Last week, the US Intelligence Community (IC) presented the 2024 Annual Threat Assessment (ATA) to the Senate Intelligence Committee. The video above shows the entire two hour presentation of this report to the Committee.
The ATA is the best unclassified summary of intel that we are going to get every year as citizens and as members of the public.
The ATA is now a legally required annual process and report; formalized by Congress after the Trump Administration skipped it.
It’s is very accessible and easy to read. It’s short, too — 41 pages, including blanks.
It’s very powerfully summarized and stated. Each word or section may speak volumes and can represent very great phenomena, threats, risk, and potential consequences.
It’s very worth reading. It’s very worth reading carefully. The US Intel Community does not state things casually or by accident.
The federal government’s official website on the ATA is here, with the official report posted as a PDF here. If you have questions about the agencies that make up the IC, the Office of the Director for National Intelligence (ODNI) has public info about the IC summarized on this page. The ODNI is a post-9/11 coordination body between intel agencies.
What Does the ATA Cover?
Per the ATA intro, “This assessment focuses on the most direct, serious threats to the United States primarily during the next year. The order of the topics presented in this assessment does not necessarily indicate their relative importance or the magnitude of the threats in the view of the IC. All 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 22 January [2024] was used in the preparation of this assessment.” For example, while instability in Haiti is noted in the report, the situation in country has been rapidly evolving in recent weeks.
Changes This Year
The 2024 assessment appears to be a bit more thorough and inclusive of some complicated, real threats than in the past — especially in calling out “malign influence operations” of several countries.
This report also appears to take a sort of fusion approach in addressing complicated, interconnected, overlapping issues. It’s helpful to see in a very complex, interdependent, systems-oriented world.
What’s Missing?
Even with this updated format, it looks like the 2024 ATA is still missing some of the fairly complicated domestic threats; as was the 2023 ATA. In my post about the 2023 ATA, I noted that the law requiring this annual threat assessment doesn’t appear to exclude domestic threat analysis. However, this year’s assessment once again does not appear to include that specific threat information.
It would be very difficult to do so. Most of the intel agencies are oriented externally although the US does track some internal threats as well. That’s more complicated legally, and more complicated politically. My guess once again is that the IC chose not to get into that space — but we also need that information.
We’re not getting clarity about the domestic threat/risk landscape from the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Department of Justice, or the Biden Administration. This shortfall makes it harder for us to navigate this complicated domestic threat landscape. It also makes it awkward. The government talking about it clearly and plainly would help Americans, American law enforcement, and American media.
What are the domestic threats? That’s a question for another post. Let me know if you have interest, and we can get into it here next week after I’ve had more time to consider and review this year’s ATA.
What Can We Do With This Info?
Well, you can read the 2024 ATA.
You can watch the hearing above — save it to YouTube and listen while you’re on a walk, in the car, making dinner, etc.
You can talk to people about all of this. We need to get more comfortable talking about national security — all of us. This stuff isn’t super complicated. Sometimes it’s as simple as common sense and paying attention to the world.
I offer two pieces of advice for talking about it:
Work hard to talk about the facts as reported without adding your interpretation, bias, or suspicions unless you specifically call those things out as your analysis or interpretation; and
When you talk about national security stuff, know the source of it. For example, in this case this is a required annual threat assessment prepared by the entire IC, coordinated by the ODNI, and presented to the US Senate Intel Committee.
Sharing accurate, unbiased information can help us mitigate and fight misinformation and disinformation.
What’s Next?
We’re in a time of acceleration and transformation. We’re going to need to not freak out about stuff.
Keeping up with the risk landscape by reading stuff like this (the 2024 ATA) can help us get mentally prepared for the world as it is fast changing. Educating each other about this stuff will help, too.
We’re going to all need to be more resilient. The Shift the Country 5 Things approach is set up in part to help us all get more resilient — with more connection, community, and coalitions where we live so that we can better address this unfolding, fast-changing risk landscape. We can all take all the work we’ve done so far and do even more with it by bringing people, groups, creativity, and ideas together. Lots of potential.
Keep the faith. We’ve got good people, and we’re all well set up to navigate all of this. We just need to put more pieces and parts together in bigger alliances and with lots more action at every level. Which we can totally do.
Stay tuned here for a ramping up things that can help us do more along these lines. Bring your friends and bring your groups. We’re fixing to release a guide for engagement plus lots of ideas people can use everywhere — hopefully this week.
Thank you.
Shift the Country is a nonprofit pushing engagement, partnerships, & pressure to supercharge democracy.