• DUAL-USE RESEARCHFirst Large-Scale Empirical Analysis of Dual-Use Research and Security Oversight

    Dual-use research refers to scientific research that has both legitimate civilian applications and potential security-sensitive applications. A new analysis of approximately 600,000 research papers reveals structural limits to single-country security oversight of dual-use research and identifies trade-offs that policymakers face when strengthening such oversight.

  • AI & TERRORISMWill Generative AI Fundamentally Change Terrorist Threats?

    By Andrew Glazzard, David Mcilhatton, and Paul Martin

    Does generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) represent a genuine transformation in terrorist capability, or are its risks being overstated within contemporary security discourse? Gen AI tools, particularly large language models, can improve the efficiency, accessibility, and scale of certain terrorist activities, but there remains limited evidence that they fundamentally alter the nature of terrorism or significantly enhance operational capability.

  • EXTREMISMUncovering Coded Antisemitism Online Takes Both Human Expertise and AI Automation

    By Wendy Melillo and Jeff Gill

    Hate speech can take a hidden form, using code words or terms understood only by like-minded people. Coded hate speech can evade online content censors and recruit people who might balk at more clearly discriminatory speech.

  • PUBLIC-EVENTS SECURITYSecurity Lessons from the Paris Olympics for the 2026 FIFA World Cup and Other Major Events

    By Alexandre Rodde, David Mcilhatton, John Cuddihy, and Shannen Benton

    Security lessons from the 2024 Paris Olympics can inform preparations for the 2026 FIFA World Cup taking place across the United States, Canada, and Mexico this summer. Paris demonstrated the value of intelligence-led counterterrorism, integrated multi-agency coordination, critical infrastructure protection, cybersecurity readiness, counter-drone capabilities, visible deterrence, and effective public communication.

  • EXTREMISMHollow‑Earth Myths and Nazi UFOs on TikTok Are Bringing White Supremacism into the Mainstream

    By Marten Risius

    Extremist content on social media does not exist in isolation. Instead, it lives in what researchers call “hybridized spaces”, where users move in and out of extremist discourse. In such spaces, borderline content, outright extremism, mundane trends and humor blend seamlessly – and participants may find their mainstream interests lead them to radical narratives.

  • AI & POLITICAL VIOLENCEBeyond Misuse: Artificial Intelligence, Grievance, and the Future Landscape of Political Violence

    By Yannick Veilleux-Lepage

    If we posit that AI is a whole-of-society transformative technology, then we can develop a theoretical account of how AI generates the structural conditions historically associated with the onset of political violence: AI is reordering labor markets, institutional authority, and the relational worlds in which people live, generating preconditions for political violence independently of whether violent actors adopt the technology themselves.

  • EXTREMISMOnline Hate Groups Sustain Their Messages By Repeating Powerful Stories or Routinely Adding New Allegations

    By Yu-Ru Lin

    Hate communities often flourish online for years, raising the question of how they persist. My research team has found that powerful stories keep members of a hate group galvanized, either by repeating the story over and over or by constantly adding fresh accusations and interpretations to it.

  • COUNTERTERRORISMI Reached Out to the White House Counterterrorism Czar for Comment. He Lashed Out on X.

    By Hannah Allam

    Sebastian Gorka accused a ProPublica reporter of writing a “putrid piece of hackery” about him. Here’s how basic beat reporting led to a broader story about the state of the U.S. counterterrorism mission at a critical moment.

  • POLITICAL VIOLENCELatest Attack Threatening President Trump Reflects Rising Political Violence in U.S.

    By James Piazza

    The events of April 25 underscore how dangerous this political moment is in the United States. For the past several years – certainly since Jan. 6, 2021 – the U.S. has been experiencing a period of increased political violence.

  • COUNTERTERRORISMThe Counterterrorism Czar Without a Counterterrorism Plan

    By Hannah Allam

    Current and former national security officials had warned that Trump’s redirection of counterterrorism resources toward his mass deportation campaign would diminish the country’s ability to respond should major global events inflame threats at home and abroad. Now, they say, the war in Iran has locked the U.S. into a showdown with a sophisticated state sponsor of terrorism at a time when U.S. security agencies have hemorrhaged expertise and leadership is in flux. For those who know the seriousness of the situation, the fact that the administration’s counterterrorism czar is Sebastian Gorka, a boastful, self-styled terrorism “expert,” is a source of keen anxiety.

  • POLITICIZING LAW-ENFORCEMENTBogus “Antifa” Designations and FBI Warrantless Access to Americans’ Communications

    By Ryan Goodman

    FISA Section 702’s “Back Door,” allowing access to Americans’ communications, is ripe for abuse especially in the context of the administration’s campaign to paint “antifa” as an international and domestic terrorist threat. Because it is amorphous and untethered to the facts, the “antifa” label creates a framework for bringing peaceful civil society organizations and everyday Americans exercising their right to protest into the Section 702 surveillance net.

  • TERRORISMWest Bank Violence Is Soaring, Fueled by a Capitulation of Israeli Institutions to Settlers Interests

    By Arie Perliger

    The dramatic escalation of settler violence in the West Bank reveals a profound transformation within Israel’s state institutions. Rather than serving as purported neutral enforcers of law and order, the military, Israeli police and the broader governmental apparatus have become increasingly aligned with — and at times directly complicit in — violent settler actions against Palestinians.

  • DEMOCRACY WATCHIsrael’s Death Penalty Law Has Little to Do with Criminal Justice and Everything to Do with Ethno‑Nationalism

    By Arie Perliger

    Under a law passed by the Israeli parliament on March 30, 2026, death by hanging will now become the default sentence for some offenses – but only in effect when the crime is carried out by Palestinians. Scholars of comparative authoritarianism have long identified the selective application of harsh criminal penalties as a hallmark of illiberal governance.

  • TERRORISMIran Will Retaliate in the U.S. We May Not See It in Time.

    By Troy Edwards, Bruria Friedman-Feldman, Vishnu Kannan

    Given Iran’s history of malicious operations outside of its soil, the concern about the Iranian threat is unsurprising. Long before this current conflict, Iran has engaged in terrorist attacks, targeted assassinations, cyberattacks, and information operations—and it uses a network of proxies and spies to amplify its reach, including within the United States. Historically, the U.S. has managed to thwart Iranian operations on its soil. Now, this administration may have us unprepared.

  • TERRORISMFrom Earth Liberation to Accelerationism: A High-Level Review of Fifty Years of Domestic Infrastructure Terrorism

    By Jesse Humpal

    An examination of 50 years of domestic extremist attacks and plots against U.S. critical infrastructure and infrastructure-adjacent industrial and commercial targets, shows that critical-infrastructure sabotage has appeared across ideologically divergent milieus, with two dominant clusters: environmental and animal-rights extremism (peaking in the late 1990s and early 2000s) and a post-2015 rise in far-right extremist infrastructure plotting, including a subset of cases that explicitly reflect accelerationist intent.