Not China, not Russia, not North Korea, not Iran, not terrorists...According to Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the "single biggest threat" to American national security is the US national debt, which is either $8.85 trillion (public debt), $13.4 trillion (total national debt), $20 trillion (total debt including GSE debt), or $124 trillion (total debt including unfunded obligations), depending on one's definition of the word "debt." And as Zero Hedge has long been warning, the imminent increase in interest rates (sooner or later), will eventually put the country in an untenable funding position. "Tax payers will be paying around $600 billion in interest on the national debt by 2012, the chairman told students and local leaders in Detroit." The Chairman (the real one, not his pale imitation over at Marriner Eccles) politely forgot to add that the successful rolling of nearly $600 billion in debt per month is likely an even greater threat to national security.

More from Mike Mullen, commenting on the upcoming annual interest payment forecast:

“That’s one year’s worth of defense budget,” he said, adding that the Pentagon needs to cut back on spending.



“We’re going to have to do that if it’s going to survive at all,” Mullen said, “and do it in a way that is predictable.”



He also called on the defense industry to hire veterans and become more robust in the future.



“I need the defense industry, in particular, to be robust,” he said. “My procurement budget is over $100 billion, [and] I need to be able to leverage that as much as possible with those [companies] who reach out [to veterans].”

And since debt is now the functional equivalent of a nuclear bomb, it behooves readers to know just who the biggest threats to US national security are:

We hope it is appreciated promptly enough, that the entity highlighted in red can just as easily become the biggest domestic threat to national security, should the interests it represents, both political and financial, not get their way.

h/t Robert