Threats May Come in Many Forms,
Which Is Why Our Efforts Are Unrelenting

It used to be conventional military threats were all the United States had to worry about. Today, we live in a much more complex world where security concerns are less straightforward and susceptibility is more global in nature. The Intelligence Community (IC) now has to concern itself with:

Terrorism

Terrorism refers to premeditated, politically motivated violence against state or civilian targets carried out by subnational groups or clandestine agents intended as a protest or coercive act.

Proliferation

Proliferation is the conveyance of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons and/or technology by countries that possess them to ones that do not.

Chemical Warfare

Chemical warfare can be defined as the military use of chemicals, other than explosives, as weapons whose use results in incapacitation or death. It’s the impact of a chemical's effect, instead of its physical effects, that distinguishes chemical weapons from conventional weapons.

Biological Warfare

Biological warfare is the deliberate use of pathogens or toxins for military or terrorist purposes. Biological warfare agents can be more toxic than chemical warfare nerve agents on a weight-for-weight basis and can potentially provide broader coverage per pound of payload. Biological warfare attacks can also be masked as naturally occurring epidemics due to the presence of a biological warfare agent such as bacillus anthracis (anthrax) in the environment.

Information Infrastructure Attack

Political activism on the Internet has generated a wide range of activity, from using e-mail and web sites to organize, to web page defacements and denial-of-service attacks. These computer-based attacks are usually referred to as hacktivism, a marriage of hacking and political activism.

Narcotics Trafficking

Along with prevention and treatment, law enforcement is essential for reducing drug use. Illegal drug trafficking inflicts violence and corruption on our communities. Law enforcement is the first line of defense against such unacceptable activity. In addition to federal investigative and enforcement efforts, IC member agencies are committed to support of local and state law enforcement in their efforts to combat illegal drug trafficking.

Counterintelligence

One responsibility of the IC is to identify, understand, prioritize and counteract the intelligence threats from foreign powers directed toward the United States. This activity is known as counterintelligence. Counterintelligence involves more than simply catching spies (counterespionage); it is concerned with understanding, and possibly neutralizing, all aspects of the foreign intelligence operations.