SPECIAL REPORT – Within the waning days of 2024, The Cipher Transient requested members of our professional community to look to the yr forward, and determine an space of specific concern within the nationwide or international safety house that they imagine bears watching in 2025.
Our particular ask: What in your view is a very powerful problem, downside or area to observe within the yr forward?
It’s a troublesome query in fact – particularly given the array of dynamic points dealing with the U.S. and the world, as the brand new yr looms. A few of our respondents gave temporary essays, figuring out a couple of problem; others answered in a single sentence.
It’s not a complete checklist by any means, however their solutions spanned a lot of the globe. We provide their responses right here – as a part of our year-end protection, and fodder for thought as we put together to satisfy 2025, and no matter it might carry.
John McLaughlin
John McLaughlin is the Distinguished Practitioner in Residence on the Johns Hopkins College of Superior Worldwide Research (SAIS). He served as each Performing Director and Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Company. McLaughlin served as a U.S. Military Officer within the Nineteen Sixties, with service in Vietnam.
McLaughlin: I believe a very powerful problem for the yr is whether or not there can be a settlement of the Ukraine struggle. If a method will be discovered that offers Ukraine safety and neutralizes Russia’s aggression, it will take a lot of the steam out of the so-called “Axis of Autocracy” (Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran), and probably diminish the threatening facet of those 4 international locations collaborating so carefully.
Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper (Ret.)
Lt. Gen. James Clapper served from 2010 – 2017 because the Director of Nationwide Intelligence. He served in two administrations because the Beneath Secretary of Protection for Intelligence and directed the Nationwide Imagery and Mapping Company (NIMA), remodeling it into the Nationwide Geospatial-Intelligence Company (NGA).
Lt. Gen. Clapper: What occurs to the nationwide safety capabilities of this nation, in the course of the subsequent administration.
Ralph Goff
Ralph Goff is a 35-year veteran of the CIA the place he was a 6-time Chief of Station with in depth service in Europe, the Center East, and Central and South Asia together with a number of struggle zones. He served as Chief of Operations for Europe and Eurasia. Goff additionally served as Chief of CIA’s Nationwide Sources Division, working extensively with “C Suite” stage US non-public sector executives within the monetary, banking, and safety sectors.
Goff: The West Financial institution – or Judea and Samaria, as Israeli officers and U.S. Ambassador-designate Mike Huckabee consult with it – stays a supply of not simply simmering rigidity between Israelis and Arabs, but additionally a possible flashpoint that might reignite the now diminished violence between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel and Hamas and even Israel and Iran. Elevated acts of violence by radical Israeli settlers towards Palestinians within the West Financial institution, in tandem with overly aggressive safety operations by Israeli safety forces within the occupied territories that end in heavy collateral casualties, might trigger one other Palestinian rebellion that may have destructive impression all through the area. Together with the aforementioned violence, Jordan could be destabilized, Egypt could be compelled to behave, and the still-on-hold means of normalization between Israel and The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia could be additional derailed.
Ellen McCarthy
Ellen McCarthy is Chairwoman and CEO of the Belief in Media Cooperative. She has over three a long time of nationwide safety service in a wide range of management roles that span quite a few intelligence organizations, most not too long ago serving because the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Intelligence and Analysis. She’s at the moment a senior fellow on the Belfer Middle at Harvard College.
McCarthy: In 2025, the knowledge ecosystem, which not will be simply binned into “conventional media” and “social media” however consists of any platform, know-how or establishment the place folks eat info, can be more and more destabilized by AI-generated false info. This may end in much more blurring of the traces between reality and fiction, additional deepening societal divides, make us an excellent greater goal to overseas malign affect, and proceed to erode belief in establishments. This rising problem will complicate our dealing with of all the opposite points we are going to face within the yr forward, to incorporate rising geopolitical tensions, financial uncertainty, local weather change, know-how regulation and cybersecurity threats.
The answer is a coordinated strategy throughout authorities, know-how, media organizations, academia and different non income centered on empowering customers with entry to high quality info.
Nick Fishwick
Nick Fishwick CMG retired after almost thirty years within the British International Service. His postings included Lagos, Istanbul and Kabul. His obligations in London included director of safety and, after coming back from Afghanistan in 2007, he served as director for counter-terrorism. His ultimate position was as director common for worldwide operations.
Fishwick: A very powerful area to observe is – the USA. By this I don’t imply that us Brits and different Europeans ought to panic concerning the new administration, simply that Trump means a brand new sport on the town. All the present pressure-point regional threats – the Center East, Ukraine, Taiwan and so forth – can be modified not by native actors however by the Trump administration and native actors’ responses. The one query this aspect of the pond since November 5 has been, What is going to Trump do?
I believe we’re going to need to get used to a special method of doing international geopolitical enterprise. We’re at struggle with Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Critical diplomacy is now about great-power offers and isn’t carried out by overseas workplaces or state departments. The UN seems to me weaker and extra discredited than ever. The wars take totally different kinds with totally different adversaries. I count on a continued realization that we should get on with China, whereas preventing for our pursuits and towards Chinese language threats to them. Trump might resolve that we additionally have to get on with Russia, even Iran, however will probably be on his phrases. I don’t know what these phrases can be or whether or not Russia and Iran will settle for them. They might be smart to take action.
Will we see ISIS 2.0? It seems extra doubtless now than it did a month in the past. We want a transparent deal with what our pursuits are within the Center East. They don’t seem to be served by lecturing Israel on how it’s allowed to defend itself however by recognizing the place the threats to western democracy come from. Within the Center East, they arrive from Iran and transnational terrorism.
Basic David Petraeus (Ret.)
Basic David Petraeus served greater than 37 years within the U.S. army with six consecutive instructions, 5 of which had been fight, together with command of the Multi-Nationwide Drive-Iraq in the course of the Surge, U.S. Central Command, and Coalition and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan. He’s a associate within the KKR international funding agency and chairs the agency’s international institute.
Gen. Petraeus: Whereas a very powerful problem/area is clearly China and the Indo-Pacific, the most important problem forward is the larger variety of simultaneous challenges and the larger complexity of a few of them – China, the Mideast, Russia-Ukraine – than at any time in our latest historical past, a minimum of because the finish of the Chilly Conflict.
Linda Weissgold
Linda Weissgold spent 37-years at CIA. Earlier than the 9/11 terrorist assaults, she was an analyst and chief of analytic applications centered on the Center East. She served as head of the CIA’s Workplace of Terrorism Evaluation and helped to determine Usama Bin Laden’s location and the rise of ISIS. For greater than two years, she served as President George W. Bush’s intelligence briefer.
Weissgold: My skilled focus has at all times been outward, not home, so the comfy place for me to speak about issues for 2025 could be to elaborate on the consequences of shifting international dynamics; the financial, army and diplomatic challenges from China; or our increasing cyber vulnerabilities.
I’m stepping out of that consolation zone, nonetheless, to deal with a longer-term home menace – the diminishing willingness in our society to problem our personal considering. CIA analysts are taught that an openness to different views is a defining function of fine evaluation and good analysts. Having colleagues problem what you assume and share information you might need missed improves the rigor and attain of your assessments.
An absence of mental curiosity and willingness to go looking out and contemplate differing views might in the end be the best menace we face. And it’s one which authorities can not repair. We have to tackle the accountability as people of demanding it of ourselves and our leaders. As a society, we should develop into rather more energetic customers of data, in search of disconfirming information and probing the outcomes of AI for bias and inaccuracies. If we’re going to have the ability to determine and mitigate future threats, we should have the flexibleness and the humility to revise judgments when new info dictates.
Nick Thompson
Nick Thompson is a former CIA Paramilitary Case Officer and Naval Particular Warfare Improvement Group operator. With over 20 years of expertise within the nationwide safety house, Nick has carried out numerous clandestine operations and fight deployments with a major focus within the Center East and Asia. He has recurrently navigated and led overseas intelligence assortment and covert motion initiatives by constructing networks with a various vary of stakeholders. He now works in Washington D.C. at Anduril Industries, a number one protection know-how firm, looking for to carry leading edge functionality to intelligence and protection professionals alike.
Thompson: With Iran down and their axis of resistance shattered throughout a number of fronts (which embody a protracted checklist of profitable kinetic operations worthy of a Hollywood screenplay), the regime might really feel that enriching uranium to 90% and weaponizing it’s of their greatest curiosity. They’ve ramped up manufacturing and blown previous earlier enrichment agreements. The regime would nonetheless have to conduct testing and certain need to develop an arsenal as a result of this would offer them their very own deterrence within the type of a counter strike functionality. This may certainly take time to perform, however the narrative that Iran would battle with the supply mechanism is misguided. Their development in each liquid-fuel and solid-fuel missile methods and work on multi-stage rockets highlights platforms which may journey 1000’s of kilometers.
Emile Nakhleh
Dr. Emile Nakhleh is a retired Senior Intelligence Service Officer, a founding director of the CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Evaluation Program and the International and the Nationwide Safety Coverage Institute on the College of New Mexico. Since retiring from the federal government, Nakhleh has consulted on nationwide safety points, notably Islamic radicalization, terrorism, and the Arab states of the Center East. He’s a life member of the Council on International Relations.
Nakhleh: Sadly, a number of points and areas can be problematic in 2025. A very powerful? AI and cyber, particularly their use in warfare – involving onerous and delicate concentrating on, and the rising variety of non-state actors abusing AI and cyber.
A very powerful areas? Whereas it’s tempting to deal with the Center East and Ukraine/Russia, I might place China and Northeast Asia, particularly the Korean Peninsula, on the prime of the checklist.
Ambassador Joseph DeTrani
Ambassador Joseph DeTrani served because the U.S. Consultant to the Korea Vitality Improvement Group (KEDO), in addition to former CIA director of East Asia Operations. He additionally served as Affiliate Director of Nationwide Intelligence and Mission Supervisor for North Korea, was the Particular Envoy for the Six-Occasion Talks with North Korea, and served because the Director of the Nationwide Counter Proliferation Middle, ODNI. He at the moment serves on the Board of Managers at Sandia Nationwide Laboratories.
Ambassador DeTrani: Though U.S.-China relations and China’s potential army motion towards Taiwan and, additionally, within the South China Sea are geopolitically a very powerful points to comply with, essentially the most rapid entails the Korean Peninsula. In the course of the subsequent yr, it’s extra doubtless than it’s been in a very long time that there can be battle on the Korean Peninsula between the North and South. An emboldened North Korea is now allied with Russia with a mutual protection treaty committing every to come back to the protection of the opposite if attacked. North Korea throughout 2025 will take provocative strikes on the DMZ and the Northern Restrict Line within the West Sea. South Korea will reply to those provocations, and which will usher to start with of struggle on the Korean Peninsula.
Given Russia’s dedication to supply army assist to North Korea, and the U.S. and the United Nations Joint Command’s army assurances to South Korea, this battle, initially beginning sluggish and in a single or two controllable areas, might escalate rapidly, with North Korea threatening to make use of tactical nuclear weapons and South Korea, given its prolonged nuclear deterrence commitments from the U.S., ready to reply in sort.
However Russia can be there for North Korea. China will name for peace talks, however won’t use any of its leverage with North Korea, figuring out Russia is ready to combat to make sure the survival of the Kim regime. If, nonetheless, Russia doesn’t abide by its mutual protection treaty commitments with North Korea, China will use its leverage with Pyongyang, Washington and the United Nations to make sure the struggle on the Korean Peninsula doesn’t escalate into struggle between China and the U.S.
Paula Doyle
Paula Doyle served as Assistant Deputy Director for Operations at CIA, the place she oversaw worldwide HUMINT operations and actions that required using air, land, maritime, space-based and cyber applied sciences. She was the Deputy Nationwide Counterintelligence Govt from 2012-2014, the place she oversaw the official US Harm Evaluation ensuing from Personal Manning’s 2010 unauthorized disclosures to Wikileaks and led the IC’s in depth evaluate of Edward Snowden’s unauthorized disclosures and defection to Russia. She led three CIA stations in Europe, the Levant, and Asia.
Doyle: The lethal wars between Israel and Tehran-backed Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. With out efficient intervention, Iran will assist Hezbollah rebuild, it can assist Hamas resurge, and it’ll assist Houthi proxy forces preserve disrupting western provide chains that transport vitality and different items through the Crimson Sea.
In the meantime, the stakes of Russia’s indefensible wars and occupations of jap Ukraine and South Ossetia in Georgia will solely develop in 2025. Moscow flatly rejects that NATO is a collective defensive alliance; its actions since 2008 present that it will probably and can wage struggle in any respect prices to forestall Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova from becoming a member of NATO. No assurances from Washington or Brussels have softened Russia’s views or resolve. Sanctions have been essential however ineffective as a result of the U.S. and EU left far too many loopholes in place and Russia hid helpful and huge property exterior of Russia. U.S. and NATO arms gross sales to Ukraine and Georgia have been important, however wars require velocity and agility. U.S. and NATO weapons took too rattling lengthy to reach in Ukraine, and so they got here with far too many restrictions.
What’s completed is finished; and Ukraine has fought valiantly with U.S. and NATO’s assist. Wanting forward, if Russia manages to retain ill-gotten territory in Ukraine and Georgia, the sanctity of sovereignty will erode earlier than our eyes. What is going to forestall Moscow from faking new threats and utilizing drive and damaging cyber-attacks towards close to overseas Baltic neighbors, nations like Poland and Finland, and the U.S.? I’ve studied this problem extensively. Putin’s playbook is eerily much like that which Hitler used between 1938 and 1940: propaganda, unproven assaults on ethnicity and spiritual affiliations, faux appeasement agreements, a cold annexation, and lightning quick invasions and occupations. If the following administration shouldn’t be daring and quick sufficient, 2025 might make the 2014-2024 decade appear to be the prequel for the following Russian invasion.
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