The Synthetic Opioid Crisis is a National Security Threat. Let’s Start Acting Like It.

It must be something in human nature where seeing threats is much simpler when they come from the outside. This is certainly true of the synthetic opioid crisis, which is killing Americans to the tune of over 70,000 a year. Any threat that causes this level of suffering, death, and economic impact must be considered a national security threat. Yet, actions are not meeting the moment. Traditionally, American mobilizes its considerable industrial, economic, and national security might behind a clear and present national security threat. That’s what’s needed now. In 2021, the Biden Administration issues National Security Memorandum-24 (NSM-24), Memorandum on Prioritizing the Strategic Disruption of the Supply Chain for Illicit Fentanyl and Synthetic Opioids Through a Coordinated, Whole-of-Government, Information-Driven Effort . The memorandum is notable because it cites the supply of illicit fentanyl into the United States as a national security threat. In 2023, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) stated, “Opioid addiction has become one of the United State’ biggest killer, endangering public health, the economy, and national security.” The same report quoted DEA Administrator Anne Milgram saying, “fentanyl is the single deadliest threat our nation has ever encountered.” Our view of what constitutes a national security threat needs to evolve if we are going to save American lives and mitigate this threat. Subscribe now National Security Threats in Recent History Entry into World War II for the United States was the result of a world changing event. A direct nation-state attack on US military forces left little doubt about the clear and present nature of the danger facing our national security. That terrible event inspired unity and mobilized the entire population behind a cause in a way that has not been matched since. Citizens became soldiers and the American industrial machine surged at a volume that would make it the core of our future superpower status. Battlefield victories were the result of American bravery, strategic vision by leaders, and the industrial scale production of the equipment needed to win. America saw a national security threat and responded in kind. The end of WWII resulted in a decades-long Cold War that permeated society at nearly every level. Hot wars were fought by proxy, but even if the US and USSR did not directly confront one another, there was still no doubt about where the threat was coming from. If asked, most Americans would respond that the Soviet Union was the chief national security threat to the United States, and most would have supported efforts to protect the nation from the Soviet threat. The beginning of the new millennium was marked forever by the tragedy of the September 11th attacks in the US, events that changed the course of world history for over 20 years. Once again, the US was attacked directly by an adversary and mobilized decisively to meet the moment. The US military itself was transformed by the events to focus on fighting irregular and asymmetric warfare. They fought cave to cave and house to house in stark contrast to the battles in WWII. The US even created an entirely new Cabinet department with the formation of the US Department of Homeland Security in 2002. To this day, every passenger on every flight inside the US or flying internationally is checked for threats. Everyone. National Security Threats in the 2020s The 2020s are a different story. The threat of foreign terrorism has been reduced while new threats from great power competitors threaten our homeland in new ways. Our country faces unprecedented threats from cyber actors, economic actions, and theft of intellectual property, all aimed at our homeland. One truth that we cannot, and should not, debate is how the 2020s have been defined by the synthetic opioid epidemic threatening our country. Share The first significant rise in deaths was in 2015 and the graphic below paints a frightening picture. Between 2020 and 2022, 200,955 Americans died from fentanyl overdose . For context, 291,557 Americans died in WWII and 5,429 Americans died in the Iraqi and Afghan wars combined. In a two-year period, we’ve experienced nearly as many deaths as WWII, and we still aren’t treating the opioid epidemic as a threat to the security of our homeland. Image Credit: Statista 2024 Acting Like It While NSM-24 does a good job of articulating the threat, a national security memorandum is not sufficient to address the problem. It is too broad and all-encompassing for a single document to effectively combat. Our society needs to mobilize against this threat the way we did when fighting state and non-state adversaries over the past 8 decades. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, we didn’t balk. When the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and Flight 93 were attacked, we rushed to defend ourselves. The truth is that national security threats look different today than they used to, and we need to adjust the lens through which we view threats. The threat from fentanyl is obvious and clearly viewed in graphs and on the faces of families who have lost loved ones. But our response does not match the urgency. In 2023, another 74,702 Americans died bringing the total since 2020 to 275,657. Leave a comment Acting like it means unity. It means unity of effort and unity of response. It means a national recognition that 70,000 American non-combat deaths per year is no longer acceptable. From there, it means the alignment of critical resources such as the intelligence community, law enforcement, interdiction forces, and international partnerships. It means transparency in these efforts. It also means leveraging technology to look at the problem in a different way. Two milligrams of fentanyl will kill a person so shutting down the critical supply nodes that produce and transport fentanyl should be a homeland security imperative. We need to leverage technology to help our border agents make more strategically significant interdictions that deny critical supply chain nodes and impose costs. Technology can help us do so without a significant increase in the number of agents on the border by helping us be more efficient with our resource distribution. Some of our most vulnerable citizens are dying on our home soil due to a foreign threat. This matter demands our very best to include technology . We need to unify our supply and demand efforts to save lives. Check back next week for part two of this series where we will discuss opportunities to combat the supply side of fentanyl trafficking…once we start acting like this is the homeland security threat it is. Connect with us: LinkedIn , Bluesky , X , Website To learn more about the services we offer, please visit our product page. This post was edited by Thomas Morin, Marketing Analyst at Frontier Foundry. View his Substack here and his LinkedIn here .