Cyber Tops Intel Community’s 2013 Global Threat Assessment

National security threats are more diverse, interconnected and viral than at any time in history, the director of national intelligence said 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.