By Cheryl Pellerin
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, April 15, 2013 – National security threats are more
diverse, interconnected and viral than at any time in history, the
director of national intelligence said last week in a statement for the
record delivered to the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence.
“This year, in content and organization, this statement illustrates
how quickly and radically the world and our threat environments are
changing,” James R. Clapper said in the statement’s introduction.
At the top of the U.S. intelligence community’s 2013 assessment of
global threats is cyber, followed by terrorism and transnational
organized crime, weapons of mass destruction proliferation,
counterintelligence and space activities, insecurity and competition for
natural resources, health and pandemic threats, and mass atrocities.
“This environment is demanding reevaluations of the way we do business,
expanding our analytic envelope and altering the vocabulary of
intelligence,” Clapper said in his statement.
The 30-page
statement, based on information complete as of March 7, also lists
threats in terms of regions such as the Middle East and North Africa,
sub-Saharan Africa, East and South Asia, Russia and Eurasia, Latin
America and the Caribbean, and Europe.
As the top-listed global
threat, cyber is discussed in terms of increasing risk to U.S. critical
infrastructure, the erosion of U.S. economic and national security,
information control and Internet governance, and other areas.
“We
judge that there is a remote chance of a major cyberattack against U.S.
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,” Clapper stated.
The technical expertise
and operational sophistication needed for such an attack is out of reach
for most actors, he added, and “advanced cyber actors like 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.”
But, he stated, isolated state
or nonstate actors might deploy less sophisticated cyberattacks as a
form of retaliation or provocation.
In terms of eroding U.S.
economic and national security, the director said in his statement: “We
assess that highly networked business practices and information
technology are providing opportunities for foreign intelligence and
security services, trusted insiders, hackers and others to target and
collect sensitive U.S. national security and economic data.”
Such
activities are allowing adversaries to close the technological gap
between the U.S. military and their own, he added, slowly neutralizing a
key U.S. advantage internationally.
In the area of online
information control, he said, some countries, including Russia, China
and Iran, focus on cyber influence and the risk that Internet content
might contribute to political instability. The U.S. focus is on cyber
security and the risks to network and system reliability and integrity.
This fundamental difference in defining cyber threats was a core part
of discussions as countries negotiated a global telecommunications
treaty in Dubai in December, Clapper said.
“The contentious new
text that resulted led many countries, including the United States, not
to sign the treaty because of its language on network security, spam
control and expansion of the U.N.’s role in Internet governance,” the
director added.
Negotiations showed that such disagreements will be long-running challenges in bilateral and multilateral engagements, he said.
“We track cyber developments among nonstate actors, including terrorist
groups, hacktivists and cyber criminals,” Clapper noted, adding, “We
have seen indications that some terrorist organizations have heightened
interest in developing offensive cyber capabilities, but they will
probably be constrained by inherent resource and organizational
limitations and competing priorities.”
In Clapper’s statement to
Congress, he said terrorism is divided into subcategories that include
the evolving homeland threat landscape, the global jihadist threat
overseas and its affiliates, allies and sympathizers in Iran and
Lebanese Hezbollah.
Terrorist threats, the director observed, are in transition as the global jihadist movement becomes increasingly decentralized.
“The Arab Spring has generated a spike in threats to U.S. interests in
the region that likely will endure until political upheaval stabilizes
and security forces regain their capabilities,” Clapper said.
The
nation also faces uncertainty about potential threats from Iran and
Lebanese Hezbollah, which see the United States and Israel as their
principal enemies.
For al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, attacks
on U.S. soil will remain part of its transnational strategy and the
group continues to adjust its tactics, techniques and procedures for
targeting the West, Clapper said.
The intelligence community
assesses that al-Qaida-inspired homegrown violent extremists will
continue to be involved in fewer than 10 domestic plots per year and
will be motivated by global jihadist propaganda to engage in violent
action, he added.
For core al-Qaida, the director said, “senior
personnel losses in 2012, amplifying losses and setbacks since 2008,
have degraded that organization to a point that the group is probably
unable to carry out complex, large-scale attacks in the West … [but] its
leaders will not abandon the aspiration to attack inside the United
States.”
Iran, North Korea and Syria figure prominently in the statement’s discussion of weapons of mass destruction.
“We assess Iran is developing nuclear capabilities to enhance its
security, prestige and regional influence and give it the ability to
develop nuclear weapons, should a decision be made to do so,” Clapper
said.
“We do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons,” he added.
North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs pose a serious
threat to the United States and to the security environment in East
Asia, a region with some of the world’s largest populations, militaries
and economies, the director said.
“North Korea’s export of
ballistic missiles and associated materials to several countries,
including Iran and Syria, and its assistance to Syria’s construction of a
nuclear reactor, destroyed in 2007, illustrate the reach of its
proliferation activities,” Clapper said.
“… Although we assess
with low confidence that the North would only attempt to use nuclear
weapons against U.S. forces or allies to preserve the Kim [Jong Un]
regime,” he added, “we do not know what would constitute, from the
North’s perspective, crossing that threshold.”
Syria has an
active chemical warfare program and maintains a stockpile of sulfur
mustard, sarin and the nerve agent VX. The intelligence community
assesses that Syria has a stockpile of missiles, aerial bombs and
possibly artillery rockets that can be used to deliver these agents, the
director said.
“Syria’s overall CW program is large, complex and
geographically dispersed, with sites for storage, production and
preparation,” Clapper said.
“This advanced CW program has the
potential to inflict mass casualties,” he added, “and we assess that an
increasingly beleaguered regime, having found its escalation of violence
through conventional means inadequate, might be prepared to use CW
against the Syrian people.”
Some elements of Syria’s longstanding
biological warfare program may have advanced beyond the research and
development stage and may be capable of limited agent production, the
director said.
Syria is not known to have successfully weaponized
biological agents in an effective delivery system, he added, but it has
conventional and chemical weapon systems that could be modified for
biological agent delivery.
In this threat environment, Clapper
said, “… The intelligence community must continue to promote
collaboration among experts in every field, from the political and
social sciences to natural sciences, medicine, military issues and
space.”
He added: “Collectors and analysts need vision across
disciplines to understand how and why developments -- and both state and
unaffiliated actors -- can spark sudden changes with international
implications.”
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