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US Intelligence Community’s 2026 Annual Threat Assessment Ignores Climate Change
A version of this article first appeared on Hot Fronts: Security in a Warming World.
Last week, the US Director of National Intelligence provided Congress with the US intelligence community’s annual threat assessment (ATA) of the top security risks facing the United States. While the hearing itself focused largely on the war in Iran, the submitted written testimony provides a snapshot into what the intelligence community (IC) is focused on and why.
Last year was the first time in over a decade that the threat assessment issued by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) did not mention climate change. This year followed that pattern. The closest the ATA comes to the topic is a sentence on drivers of migration:
“Extreme weather events are likely to continue to indirectly drive migration by worsening the economic and food security of many low-income countries, particularly in Central America.”
The Arctic does get a whole section, but the reader would never know from the text why so many countries are focused on it. The ATA makes references to it becoming more “accessible” – with this accessibility driving Chinese interest in particular – without ever explaining why that accessibility is growing.
Mentions of energy and critical minerals are largely focused on opportunities for extraction rather than on the risks of instability or conflict. The document identifies critical minerals, oil, and gas as a potential opportunity for the United States in the South Caucasus, Central Asia, and Venezuela. The ATA had this to say about Africa:
“Africa harbors vast reserves of critical minerals that are vital to U.S. advanced defense systems and economic competitiveness.”
The section on the fallout of Operation Epic Fury, the US military’s war in Iran, says nothing about how the conflict is affecting energy markets, food, or water security in the region. In some ways, this is understandable given the fast-moving nature of the conflict, but the assessment does comment on other aspects of the war, including its effect on terrorism.
A More Politicized Approach to Climate and Environment Analysis?
The 2025 and 2026 ATAs are a departure from the first Trump Administration, where the Intelligence Community (IC) retained its independence and regularly warned of climate change risks. For example, in 2019, the year that President Trump tried (and failed) to give climate denier William Happer a perch on the National Security Council from which to censor climate analysis, the ATA said this about climate change:
“Global environmental and ecological degradation, as well as climate change, are likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond. Climate hazards such as extreme weather, higher temperatures, droughts, floods, wildfires, storms, sea level rise, soil degradation, and acidifying oceans are intensifying, threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security. Irreversible damage to ecosystems and habitats will undermine the economic benefits they provide, worsened by air, soil, water, and marine pollution.”
The 2026 ATA is the latest indication that the Trump Administration is politicizing the US intelligence community’s climate and environment analysis. Last year, the DNI gutted the office on the National Intelligence Council that covered climate and environment issues, with DNI Gabbard claiming at the time that the office was pushing a “political agenda that ran counter to all of the current President’s national security priorities.”
As Josh Busby, Greg Pollack, and I wrote in Foreign Policy at the time, this politicization creates a blind spot for the United States: “Destroying government capacity to analyze future trends and implement policy—whether related to climate change, artificial intelligence, global public health, or other challenges—puts U.S. national security at risk and cedes influence to the country’s competitors. China certainly isn’t stopping its long-term planning for how to manage climate change and navigate the energy transition to its own advantage.“
With the US intelligence community stepping back on its analysis of climate and environment risks, it is more important than ever that other countries that once relied on US information step up with their own assessments. Germany published its own intelligence assessment of climate risk in 2024, and the UK released a report on nature, biodiversity, and security earlier this year. Australia has conducted a similar effort, but has not publicly released the assessment yet. More countries should consider developing their own climate intelligence efforts to fill the gaps left by the US retreat.
For more details on previous US intelligence assessments of climate and environmental risks, visit the Center for Climate and Security Resource Hub.
Feeding Resilience: The Conflict, Climate, and Food Nexus of the War in Iran
By Erin Sikorsky and Noah Fritzhand
In 2023, the Center for Climate and Security (CCS) launched the Feeding Resilience project to examine the intersection of food, climate, and national security. One of the precipitating shocks informing the project was the Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent global food crisis that stemmed not only from the conflict but also from climate change-driven hazards and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Food prices reached an all-time high in the summer of 2022, and Russia wasted no time in exploiting the fragile global food system for its political ends. As we wrote in 2022, these conditions impacted countries outside Eastern Europe, including Somalia, where consecutive droughts compounded with price shocks, Ecuador and Panama, where food shortages sparked protests.
Now, with the war in Iran, we have a second tragic example of how conflict and climate shocks intersect with one another to negatively affect food security worldwide. The conflict poses risks to food security at the local, regional, and global levels – risks amplified by intensifying extreme weather and climate hazards. Further compounding the crisis is the global humanitarian support system’s current lack of preparedness, with agencies like the World Food Program woefully underfunded. This post takes each of these challenges in turn.
(more…)Op-ed: Iran War Is Yet Another Reminder That Fossil Fuels Are a Bad Bet
By Tom Ellison
This op-ed was originally published on March 5, 2026 by Sustainable Views
The widening US and Israeli air war with Iran is many things, including a human tragedy, a risky turning point for the region, and another example of President Donald Trump’s military adventurism. But with the conflict playing out at the beating heart of the oil and gas economy, it also reminds us that reliance on fossil fuels is an unacceptable security risk. It’s a risk baked into our geopolitics that will continue to grow until countries move away from fossil fuels entirely, rather than just diversifying their sources.
Already, Iranian threats have largely closed the Strait of Hormuz, which hosts about 20% of the world’s oil and gas flows and is one of Tehran’s few ways to externalize the conflict’s costs. Ships are piling up or rerouting, deterred by Iranian threats and uninsurability. Qatar, the world’s second-largest natural gas exporter, shut down exports amid Iranian attacks, including on a single plant that accounted for 20% of global LNG supply. Four days in, oil and gas prices jumped by 9% and 50%, respectively. What comes next is uncertain, but in the very plausible event of a drawn-out conflict, prices will rise further. The effects may also spill into food, which relies on fertilizer tied to natural gas and its supply chains, risking price spikes that are a recipe for further instability.
The crisis illustrates the growing geopolitical risks of relying on fossil fuels, which require the unimpeded 24/7 operation of intricate supply chains and transnational markets. In contrast to fossil fuels, wind and solar offer autonomous electricity production once constructed. They do not rely on continuously operating pipelines, ports, or shipping lanes that can be switched off, blockaded, or hit by a hurricane. There is no Strait of Hormuz or Nordstream II for clean energy.That’s not to say clean energy is risk-free. No system is. But the challenges of clean energy, including China’s dominance of key material and mineral supply chains, are more manageable than those of fossil fuels. Cutting off material inputs only affects future construction, largely via pricing. It doesn’t risk people freezing in winter. Concern over cyber vulnerabilities in Chinese goods is a challenge, but it is not unique to clean energy. The highest-risk pieces of hardware can be prioritized for additional safeguards, with a solar panel posing less risk than an input to sensitive military components. And in the young clean energy sector, innovation in batteries, recycling, and alternative minerals can reduce the leverage afforded by the materials China dominates.
Watch: The Iran War: Implications for Food, Water, and Energy Security
In case you missed it, watch the recent webinar where experts from the Center for Climate and Security discuss the energy, water, and food implications of the ongoing war in Iran. The discussion was moderated by CCS Director Erin Sikorsky and featured speakers Tom Ellison, CCS Deputy Director, Swathi Veeravalli, CCS Advisory Board Member, and CCS Non-resident Fellows Dr. Cullen Hendrix, Peter Schwartzstein, and Dr. Marcus D. King.
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