For years, U.S. intelligence agencies have published ‘Global Trends,’ a public document designed to foresee the challenges the United States and the wider world would face in the decades ahead. While much of the intelligence community focuses on immediate concerns, this report offered a crucial long-term perspective. Previous editions successfully highlighted impending threats and shifts, including the growing impacts of climate change, evolving immigration patterns, and even the potential for a global pandemic.
However, in a significant and controversial move, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), currently led by Tulsi Gabbard, is disbanding the specialized group responsible for compiling this essential report. According to former officials, some of the report’s warnings, especially those concerning climate change, had simply become politically inconvenient for the current administration.
In justifying the decision, Ms. Gabbard’s office declared that the National Intelligence Council’s Strategic Futures Group had ‘neglected to fulfill the purpose it was created for’ and had instead pursued a ‘partisan political agenda.’ They further stated, ‘A draft of the 2025 Global Trends report was carefully reviewed by D.N.I. Gabbard’s team and found to violate professional analytic tradecraft standards in an effort to propagate a political agenda that ran counter to all of the current president’s national security priorities.’
This termination of the office largely went unnoticed last month, overshadowed by a flurry of other actions taken by Ms. Gabbard, which included the closure of the National Intelligence University and drastic reductions in staff focused on foreign malign influence and election threats. Ms. Gabbard’s office defended these actions by pointing to alleged ‘tradecraft’ issues, referring to the methods used to gather and analyze intelligence for the report.
Historically, the Global Trends report was seen as an objective, non-partisan foresight into the future, valued by both Democratic and Republican administrations. Yet, mirroring a broader trend within the Trump administration, what was once considered apolitical is now frequently branded as partisan.
Ms. Gabbard single-handedly canceled this year’s report and disbanded its dedicated team. Reinstating such an effort in a future administration will be far from simple. These reports, traditionally released in the initial months of a new presidential term, are the culmination of months of meticulous work by intelligence officers operating under the preceding White House.
During a recent Climate Forward conference hosted by The New York Times, Jake Sullivan, the Biden administration’s national security adviser, vehemently denied any suggestion that intelligence officers were driven by political motives in their concerns. He emphasized that ignoring critical global challenges like climate change would not make them disappear, but rather leave the United States, and the world, unprepared.
“The United States is not going to be as prepared and as capable to contend with this challenge going forward,” Mr. Sullivan warned. He expressed deep regret over the widespread cuts and firings within the intelligence community, noting their heavy impact on dedicated career professionals.
“To have the director of national intelligence cast aspersions upon the professionalism and public service of dedicated people, I just find basically offensive and wrong,” he asserted.
Gregory F. Treverton, who chaired the National Intelligence Council under President Barack Obama, echoed Mr. Sullivan’s sentiments and criticized Ms. Gabbard’s assessment. He highlighted that the report’s creation fostered new intelligence gathering and analysis techniques, with the 2017 edition benefiting from global focus groups. “I lament its demise — it was a good exercise in developing tradecraft,” Mr. Treverton remarked. “Obviously, they didn’t like it, didn’t find it necessary. Obviously, they don’t find much intelligence necessary.”
The Trump administration has systematically dismantled several national security groups tasked with long-term trend analysis. For instance, the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, which guided senior leaders in contemplating the future of warfare, was also shut down in March. The Global Trends initiative itself originated in 1997, predating the establishment of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and consistently delivered its forward-looking reports every four years. The 2017 report, for example, chillingly predicted the possibility of a pandemic triggering global economic chaos. Although it forecast the pandemic to begin in 2023 rather than 2020, its warnings about travel restrictions, economic distress, and widespread isolation proved remarkably accurate.