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Have intelligence agencies released risk assessments about a major-power war in 2023-2025?
Executive summary
The intelligence community publicly released unclassified risk assessments in 2024 and 2025 that treat major‑power strategic competition and the risk of interstate war as central threats, and those documents evaluate dynamics spanning 2023–2025. The 2024 Annual Threat Assessment explicitly warned that accelerating competition among China and Russia elevated the risk of a larger interstate conflict, while the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment reiterated and updated those concerns without always assigning precise probabilities in public text [1] [2] [3]. These public reports confirm that U.S. intelligence agencies have produced and published assessments addressing the danger of a major‑power war in the 2023–2025 window, even as classified analytic work and agency statements provide complementary emphasis and organizational context [4] [5].
1. How the public record frames the danger — clear warnings, cautious language, and evolving emphasis
The unclassified 2024 Annual Threat Assessment framed the geopolitical environment as increasingly fragile and explicitly warned that strategic competition among major powers, principally China and Russia, could spill over into interstate war; that report is dated February 5, 2024 and based on information current to January 22, 2024, and assesses flashpoints where competition could escalate into broader conflict [1]. The subsequent 2025 Annual Threat Assessment, published in March 2025, continued to treat state competition and the prospect of conflict among major powers as a primary concern, updating threat trajectories and naming state actors of concern while offering judgements about how interactions among Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea could raise escalation risks without necessarily publishing detailed probability estimates in the unclassified text [2] [3]. Both reports are public evidence that intelligence agencies publicly assessed the risk environment for 2023–2025 with major‑power war as a possible outcome.
2. What the reports say and what they do not say — substance versus certainty
The unclassified reports identify state behavior, military modernization, alliance politics, and crisis flashpoints as drivers that increase the chance of interstate conflict; they document observable trends and red‑flag scenarios rather than providing binary forecasts or precise probability percentages in their public form, which reflects analytic practice and classification considerations [1] [4]. The publicly released 2025 assessment reiterates the concern that growing cooperation among adversarial states and their use of both conventional and asymmetric tools could make localized wars more likely to draw in others, a framing that signals elevated systemic risk without producing an explicit “probability of major‑power war” for 2023–2025 in the unclassified product [3]. These limitations indicate that while the community has assessed the risk, the public trace is descriptive and scenario‑oriented rather than probabilistic.
3. Agency statements and organizational shifts that corroborate the public reports
Senior agency leaders and internal reorganizations support the public assessments’ emphasis: for example, CIA Director William Burns publicly stated the agency is reorganizing its focus toward China as the long‑term strategic challenge, and officials have linked the war in Ukraine to broader implications for U.S. security and posture [5]. These statements do not substitute for formal classified judgements but corroborate the direction of public threat assessments: U.S. intelligence has shifted greater resources and attention to the competition that could precipitate a major‑power clash. The combination of published Annual Threat Assessments and senior officials’ remarks shows a consistent analytic posture across 2023–2025 stressing elevated strategic competition and attendant escalation risks [2] [5].
4. Differing emphases, possible agendas, and why reports vary year to year
The 2024 report’s explicit language about the risk of a major‑power war and the 2025 report’s continued attention reflect both changing events and institutional priorities; intelligence products are designed to inform policymakers and the public while protecting sources and methods, which explains why unclassified products sometimes trade absolute probabilities for scenario analysis [1] [4]. Political audiences and media consumers may interpret the reports through partisan lenses, and agencies emphasize different threats—China’s long‑term challenge, Russia’s immediate aggression, and regional proliferators—depending on evolving evidence and policy needs. The public releases therefore represent a mix of factual trend reporting and strategic signal management intended to influence policy without revealing classified analytic detail [6] [3].
5. Bottom line for the question asked — yes, but with caveats about what was public
In sum, U.S. intelligence agencies released unclassified risk assessments in 2024 and 2025 that explicitly consider the possibility of a major‑power war occurring in the 2023–2025 period and outline the drivers and flashpoints that could produce such an outcome; these are captured in the 2024 Annual Threat Assessment and the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment [1] [2] [3]. The caveat is that public reports aim to describe risks and scenarios rather than publish classified probabilistic judgements, so while the public record shows clear warnings and updated risk analysis, classified assessments likely contain more detailed probability estimates and operational detail that are not in the unclassified documents [4] [7].