The 2024 IC Annual Threat Assessment: Analytic Authority and Policy Relevance

This past week Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines and other leaders of the U.S. intelligence community (IC), including CIA director Bill Burns and DIA director Jeffrey Kruse, gave their annual threat assessment to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. While each of the agency directors delivered their own organization’s perspective on the key security issues the United States, the ODNI’s 2024 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community (ATA) stands as the definitive unclassified document produced by the efforts of the entire IC under the direction of the DNI since its initial publication by the first DNI, John Negroponte, back in 2006.

The ATA is a remarkable document by any measure. It brings together the top national security issues that the president and other senior civilian and military leaders ask the DNI and the larger IC to focus on in a single document. It reflects the ODNI’s efforts, particularly that of the National Intelligence Council and its regional and functional national intelligence officers, to bring together the most authoritative analytic assessments of the entire IC in a manner that is unpoliticized, inclusive, yet honest about dissenting opinions. Finally, it represents the efforts of the DNI to ensure unclassified assessments can be shared with the American people for whom the U.S. IC ultimately works. When one considers that these analytic lines drive policy thinking and formulation at the highest levels of U.S. government on the key issues on which leaders focus, one can immediately see both the analytic authority and policy relevance of this annual document.

North Korea: Consistency and Evolution

The portions of the ATA dedicated to North Korea speak for themselves and serve as a good reminder of the longer-term threats the United States should worry about beyond when the next missile launch or nuclear test might take place. Looking back through all the ATAs and their analytic lines about North Korea, it is impressive how successful the IC has been in assessing and predicting the behavior of North Korea over the years. Whether it was teeing up the importance of the uranium enrichment program during the Six-Party Talks in 2008, assessing the unlikelihood Kim Jong Un was prepared to put significant pieces of his nuclear program on the table during the period before and after the 2019 Hanoi talks, or North Korea’s intention to quantitatively and qualitatively expand its nuclear program to achieve strategic dominance over South Korea last year, the ATA and related analysis produced by the IC has allowed policymakers, negotiators, and warfighters have “decision advantage” on this most difficult issue.

The 2024 ATA validated and expanded assessments over the past few years on the continued qualitative and quantitative growth of North Korea’s nuclear and missile program, and the unlikelihood Kim Jong Un was prepared to negotiate seriously. The reasonable question any observer of North Korea policy asks is “What is potentially negotiable with Pyongyang, and is it worth the cost?” Would sanctions relief for a limited halt to nuclear testing and missile launches, for example, reduce the threat by denying weapons of mass destruction (WMD) research and development objectives, or increase the threat by providing a more conducive environment for North Korea to earn money, acquire sensitive technologies needed for WMD programs, and have more and better weapons? In this regard, the 2024 ATA’s language is useful: “North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will continue to pursue nuclear and conventional military capabilities that threaten the United States and its allies, which will enable periodic aggressive actions as he tries to reshape the regional security environment in his favor.”

Kim almost certainly has no intentions of negotiating away his nuclear program, which he perceives to be a guarantor of regime security and national pride. In addition, Kim probably hopes that he can use his bourgeoning defense ties with Russia to pursue his goal of achieving international acceptance as a nuclear power.

Negotiations Risk versus Gain: In this regard, the ATA notes Kim’s intent to continue to expand, not negotiate even limits on, his nuclear and missile programs. Such assessments here and in the past are not judgment calls on whether the United States should seek some type of dialogue with North Korea—such dire assessments did not discourage the United States from pursuing over the years the Agreed Framework, Six Party Talks, Leap Day Understanding, or progress during the Trump administration. These are policy decisions informed by the analysis. Such analysis did, and continues to do, allow policymakers to understand what was necessary to have authentic and credible negotiations, what the true scope and substance of the threat was, and what was worth paying what for.

The Changing World and Russia-DPRK Cooperation: The 2024 ATA touches on transformation in North Korea’s geopolitical environment both to capture the importance of improved Russia-Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) relations and to touch on Kim Jong Un’s efforts to gain broader international acceptance of his nuclear-armed state status. The ATA noted that following meetings with both high-level Chinese and Russian delegations in late 2023, “North Korea probably has begun shipping munitions to Russia in support of the conflict with Ukraine in exchange for diplomatic, economic, and military concessions.” Unstated but understood is that Russia’s warming relations risks transfers of technology, know-how, and materials in support of North Korea’s nuclear, missile, and conventional programs. Not fully addressed, in part because it is an evolving dynamic, is China’s view on these developments and what type of pressure Beijing is willing to apply on Moscow and Pyongyang so as to prevent a dangerous exacerbation of tensions in northeast Asia.

Looking at the various commentaries written on this subject, there still needs to be more work done in getting greater specificity on the nature of the help North Korea is receiving, and what the implications are for North Korea’s capabilities that might give insight into its intentions. Is North Korea pursuing certain capabilities in a prioritized manner to achieve readiness necessary for specific types of military missions in the coming years, or is Pyongyang simply taking whatever it is Moscow is willing to offer?

Understanding Pyongyang’s Near-Term Bad Behavior: The ATA notes North Korea’s efforts through its threatening rhetoric, missile launches, and military demonstrations to counter advances in U.S., Japan, and South Korea security cooperation. Characterizing these as “coercive” actions by Pyongyang to seek to change U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK)-Japan behavior and “counteract South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol’s hardline policies toward the North,” is somewhat of an incomplete story: the precipitating cause of strengthened trilateral cooperation and South Korea’s “hardline” policy is, of course, North Korea’s pursuit over 30 years of a nuclear capability to intimidate, coerce, and subjugate South Korea while rejecting repeated efforts by Seoul and Washington to pursue reconciliation, détente, and normalization of relations. Thus, the cause of North Korea’s aggressive and threatening behavior over the last year or so comes from frustration its efforts to achieve dominance on the Korean Peninsula through its nuclear program continues to fail.

Pyongyang’s Longer-Term Bad Behavior: The ATA helpfully addresses how the U.S. IC sees overall DPRK military capabilities increasing by briefly listing the full range of unconventional and conventional capabilities North Korea has been pursuing over the past year in particular. This helps the United States look beyond missile launches episodically with a focus on near-term tension while ignoring the longer-term impact of enhancements to the Korean People’s Army and what intent may be behind the capabilities development. The ATA notes the following in its subsection on the military: “North Korea’s military will pose a serious threat to the United States and its allies by its investment in niche capabilities designed to provide Kim with options to deter outside intervention, offset enduring deficiencies in the country’s conventional forces, and advance his political objectives through coercion.”

The 2023 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), “North Korea: Scenarios for Leveraging Nuclear Weapons Through 2030,” looks forward a decade and touches on whether North Korea might have offensive, defensive, or coercive intentions in terms of leveraging its nuclear weapons. The 2024 ATA language mirrors the NIE’s assessment that North Korea’s advancing of political objectives through coercion poses a “serious threat” to the United States and its allies. When talking about the “deterrence” North Korea seeks in its WMD and conventional capabilities, it is of course important to remember that “deterring outside intervention” is not alluding to a scenario in which Pyongyang must respond to an out-of-the-blue attack by U.S.-ROK forces. Rather, the most immediate value to Kim Jong Un of his nuclear capabilities would be to deter U.S. or ROK response to North Korea coercive or revisionist actions. Additionally, deterring external intervention in a domestic instability scenario in which the regime’s survival appears to be threatened is another important role of these weapons.

The Humanitarian Conundrum: The ATA included a critical section that helps policymakers understand the current humanitarian challenge with North Korea: “While North Korea has managed to weather the effects of the pandemic and its extreme self-imposed isolation; in the long term, Kim will have to balance his desire for absolute state control with the negative impact on his country’s economic well-being. The Kim regime has prioritized recentralizing authority above its population and its economy with brutal crackdowns and serious mismanagement of agriculture that probably are worsening living conditions. The North Korean regime has long feared losing control over its people and is trying to roll back the relatively modest levels of private economic activity that have arisen since the 1990s and to ensure state domination over everyday life.”

Implied, if not stated directly, is that North Korea’s isolation is by deliberate design, and it is not sanctions per se that are the greatest obstacle to helping at risk populations in North Korea, or preventing Kim from taking the country and its economy down a different path. It is a regime priority to strengthen domestic control in the political, economic, and sociocultural realms to guard against perceived or potential future challenges to the regime and system. The benefits of international aid and assistance, or aggressive economic reform that might evolve into pressure for political reform down the road are simply risks the DPRK leadership is not willing to take at this time. 

Implications: For North Korea watchers, the 2024 ATA provides excellent baseline assessments useful for contextualizing North Korea’s near-term coercive behavior while forecasting dangerous futures for which to plan. Of course, like all assessments, they are not static and are always open to challenge. That is what makes a thorough review of this year’s ATA together with a review of past ATAs (some of which also include oral remarks by the various participants (see INTEL - Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community) such a useful investment.

Sydney Seiler is a senior adviser (non-resident) with the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.