The 2024 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Homeland Threat Assessment highlighted numerous aspects of the failed policies from President Joe Biden and his administration.
Released on Thursday, the assessment focuses on threats to public safety, border and immigration, critical infrastructure, and economic security. The sources of threats ranged from foreign and domestic terrorists to drug cartels to nation-state actors.
Among the foreign terrorist threats to the U.S., groups “like al-Qa‘ida and ISIS are seeking to rebuild overseas, and they maintain worldwide networks of supporters that could seek to target the Homeland,” the report said. “Among state actors, we expect Iran to remain the primary sponsor of terrorism and continue its efforts to advance plots against individuals in the United States.”
Intelligence officials have pointed to Afghanistan as a prime area where Islamic terrorists quickly gathered — following Biden’s disastrous pullout from the country — as they seek to reorganize and plan future attacks against the West.
“Since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, ISIS’s regional branch — ISIS‑Khorasan — has garnered more prominence through a spate of high-casualty attacks overseas and English‑language media releases that aim to globalize the group’s local grievances among Western audiences,” the report added. “Individuals with terrorism connections are interested in using established travel routes and permissive environments to facilitate access to the United States.”
DHS said that illicit drugs remained one of the top threats to the U.S. as overdose deaths have skyrocketed in recent years thanks to the Sinaloa Cartel and the New Generation Jalisco Cartel flooding the streets with fentanyl.
“These organizations continue to use bribery and violence to grow their smuggling and narcotics production operations in Mexico, and they rely on companies in China to purchase fentanyl precursor chemicals and pill pressing equipment,” the report said.
These same organizations are also responsible for the historic number of illegal aliens pouring into the U.S. via the southern border, which has largely been open during the Biden administration. The report noted the U.S. northern border has also seen record high illegal crossings under Biden.
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“As of July, approximately 160 non-US persons in the TSDS attempted to enter the United States via the southern border this year, most of whom were encountered attempting to illegally enter between ports of entry,” the report said.
Mexico’s leftist government said early on during the Biden-era that they believed that Biden was “stoking illegal immigration and creating business for organized crime,” according to a report from Reuters.
“Mexico‑based criminal networks are also involved in sex trafficking, coercing Mexican women and girls into commercial sex across several US jurisdictions,” the assessment said.
The assessment said that chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats to the Homeland will continue into 2024 but “deliberate use of such threats against the Homeland will likely be limited.”
The assessment said that nation-state actors like Russia, Iran, and China continue to represent serious threats to the U.S. through a variety of means, including cyberattacks and spreading mis-, dis-, and malinformation aimed at undermining trust in the West.
The Biden administration was weak in confronting Russia in its first year in office and remains weak in confronting Iran and China.
The assessment notes that each of the three aforementioned nations presents unique threats to the Homeland — with communist China being by far the greatest threat — for the upcoming fiscal year.
Russia:
- “Malicious cyber activity targeting the United States has increased since the beginning of the Russia‑Ukraine conflict, a trend we expect to continue throughout the duration of the conflict. Pro‑Russia cyber criminal groups, such as Killnet, collaborate to conduct distributed denial‑of‑ service (DDoS) attacks and other potentially disruptive attacks against US government systems and our transportation and healthcare sectors.”
Iran:
- “Iranian government cyber actors continue to employ social engineering tactics, utilize easily accessible scanning and computer hacking tools, and exploit publicly known software and hardware vulnerabilities to conduct cyber espionage against US critical infrastructure entities.”
China:
- Adversarial governments, most notably the PRC, are developing other AI technologies that could undermine US cyber defenses, including generative AI programs that support malicious activity such as malware attacks.
- Chinese government cyber actors likely will continue to target key critical infrastructure sectors in the United States, including healthcare and public health, financial services, the defense industrial base, government facilities, and communications. Beijing’s expansion of maritime logistics capabilities and the use of commercial Chinese logistics technologies increase the risk of espionage and potential disruption operations at ports.
- The PRC likely will continue to use a variety of tools in an attempt to give Chinese firms competitive advantages over the United States, including extensive subsidies for state-owned enterprises and favored domestic firms, as well as barriers against US firms operating in China.
- “China’s control and manipulation of critical supply chains will remain an economic security threat to the Homeland. Beijing has recently introduced export control measures on gallium and germanium—critical inputs for semiconductors and low-carbon energy technologies—giving the PRC the ability to restrict exports of these critical minerals to foreign buyers. The PRC has previously restricted exports of rare earth minerals during bilateral disputes.”
- “Foreign adversaries, primarily the PRC, likely will continue efforts to target and steal sensitive US information, research, and technology. These adversaries almost certainly will continue to use students, researchers, and commercial entities as cover for their efforts to gain access to valuable US information that can damage our competitiveness, result in billions of dollars in lost profits, and transport cutting‑edge technology and research to adversarial military and economic programs.”