By John Gannon, PhD

In the past quarter century, the United States has experienced a significant expansion of its national threat assessment as a result of two revolutionary changes in the world. The first revolution is geopolitical. It swept away the Soviet Union along with the East European regimes of the Warsaw Pact. It further transformed Europe with German unification and the rapid expansion of the European Union. At the same time, the rise of China and India accentuated an eastward shift in the global distribution of economic and political power. Brazil in our own hemisphere rose to the status of a major regional power.

Today, the United States remains the preponderant global power, but it exerts its influence with greater difficulty in what is increasingly a multi-polar world. This requires a lot more collection and analysis from the intelligence community on a broader range of political, economic, environmental, scientific, military, social, and cultural issues.  Analysts are becoming more specialized. Analysis on these complex issues demands much greater application of multi-disciplinary methodologies, and much closer collaboration with experts inside and outside the U.S. government.

The decline of the single strategic threat from the Soviet Union has given way to an expanded global threat environment that includes, in addition to nation-state challenges, persistent transnational threats from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), terrorism, cyber attacks, trafficking, international organized crime, human trafficking, and spreading regional conflicts. To deal with these issues today, analysts must be prepared to assess a country’s stability in terms of such factors as quality of governance, levels of corruption, adherence to rule of law, education levels, age distribution, migration, competition for natural resources (e.g., food, water, and energy), and quality of health care. Analysts do more of this social, economic, and cultural analysis today because it relates directly to global stability. Increasingly sophisticated technical collection systems and the Internet have also opened greater flows of relevant data that demand careful analysis.

The second revolution involves technology, which includes information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, material sciences, neuroscience, and robotics — all of which, in responsible hands, will greatly improve the quality of life for mankind but, in the hands of bad actors, can threaten civilized society with catastrophic destruction. The threat comes not just from breakthroughs in individual technologies, but also from the integration or fusion of these technologies in new weapons and destructive capabilities. The “dual-use” nature of these technologies, the rapid emergence of new technologies, and a growing trend in the development of disruptive technologies – like the improvised explosive device – challenge the intelligence community to catch a fast-moving technology curve. The worrisome bottom line is that the United States today is more threatened than ever by technological surprise.

Globalization is having a major impact on the intelligence business. Threats are becoming more complicated and more distributed at home and around the world. The traditional line between foreign and domestic threats has become blurred, as has the once classic distinction between foreign and domestic intelligence. Threats from international terrorists, cyber and bio attacks, WMD, and pandemics or drug resistant infectious diseases all share the common characteristic of respecting no borders. The 9/ll terrorist attacks were a painful reminder that these threats are not oceans away but right in our own back yard!

Globalization has intensified another major national security challenge for the United States – the global dispersion of research and development (R&D). For most of the Cold War, the United States was the unchallenged center of R&D, which helped decisively to sustain strong U.S. advantages in economic competitiveness and military capability.  Today, R&D is a global enterprise spread among multiple nation-states, powerful multi-national corporations, and growing international networks. The U.S. control of dual-use and sensitive military technologies is increasingly tenuous in this complicated and confusing security environment.

Nation-states and non-state actors including terrorists, working alone or in combination, have increasingly greater access to actionable information, global finance, and destructive capabilities – including WMD. Little countries, groups, and individuals have the potential as never before to wage catastrophic attacks. New intelligence issues, many related to advances in science and technology and homeland security, are spawning new subject-matter experts and additional consumers. The challenge of crisis management in the intelligence community has never been harder.

Climate change, on which the intelligence community produced a National Intelligence Estimate in 2008, is another relatively new issue for intelligence with the potential to affect national and international stability as it relates to economic and financial activity, governance, demographics, migration including refugee crises, availability of natural resources, infectious-disease control, humanitarian crises, and conflict within and among states. Significant climate change would likely provoke most, if not all, of these destabilizing influences at the same time. In the extreme, climate change could involve the very survival of states.

When taken together, these real and potential threats present a dizzyingly complex picture. But this is not a challenge for the United States alone. While it is critical that the United States remain at the forefront of identifying and addressing evolving threats, meeting them will ultimately demand continuous flexibility, agility, and a coordinated international effort. Global threats can be reduced only by the concerted action of both national and international actors. In the turbulent years ahead, the U.S. intelligence community will almost certainly be expected to bring its formidable technical collection and analytic capabilities to bear as the United States, in collaboration with international partners, confronts this expanded global threat environment.

About the Author

John Gannon is Vice President for Global Analysis at BAE Systems, which supports U.S. government and corporate analysis. Prior to joining BAE, he served as Deputy Director for Intelligence at CIA, Chairman of the National Intelligence Council and Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production. He headed the White House team in the Department of Homeland Security Transition Planning office, and was the Staff Director of the House of Representatives Select Committee on Homeland Security. Mr. Gannon has received many awards, including the CIA’s Distinguished Intelligence Medal and the National Security Medal, the nation’s highest intelligence award. Mr. Gannon currently is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. He earned his BA in psychology at Holy Cross College, and his MA and PhD in history at Washington University in St. Louis. He is a former Naval Officer and Viet Nam veteran.