Intelligence and National Security Journal: AI Coverage and the 2026 Threat Assessment

Two different searches land on this topic. One is looking for the academic journal Intelligence and National Security, published by Taylor & Francis — a peer-reviewed outlet covering intelligence policy, operations, and history. The other is looking for analysis on what AI means for national security at the state and intelligence community level. The 2026 DNI Annual Threat Assessment treats AI as the defining technology of the century and places China’s AI program at the top of the US adversarial threat list. This piece covers both: what the journal is and what it publishes, and what the intelligence community’s own assessments say about AI’s role in national security in 2026.

The Intelligence and National Security Journal: Scope and AI Coverage

What the Journal Covers

Intelligence and National Security is published by Taylor & Francis (Routledge) and is available through Tandfonline as Volume 41 in 2026. It is the primary peer-reviewed academic journal in the intelligence studies field, covering intelligence policy and doctrine, the history of intelligence operations, comparative intelligence community structures, counterintelligence, covert action, and the intersection of technology with intelligence practice. The journal publishes eight issues per year and accepts submissions from academics, former practitioners, and policy researchers.

Recent editorial focus has tracked AI and digital transformation as primary themes. Volume 40 (2025) included a special issue titled “Intelligence and Digital Transformation: Strategies, Challenges, and Opportunities,” addressing how machine learning, AI, and data analytics are changing intelligence collection, analysis, and sharing. A January 2026 article examined AI deployment in warfare and national security, drawing on qualitative data from 105 military, intelligence, cybersecurity, and government specialists — finding that AI improves military decision-making, intelligence synthesis, surveillance, and real-time risk assessment, while raising contested questions about algorithmic responsibility and autonomous weapons.

AI Coverage in Intelligence and National Security Research

The intelligence studies literature has spent the last three years catching up to AI’s operational reality. The research published in Intelligence and National Security and parallel journals — including the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence — covers three main problem sets. First, AI as an intelligence collection tool: how ML models process open-source intelligence (OSINT), imagery, signals, and human reporting at speed and scale that human analysts cannot match. Second, AI as an analytical layer: how automated systems generate threat assessments, correlate indicators, and flag anomalies across large datasets. Third, AI as an adversarial weapon: how state actors use AI to automate influence operations, sharpen cyberattacks, and accelerate intelligence targeting against the US and allied infrastructure.

The academic literature on the third category has grown fastest because the operational evidence is now substantial. A 2025 incident documented by the intelligence community involved cyber actors using an AI tool in a data-extortion operation targeting international government agencies, healthcare systems, emergency services, and religious institutions — a multi-sector attack that would have required significant manual reconnaissance without AI assistance. This convergence of academic research and operational reality is why the journal’s AI coverage has expanded significantly in recent volumes. Understanding the full scope of AI security concerns helps frame what the intelligence community is dealing with.

How to Access the Journal

Individual articles in Intelligence and National Security are available through institutional library subscriptions or through Tandfonline pay-per-article access. Many universities provide access through JSTOR or through direct Tandfonline institutional licensing. The journal’s ISSN is 0268-4527 (print) and 1743-9019 (online). For practitioners without institutional access, some articles are available as open-access through the Taylor & Francis Open Select program, and preprints of accepted articles are sometimes available through authors’ academic profiles on ResearchGate or SSRN. The journal also publishes book reviews, which tend to be open-access more frequently than research articles.

AI in National Security: The 2026 Intelligence Community Assessment

AI as the Top National Security Concern in 2026

The 2026 Annual Threat Assessment released by Director of National Intelligence Gabbard on March 16, 2026, places AI at the center of the national security threat landscape. The assessment describes AI as a “defining technology for the 21st century,” capable of fundamentally reshaping warfare, intelligence operations, and geopolitical competition. The intelligence community’s assessment reflects a shift: AI is no longer treated as a future threat in official reporting but as an active current threat enabling adversary operations that are already occurring.

The assessment specifically warns that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are treating US critical infrastructure as a standing battlespace — positioning themselves inside networks that run industrial and infrastructure systems with long-term access as a strategic objective. Ransomware groups are shifting to faster, higher-volume attacks that are harder to identify and mitigate. The assessment notes that AI innovation will accelerate cyber domain threats for both attackers and defenders, increasing the speed at which both sides can operate. The broader analysis of how artificial intelligence is reshaping cybersecurity provides the technical context behind these threat vectors.

Nation-State AI Threats and Critical Infrastructure Targeting

China receives the most detailed treatment in the 2026 AI threat assessment. The intelligence community identifies China as the most capable competitor in AI development and the most “active and persistent cyber threat” to US government networks, private sector systems, and critical infrastructure. China’s stated goal is to displace the US as the global AI leader by 2030. The DNI assessment notes that China uses AI across conventional military operations, special operations, intelligence gathering, and influence operations targeted at the US and allied democracies, backed by government funding, large proprietary datasets, and an expanding talent pool.

North Korea’s cyber program is separately characterized as sophisticated and agile. In 2025, North Korean cyber operations stole approximately $2 billion in cryptocurrency, funding the weapons development program directly. The operations use AI-generated synthetic identities to scale insider threat schemes — the same FAMOUS CHOLLIMA capability documented in CrowdStrike’s threat reporting. Iran and Russia round out the adversarial AI picture: Russia’s AI capabilities focus primarily on influence operations and military applications in the ongoing conflict theater; Iran has accelerated its cyber program to target regional adversaries and US infrastructure, increasingly using AI for reconnaissance automation.

Intelligence Community AI Readiness and the Defensive Gap

The assessment is explicit about the readiness problem: the US government is not prepared to defend against the AI-accelerated threat landscape as it stands. Intelligence agencies will benefit more from AI adoption than any other national security mission — AI-assisted collection, analysis, and targeting are direct force multipliers for intelligence work. But as of the assessment’s release, AI applications within the intelligence community are at different stages of deployment across agencies, and the adversarial capabilities documented in the report are in some cases ahead of the defensive posture. The AI security tools available to enterprise and government defenders are maturing, but deployment at the pace adversaries are operating requires governance, procurement, and integration decisions that move faster than traditional government processes allow.