Top 20 fears of the U.S. intelligence community

A United States senate committee has released the 2013 “Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community.”

The annual report offers a cursory snapshot of what American citizens have to fear for the year ahead.

Noteworthy in the 2013 edition is the prominence given to threats of cyber attacks, which receives more attention than terrorism or the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

“In some cases, the world is applying digital technologies faster than our ability to understand the security implications and mitigate potential risks,” the report states. “The growing use of cyber capabilities to achieve strategic goals is also outpacing the development of a shared understanding of norms of behavior, increasing the chances for miscalculations and misunderstandings that could lead to unintended escalation.”

Here’s a list of threats to the security of the United States ranked (quite arbitrarily) by the number of instances a word or phrase appears in the documents:

1. Iran - 49
2. Russia - 38
3. Mali - 33
4. cyber - 33
5. Syria - 32
6. China – 30
7. nuclear - 29
8. Iraq - 19
9. terrorist - 19
10. Afghanistan - 18
11. Pakistan - 17
12. Qa’ida – 14
13. drug - 13
14. Libya – 13
15. Israel – 11
16. Somalia – 11
17. Egypt – 9
18. Mexico – 8
19. Yemen - 6
20. Canada – 2