2025 Annual Threat Assessment

2025 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. intelligence community was published on March 25, 2025, by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

Daniel Hinšt, a Political Scientist from CEA, provides an overview of the report.

2025 Annual Threat Assessment (ATA) identifies several key security risks to the United States:

1. Nonstate Transnational Criminals and Terrorists:

• Foreign Illicit Drug Actors: These groups are primarily responsible for over 52,000 U.S. deaths from synthetic opioids in the 12 months ending in October 2024. They also facilitated nearly three million illegal migrant arrivals in 2024, straining resources and heightening risks to U.S. communities.
• Transnational Islamic Extremists: These groups continue to pose direct threats to U.S. citizens and interests, necessitating ongoing vigilance and counterterrorism efforts.
• Other Transnational Criminals: These organizations engage in various illicit activities that undermine U.S. national security, including cyber and financial crimes.

2. Major State Actors:

• China: Recognized as the most capable strategic competitor, China employs complex military and economic strategies, particularly concerning Taiwan and regional claims. It aims to surpass U.S. advancements in artificial intelligence by 2030.
• Russia: Despite significant losses, Russia has gained leverage in the conflict against Ukraine. It continues to advance its nuclear arsenal and collaborates with China and Iran, enhancing its global positioning.
• Iran: It has enriched uranium levels that are high, though it has not resumed a nuclear weapons program. It maintains regional influence through proxy groups and poses a persistent challenge to U.S. interests.
• North Korea: Benefiting from Russian support, North Korea continues to enhance its capabilities, presenting ongoing security concerns for the U.S. and its allies.

3. Adversarial Cooperation:

The report highlights increasing cooperation among Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. This collaboration enhances their collective resilience against U.S. strategies and raises the potential for conflicts involving multiple adversaries.

The following quoted information from 2025 Annual Threat Assessment can be highlighted:

• large-scale illegal immigration has strained local and national infrastructure and resources and enabled known or suspected terrorists to cross into the United States
• 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.
• 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.
• China remains the primary source country for illicit fentanyl precursor chemicals and pill pressing equipment, followed by India.
• 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.
• 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
• 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
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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
• The PRC remains the most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. government, private-sector, and critical infrastructure networks.
• The PRC seeks to compete with the United States as the leading economic power in the world
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 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.
• 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
• 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
• 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 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.
• 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
• 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
• 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.
• 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 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.
• 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 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.
• 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.
• 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
• 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.
• 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.
• Even in degraded form, HAMAS continues to pose a threat to Israeli security.
• While HAMAS’s popularity has declined among Gazans, its popularity remains high among West Bank Palestinians, especially relative to the Palestinian Authority (PA).
• 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
• 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
• 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.