SPECIAL REPORT – Within the waning days of 2024, The Cipher Temporary requested members of our knowledgeable community to look to the yr forward, and establish an space of explicit concern within the nationwide or international safety house that they consider bears watching in 2025.
Our particular ask: What in your view is crucial concern, downside or area to look at within the yr forward?
It’s a troublesome query in fact – specifically given the array of dynamic points going through the U.S. and the world, as the brand new yr looms. A few of our respondents gave temporary essays, figuring out multiple concern; others answered in a single sentence.
It’s not a complete listing 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 could 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 Sixties, with service in Vietnam.
McLaughlin: I feel crucial concern for the yr is whether or not there will likely be a settlement of the Ukraine battle. If a formulation could be discovered that provides Ukraine safety and neutralizes Russia’s aggression, it could take a lot of the steam out of the so-called “Axis of Autocracy” (Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran), and doubtlessly diminish the threatening side 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 Below 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, throughout 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 battle zones. He served as Chief of Operations for Europe and Eurasia. Goff additionally served as Chief of CIA’s Nationwide Assets Division, working extensively with “C Suite” stage US personal 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 check with it – stays a supply of not simply simmering stress between Israelis and Arabs, but in addition a possible flashpoint that would reignite the now lowered violence between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel and Hamas and even Israel and Iran. Elevated acts of violence by radical Israeli settlers in opposition to Palestinians within the West Financial institution, in tandem with overly aggressive safety operations by Israeli safety forces within the occupied territories that lead to heavy collateral casualties, may trigger one other Palestinian rebellion that might have destructive influence 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 many years of nationwide safety service in quite a lot of management roles that span quite a few intelligence organizations, most just lately serving because the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Intelligence and Analysis. She’s presently a senior fellow on the Belfer Heart at Harvard College.
McCarthy: In 2025, the data ecosystem, which not could be simply binned into “conventional media” and “social media” however contains any platform, expertise or establishment the place folks devour info, will likely be more and more destabilized by AI-generated false info. This can lead to much more blurring of the traces between truth and fiction, additional deepening societal divides, make us an excellent greater goal to international malign affect, and proceed to erode belief in establishments. This rising problem will complicate our dealing with of all the opposite points we’ll face within the yr forward, to incorporate rising geopolitical tensions, financial uncertainty, local weather change, expertise regulation and cybersecurity threats.
The answer is a coordinated method throughout authorities, expertise, media organizations, academia and different non income targeted on empowering customers with entry to high quality info.
Nick Fishwick
Nick Fishwick CMG retired after practically thirty years within the British International Service. His postings included Lagos, Istanbul and Kabul. His duties in London included director of safety and, after coming back from Afghanistan in 2007, he served as director for counter-terrorism. His remaining position was as director common for worldwide operations.
Fishwick: A very powerful area to look at is – the USA. By this I don’t imply that us Brits and different Europeans ought to panic in regards to 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 many others – will likely 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’s going to Trump do?
I feel we’re going to need to get used to a distinct means of doing international geopolitical enterprise. We’re at battle with Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Severe diplomacy is now about great-power offers and isn’t performed by international workplaces or state departments. The UN appears to me weaker and extra discredited than ever. The wars take completely different kinds with completely different adversaries. I anticipate a continued realization that we should get on with China, whereas preventing for our pursuits and in opposition to Chinese language threats to them. Trump could resolve that we additionally must get on with Russia, even Iran, however will probably be on his phrases. I don’t know what these phrases will likely be or whether or not Russia and Iran will settle for them. They might be clever to take action.
Will we see ISIS 2.0? It appears extra seemingly now than it did a month in the past. We’d like 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.
Common David Petraeus (Ret.)
Common David Petraeus served greater than 37 years within the U.S. navy with six consecutive instructions, 5 of which had been fight, together with command of the Multi-Nationwide Pressure-Iraq throughout the Surge, U.S. Central Command, and Coalition and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan. He’s a accomplice within the KKR international funding agency and chairs the agency’s international institute.
Gen. Petraeus: Whereas crucial concern/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, at the least because the finish of the Chilly Struggle.
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 targeted on the Center East. She served as head of the CIA’s Workplace of Terrorism Evaluation and helped to establish 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 all the time been outward, not home, so the comfy place for me to speak about considerations for 2025 could be to elaborate on the results of shifting international dynamics; the financial, navy 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 pondering. 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 suppose and share knowledge you might need missed improves the rigor and attain of your assessments.
A scarcity of mental curiosity and willingness to go looking out and think about differing views could in the end be the best menace we face. And it’s one which authorities can’t repair. We have to tackle the accountability as people of demanding it of ourselves and our leaders. As a society, we should grow to be far more lively customers of knowledge, on the lookout for disconfirming knowledge and probing the outcomes of AI for bias and inaccuracies. If we’re going to have the ability to establish and mitigate future threats, we should have the pliability 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 performed numerous clandestine operations and fight deployments with a major focus within the Center East and Asia. He has recurrently navigated and led international 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 expertise firm, searching 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 embrace an extended listing of profitable kinetic operations worthy of a Hollywood screenplay), the regime could 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 must conduct testing and sure wish 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 can absolutely take time to perform, however the narrative that Iran would wrestle 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 hundreds 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, significantly 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 will likely be problematic in 2025. A very powerful? AI and cyber, particularly their use in warfare – involving laborious and smooth 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 high of the listing.
Ambassador Joseph DeTrani
Ambassador Joseph DeTrani served because the U.S. Consultant to the Korea Power 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 Heart, ODNI. He presently serves on the Board of Managers at Sandia Nationwide Laboratories.
Ambassador DeTrani: Though U.S.-China relations and China’s potential navy motion in opposition to Taiwan and, additionally, within the South China Sea are geopolitically crucial points to comply with, essentially the most rapid entails the Korean Peninsula. In the course of the subsequent yr, it’s extra seemingly than it’s been in a very long time that there will likely 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 return 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 battle on the Korean Peninsula.
Given Russia’s dedication to supply navy help to North Korea, and the U.S. and the United Nations Joint Command’s navy assurances to South Korea, this battle, initially beginning sluggish and in a single or two controllable areas, may 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 form.
However Russia will likely be there for North Korea. China will name for peace talks, however is not going to 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 battle on the Korean Peninsula doesn’t escalate into battle 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 the usage of 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 Injury Evaluation ensuing from Non-public Manning’s 2010 unauthorized disclosures to Wikileaks and led the IC’s in depth assessment 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 is going to 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 japanese 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 may and can wage battle 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 belongings 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 finished is completed; and Ukraine has fought valiantly with U.S. and NATO’s help. 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’s going to stop Moscow from faking new threats and utilizing power and damaging cyber-attacks in opposition to close to overseas Baltic neighbors, nations like Poland and Finland, and the U.S.? I’ve studied this concern 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 subsequent administration shouldn’t be daring and quick sufficient, 2025 may make the 2014-2024 decade appear like the prequel for the subsequent Russian invasion.
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