The purpose of this National Security Strategy (NSS) is to identify three strategically significant but neglected threats and opportunities that directly impact U.S. national security long-term. The first is an “uncomfortable truth” for much of official Washington. America’s authoritarian adversaries have infiltrated and subverted from within every key American government agency and institution. This is not a new phenomenon, but the current depth, breadth, and ferocity of such is unprecedented. The underappreciated reason for this is that, unlike during the Cold War, America’s authoritarian adversaries see their transformation of America into an authoritarian regime, like them, as a matter of life-or-death for their continued survival.

The second neglected threat addressed by this NSS is another uncomfortable truth. It is a byproduct, or natural consequence, of the aforementioned ideological infiltration of our government and institutions. Today, a significant percentage of America’s most senior leaders, including government and military officials, have adopted Beijing’s and Moscow’s strategic objectives for America as their own. This has resulted in a level of U.S. policy convergence with Beijing and Moscow that is weakening the U.S. and its allies while strengthening our strategic adversaries.

The third threat addressed by this NSS is a natural outgrowth of the second. Like America, most of our democratic allies face a plague of foreign adversary internal subversion. Given this common threat, instead of each ally addressing it alone, we should confront it together and see this shared, persistent, threat as an opportunity to professionalize the crafting and execution of alliance strategy against these and other challenges to our alliances.

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