Twenty-five years on

Global jihadism is no longer seen as the top threat to the U.S. homeland. Washington's attention has moved to great-power competition instead.

The threat didn't vanish

Terrorism is still a problem at home and abroad, and adversaries are racing to exploit fast-moving technology like artificial intelligence.

Three people who ran this

At the Soufan Center summit in New York, experts who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents laid out what a 21st-century strategy needs.

A failure of imagination

The 9/11 Commission blamed the attacks partly on the government's inability to picture what was coming. The question now is whether that gap has closed.

“failure of imagination”

Boston's bomb recipe

Jen Easterly, who ran CISA from 2021 to 2025, pointed to the Boston Marathon bombers learning to build explosives from a digital al Qaeda magazine.

Now imagine AI doing it

Easterly described AI generating instructions, precision imagery, even shopping lists for crude cyber, biological, and radiological weapons.

Racing toward it

She put the timeline bluntly. This is not a distant scenario being modeled, it is arriving now.

“the world that we are racing toward at world-class marathon speed”

Already happening

Jihadi groups including Boko Haram have used AI for everything from producing propaganda to planning attacks.

Drones and cyberattacks too

AI is not the only gap. State-sponsored drone and cyber operations are growing concerns amid the Russia-Ukraine and U.S.-Iran wars.

Allies who have been hit

Chris Costa, counterterrorism director at the NSC in the first Trump administration, said the U.S. learns fastest by talking to partners who faced the same threats.

The enemy studies too

Costa's warning was that the other side improves continuously, so standing still is losing ground.

“Our adversaries are absolutely learning creatures”

Insults have a cost

Antagonizing allies with rhetoric, provocative maps, and tariffs raises real questions about future U.S. intelligence sharing.

A strategy critics call ideological

The White House plan targets narcoterrorists and left-wing groups while ignoring far-right threats. Experts say it is at odds with the actual threat picture.

Facts build trust

Costa would not criticize the administration directly, but said partner trust depends on a strategy grounded in intelligence rather than politics.

“based on facts, based on the intelligence”

Jihadism is still on the list

Joshua Geltzer, a former NSC legal advisor under Biden, said the threat is diffuse enough to justify naming many dangers, jihadism among them.

Don't lurch

Geltzer's closing point: sudden swings in focus waste resources, and the adversary picks the timing.

“Whiplash is a really bad way to do most things, but especially counterterrorism”