The Signal in the Noise: The 2023 Threats and Those on the Horizon

Domestically, threats emerged from different corners of the violent extremist landscape, including from racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists, anti-government and anti-authority violent extremists, and homegrown violent extremists. In February, two American white supremacist violent extremists were charged with conspiring to destroy an energy facility in the Baltimore, Maryland area—with an aim to jumpstart a broader cycle of violent instability. In August 2023, authorities arrested a 17-year-old resident of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, alleging that “he was preparing to build bombs and select targets after being in touch with an al-Qaida affiliate in Syria.” As the war in Gaza continues, and as known terrorists around the world call for violent action in support of Hamas, American officials recently issued a warning that the spillover threat to the U.S. remains significant. 

In the United States, violent extremists faced considerable pressure in 2023. The lack of a major, high casualty terrorist incident in the United States last year is a testament to a diligent and dogged counterterrorism workforce. As of September, the FBI was conducting approximately 2,700 domestic terrorism program investigations—a number which has reportedly more than doubled since spring 2020. In that same period, the FBI was also conducting approximately 4,000 investigations related to international terrorism. Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers head Stewart Rhodes were sentenced to prison, 22 years and 18 years respectively, for terrorism-related crimes associated with the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. In addition, U.S. law enforcement and intelligence efforts prevented a number of terrorist plots, two of which are described above. 

Still, there is need for improved organization of the counterterrorism effort, and for tools suited to the present threat. In June 2023, for example, the Office of the Inspector General completed an audit of the Department of Justice’s approach to the domestic violent extremism (DVE) threat while safeguarding civil rights and civil liberties, finding that Justice Department has faced challenges in establishing a cohesive DVE strategy, limiting the domestic counterterrorism mission community’s capacity for necessary intra-governmental coordination. A major point of debate over the past year in the counterterrorism policy and law space has been the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a critical intelligence collection authority that enables the intelligence community to collect, analyze, and share foreign intelligence information about national security threats. It is both a highly-valuable and controversial tool. In mid-December, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to include a four-month extension of Section 702 with the National Defense Authorization Act it passed on to President Biden’s desk to be signed. This also extends the debate on Section 702’s re-authorization into the coming months. Matthew Olsen, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department National Security Division, said recently, “allowing Section 702 to lapse even temporarily would be catastrophic to U.S. national security and the safety of the American people. We cannot afford to be blinded to the many threats we face from foreign adversaries…like Hamas and ISIS” 

Doctor writes that these regional and domestic threat summaries offer crucial clues as to where vigilance will be especially critical as we enter a new year. Where should attention be focused? And where should the increasingly limited resources of the U.S. counterterrorism workforce be directed?

Four Terrorist Threats to Watch in 2024
A review of 2023 reveals a dynamic, diverse, and diffuse terrorism threat landscape. In the coming year (and beyond), U.S. national and homeland security is likely to be challenged by an assortment of terrorism threats. Some will be similar to those that have persisted for years. Others will be newly emerging. By design, threats in this latter category tend to reveal or exploit latent knowledge or capability gaps in a state’s security apparatus, allowing for a window of outsized impact. 

The risk of an external, coordinated attack on the U.S. homeland—a September 11 repeat—remains credible; however, the most probable violent terrorist threat to the U.S. comes from within. That said, the line separating international and domestic threats is becoming increasingly thin, meaning that much of the locally sourced terrorism threat in the U.S. in the coming year may stem from individuals or groups connected with cross-border extremist networks or may be inspired by terrorist activity abroad. While neither exhaustive nor ordered by their relative urgency, the following four cross-cutting categories of threats reflect some of the more notable anticipated dangers that are likely to drive the terrorism-related threat to the United States in 2024.

Inspired (and increasingly young) U.S.-based violent extremists 
In light of the thwarted attacks in the U.S. over the last year, it is clear that lone attackers—individual extremist offenders based in the U.S. who act outside the explicit direction of a known terrorist organization—present a daily challenge to intelligence and law enforcement practitioners. This threat is exacerbated by the lack of a clear profile. While many lone offenders in recent past have espoused a racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist ideology, this violent motley crew also consists of Salafi-jihadist inspired extremists, anti-government radicals, and others. They tend to radicalize in isolation, a process often supercharged online, and plan their attacks quietly. And they are hard to identify. 

Within this threat vector, there also appears to be a quiet but steady upward trend in young terrorist offenders. In October 2023, FBI Director Wray told the International Association of Chiefs of Police that “hardly a week goes by when I’m not briefed on a juvenile here in the United States motivated to commit violence by some foreign terrorist organization or other ideology.” Juvenile offenders can be inspired by foreign or domestic terrorist organizations, in addition to other violent extremist ideologies.

Nation state involvement in terrorism
The current intensity of global great power competition incentivizes states to pursue coercive influence through a variety of tools—including empowering militant groups to commit violent acts. It’s cheap, sufficiently effective, and offers sponsoring states some degree of plausible deniability. Historically, this is a well-established practice, but the recent surge of activity by Iran-backed militias against American forces, assets, and global partners indicates that this threat has reached new levels of maturity and complexity. Iran has cultivated an especially robust network of aligned militant proxies, but other U.S. adversaries, such as Russia, have also demonstrated their ability to leverage non-state groups and paramilitary organizations to threaten American security and interests. U.S. state adversaries may also try to manipulate or provoke attacks by U.S.-based extremists through information campaigns.

The democratization of technology
The increasing sophistication and rapid democratization of emerging commercial technologies raise new concerns for the future of terrorism, both in the near and long term. Most terrorist incidents involve creative and not-so-creative uses of rudimentary tech, such as radio transmitters. This issue warrants continued and resourced attention. But counterterrorism officials must also monitor the use of emerging technologies—which have the potential to be used as force-multiplying instruments in various terrorist activities. These include radicalization and recruitment; planning and conducting an attack; and financial operations, among others. And some emerging technologies have been key elements of recent terror plots and attacks. As emerging technologies become more affordable, reliable, and available, the threat they present will become more pervasive. Responding to these threats effectively will require continued exploration of how emerging technologies—such as unmanned systems, extended reality and related platforms, artificial intelligence, advanced telecommunication networks and the Internet of Things, and additive manufacturing—may be exploited to facilitate terrorist activities.

A critical mass of the “resistance against the oppressor” narrative
Over the past year this sentiment and slogan have been reflected widely across the violent ideological spectrum. While each element gives the accused oppressor a slightly different face—whether it be the Biden administration and public officials, federal law enforcement, corporate America, some combination of these elements, or others—there seems to be a convergence around this narrative. In the coming year, with public trust in the U.S. government near historic lows, we may see this narrative manifest in various parts of the violent extremist landscape. 

First, there is an enduring threat posed by sovereign citizen and militia violent extremists who view the U.S. government as unfair, unfit, corrupt, overreaching, or as some combination of these descriptors. These beliefs about the government have recently been connected to a marked increase in violent threats against public officials, including federal law enforcement and elected representatives. 

Second, environmental violent extremists seem to exhibit a growing appetite for destructive action. To be sure, in the coming year, the greatest volume of lethal terrorist activity in the United States will likely be driven by other segments of the violent extremist ecosystem. But escalating concerns about the deteriorating natural environment is galvanizing a growing coalition of activists who may be willing to use violence to incite fear to attempt to compel change in environmental policy or corporate activities. The energy, transportation, and agriculture sectors would be especially symbolic targets. A year ago, for example, environmental activist Joseph Dibee pleaded guilty for his role in two arson conspiracies seeking to destroy private and government animal processing sites in Oregon and California. 

Anarchist violent extremists may pursue more active violent resistance against perceived government abuse or harmful corporate activities. The ongoing tensions regarding the the $90 million “Cop City” construction project in Atlanta, for example, has brought hostile direct action back to the top of our news cycles. And amplified by local and international protests in support of Gazan civilians facing a lethal Israeli counteroffensive, open support for violence as a solution is gaining support in large cities and among younger Americans generally. There is a risk that this narrative will continue to seep from the fringe into the mainstream.

These four anticipated terrorism threat vectors highlighted above suggest that certain events may be gravitational centers for violent extremism in the coming year. 

The first and most fluid is the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. Not only have Hamas and other violent Islamist organizations intentionally aimed to inspire sympathetic attacks in the U.S., but divided domestic public opinion on the war has also led to mobilized protests and isolated acts of violence on opposing sides of the Israel-Palestine issue. As a result, the related terrorism threat to the United States may come from foreign terrorist organizations, homegrown violent extremists, or domestic violent extremists. There is an especially high risk that U.S.-based homegrown extremists will be mobilized by violent Islamist foreign terrorist organizations’ ongoing calls for attacks. Karrem Nasr, a U.S. citizen from New Jersey, was charged in December for attempting to materially support al-Shabaab, explicitly motivated by the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists may also work to target minorities, including American Muslims and Jews. 

At home, the 2024 U.S. presidential election may also prompt a surge of related terrorist threats in the coming year. The risks are conditioned on a number of factors such as the perceived competitiveness of the race, candidates’ rhetoric, and the perceived fairness of the election by American violent extremists. The risk of open violence between extremist collectives, such as anarchists and white supremacists, will be heightened during this season. Likely scapegoats and targets of violence are marginalized communities, such as LGBTQ+ persons as well as ethnic and religious minorities. With primaries running through July and August, the threat of election-related terrorist violence will likely be highest in the months leading up to the November election and those immediately following. 

Doctor concludes:

We enter the new year with “blinking lights everywhere.” The success of the Hamas terrorist operation on October 7 reflected, in part, a failure by Israeli authorities to see the signal through the noise. From a U.S. homeland security perspective, the terrorism threat in 2023 can be summarized as diverse, diffuse, and active. In 2024, we are likely to continue to see signs of continuing shifts in the terrorism landscape—such as the threats posed by lone juvenile offenders, the malign use of democratized technologies, and “violent resistance” narratives adopted across the extremist ecosystem. These changes should prompt a proactive reassessment of the assumptions that underlie conclusions—as well as how we move from assumptions to conclusions—regarding the anticipated nature of the near-term terrorism threat. With a series of catalyzing events in the coming year—most prominently, the continued war in Gaza and the U.S. presidential election cycle—it will be especially important to carefully consider which terrorist threats we should expect to endure and maintain an open mind to those which may begin to emerge.