• Lines on a 1916 Map May Not Keep Syria Together

    The question most observers are now asking is: what if any form of stable central government might emerge from this lightning fast upending of the power dynamics in Syria? A possible lesson from history is that insurgent armies of diverse allegiance, religion and ideology are capable of capturing cities, but their ability to administrate them is less certain.

  • Why Bashar al-Assad’s Security State Collapsed So Dramatically in Syria

    While it may seem like the events in Syria in the last ten days came out of nowhere, the rapid fall of the Assad regime has a long history.

  • Smart Pressure: Conceptualizing Counterterrorism for a New Era

    When it comes to counterterrorism, the United States has been living through an inflection point. It wants to focus less on terrorism so it can place more emphasis on strategic competition, but key terrorist adversaries remain committed. The terrorism landscape and the approaches used by key terror adversaries have also been evolving

  • The Russia-Iran-Assad ‘Axis of the Vulnerable’ Is Cracking in Syria

    Starting in 2016, Russia and Iran, propping up the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Since 2020, Assad has presided in name over part of a fractured country. Now Assad does not even preside over his share of the partition. And his Russian and Iranian enablers, overstretched and isolated by much of the world, are not in a position to restore his paper rule.

  • The FBI’s Counterterrorism Division Turns 25

    November 21 marks the 25th anniversary of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, or CTD. In the time since its creation, the division has worked to counter the constantly evolving threat of terrorism at home and abroad.

  • Organizing for Innovation: Lessons from Digital Counterterrorism

    This article explores five factors that were key to facilitating innovation in Facebook’s approach to countering the Islamic State—and that I argue are more generalizable. They are: people, organization, legitimacy, tools, and collaboration. It also identifies lessons that can be learned from that experience.

  • AI, Bioterrorism and the Urgent Need for Australian Action

    Experts worry that, within a few years, AI will put that capability into the hands of tens of thousands of people. Without a new approach to regulation, the risk of bioterrorism and lab leaks will soar.

  • Support Dwindles for Cracking Down on Nonprofit Terror Financing

    The overwhelming bipartisan support a plan to revoke tax exemptions for nonprofits deemed supportive of terrorist organizations once enjoyed has dwindled as critics worry about constitutional overreach.

  • U.S. Domestic Terrorism Is Increasingly Motivated by Partisan Politics

    One of the most alarming trends in terrorism is the growth in anti-government extremism. “The heightened risk of terrorist attacks motivated by partisan beliefs does not just endanger individual lives but also threatens the democratic process itself, casting a shadow over open discourse and discouraging civic engagement,” Riley McCabe writes.

  • The Past, Present, and Future of Homeland Defense

    Homeland defense issues my be referred to as seams of ambiguity which doesn’t clearly define itself as either a defense or a law enforcement issue, and our adversaries have discovered the seam and they’re playing along that seam. And that’s what thrusts us into the gray areas that we’ve been talking about for at least two decades now.

  • Failure in the Sahel

    There may be an element of schadenfreude in watching Russia fail in the Sahel in a major play against Western interests and get caught in a mess, from which it can only extricate itself with a loss of face. But the problem is that the result of this failure has been to turn the Sahel into a center for extremist violence that risks spreading further.

  • How the Far Right Is Evolving and Growing in Canada

    Historically, Canada has always had a few active far-right groups, including the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and Nazis and fascists before the Second World War. But that was then. Now, the far right has a different strategy.

  • Hezbollah, Hamas Down but Not Out, U.S. Says

    Israel’s war against Hezbollah and Hamas, while inflicting considerable damage, has yet to strike a crippling blow to either of the Iran-backed terror groups, according to a top U.S. counterterrorism official.

  • Shia Militarism Upstages Salafi Jihadism in West Asia

    It is curious to note that the ‘jihadist’ tag is almost exclusively given to violent Sunni extremists. In fact, the Arabic term of “muqawama” (resistance) is now replacing jihad across West Asia. Deriving its resonance from the Shia ideology of resistance against the ‘oppression’ of Islam’s larger Sunni community, the term is now getting applied to rising pan-Islamist opposition towards the US-Israeli sway over the region.

  • Extremist Ideology Is Hard to Pin Down

    When it comes to extremist motivations for political violence, their varied sources and the role of mental health make it difficult to attribute a root cause and who might have been responsible for leading them down that road. Benjamin Allison writes that thelack of ideological clarity among those who commit acts of political violence is not uncommon.