The Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA’s) assessment of the global security environment – “The United States is confronting an increasingly complex national security threat environment. In addition to traditional military modernization, developments in artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, quantum sciences, microelectronics, space, cyber, and unmanned systems are rapidly transforming the nature of conflict and the global threat landscape. Our adversaries are deepening cooperation, often lending military, diplomatic, and economic support to each other’s conflicts and operations, to circumvent U.S. instruments of power. Transnational criminal organizations and terrorist groups are exploiting geostrategic conditions to evade authorities. Advanced technology also is enabling foreign intelligence services to target our personnel and activities in new ways. The rapid pace of innovation will only accelerate in the coming years, continually generating means for our adversaries to threaten U.S. interests…The U.S. Homeland faces an array of threats emanating from strategic competitors and non-state entities seeking to erode U.S. competitive advantage or target U.S. citizens. Our adversaries are developing long-range and novel missile capabilities to target the Homeland, and continue to seek new avenues to threaten our cyber networks and critical infrastructure. Along our southern border, transnational criminal organizations, drug trafficking organizations, and terrorist groups are attempting to evade regional and U.S. law enforcement—including by exploiting persistent migration flows—to conduct activities aimed at harming U.S. citizens.

Missile Threat U.S. adversaries continue efforts to advance their missile capabilities threatening the Homeland —including traditional ballistic missiles, aeroballistic and cruise missiles, and novel nuclear and conventional warhead delivery systems. Both China and Russia are expanding their missile inventories and aggressively pursuing new systems, such as hypersonic glide vehicles, engineered to complicate U.S. defenses in the event of a conflict. North Korea now has developed an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of ranging the continental United States…”