The attack in Sidney, Australia, comes at a time when several alleged terror plots in Europe have reportedly been foiled. The resilience of the ISIS ideology and ongoing concerns over extremist violence put an added burden on security officials to safeguard the many public events occurring at year’s end.

The terror attack at Bondi Beach on Sunday should be understood not only as an act of violence but as a stress test of Australia’s security, social and policy systems. The more consequential question is what this event reveals about the community assumptions that have quietly taken hold—and what follows if those assumptions are left unchallenged.

It is still not clear whether Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who murdered a West Virginia National Guard member in Washington, D.C., two weeks ago, was a terrorist – but assuming he is a terrorist, it would mean that since 1975, Lakanwal is the only Afghan terrorist to have murdered somebody on U.S. soil in an attack. In other words, the annual chance of being murdered in an Afghan terrorist attack on U.S. soil is about 1 in 14.2 billion per year. The annual chance of being murdered in a normal homicide is about 1 in 14,000 per year, approximately one million times greater.

There is no single official definition of terrorism in U.S. law, but all the different definitions focus on identifying violent or dangerous acts done with the intent to intimidate or coerce civilians or influence government policy. But more than redefining terrorism,National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7, issued on 2 September 2025 (NSPM-7) reorients the machinery of national security toward the policing of belief. The directive’s emphasis on ideological orientations –“anti-Christianity, “anti-capitalism,” and “anti-American” views –as indicators of domestic terrorism potentially jeopardizes First Amendment rights.

Progress in biological sciences and technologies will offer more opportunities to improve human well-being in the coming decades, but this progress may also lower barriers that are blocking bad actors from engineering pathogens to cause destruction. We need to identify potential preparedness measures for challenging biological threats.

Many people celebrated President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting “political debanking.” Yet, those same people seem to be silent now that the president has created new pressures to implement political debanking by effectively debanking the left. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the life sciences, accelerating breakthroughs in research, drug discovery and biotechnology. However, some of the AI tools that drive innovation can also be misused, posing significant dual-use risks.

A coalition of jihadist groups affiliated with al-Qaida have laid siege to landlocked Mali’s capital. For over a month, they have attacked convoys supplying Bamako with fuel, putting considerable pressure on the military junta that has been ruling the country for five years. After more than 10 years of civil war, will the jihadist blockade lead to the fall of the capital — and the country – to the jihadists?

Even by the sorry standards of Sudanese history, the recent atrocities committed by various factions in what seems like an endless civil war stand out. In the last three weeks or so, the levels of killing and sheer cruelty have shocked aid agencies and the international community.