The Legacy of the 9/11 Attacks: Terror Threats Have Multiplied
This is just one dimension of a new era of extremists’ ascendency, which means Americans are not any safer. The domestic threat landscape is also beyond anything anyone would have imagined twenty-four years ago, with ideologies that are no longer just inspired by religion, policy, or politics. The number of hate groups is surging both at home and abroad, spurred in some cases by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel and its aftermath, and in other cases by extremist-populist views, anti-immigrant sentiment, and rapid technological changes that shape how we live.
Despite this, the government has cut back on programs aimed at countering domestic terror. For example, the U.S. Department of Justice has largely dismantled its domestic extremist unit, the FBI has cut back staffing and the resources allocated to domestic terrorism investigations, and DHS has curtailed the operations of its Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships and its Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program. This approach of not connecting the dots on terrorism threats has also made the United States less safe.
How did the U.S. government approach the ideological aspect of the terrorism threat after 9/11?
The lightning-fast victories and low casualties of the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 seemed to confirm what was then hailed as a “revolution in military affairs”—the belief that the technological superiority, doctrinal mastery, and superior equipping and organization of the U.S. military could handily defeat any adversary. But the terrorist and insurgent campaigns that emerged following the invasions demanded a different strategy and more appropriate tactics that U.S. forces were initially reluctant to embrace.
The reliance on kinetics ignored the fact that al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and subsequently ISIS were all transnational movements whose ideology of strident defense of “Muslims and Islamic lands,” as well as intrinsic narrative of grievance, resonated far beyond the field of conflict. While the United States was tactically successful in killing or capturing critical al-Qaeda, Taliban, and ISIS leaders and fighters, it never developed a sustained strategy to counter the terrorists’ ideological appeal, their ability to radicalize new recruits, or their continued capacity to energize sympathizers and sustain their movements.
Early on, there was a significant effort by the United States to pursue a soft power approach. This included a strategic assessment and understanding of how to build roadblocks on and offline so that younger generations would not get inspired by radical ideologies.
It’s worth noting that the government instituted a strategy known as Countering Violent Extremism that was designed to empower individuals, civil society, and local efforts to protect young people from the pull of extremists. This included promising programs in which former extremists worked directly with vulnerable youth. Programs like Sisters Against Violent Extremism helped mothers and other females in a family develop skills to identify changes in youth and address early signs of radicalization. Online-focused programs like Viral Peace helped to train local leaders to guide communities on pushing back against hate and violence through the use of social media. Unfortunately, far too little funding or personnel were committed to fighting the ideological war.
How can the United States effectively counter terrorism in the 2020s?
We can’t stop what we do not understand. U.S. power must be invested into how we understand what is taking place within societies. Extremists are recruiting regular people, and they do that by understanding what they need to do to persuade and appeal to how people feel. The U.S. government does not understand how potential recruits from the emerging generations—Gen Z and Gen Alpha—can be protected because it does not have “cultural intelligence” as part of its toolkit.
To understand the values of the next generation, whether in the United States or around the globe, we must identify and explore points of convergence and divergence. We can explore these nuances through the exploration of cultural intelligence—structured cultural data that enables the identification of patterns across seemingly disparate cultural signals—and use it to redesign a soft power dimension of the United States’ foreign policy strategy.
Knowing which specific audiences to target can help determine the method of engagement. During the Cold War, the United States did this through media with “free” radios. Today, it will require dozens of diverse efforts through cultural touchpoints including gaming, media, podcasts, sports, and streaming, because each demographic has micro “tribes” inside of them. Soft power innovation is a critical national security necessity, as our tools have failed to keep pace with the evolving global landscape.
What impact, if any, will new technologies like AI have on terrorism and counterterrorism?
Terrorists will certainly attempt to exploit artificial intelligence (AI) operationally to enhance surveillance and reconnaissance of targets and support their actual attacks. AI could also assist terrorists in their ongoing information operations and propaganda efforts, particularly through the use of “deepfakes” and other false flag techniques. Whether it is social platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Telegram, or Facebook, gaming platforms, or elsewhere, bad actors are working 24/7 to lure in new recruits. Their tactics are smart, fast, and successful. Memes, videos, influencers, poetry, music, games—whatever Gen Z and Gen Alpha are on, they are too.
But governments, given their capacity to harness AI on a large scale, could have an advantage in developing new ways to anticipate, predict, and defend against terrorist attacks and novel terrorist tactics.
It’s also possible that the most serious technological challenge the United States faces from terrorists is a more mundane and already existent one—the threat posed by unmanned aerial systems, commonly known as drones. Drones have already played a significant role in the war between Russia and Ukraine, as well as in various conflicts in the Middle East. Most notably, they were used in Hamas’s successful breaching of the fence along Israel’s border with Gaza on October 7, 2023, and in the cross-border attacks on Israel launched by Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and by Iran.
Yet the United States is completely unprepared to counter drone attacks that might target major population centers and critical infrastructure. Multiple bills aimed at countering drone threats are pending in Congress that await action, but none adequately address this rising threat. In December 2024, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency informed Congress that during the past year, there were 6,900 drone incursions from Mexico in just one six-week period.
What can the United States learn from Europe’s counterextremism approach?
The United States would do well to learn from the Digital Services Act (DSA), which the European Union enacted to make the online space safer. While it is not perfect, it demands far more from technology companies and holds them accountable. The Donald Trump administration has strongly opposed the DSA and Silicon Valley firms are unlikely to invent a better way forward—leaving Americans vulnerable. With the surge in hate and all kinds of extremist content online, the impact it has on how individuals respond to it, and the dangerous American hate ecosystem, the United States needs to get serious about preventing new generations from being inspired by their vile directives. Nearly twenty-five years after 9/11, we know the importance of identity and belonging vis-à-vis recruitment and radicalization.
Bruce Hoffman is Shelby Cullom and Kathryn W. Davis senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations. Farah Pandith is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former diplomat. This article is published courtesy of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). This work represents the views and opinions solely of the authors. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.
