Julian E. Barnes and Helene Cooper
Every four years U.S. intelligence officials have published Global Trends, a public document that predicts what challenges the United States — and the world — will face in the coming decades.
With the intelligence community often focused on immediate issues, the Global Trends report has taken a longer-term look. Past editions warned of threats and shifts that came to pass, including climate change challenges, new immigration patterns and the risk of a pandemic.
But the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, led by Tulsi Gabbard, is eliminating the group that compiles the report.
Some of the warnings, most notably on climate change, had become politically inconvenient, according to former officials.
Ms. Gabbard’s office, in announcing the decision, said the National Intelligence Council’s Strategic Futures Group had “neglected to fulfill the purpose it was created for” and had pursued a partisan political agenda.
“A draft of the 2025 Global Trends report was carefully reviewed by D.N.I. Gabbard’s team and found to violate professional analytic tradecraft standards in an effort to propagate a political agenda that ran counter to all of the current president’s national security priorities,” the office said.
The elimination of the office last month was little noticed because it came amid a flurry of activity by Ms. Gabbard, including the closure of the National Intelligence University and sharp cutbacks of officers working on foreign malign influence and election threats.
Defending the move, Ms. Gabbard’s office highlighted what it said were problems of tradecraft, or the methodology used to gather information and analyze intelligence for the report.
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