Lawfare Daily: Climate Security During the Trump Administration Years

[Intro]

Erin Sikorsky: There's been bipartisan agreement for quite some time now that there are national security dynamics and risks associated with climate. It was during a Republican Congress in the first Trump administration that a definition of climate security was codified in the National Defense Authorization Act.

Anna Hickey: It is the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Anna Hickey, associate editor of communications, with Erin Sikorsky, director of the Center for Climate & Security.

Erin Sikorsky: Climate security has to be broader than just the federal government in this environment, and that's why the subnational engagement is so critical, right? When we say climate security, what I really mean is keeping Americans safe and secure from climate hazards and, and so that they can thrive, right?

Anna Hickey: Today we're talking about the omission of climate change from the Annual Threat Assessment and how the Trump administration views climate security.

[Main podcast]

So you're gonna talk about the Annual Threat Assessment. So first, can you just explain to our listeners what the Annual Threat Assessment is?

Erin Sikorsky: So the intelligence community's Annual Threat Assessment is a yearly report to Congress, unclassified—they, they do a classified version as well, but the one we'll talk about is unclassified—to lay out what the intelligence community sees as the top priority threats facing the United States in the coming year, right. It's their key warning document to Congress.

Anna Hickey: Who is involved in writing it in the intelligence community?

Erin Sikorsky: Sure. So the director of national intelligence presents it to Congress, so it represents the views of all 18 intelligence agencies that sit under her purview. It's usually led through the National Intelligence Council, but incorporates perspectives, like I said, from across all of the agencies.

Anna Hickey: The reason I'm talking to you today is because, as you noted in your piece at the Council on Strategic Risks, the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment is the first in over a decade to omit climate change.

So in your piece you write that the IC and the ATA did not shrink from climate and environmental security threats throughout the first Trump administration. So what do you make of this omission in the second administration and what it says about how the intelligence community is operating in President Trump's second term?

Erin Sikorsky: Yeah, I mean, I think I, I was disappointed to see it not included because I think it sends a signal that the politicization of the climate issue is extending further than it did in the last Trump administration, right? I mean, during the first Trump administration, the president made no, no, no secret of the fact that he wasn't concerned about climate change. He didn't consider it a top issue for the U.S., but you continued to see reports come out of our intelligence agencies on the topic.

Now, I think, you know, they've come in this time around even stronger on, on some of these issues, and they've lumped climate change in with what they call these quote unquote other woke issues, right, that we won't, won't be spending time on in the, the national security community. And so it makes me worried not to see it in there because I, you know, I have no way of knowing—and I think she was asked, even maybe asked about this in her testimony—whether that was a directive from on high, you know, don't include climate, we're not focusing on it anymore, or if it was a choice not to include it because the analysts know this is not something the administration cares about, so there's some element of, of self-censorship there.

Anna Hickey: Yeah. In the congressional briefings of the assessment, at least in the Senate briefing, Senator King from Maine questioned Tulsi Gabbard, the current director of national intelligence, about the omission. And I don't know if you watched it, but she responded that she did not recall whether or not she directed the omission. Wondering, if you did watch it, what you, would make of her dodge of the answer or refusal to kind of directly answer the question?

Erin Sikorsky: Yeah, I mean, it was a classic Washington dodge, right, to answer by not answering. And so, like I said, who knows exactly how it all happened, but what I do know is that by not including it, then it sends a strong message that this isn't a priority and this isn't something that the intelligence community should be worrying about or focused on for the coming year.

I mean, I think that's the other thing that ATA does is it kind of plays out the agenda, right? These are the top threats. These are the things we're focused on. This is where we're gonna put our time and energy. And so things that aren't in there doesn't mean they don't get covered at all, but they maybe don't get the priority or the resources that they need in this case.

Anna Hickey: And so why has climate change been included in previous threat assessments? I think to the average listener, they might not think of natural disasters as a national security risk, but what was the reasoning for it in the previous decade to include it in these ATAs?

Erin Sikorsky: Right. Well, there's a range of ways in which climate change impacts U.S. national security concerns, and what you saw in previous annual threat assessments was everything from discussing, you know, climate's impact on water and food security in key geographies around the world, and what that might mean for risks of instability and conflict in different places, especially in the wake of the Arab Spring where you saw food insecurity contribute to revolutions, right, that, that overthrew leaders.

The intelligence community has been interested in understanding how different factors can combine together to create risks and, and places we care about, and, and climate is increasingly one of those drivers of risk.

But also they're the direct threats of the hazards themselves, right, whether they threaten military bases and installations that are along coastlines, right, and getting inundated by strengthened storms, or they're in the deserts of California and they're being evacuated due to wildfires. There's huge questions around military readiness, military resilience, and climate hazards themselves.

There's also the fact that militaries are deploying globally in response to these hazards, right? Countries are using militaries to fight wildfires, to respond to droughts, to rescue people from floods, and that is straining their capacity and their ability to focus on other, other issues like training, right, or development.

But even if you don't care about all of that, even if you know you're, you're someone who cares only about, say, China as the top competitor of the United States—and that's the number one thing we should be focused on, right—you also have to bring a climate lens into that understanding of China's national interests globally. How is it positioning itself in a warming Arctic, for example? How is it trying to secure food for its vast population in the face of climate hazards itself? How is the Chinese military preparing to manage sea level rise at the islands it's created in the South China Sea, right? So by omitting climate, you're just creating all of these blind spots.

And, and the other thing I'll say is there has been, there's been bipartisan agreement for quite some time now that there are national security dynamics and risks associated with climate. It was during a Republican Congress in the first Trump administration that a definition of climate security was codified in the National Defense Authorization Act, right. So this isn't about politics; it's about pragmatism of keeping the United States safe and giving the military room to maneuver in a changed world.

Anna Hickey: And could you talk about whether or not there have been any other kind of consistent inclusions in the assessment that have like climate change kind of cropped up in every assessment year after year, or has climate change really been the only one that's been consistent over the past decade?

Erin Sikorsky: There, there have been others. I mean, the main, you know— obviously counterterrorism issues, competition with China, issues with Russia, Iran, North Korea—you know, the big national security concerns, but also things around global health security have been included in the ATA. Traditionally warnings about pandemics pre 2020 were in the ATA, and there was very little to nothing about global health issues in this ATA either. It seemed that kind of anything that isn't quote unquote considered a traditional hard security threat was eliminated from this ATA.

And again, I think that's worrying. You've had previous directors of the CIA talk about what they call problems without passports, right? Climate, health, other things that cross borders, and how it was really the intersection of those with more traditional security threats that pose real challenges for the U.S. So, I see this as a step backwards.

Anna Hickey: Thinking about the national security apparatus within the US government, beyond just the intelligence community, have you seen any indications from the DOD or any other agencies that this kind of omission of climate change is occurring across the government in the national security sector, or is this just the first instance that you've really seen?

Erin Sikorsky: Yeah, I mean, you're seeing it across government, and President Trump made it very clear when he came into office that that climate would no longer be a priority. And so everything from the elimination of USAID, which is where you know, a lot of the forward looking programming to prevent climate security risks, particularly in already unstable or conflict affected states, all of that's gone; work at the State Department to focus on, on climate security, from what I understand is largely gone.

The Defense Department, it's interesting. You know, publicly, Secretary Hegseth, you know, likes to talk about this a lot. He talked about it in his, in his confirmation hearing, you know, saying that his secretary of the navy would only be focused on, on shipbuilding, not on climate. You know, he even, I don't know, in some tweet in a recent month, said something like, you know, the Pentagon won't be doing climate change crap anymore. But what that seems to primarily mean is they won't be doing things related to clean energy and building energy resilience that way.

But I think things around resilience of bases, right, investing to make sure that they're attuned to changing climate other things like that—hopefully that will be able to continue because that's about protecting our troops; it's about protecting our capabilities; and, and hopefully we'll see that, that move forward.

But you know, who knows? Again, like I said, when you have your leaders talking about how we don't do this anymore, even if the program still exists, will folks feel empowered to, to lean forward? Certainly, you know, we're seeing with U.S. allies and partners around the world a worry that they definitely shouldn't talk about climate in a security context with this administration. So I think there is a chilling, a chilling effect, unfortunately. So even if at the, you know, at the like civilian operational level things can continue, the leadership that the U.S. was, was, had on this issue is really gone.

Anna Hickey: When you talk about resilience in the military and national security apparatus against climate change, I mean for me, what I think of is the bases in Florida or Texas or Louisiana—military bases that might be impacted by hurricanes and other natural disasters 'cause obviously, you know, hurricane season is, you know, fast, quick approaching.

What other types of resilience did the military or other national security apparatus do either during the first Trump administration or the Biden administration that you kind of fear might be dropped in the next four years?

Erin Sikorsky: Yeah. I mean, as I was just speaking about, one of the great things that we've seen previously with the military was real partnership with other countries—close allies in Europe or partners in Africa—to help those militaries become more resilient to climate hazards as well, right?

And I think the U.S. military saw this as an opportunity to buy down future risk. If you make a military partner in say, the Pacific more resilient to climate hazards, that means that partner can be there for you when you need them, right? If you want to be able to use their runways, for example, or you wanna be able to use their ports, that they can handle whatever climate hazards come at them. I worry that that kind of leadership and partnership won't be there in the same way.

There was a great report put out by the State Department a couple of years ago now that looked at and included kind of a range of new security threats, but it included a, a scenario around Taiwan, a conflict around Taiwan, where due to a changed climate, you have an unseasonable or a strengthened typhoon that hits; that creates communication challenges for key actors, whether the United States or China; interrupts comms maybe for one side or the other; interrupts supply lines for one side or the other; and creates real challenges around reassurance and deterrence and misperceptions of what one side's doing to the other.

So again, it's an example of by bringing that climate lens and making sure you have the most up-to-date understanding about what type of hazards might exist in a region that you're able to make better contingency plans, right, that may be needed in, in the case of a hot conflict, God forbid, right.

And, and so all of that kind of resilience and that systemic thinking about risk, I fear is, is not going to happen as much. There will still be reactive responses when hazards occur, but the kind of forward planning—and that, that's across government, it's not just DOD or intel, it's kind of across all of the foreign security policy apparatus. And, and some of that was happening in the last administration, but that's hard. It's hard, you know, and, and so any of the progress that was made, you know, now we've, we've lost that.

Anna Hickey: And thinking about the United States’ role in helping like developing countries, militaries become more climate resilient, do you see the EU or even like China having the capacity to step in or was this something because of the size of the U.S. military, it was kind of singularly the U.S. could do that globally?

Erin Sikorsky: Yeah, I mean there are definitely places where European countries or NATO countries might have partnerships, longtime partnerships where they can do this. I think, you know, like the U.K. and Kenya for example, or maybe in Jordan. But no, no country can match the kind of reach of the, the U.S. military in particular. We've seen China in some places try to step in, in the wake of the, you know, the pullout of USAID, it's on the development front, but on the military front, they're certainly not there yet.

So, yeah, it's a real missed opportunity and it, it, it's, it's a big loss that, that, that then, you know, has the potential to blow back to the United States 'cause you think about places like Sub-Saharan Africa and the Sahel, or in East Africa, where investments in helping militaries manage climate risks helps them also deal with terrorism and extremism, right? If you look at Kenya, for example, where their military has really done a lot of work to integrate climate into their engagements in Somalia and elsewhere, to help manage drought and help plant trees, and, and help local communities be resilient to, to hazards—when you don't have a partnership with the U.S. pushing them forward to do that, they have fewer resources. It leaves more, more communities at risk and allows extremists to, to take advantage.

Anna Hickey: Obviously, we've seen a lot of grants and contracts, especially in the foreign aid sphere, get canceled in just the first few months of the second Trump administration. Have you seen any specific funding or grants towards this kind of partnership be canceled that you're specifically worried about, or is it just all caught up in the general foreign aid kind of slashing?

Erin Sikorsky: Yeah, I mean, there were some programs at the Department of Defense that I'm worried about, and I think their fate is still a little unclear. You know, I, we'll, we'll, we'll see how it all, how it all falls out. You know, I don't wanna, I don't wanna put a target on anyone's back either, so, for things that still exist.

Anna Hickey: Understandable. So kind of, obviously we're just in the very, you know, first few months, not necessarily the early days, but early months of the second administration. As the administration continues to lay out their priorities, is there anything else you're watching to see how they kind of, I guess, not address climate change? Are you going to be looking at it in the NDAA or any other assessments coming out from the national security apparatus?

Erin Sikorsky: Yeah, I mean, every four years the National Intelligence Council usually puts out a big report called Global Trends, which is an unclassified look at the next 20 years and the key threats facing the, the United States. Waiting to see if that, that will come out; it usually includes climate as a risk, so if it does come out, we'll see what it says. I think that will send a sign.

You know, we'll look at the national defense strategy as well as the national security strategy if the, the White House does one, and how they—I I, I'm sure they're not going to talk about climate issues, but yeah. We'll see what happens in Congress as well.

I mean, I think the other thing to watch is, right, a former defense official who worked on these issues and previous administrations likes to say, you know, physics always wins. We're gonna continue to have climate, extreme weather events right in, in the near term. And so when those, we have the first major events at a U.S. military base, right, or here in the U.S. and that requires a military response, how does this administration react? I think we'll, we'll learn from that and then, you know, what does it mean?

I think a lot of the things that have been cut by the administration, we won't really see their full impact, you know, until months, if not a few years into the future. But some of the cuts that have been made at NOAA, for example, a place that the military relies on for a lot of data and information about climate, the impact of some of these climate security programs that were at USAID when those have completely disappeared.

We've already seen in Myanmar with the earthquake, which obviously is not a climate hazard, but normally the U.S. response would be led by a team—what's called a DART team from USAID—and that hasn't happened this time around. So the U.S. is not on the ground in the way it normally would be to respond. So I think those are all things I'll be watching to see both, you know, what the Trump administration publishes in terms of reports, but then also how its actions take place on the ground and what that means for U.S. national security.

Anna Hickey: And there is for some Americans a kind of disconnect between the climate assistance and humanitarian assistance that the U.S. government provides to foreign countries and then the benefit to our national security it can provide. So can you explain kind of why having like this DART team on the ground in Myanmar during this earthquake or during a hypothetical, you know, hurricane or monsoon, how that helps our national security?

Erin Sikorsky: Yeah, absolutely. I mean. You know, the U.S. role in the world as a positive leader creates a lot of benefits for the United States. I mean, it creates soft power, right? We are country, traditionally that others have looked up to, and we can provide resources, right, create partnerships that then, you know, especially when we're in a, a more geopolitically competitive world, with China in particular, we become the partner of choice, right, especially when you look at the Pacific or Southeast Asia. And we want those, those countries on side with the U.S., and one of the ways we can do that is through responding to what they consider their top national security concern, which is climate, right?

And also, as I was saying, talking about earlier, the, when you can invest in resilience in those places, that provides a benefit to the US If we, our military needs to use the space, right, or if we need to rely on that local community for support if we're deployed in the region.

So, so those are some of the reasons. I mean, the other thing I would say is a lot of the work of, of USAID and, and climate resilience and food security resilience, right, which is related to climate—there are states across the US that provide that food aid or that house university programs that do the research that informs these interventions. And so that provides jobs and economic development, you know, in communities in the U.S. So we're very connected, globally and, and losing that, you know, hurts not just here in Washington, but it hurts all over the country.

Anna Hickey: And is there anything Congress or congressional Democrats, Republicans, if they prioritize climate change, could do to push the administration to start to think about climate change as a national security threat?

Erin Sikorsky: Yeah, I mean, as I was saying earlier, there's been a lot in the National Defense Authorization bill in recent years requiring reports or requiring climate considerations to be integrated into installation plans, for example. So, so Congress can do a lot in terms of, you know, creating those kind of requirements in the NDAA. Frankly, I don't have a lot of hope that that's gonna happen given the current makeup, but, but it's possible.

They can also hold hearings, right, ask questions. They can do what Senator King did in the ATA and, and ask a question about why climate was missing. I think that kind of pressure is, is important to help keep the issue on, on the table for this administration.

Anna Hickey: And then you mentioned California earlier, and obviously states do not have the kind of national security apparatus that the United States federal government does, but do state governments have any ability to kind of promote climate resilience within their own, you know, National Guard, or is that something that's still pretty monitored at the federal level?

Erin Sikorsky: No, absolutely, and there's a big role I think for states and kind of subnational climate security. I mean, how do you build a safe and secure state and community, and the National Guard is, is a big role in that. There's a lot of interesting innovation that happens in California with their National Guard in terms of wildfire fighting and how they integrate with state and local officials. There's some interesting collaborations between National Guards in the West to help each other out depending on who's facing certain hazards.

So yeah, I think that's a huge resource that states have. And actually it's a really interesting opportunity for some subnational diplomacy then too, because the state national guards all participate in something called the State Partnership Program, where they have long relationships with foreign countries over many years where they've gone over and, and done trainings and exercises. And these days a lot of those trainings and exercises have been on extreme weather response, trading tips on fighting wildfires, trading tips on responding to drought.

So I think that is a way to continue some of that international engagement on the topic, but with just different levels of, of government here in the U.S.

Anna Hickey: And then as we think about climate security for the United States, is there anything you're specifically looking at over the next four years to see how the Trump administration responds?

Erin Sikorsky: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, there's so much right now, right? I think looking at how they deal with domestic disaster response—you know, I think there's been some talk about getting rid of FEMA completely, which I think is a real risk and would put Americans at risk and also then put more of the burden potentially on the U.S. military and on the National Guard to be first in line to respond.  So I think that's something I'll be watching closely. And what kind of resources—is there politicization of where resources flow to states and local governments as well, I think will be something to keep a, keep a close eye on.

Anna Hickey: So thinking about climate change and its impacts, do you have anything off the top of your head about how climate change has specifically impacted the U.S. military's kind of ability to respond to different situations over the past few years? Or is it pretty amorphous?

Erin Sikorsky: Yeah. I mean, a couple examples I'll give you of the U.S. and then maybe one if you don't mind, from, from Canada and Australia then too.

In the U.S, so you had two major climate driven hazards in the Pacific last year. You had a typhoon, Typhoon Mawar, that hit Guam, which decimated U.S. military facilities there, caused billions of dollars of damage. So interrupted, right, that capacity in a key AOR for the U.S. military, that was really concerning.

Another was in the Marshall Islands, in Kwajalein station. A rogue wave, a huge wave, came over the base there, and again, decimated a lot of equipment and interrupted the ability of the base to operate. And they did a attribution study afterwards that showed waves of that kind are driven by climate change. It was actually something that had been warned about before to the base. So those are a couple examples directly.

I, you know, I have also heard examples in California with bases out in the desert that some of the atmospheric rivers that hit California last year washed out roads, cut off training, you know—weren't, weren't big disasters in that they caused, you know, huge amounts of damage to buildings and infrastructure, but they just made everything work a lot less efficiently on a base and, and slowed things down.

The other thing I've watched in, in the U.S. too, is the impact that these hazards have, not just on physical things, but on troop morale. So with Hurricane Michael that hit Tyndall Air Force Base in 2019, that required a bunch of soldiers who were stationed there to move to another base to continue their training. And it wasn't clear how long that would be, whether it would be temporary or not. They had to move their families, right, pull their kids outta school. It ended up—because it dragged on and they didn't get clear answers—they ended up separating from the military because of that.

So the impact that these hazards have on troop morale, we know, I mean there's tons of studies about the, these hazards harming mental health of communities generally when they hit, well the same is true for, for U.S. troops, right?

And then the example I wanted to give you from Canada and Australia is both of those countries, their militaries have deployed a ton in response to wildfires. Two summers ago, the Canadian military deployed over 100, 120 some days in a row to two wildfires. And there are real concerns from top leadership of those militaries that this is taking away from training. It's impeding their ability to be prepared for contingencies in the Pacific, for example, and it's unsustainable and costly in.

Anna Hickey: I remember the smoke from those wildfires that summer in D.C. There was no joke.

Erin Sikorsky: Yeah.

Anna Hickey: And I guess kind of wrapping up our conversation is do you have any final thoughts about how you're thinking about climate security over the next four years in this Trump administration?

Erin Sikorsky: Yeah, I mean, I, I think a couple things, and I've, I've already alluded to this one, is I think that climate security has to be broader than just the federal government in this environment. And that's why the subnational engagement is so critical, right? When we say climate security, what I really mean is keeping Americans safe and secure from climate hazards and, and so that they can thrive, right, and have economic development, have community resilience, and, and that can, that can happen at the local level as well.

And then I think it's, it's about continuing to communicate the facts about the risks, right? And the more we can provide concrete evidence, you know, of how much money it costs at this base, how many times the military is deploying, right—being able to tell those fact-based stories of the impact, I think will hopefully help shape a healthier conversation.

But we're in a really challenging moment right now and we've lost a lot of ground, and so I think we're gonna face some, some really tough questions here in the next few years about how we, how we address this risk, and, and we'll have fewer tools in our toolbox to do it, unfortunately.

Anna Hickey: I think we'll end it there on that pessimistic note. But thank you so much for joining me. This was an incredible conversation.

Erin Sikorsky: Yeah. Thank you, Anna.

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