Congress held its traditional Worldwide Threat Assessment Hearing on Tuesday. According to the last two decades of testimony from our spy leaders, we’re all screwed.

WASHINGTON -- Capitol Hill celebrated the time honored tradition Tuesday of the annual World Threat Assessment hearings, in which the nation's spy chiefs -- often appearing annoyed at having to subject themselves to hours of congressional prodding -- parade in front of their Senate overseers and tell the American public how much scarier the world is this year.

This year, Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee that "[u]npredictable instability has become the new normal." And, he said, across his decades of service, the U.S. has never seen as complex of a threat an environment as it faces in 2016.

That, as it turns out, is pretty much the theme of every worldwide threat hearing since they started two decades ago. The world just keeps getting worse, the way the spies tell it -- it's complicated and complex and the "internet of things" is going to get really scary and also we're going to have wars in space. So here, the uncontrollable spiral of global destruction, chronicled over the last two decades of Worldwide Threat Assessment Hearings.

1994

CIA Director James Woolsey tempers his cautious optimism with understanding that the world is going off the rails.

“The lesson that I draw from my first year as director of Central Intelligence is that hope coexists with uncertainty, promise with danger.”

Steven Senne / ASSOCIATED PRESS

1997

Acting CIA Director George Tenet — who will go on to become CIA Director — says once again, things are complicated, and underscores Woolsey’s prior assessment that the world is going to hell.

“Mr. Chairman, as we survey today's world, core threats which dominated our national security for fifty years have ended or receded. In their place, however, is a far more complex situation ...We are convinced in looking ahead that there will be no relief from the sort of crises that appear suddenly and do not fit the traditional mold.”

Dennis Cook / ASSOCIATED PRESS

2001

Tenet appears once again, months before the 9/11 terror attacks, and coins the “never before” qualifier that has become central to the annual Threat hearings.

“As I reflect this year, Mr. Chairman, on the threats to American security, what strikes me most forcefully is the accelerating pace of change in so many areas that affect our nation’s interest...never in my experience, Mr. Chairman, has American intelligence had to deal with such a dynamic set of concerns affecting such a broad range of U.S. interests.”

Charles Dharapak / ASSOCIATED PRESS

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