Foresight expert flags 10 homeland security trends U.S. leaders should watch in 2025
As U.S. agencies map out priorities for 2025, a strategic foresight specialist has outlined ten trends she says will shape homeland security, urging leaders to stay ahead of rapid technological advances, shifting societal dynamics and global pressures. In a column drawing on emerging trends and foresight articles from the past year, Robin L.
Champ frames the issues government leaders should track as they prepare for the coming year. She writes that the future of homeland security lies in staying ahead of these developments and argues that leaders who anticipate shifts and act strategically will "ensure resilience and security" in an increasingly interconnected and unpredictable environment.
Champ is vice president for strategic foresight at LBL Strategies and an instructor at Harvard Extension School. She previously retired as chief of the Enterprise Strategy Division at the U.S. Secret Service, where she led foresight and strategic planning, and co-chaired the Federal Foresight Community of Interest.
Earlier in her career, Champ led the Global Futures Office at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, where she developed a methodology that combined stakeholder interviews, scenario-based planning, SWOT analysis, policy analysis and crowdsourcing to inform the agency’s Strategic Plan.
She also led the Project on Advanced Systems and Concepts for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction and served as the Defense Logistics Agency lead for the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, authoring the DLA Transformation Roadmap and managing the agency’s Balanced Scorecard.
Her analysis positions foresight-driven planning as a priority for 2025, emphasizing that agencies integrating structured anticipation into decision-making will be better positioned to maintain resilience as the security environment evolves.