The following list below the fold is a serious list of actual threats to our national security, most of which you will not find on your evening news no matter who you watch. By the way, the list is not ordered, and I will happily bet that several posters will identify threats that I will agree are more important. Yes, I did first do most of it as a comment, but I thought it would provoke some discussion. All below the fold:
Let's consider some serious threats to our national security:
The military-industrial welfare warfare state, which launches American wars in country after country after country, and believes that presidential diktats should replace our constitution.
The national security state, which reads every email, saves every web page, and wants to impose Stalinist travel paper requirements to use a railroad train or an intercity bus.
sea level rise and climate change due to atmospheric composition changes
emergence of a competing nation with an economy larger than ours and a manufacturing capacity far larger than ours -- steel production is a classic number.
re-invention of a de facto gold standard -- in the form of a Euro that individual nations cannot print -- by the EU
astonishing diminution of our position in science and technology, as witness relative national scientific citation rates
failure to motivate young Americans to enter science and engineering, as witness foreign student dominance of our university doctoral programs.
Runaway medical outbreak with the lethality and infectivity of SARS but a longer incubation time and this time from a major travel node;
Know-nothingism, this time in the form of global warming, denial evolution denial, antivaccinationism, trutherism, and birtherism et tedious cetera
Unexpected instability in the financial system, arising because it is too heavily interconnected.
Media circuses, notably coverage of serial killers, actresses, and athletic types -- if you do not believe me, try comparing with English.aljazeera.com
Potential of social unrest, on which I would note (i) repeat of the militarist suppression of the occupy movement, except this time the response is seriously violent, (ii) second recession etc leading to repeat of 1960s riots, though likely not from the same people, and (iii) national security state leading to serious violent opposition by people a bit smarter than the columnists saying this cannot happen, featuring, at a guess, computer hacking, assassinations, IEDs, attacks on media facilities and public utilities, pilotless drone attacks, etc.
Note I did not mention attacks by foreign nations we did not attack first, foreign terrorists, or the like.
Way below this I would put escalating college costs, because I anticipate that there are market solutions.