Five Key Considerations on Terrorism and Political Violence
Abstract
The evolving threat of terrorism and political violence in the United States cannot be understood without observing technological change, institutional memory, and societal resilience. Recent discussions underscore five urgent considerations: (1) sustaining lessons from two decades of counterterrorism, (2) preparing for AI and drone-enabled battlefields, (3) confronting the misuse of commercial technologies, (4) maximizing open-source intelligence collaboration, and (5) analyzing the connection between counternarcotics and counterterrorism. Across all five lies a central truth: adversaries exploit division, while unity across government, private sector, and civil society is America’s most credible form of deterrence.
Introduction
Terrorism and political violence are not relics of the post-9/11 era; rather, they are evolving phenomena shaped by rapidly developing technology, shifting geopolitics, and domestic vulnerability. At The Soufan Center’s recent Global Summit on Terrorism and Political Violence, leaders from government, private sector, academia, and civil society underscored a recurring theme: adversaries thrive on fragmentation, whether in our institutions, our politics, or our digital ecosystems. What follows are five key considerations that when taken together, reveal both the complexity of today’s threat landscape and the urgency of unification across sectors of American society.
These are not just academic insights, they are warnings about how the democratization of violence, the misuse of everyday technologies, and the blurring of terrorism with criminal enterprises threatens to outpace current security frameworks. Analysis from the discussions held at the Global Summit on Terrorism and Political Violence point to a clear conclusion: unless the United States integrates lessons from past campaigns, adapts to emerging technologies, and strengthens trusted partnerships, it risks ceding strategic advantage to agile non-state actors.
1. Carrying Lessons Forward
While two decades of counterterrorism came at an extraordinary cost to the United States, those campaigns yielded hard-earned lessons that should not be discarded as strategic interest shifts toward great power competition. Leaders from the special operations community caution that great power competition and irregular warfare are not competing priorities but parallel challenges that must be confronted together. Neglecting one in pursuit of the other risks leaving the nation strategically unbalanced.
Today, non-state actors are exploiting technologies once reserved for nation-states such as drones, robotics, and artificial intelligence, blurring the old distinctions between terrorism, insurgency, and organized crime. What emerges is a more dangerous “even playing field,” where the key variable is not who the adversary is but rather how quickly and cheaply an actor can weaponize publicly available tools.
History warns of the dangers when rising and established powers collide, a dynamic defined by Graham Allison as the Thucydides Trap. Yet arguably the more immediate risk lies beneath the level of great power conflict. When violent non-state actors gain access to democratized technologies, they can destabilize regions and institutions, eroding stability long before states themselves ever move into direct confrontation. Institutional memory in this environment is not only about written doctrine, but also how successive practitioners are mentored to carry forward lessons from the past. While doctrine provides continuity, it’s ultimately the transmission of lived experience between generations that prevents costly relearning. Preserving and applying these lessons coherently ensures the nation is not divided between past and future priorities but prepared for both simultaneously.
2. The Future of Conflict: Drones and Artificial Intelligence (AI)
The future of warfare is already visible in contemporary conflicts and being shaped in real time through mass produced drones and AI-enabled targeting. Currently in Ukraine, bottom-up innovation has produced a “drone revolution,” with micro-factories turning out millions of low-cost weapon systems that impose disproportionate losses on a better-armed adversary. Meanwhile in Israel, top-down AI integration through systems such as “Lavender” and “Gospel” are using AI to generate targeting recommendations. While Israeli Defense Force (IDF) commanders retain final air strike authority, the very presence of AI in the targeting process raises urgent operational and ethical questions about autonomy, accountability, and the future role of human oversight in armed conflict.
For the United States, the implication is critical as the strategy built around a handful of high value platforms risks obsolescence in an era defined by cheap, attritable systems guided by AI. While this doesn’t mean abandoning carriers or fifth-generation aircraft, it does require rethinking force design, acquisition, and doctrine around scale and adaptability. The central question is whether U.S. institutions can accelerate procurement cycles, integrate software-driven autonomy responsibly, and train forces for machine-speed conflict. If adaptation lags, adversaries who embrace democratized technologies will hold the advantage, eroding deterrence and potentially reshaping the balance of power before the United States can respond effectively.
3. Extremism in the Digital Commons
The same platforms that empower commerce and civil dialogue also give extremists unprecedented reach and capability. What once required the resources of a state can now be improvised in a garage or coordinated on social media. This democratization of violence blurs the lines between terrorism, insurgency, and criminal activity, creating a threat environment where adaptation consistently outpaces regulation.
Extremist groups are advancing along the two reinforcing fronts of decentralized propaganda ecosystems and the rapid weaponization of commercial technologies. For example, the collapse of ISIS’s territorial caliphate did not end its influence; instead, affiliated networks such as ISIS-Khorasan Province (ISKP) have splintered and innovated, extending their reach across regional, generational, and ideological boundaries. According to The Soufan Center’s recent IntelBrief, social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram (along with the increased use of gaming platforms) are fueling youth radicalization, driven by algorithms that amplify emotionally charged and extremist content. At the same time, extremist groups are expanding their propaganda methods, turning to generative AI to produce content that mimics the authority of mainstream media outlets or well-known online personalities. For the United States, this dynamic poses a profound risk. While U.S. and allied partners do monitor and infiltrate many of these online networks, the sheer scale and adaptability of digital ecosystems allow adversaries to continuously exploit openings.
From a tech-policy standpoint, it’s essential to identify a pathway to preserve the benefits of open innovation and civil freedoms, while closing off exploitation. Proposals include stronger identity verification measures, anomaly monitoring, and embedded safeguards such as technical “kill switches” that can disable systems when misuse is detected. Yet technical fixes alone are insufficient, governance must anticipate these challenges rather than react. Perhaps most importantly, there must be willing collaboration between government, private sector, and civil society partners. Fragmented responses only multiply vulnerabilities whereas coordinated efforts deny extremists the gaps they seek to exploit.
4. The OSINT Opportunity
While the online ecosystem is vast, the same openness that extremists exploit can also expose them. Every propaganda post, recruitment message, and comment leaves behind a digital footprint. Open-source intelligence (OSINT) transforms this vulnerability into opportunity, enabling systematic monitoring at scale without the barriers of classification. Properly harnessed, OSINT can map networks, anticipate migration across platforms, and allow earlier interventions.
The challenge is not one of technological capacity but of collaborative structure. OSINT’s value depends on whether insights can move quickly enough to make a difference. If analysis lingers in academic, governmental, or corporate silos, the window for preemption closes. Conversely, when OSINT is shared openly between law enforcement, intelligence community, and private sector, it can provide the kind of agility adversaries themselves rely on.
The strategic opportunity is twofold: first, to use OSINT not only for disruption but also for deterrence. Second, to embed OSINT into a broader culture of trusted partnerships, where government, private firms, and civil society treat information-sharing as routine. Here too, unity is deterrence, and the faster insights can move across institutional boundaries, the harder it becomes for adversaries to weaponize digital spaces against us.
5. Borders at the Crossroads
In today’s threat landscape, the boundaries between counterterrorism and counternarcotics are blurring in ways that pose both strategic and ethical dilemmas. Recent U.S. military actions against suspected drug-trafficking vessels signal a shift away from law enforcement led interdiction, which prioritizes evidence collection and prosecution, toward overt military force.
While reframing cartels as terrorist organizations may seem intuitive, doing so risks escalation and entanglement in irregular warfare across Latin America. Sovereignty sensitivities are acute, and unilateral U.S. action could erode the very partnerships required for long-term success. At the same time, the synthetic drug market has changed the equation as these substances are cheap to produce, adaptable in supply chains, and highly resilient to traditional interdiction efforts.
Domestically, designating cartels as foreign terrorist organizations would also open a new legal front in which prosecutors could pursue material support charges under counterterrorism statutes, but courts would face difficult questions about evidentiary standards, jurisdiction, and due process when applying terrorism frameworks to actors traditionally treated as criminals. The result could be a flood of cases that strain an already burdened judicial system and blur the line between law enforcement and national security in ways that carry their own risks.
The strategic insight here is that while kinetic strikes might temporarily disrupt supply, they do not address the deeper social and economic forces fueling consumption at home. No volume of interdiction or targeted strikes will resolve the crisis if U.S. demand for synthetic opioids continues unchecked. Past approaches such as “Just Say No” campaigns of the 1980s to kingpin takedowns of the 1990s, show that neither deterrence by messaging or decapitation strategies alone can solve the problem. A coherent strategy must therefore combine strategic disruption abroad with emphasis on community-level resilience at home. In this sense, public health is national security, and treating it otherwise risks perpetuating a cycle that adversaries can exploit.
Conclusion: Cohesion Over Chaos
Across these five key considerations runs a central thread: fragmentation is the adversary’s ally. Whether through technological disruption, institutional distrust, or policy overreach, disunity creates openings for extremist actors and criminal networks to exploit. On the other hand, cohesion serves as credible deterrence.
Adversaries are betting on a distracted, divided America. To prove them wrong requires operationalizing unity, not as rhetoric, but as measurable policy, trusted partnerships, and resilient communities. In an age where division itself can be weaponized, unity is not only America’s greatest strength but quite possibly its most consequential form of deterrence.
