For the first time in eleven years, the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community left out one of the greatest security threats of our time: climate change. Instead, the threat assessment focused on Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China—a blatant capitulation of common sense to the unrelenting war machine—because who cares about planetary destruction when we can make more nuclear bombs? 

When questioned by Senator Angus King on the absence of global climate change, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard responded that the report focuses only on the “most extreme and critical” national security threats. Well, according to the World Health Organization, over 250,000 people die each year from hunger, disease, and heat caused by climate change—a number that is projected to double in the next ten years. This doesn’t even include air pollution, which accounts for over 7 million annual fatalities. 

We all know that death and destruction is deeply woven into the military industrial complex, and that actual life-giving programs are set aside to fund the creation of more F-35 fighter jets—but to erase the significance of climate change is a new low for the U.S. government, and marks a dangerous divergence from a normalized narrative that if we don’t act now, there will be no reversing the devastating consequences of a warming world. 

👉 Ask Tulsi Gabbard: Why No Climate Change in the 2025 Threat Assessment?

The threat assessment neglected to include climate change, but China was labeled the “most robust military threat to U.S. national security.” But let’s look at the facts: China is responsible for 4% of global military spending compared to NATO’s 80%. Chinese officials have repeatedly stated that they have no interest in war. The U.S. military has an extreme comparative advantage over China as far as military buildup and war experience. The only thing China has been guilty of is economic success, and any conflict would be detrimental to their development over the past 50 years. So why are we pushing for war against China? Because China is, in fact, an economic threat, and if there’s one thing the U.S. does, it’s protect its billionaires.

Military leaders call it “deterrence” and achieving “peace through strength” but what they really mean is “peace through war,” where peace doesn’t mean absence of conflict, but the continued global domination of the U.S. and its wealthiest citizens. This has been the dominant U.S. foreign policy strategy for the past half a century. 

Here is the truth: the greatest security threat of our time are the billionaires—the billionaires who push for war to line their pockets, who fund our government officials to retroactively ignore genocide, who siphon all the wealth and refuse to invest in infrastructure and programs that would actually “make American great again,” and who ignore climate change because its not in their interests—which is, in effect, ushering in the end of the world. 

In contrast, China has a far more active approach to countering the climate challenge. In March, China’s two sessions reaffirmed the prognosis that climate is a top security agenda item, with specific policy plans and goals over the coming years to demonstrate a clear path forward. Unlike other nations, China has not backed away from multilateral commitments, but prioritized the move to renewable energy and tightened environmental regulations in order to integrate green manufacturing into the economy. China’s 2025 Government Work Report discussed biodiversity conservation programs, such as a 10-year fishing ban on the Yangtze River, enhanced pollution prevention, and low-carbon programs for green buildings, green energy, and green transportation. There are some cities, like Shenzhen, that have already made the switch to entirely electric public transportation. 

Despite all of China’s globally beneficial moves, the U.S. government continues to push for a $1 trillion dollar military budget to counter China. In a Congressional hearing last week, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Mike Rogers said, “We are not giving our warfighters the tools they need to defeat China. That must change.” U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander Samuel Paparo agreed, saying, “We are never satisfied with how ready we are. (...) You are talking to somebody that is never satisfied with where we are.” 

Right now, the calls for war are ringing far louder than any calls for cooperation and saving the planet.

👉 Ask the Intelligence Community: Are You Not Worried About Destroying the Planet?

Though China has a long way to go to carbon neutrality, it sets a clear example of the weight all nations should be placing on the climate threat. Already, the developing world is feeling the disproportion effects of global warming, with clear links between mass migration, famine, and political violence. 

The injustice is staggering: the United States and its allies, which have simultaneously been responsible for the majority of CO2 emissions since the industrial revolution, have extracted the wealth and resources of the global south, and left them to feel the pain of poverty, environmental degradation, starvation, and conflict. And now the U.S. is attempting to reverse course with predatory tariffs and coercive threats, all while blaming China for climate change and pushing for even more military spending to take us to war with the one country that is doing something about it! 

Militarism and manufacturing enemies are not the answer—cooperation is. The intelligence community must recognize the climate threat, and our government must recognize the need for diplomatic, globally beneficial solutions to the catastrophic looming threat of global warming. We don’t need a $1 trillion dollar war budget. We need to fund life!

👉 Tulsi: Why Not Work With China on the Climate Security Threat Rather Than Fuel War?

Peace and solidarity, 

Megan, Jodie, and the CODEPINK Team

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