April 6, 2026 | The National Interest
What the 2026 Intelligence Assessment Gets Right—and Wrong
The US intelligence assessment identifies key threats but understates cyber risks and China’s Taiwan strategy, leaving US policymakers ill-prepared for emerging conflicts.
April 6, 2026 | The National Interest
What the 2026 Intelligence Assessment Gets Right—and Wrong
The US intelligence assessment identifies key threats but understates cyber risks and China’s Taiwan strategy, leaving US policymakers ill-prepared for emerging conflicts.
Excerpt
America’s adversaries are counting on one thing: that the United States and its national security apparatus will continue underestimating the threat they pose. This year’s Annual Threat Assessment does just that.
The Intelligence Community released its 2026 Annual Threat Assessment (ATA) in March. It is sharper and more strategically sound than the intelligence analysis included in the National Security Strategy (NSS) and National Defense Strategy (NDS) produced earlier this year. Its analysis of the cyber landscape and its focus on threats from the “Axis of Aggressors”—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—to the United States and its partners and allies earns a strong grade.
The document hedges on the most pressing threats: specific ongoing adversarial cyber operations, the most likely scenario in a Taiwan crisis, and a European situation report that ignores positive trends and intelligence gathering opportunities.
Cyber and Technology Competition
The ATA’s technological challenges section rightly addresses artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing as force multipliers for adversary operations and connects them to the corresponding effects on critical infrastructure defense.
Mark Montgomery is a senior fellow and the senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow Mark on X: @MarkCMontgomery. Johanna (Jo) Yang is a policy analyst at the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where she works on issues related to nation-state cyber threats, allied cybersecurity posture, critical infrastructure protection, and US cyber and national security policy. Follow Jo on X: @JohannaYang.