Leading terror groups like al-Qaida and Islamic State, once pushed to the brink after years of military pressure from the United States and its allies, have found ways to recover and once again represent a serious and lethal threat, according to a top U.S. counterterrorism official.
The rare public assessment from the acting director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center comes just days before the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida terror attacks on the U.S. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people, and emphasized the impact of more recent terror strikes and of technology in galvanizing the terror landscape.
“We are today in the midst of another transformative moment in the global terrorism threat landscape,” said the NCTC’s Brett Holmgren, speaking to a counterterrorism symposium in New York.
“Groups like ISIS just a few years ago were at their nadir,” he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State terror group, also known as IS or Daesh.
But now the U.S. sees “a much more distributed threat, in part because of some of the counterterrorism pressures that have been applied,” Holmgren added.
“We see a real proliferation of the threat and really a shift towards, at least for al-Qaida, the center of gravity in parts of Africa,” he said. “You see, frankly, al-Qaida basically [was] kicked out of Afghanistan over the last few years, and they have a very small footprint left there.
“You also see the Islamic State and others that have been pushed out of their safe havens in Syria, where they are now deliberately operating in much smaller cells to evade detection,” he added.
As a result, the threat posed by al-Qaida and IS to the U.S. are not the same as they once were, according to Holmgren, echoing statements by other top U.S. intelligence officials that while the terror organizations and their affiliates have a desire to strike at the U.S., they are, for now, lacking the ability to do so.
“The capacity and the capability is not there,” Holmgren said, citing sustained counterterrorism pressure from the U.S. and its allies.
Instead, U.S. counterterrorism officials see al-Qaida and IS embracing the online environment to recruit and, in some cases, provide resources to individuals in the West to carry out attacks on their own.
Other nations, however, including some U.S. allies, are not as convinced that the threat from hotspots like Afghanistan and Syria have diminished.
A United Nations report this past July, based on intelligence from member states, argued that al-Qaida has thrived in Afghanistan, benefiting from the protection of the Taliban government while expanding its network of training camps and safe houses.
And U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia, said separately in July that the pace of IS attacks in Syria and Iraq is set to double compared to last year.
The political wing of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic forces has issued similar warnings in the past year.
But Holmgren and other U.S. intelligence officials argue the biggest danger, for now, is what al-Qaida, IS and other terror groups can organize online.
U.S. officials see signs that al-Qaida, IS and even Iranian-backed terror groups like Hezbollah have embraced AI, or artificial intelligence, using the technology to produce higher-quality and more targeted propaganda.
And while the use of AI may not be sophisticated, officials say there is evidence it has been effective, both in gaining followers and in using AI-generated voices and images, to help terrorist operatives evade detection.
Additionally, the new push by terror groups like al-Qaida and IS continues to be super-charged by last year’s October 7 Hamas terror attack carried out against Israel in which the group — designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., United Kingdom and European Union — killed about 1,200 people, with another 250 taken hostage.
More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed due to Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas. And a range of terror groups has seized on the conflict to call for attacks against the West.
The Hamas attack sparked a “tectonic shift in the threat environment,” said Rebecca Weiner, the New York Police Department’s deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism.
“The ripple effects that we have experienced since October 7, that we will experience over the years to come, they’re not really ripples. They’re waves,” she said, speaking at the symposium in New York. “I don’t really expect things to get too much better, unfortunately, in the months ahead.”
The NCTC’s Holmgren called the October 7 attack a “unique flashpoint.”
“That is, in our view, the most consequential event when it comes to violent Islamic extremism in terms of radicalization and recruitment since 9/11,” he said. “It’s really remarkable in how it’s united these really disparate groups, from neo-Nazis to al-Qaida to Iranian-linked groups.”
There are also fears the AI-enhanced propaganda and recruitment drives have been especially efficient at targeting young adults and teenagers.
“We have a whole new generation of homegrown violent, violent extremists, especially younger individuals and juveniles, to worry about,” said the NYPD’s Weiner. “The younger people who are radicalizing, who [are] unable to incorporate all this information that they’re receiving in a digital world and bring that into the 3D context in a way that’s safe.
