Since 1997, the U.S. intelligence community has published the unclassified “Global Trends” report every four years to assess different scenarios for our global future and their likely impact on the United States. We can state confidently, having all served in senior national security positions in the U.S. government, that these reports provide a rare impetus for policymakers to shift their focus from their daily inboxes to the strategic threats on the horizon.
They also provide a platform for U.S. officials to compare assumptions with foreign counterparts, enhancing international cooperation and deepening shared understanding of our uncertain future. However, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has decided to kill the forthcoming Global Trends report and dismantle the unit that wrote it, accusing its authors of pushing a “political agenda that ran counter to all of the current President’s national security priorities.”
Since 1997, the U.S. intelligence community has published the unclassified “Global Trends” report every four years to assess different scenarios for our global future and their likely impact on the United States. We can state confidently, having all served in senior national security positions in the U.S. government, that these reports provide a rare impetus for policymakers to shift their focus from their daily inboxes to the strategic threats on the horizon.
They also provide a platform for U.S. officials to compare assumptions with foreign counterparts, enhancing international cooperation and deepening shared understanding of our uncertain future. However, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has decided to kill the forthcoming Global Trends report and dismantle the unit that wrote it, accusing its authors of pushing a “political agenda that ran counter to all of the current President’s national security priorities.”
The reality, of course, is that the decision to cancel the report and eliminate the group that wrote it was itself politically motivated. The intelligence community’s job is never to endorse a president’s priorities but instead to provide unbiased analysis and warning. Doing away with the Global Trends report, combined with other steps that the Trump administration has taken to dismantle U.S. capabilities to ascertain future threats, will make the United States less prepared, less resilient, and less safe.
What would motivate this administration to make this decision? We need only look to President Donald Trump’s comments before the United Nations in September, when he railed against climate change as a “con job.” Climate change has been covered in every Global Trends report since the one released in 2000, and the topic was, we assume, included in this one. In Trump’s terms, that is an act of heresy. By punishing analysts for providing unbiased perspective, Gabbard has undermined the very purpose for which her office was established.
This incident will surely have a further chilling effect on the willingness of others to provide information that runs counter to prevailing political assumptions, whether or not they are based in reality. We have already seen Gabbard politicize intelligence on other topics, revoking security clearances of career national security officials for their work investigating Russian election meddling and removing officials who published analysis contradicting the administration’s views on Venezuela.
The loss of foresight capability in the intelligence community is part and parcel of a larger effort by the Trump administration to diminish the U.S. government’s ability to monitor climate change by cutting back on weather monitoring; curtailing Earth systems observation mechanisms, such as the long-running facility at Mauna Loa; canceling U.S. government support for climate science; and halting work on the next National Climate Assessment.
The Trump administration appears to hope that the problem of climate change will go away if we simply ignore it, consistent with the president’s initial response to COVID-19. We saw how that plan worked out.
The Trump administration has also reduced the U.S. government’s ability to execute climate change policy. The administration has signaled its intent to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, but that action will not take effect until January 2026. In the meantime, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has eliminated the Office of Global Change at the State Department, meaning that there is no one to defend U.S. interests in international environmental forums, including at the upcoming negotiations at the U.N. climate conference in Brazil in November (COP30).
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. In late September, while Trump was dismissing climate change before hundreds of nations profoundly affected by it, Beijing announced a new target for reducing its own greenhouse gas emissions, stealing another march on the United States with respect to perceptions of global leadership.
Depriving the United States of the capacity to monitor and assess the problems of the future doesn’t make them go away; it simply makes the country less prepared for threats that it might otherwise have foreseen. This decision is akin to pilots switching off their onboard instruments midflight and flying blind into the unknown.
In the past year, the United States experienced devastating climate-related storms and wildfires from North Carolina to California. These incidents killed hundreds, displaced thousands, and caused billions of dollars in damages. The U.S. military has deployed nearly 50 times in the past year in response to climate hazards. In California alone, more than 1,800 members of the National Guard were mobilized to support wildfire fighting efforts in January, taking them away from other national security tasks.
Climate hazards are likewise undermining U.S. military infrastructure and readiness in the Indo-Pacific, with extreme weather causing billions of dollars in damage to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam in 2023 and U.S. military facilities on , part of the Marshall Islands, in 2024.
U.S. competitors and adversaries take advantage of these disasters to sow division and undermine U.S. security through disinformation; China launched a social media effort blaming the U.S. military for wildfires in Hawaii, and Russia amplified a campaign claiming that Washington could not afford to respond to Hurricane Helene because of its support for Ukraine.
Other governments will continue assessing threats proactively, as they recognize the value of planning for the future and working to mitigate risks before they materialize, but it is unthinkable that the world’s preeminent national security community will no longer develop its own assessment, rooted in its own national interests.
If the U.S. government no longer intends to bear this responsibility, even as it faces the most challenging global security landscape since the end of World War II, it will be incumbent on an enterprising think tank, nongovernmental organization, or foundation to carry this work forward. Refusing to plan for how to preserve U.S. security and prosperity simply isn’t an option.
