U.S. intelligence agencies will no longer produce the Global Trends report — a once-perennial assessment of looming global threats — after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard shut down the office responsible for it, The New York Times reported Friday.
For more than two decades, Global Trends offered a long-range view of potential challenges, from climate change and migration to pandemics, often years before they materialized. Past editions correctly anticipated issues such as worldwide health crises and shifts in immigration patterns.
But Gabbard’s office announced it was eliminating the National Intelligence Council’s Strategic Futures Group, which produced the report, saying the draft 2025 version “violated professional analytic tradecraft standards” and sought to “propagate a political agenda that ran counter to all of the current president’s national security priorities,” according to the Times.
The decision, made last month, drew little attention amid other moves by Gabbard, including closing the National Intelligence University and slashing personnel focused on foreign influence and election threats. Her office maintained that the Global Trends team had “neglected to fulfill the purpose it was created for.”
Critics counter that the report was historically nonpartisan. Jake Sullivan, former President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, told the Times at its Climate Forward conference that dismissing long-term intelligence on climate risks and other challenges does not make those problems disappear.
“The United States is not going to be as prepared and as capable to contend with this challenge going forward,” he warned, calling Gabbard’s comments about intelligence professionals “offensive and wrong.”
Former National Intelligence Council chairman Gregory F. Treverton, who led the 2017 report, said the effort sharpened intelligence-gathering techniques and foresight.
“I lament its demise — it was a good exercise in developing tradecraft,” he told the Times, noting that the last report even foresaw a pandemic disrupting global travel and economies.
The Trump administration has similarly disbanded other long-range national security groups, including the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment. With the Strategic Futures Group now dissolved and this year’s Global Trends report canceled, experts warn that any future administration seeking to revive the project will face significant obstacles.
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