Editor’s note // By Ben FrankelThis Was the Year That Was

Published 31 December 2019

Below we offer the Homeland Security News Wire’s list of what we consider to be the ten most important, or telling, security stories, developments, and trends of 2019. The list is not exhaustive or comprehensive, but rather selective and suggestive. Others may compile different lists. The topics of the stories on the list represent what the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities consider to be the most pressing security threats to the United States, among them (not in order of importance): Terrorism, especially far-right and lone-wolf terrorism; cyberattacks on critical infrastructure and ransomware; the security and economic threats posed by climate change; China’s drive to infiltrate Western countries’ communication infrastructure; Russia’s effective attacks on liberal democracies; Iran’s march toward the bomb and toward achieving regional hegemony; and North Korea’s uninterrupted production of weapon-grade fissile material and more advanced missiles.

Below we offer the Homeland Security News Wire’s list of what we consider to be the ten most important, or telling, security stories, developments, and trends of 2019. The list is not exhaustive or comprehensive, but rather selective and suggestive. Others may compile different lists.

The topics of the stories on the list represent what the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities consider to be the most pressing security threats to the United States:

·  Terrorism, especially the two rising trends within it: Far-right/white nationalist terrorism, and lone-wolf terrorism

·  The growing threat posed by China’s relentless efforts to have Chinese communication companies gain access to critical infrastructure nodes in other countries in order to allow China’s vast intelligence apparatus to engage in persistent surveillance of Western and non-Western societies

·  The growing threat posed by ransomware, especially the growing trend of digital blackmailers targeting local and state governments and managed service providers

·  The increasingly more ominous consequences of climate change for U.S. national security

·  Russia’s steadily growing threat to Western democracies and the U.S. interests, as Russia has proven itself especially capable of exploiting the openness of Western democracies

·  Iran is making progress toward its two main strategic goals: Reducing its nuclear weapons break-out time, that is, the time it would take it to assemble a nuclear weapon once a decision to do so has been made; and achieving a Middle East regional hegemony which would pose dire strategic challenge for Israel

·  The administration’s North Korea policy has failed. The administration saw its North Korea policy as one of its signature initiatives, but now admits that North Korea is the top security threat to the United States

There were many other challenges to U.S. security, broadly defined, that we could have mentioned. Among them:

·  As genetic engineering technology advances, it becomes easier to create designer pathogens for which there is no vaccination or cure

·  U.S. election systems remain distressingly vulnerable to cyberattacks and disruption

·  Anti-Semitism is becoming more open, and more violent individuals, motivated by white nationalist ideology, ethnic animosity, or inner demons are driven to engage in violence against Jews

·  The growing acceptance of anti-Semitism on the left, as evidenced by the repetition of anti-Semitic tropes by Reps. Ilahn Omar (D-Minnesota) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan)  (and across the pond: by the relative passivity of the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbin in the face of openly expressed anti-Semitism by members of the party and more than a few in higher ranks) 

·  Critical infrastructure nodes such as dams and water treatment systems remain, inexplicably, vulnerable to cyberattacks

·  Sea-level rise increasingly threatens more and more communities, and for the first time, municipal authorities along the coast and in the Midwest floodplains openly consider “strategic retreat” of entire communities to higher ground

·  Climate change increases the number of and intensity of wildfires, and increased habitation in urban–wildland interface (UWI) allows these fires to wreak more and more destruction on more and more communities

Again, others may offer additional threatening developments to which the United States should respond.

On Thursday, we will publish the HSNW Top 10 threats the United States will face in 2020.

To our readers: A Happy New Year!

Ben Frankel is the editor of the Homeland Security News Wire