Top 3 threats to the United States: the good and bad news

The annual Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community is out this week, a widely-anticipated report compiled by the nation’s intelligence agencies. Here is the good and bad news about the top three threats facing the United States, according to an unclassified version of the report.

1. Cyberwarfare

Susan Walsh/AP
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington Tuesday, where he delivered the US intelligence community's overview of global threats.

The bad news:

Even more than terrorism, the threat of cyberattack is the biggest peril currently facing the United States, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

The rapid proliferation of digital technologies is happening “faster than our ability to understand the security implications and mitigate the potential risks,” Mr. Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee in presenting his report.

The most concerning part of that particular assessment, analysts note, is the often losing battle to stop cyberincursions into US networks.

These are lurking threats that are designed to remain undetected in cyber systems while simultaneously exporting vital economic and security data to enemies and criminal networks.

“Threats are more diverse, interconnected, and viral than at any time in history,” the threat assessment notes. “Destruction can be invisible, latent, and progressive.”

What makes combating cyberthreats even trickier is that those who are doing the attacking almost always have plausible deniability. Indeed, even more difficult than detecting an attack is figuring out where it came from, analysts note.

“The choices we and other actors make in coming years will shape cyberspace for decades to come, with potentially profound implications for US economic and national security,” Clapper warned lawmakers. “Our progress cannot stop.”

The good news:

Though former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned of a “cyber Pearl Harbor,” the nation’s intelligence agencies estimate that there is only a “remote chance of a major cyber attack against US critical infrastructure systems during the next two years that would result in long-term, wide-scale disruption of services, such as a regional power outage,” according to the assessment.

That’s because the level of technical expertise required for such an attack “will be out of reach for most actors during this time frame.”

The most audacious cyberattackers of US networks, Russia and China, “are unlikely to launch such a devastating attack against the United States outside of a military conflict or crisis that they believe threatens their vital interests.”

1 of 3

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.