neo-Nazism, and other exclusionary cultural-nationalist beliefs. These actors increasingly seek to sow social divisions, support fascist-style governments, and attack government institutions. The transnational and loose structure of RMVE organizations challenges local security services and creates a resilience against disruptions.

Transnational RMVEs capitalize on societal and political hyperpolarization to try to legitimatize their aims and mainstream their narratives and conspiracy theories into the public discourse. These RMVEs believe that recruiting military members will help them organize cells for attacks against minorities or institutions that oppose their ideology.