TThe American intelligence community published its annual evaluation of annual threats in 2025 on March 25. The missing of the document was mentioned in climate change – marking the first time in addition to a decade that the subject had not appeared on the list.
“On which I concentrated this annual evaluation of threats and the [Intelligence Committee] The most extreme and critical direct threats of our threat assessment are focused on our national security, “said national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard in response to a question on the referral during a senatorial intelligence committee.
Gabbard said she “did not remember” asking the intelligence community to avoid mentioning climate change in the report. But the change comes in the middle of the Trump administration’s continuous thrust for a priority for climate change in the federal agenda.
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The US government has considered climate change as a world security threat for at least three decades. The academic reports of the Naval War College included factors of environmental stressors and climate change in the 1980s, explains Mark Nevitt, associate professor of law at Emory University. At the federal level, climate change was recognized for the first time as a national security threat by President George W. Bush in August 1991, and the American national security community listed the issue as a threat in 2008.
The question has generally been included on the annual threat assessment list because of its destabilizing impact, both at the national level and abroad. “The annual evaluation of threats is projected on where the areas of concern and the fields of competition [are]And where the American national security sector should focus its attention, “said Nevitt.” Because climate change simply destabilizes different parts of the world, through extreme weather conditions, through droughts, by raising sea level … The intelligence community wants to be ready for future conflicts and future competitions in competition. “”
Climate change is often called “threat multiplier” by the intelligence community, because it aggravates the already existing problems, while creating new ones.
“We need things that already worry us, like extremism or terrorism, and exacerbates the scale or the nature of these threats,” explains Scott Moore, professor of political science, emphasizing climate and security, at the University of Pennsylvania. “If you have these intensified impacts on climate change, they put stress on things like food systems and aggravate already existing tensions within countries.”
Climate migration, for example, increases worldwide – more than half of the new internal trips in countries registered in 2023 were caused by weather disasters, according to the migration data portal.
“Mass migration leads to many political and social tensions as well as border issues,” explains Karen Seto, professor of geography and urbanization science at the Yale School of the Environment. “That … could affect national security, because it could destabilize an entire region.” A study of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences have found that extreme weather conditions contribute to migration in the United States through the southern border-with more migrants from the agricultural regions of Mexico settling in the United States after extreme drought.
Such displacement can have major impacts on people’s lives and livelihoods, according to experts, especially in already fragile regions. “If you have, for example, a truly extreme and intensified drought in a country in which extremist ideologies percolate, these impacts on climate change can make people more likely that people will stop agriculture or can migrate to cities where they can be confronted with difficult job prospects, be socially relocated and can be more vulnerable towards extremism or getting into a type of violence,” says Moore. ”
At the national level, the consideration of climate change helps the American soldiers to ensure that infrastructure is built to withstand extreme weather events – and to respond to national disasters at national and abroad. “You need the National Guard, the Coast Guard, the US military, to help essentially their community when there is an extreme weather event,” said Nevitt. While extreme meteorological events intensify with climate change, it could force military resources and put more life in danger if the soldiers do not prepare to face the threat.
Infrastructure in the United States, such as energy and Internet networks, must also be fortified. If the regions lost power in the case of an extreme weather event, networks could be vulnerable to the attack.
“Our energy network is very at risk, and we have seen forest fires occur through the country, and therefore these could again be threat multipliers,” explains Seto. “I think that the risk of national security is that we are not ready to respond to the threats of foreign agents who can take advantage of the weaknesses we could have.”
Showing that the climate crisis is a priority is also necessary to maintain the diplomatic force of the United States, in particular in the regions which consider climate change as a major concern. “Other countries, in particular countries that are very important for the American defense posture, such as the island countries of the Pacific, really care about climate change. They want to hear what the United States is ready to do to help them deal with climate change, “said Moore. “And therefore, when you have the instructions to ignore climate change essentially, or in an extreme version of almost censorship of climate change, this will have a harmful effect on diplomatic engagement with certain fairly important countries.”
And experts say that the removal of climate change from the list – and the priority of the problem roughly – will only leave the United States more vulnerable. “This will make the administration and the national security sector less agile, because they may not have the people, the plans, the politics, [and] The capacity in place when the disaster inevitably strikes, “warns Nevitt.” You cannot just wish climate change. “”
