Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community (2025)
Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community (2025)
INTRODUCTION
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.
FOREWORD
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
