Transnational Challenges and U.S. National Security: Defining and Prioritizing Borderless Threats

By their very nature, transnational challenges are murky, often intermingled and thus difficult to analyze. This report provides an introductory examination to these challenges in an effort to build understanding around what they are and why they matter to current U.S. national security. Through our research, we derived a definition for transnational challenges and then used that definition to identify eleven such challenges that impact U.S. national security interests today. We observe trends and patterns among these challenges, including how they relate to one another and how they may evolve over time. We end with thoughts on which transnational challenges the United States should focus on, and why.