• U.S. Domestic Terrorism Caseload “Exploding”

    U.S. national security and law enforcement agencies are battling what they describe as a “significant jump” in threats from domestic terrorists, many of whom are acting on their own and motivated by racial animosity or anti-government ideology.

  • The Role of Trust in Deciding Which Terrorist Faction to Join

    Research based on interviews with Irish Republican activists has shown that trust plays a greater role than ideology in how members pick sides when terrorist groups splinter. If commitment is primarily social rather than ideological, then counter-narrative or ideological “deprogramming” strategies may not help lure someone away from a group of individuals with whom he or she feels a close personal bond of trust.

  • Al-Qaida, Islamic State Group Struggle for Recruits

    As strange as it may sound, revolutionary Islamist groups suffer from recruitment problems as any other organization does. My research on Islamist terrorism has found that al-Qaida and its rival offshoot, the Islamic State group, have long had chronic difficulties replenishing their ranks.

  • Psychological Assessment of Individuals Linked to Radicalization, Lone-Wolf Terrorism

    In recent times, the phenomenon of lone wolf terrorism has been observed with the social assumption that a radicalized individual is only guided by personal, social, and ethnic reasons to commit an extremist act. But there is still much to understand about this phenomenon and improve the methods of investigation or psychiatric interventions.

  • How the Terrifying Evacuations from the Twin Towers on 9/11 Helped Make Today's Skyscrapers Safer

    One legacy of the 9/11 tragedy and the harrowing experience of those who successfully escaped the Twin Towers – the disaster was the most significant high-rise evacuation in modern times —  is that today’s skyscrapers can be emptied much more safely and easily in an emergency.

  • America Marks 20 Years Since 9/11 Attacks as Biden Searches for Closure

    The 9/11 terrorist attacks unfolded in less than two hours, killing 2,996 people. The war in Afghanistan, launched a month after the 9/11 attacks lasted 19 years, 10 months, three weeks and two days, with DOD counting 2.325 American military deaths. On Saturday, 11 September, President Biden will try to draw a line under these events, saying that a new era in American foreign and defense policy has begun. “But we will also see, as we always do, that one era does not end when a new era begins,” notes one historian.

  • Lessons from 9/11

    Beyond their painful human toll, the 9/11 terrorist attacks changed and continue to influence life in America in many ways. Harvard professors detail how the tragedy reshaped U.S. homeland security and foreign policy, study and treatment of PTSD, and crisis planning and management.

  • Declassifying the 9/11 Investigation

    President Biden says he will open up the government’s secret files about the plot, but will they answer the questions that remain?

  • Reflecting on September 11, 20 Years Later

    Steven Simon, a counterterrorism expert: “[R]esilience is futile if counter-terrorism policy devolves to yet another partisan tool. Of all challenges, terrorism is mostly likely to spur a dangerously excessive reaction while degrading the state of American politics if the two parties have not cooperated on building and implementing effective defenses. If politics are too broken to permit such preparedness, then a successful strike against the U.S. will be more likely, the partisan blame game more poisonous, and an appropriate response far more difficult to engineer.”

  • 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Debunked: 20 Years Later, Engineering Experts Explain How the Twin Towers Collapsed

    The collapse of the World Trade Center has been subject to intense public scrutiny over the last twenty years, prompting several investigations and spawning a variety of conspiracy theories. FEMA’s report was published in 2002, and NIST’s 3-year investigation produced a report which was published in 2005. While there have been critics of both reports, their explanation for the buildings’ collapse is widely accepted. They conclude it was not caused by direct impact by the aircraft, or the use of explosives, but by fires that burned inside the buildings after impact.

  • 9/11 Prepared Firms for COVID-19 Economic Effects

    Companies which experienced the financial impact of 9/11 were more resilient to the economic effects of COVID-19, according to new research.The research is the first of its kind to compare the events of the last eighteen months with 9/11.

  • Trial of 2015 Paris Terror Attackers Begins

    Twenty people involved in the November 2015 terrorist attacks in France – the largest terrorist event in France — in which 130 were killed and 490 wounded, went on trial in Paris Wednesday – six of them in absentia.

  • The Tel Aviv Plot

    Recently declassified information from the first-ever interrogation of someone presumed to be a senior al-Qaeda operative captured after 9/11 provides new insights into Osama bin Laden’s plans for a follow-up attack to Sept. 11. Bruce Riedel writes that, specifically, bin Laden was plotting a major attack in Israel. The attack was thwarted at the last minute, but information about it has been classified until now.

  • Violent Extremism in America: Pathways to Deradicalization

    Top law enforcement officials have described violent extremism — especially racially or ethnically motivated extremism— as the greatest domestic threat facing the United States. The Biden administration has requested tens of millions of dollars to fight it. Yet the research on what an effective strategy might look like has too often failed to engage the people who might know best: those who have lived that life and left it behind.

  • Massoud Vows to Fight on as Taliban Claims Victory Over Resistance

    The Taliban has taken over the Panjshir Valley, saying that with the defeat of the last hold-out of the anti-Taliban forces, the valley is now open for travel and supplies. In a twitter message, resistance leader Ahmad Massoud said his forces are still present in Panjshir and will continue to fight the Taliban, but admitted that “hard decisions” had to be made, with ammunition running in the face of furious enemy attacks.”