U.S. National Counterintelligence Strategy

Key Chapter Title List

1. Vision and Mission
2. Foreign Intelligence Threat Landscape
3. Pillar One: Counter Foreign Intelligence Entities
4. Objective 1: Detect, Understand, and Anticipate Foreign Intelligence Threats
5. Objective 2: Counter, Degrade, and Deter Foreign Intelligence Activities and Capabilities
6. Objective 3: Combat Foreign Intelligence Cyber Activities
7. Pillar Two: Protect U.S. Strategic Advantages
8. Objective 4: Protect Individuals from Foreign Intelligence Targeting and Collection
9. Objective 5: Protect Democracy from Foreign Malign Influence
10. Objective 6: Protect Critical Technologies and U.S. Economic Security
11. Pillar Three: Invest in the Future
12. Objective 9: Build Counterintelligence Capabilities, Partnerships, and Resilience

Document Introduction

The United States currently faces unprecedented threats from Foreign Intelligence Entities (FIEs), which have reached new heights in scope, scale, complexity, and impact. These threats emanate from nations such as Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and various non-state actors. By stealing state secrets, sensitive data, and intellectual property, undermining critical infrastructure, and interfering with U.S. policy and public opinion, they pose direct challenges to U.S. national security, economic well-being, democratic processes, and social cohesion.

The 2024 U.S. National Counterintelligence Strategy, led by the National Counterintelligence and Security Center and developed in collaboration with U.S. government and intelligence community partners, provides strategic guidance for the U.S. federal government and the counterintelligence community for the next three years. This strategy aligns with the priorities set by the National Security Strategy and other national strategies, and updates the counterintelligence community's focus based on current and anticipated foreign intelligence threat environments.

The strategy constructs a comprehensive defense framework around three core pillars: first, countering foreign intelligence entities by detecting and anticipating threats, countering and deterring related activities, and combating cyber intelligence operations to seize strategic initiative; second, protecting U.S. strategic advantages, covering critical areas such as personal security, democratic institutions, critical technologies, infrastructure, and supply chains to fortify security defenses; third, investing in the future by strengthening counterintelligence capabilities, building diverse partnerships, and enhancing systemic resilience to lay the foundation for long-term threat response.

The strategy emphasizes that addressing the complex and evolving foreign intelligence threat requires a whole-of-society collaborative model. This integrates the strengths of federal, state, and local governments, the private sector, academia, and foreign partners to achieve comprehensive linkage in information sharing, vulnerability identification, defense enhancement, and resilience building. Specific action paths are outlined under each objective, including innovating intelligence collection capabilities, optimizing information sharing mechanisms, integrating offensive and defensive tools and technologies, and strengthening cross-domain collaboration, forming a systematic and actionable blueprint for counterintelligence operations.

The implementation of this strategy will advance the integration and coordination of U.S. counterintelligence work, effectively curb the harmful activities of foreign intelligence entities, protect U.S. strategic advantages and core interests, and provide critical support for safeguarding U.S. national security, economic security, and way of life.