What Makes a Good Counterterrorism Strategy?

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report.

Here’s what’s on tap for the day: The counterterrorism landscape 25 years after 9/11, Germany’s reluctance to punish Russia more severely, and the United States and Iran continuing to **exchange fire. **

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Avoiding Whiplash

Twenty-five years after the 9/11 attacks, global jihadism is no longer viewed as the top terrorism threat to the U.S. homeland, and Washington’s foreign-policy priorities have shifted away from counterterrorism and toward great-power competition. But terrorism remains a challenge for the United States both at home and abroad, particularly as its adversaries increasingly look to exploit rapidly evolving technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).

At the Soufan Center’s Global Summit on Terrorism and Political Violence in New York City on Wednesday, John moderated a fireside chat with three top experts—who served and advised both Republican and Democratic administrations—on what a 21st-century counterterrorism strategy should look like. Much of the discussion focused on how Washington can best confront emerging threats.

The 9/11 Commission Report attributed the attacks, in part, to a “failure of imagination” from the U.S. government and intelligence community. Asked whether the United States is currently failing to imagine new terror threats to the homeland, Jen Easterly, who served as the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency from 2021 to 2025, recalled how the Boston Marathon bombers learned how to make explosives via a digital al Qaeda magazine—and related this to the capabilities that AI offers.

For instance, she said, imagine AI generating instructions, precision imagery, or even shopping lists for “crude versions” of cyber, biological, and radiological weapons and putting that at the hands of hostile nations, terrorists, and criminals. This is “the world that we are racing toward at world-class marathon speed,” said Easterly, who is now the CEO of RSAC, a leading cybersecurity conference. There have already been examples of jihadi groups, including Boko Haram, using AI to help with a range of activities, from producing propaganda to planning attacks.

**Partnerships and learning. **AI is far from the only technology that’s exposing counterterrorism vulnerabilities for the United States and its allies. Drones and cyberattacks are also major concerns, particularly in relation to state-sponsored terrorism amid the Russia-Ukraine and U.S.-Iran wars. Maintaining and cultivating strong international partnerships will be crucial to confronting such challenges, the experts said.

The United States can better understand the threats that it’s facing by communicating with international partners that have faced similar threats, said Chris Costa, who served as a special assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council during the first Trump administration.

“We have to share those lessons,” Costa said. “Our adversaries are absolutely learning creatures,” he added. “They are learning day in and day out. We have to continue to learn as well.”

With the Trump administration’s penchant for antagonizing allies via insulting rhetoric (or provocative maps), tariffs, and other policies, there are fair questions to ask about the potential long-term consequences for U.S. intelligence gathering and counterterrorism.

The White House’s counterterrorism strategy has also generated controversy, with its focus on going after “narcoterrorists” and left-wing groups (and no attention granted to threats posed by the far right). Experts have said that the strategy is at odds with reality and driven by ideology.

In the discussion at the summit on Wednesday, the experts emphasized the importance of having an intelligence-driven, non-partisan counterterrorism strategy.

Though Costa declined to directly criticize the Trump administration, he said that building “trust” with foreign partners requires having a counterterrorism strategy that is “based on facts, based on the intelligence.”

When asked whether the United States is being complacent in confronting jihadism as it increasingly focuses on other threats, Joshua Geltzer, who served as a deputy assistant to the president, deputy White House counsel, and legal advisor to the National Security Council under the Biden administration, said the “diffuseness of the terrorism threat … justifies speaking about a range of threats,” but that “jihadism’s still among them.”

“Whiplash is a really bad way to do most things, but especially counterterrorism,” Geltzer added. “Unfortunately, the adversary gets a vote. We need our resources to be well allocated.”

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**On the Button **

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

**Iran war escalates (again). **Iran and the United States continued exchanging tit-for-tat strikes near the Strait of Hormuz this week, with Iran claiming that it had targeted 10 ships and fired missiles at a U.S. military base in Jordan, a day after U.S. Central Command said it had destroyed five Iranian oil tankers. The *Wall Street Journal *also reported that Iran has begun producing ballistic missiles again, citing U.S. and Middle Eastern officials.

Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen, meanwhile, seized a key port in the Red Sea, potentially giving the Iranian regime control of a second shipping chokepoint in the region’s Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

**Berlin’s Russia problem. **Germany recently accused Russia of being behind an attempted drone attack at Leipzig airport. Berlin has taken a number of steps to punish Moscow, which has denied involvement, but some critics feel that its actions are far too tepid and won’t deter future acts of hybrid warfare or what some are calling “state-sponsored terrorism.” John and Sam Skove wrote about these developments, and how domestic political concerns are influencing Germany’s approach to this, in a new piece this week.

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**Snapshot **

Fighters loyal to the Houthis gather during a rally to recruit more fighters in Sanaa, Yemen, on Sept. 10.

Fighters loyal to the Houthis gather during a rally to recruit more fighters in Sanaa, Yemen, on Sept. 10. Mohammed Huwais/AFP via Getty Images

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Hot Mic

The FBI on Wednesday became the latest U.S. agency to release a cyber strategy, and it did so in an unclassified manner for the first time in the bureau’s history. The 17-page document expands on the Trump administration’s broader cyber doctrine, which advocates more offensive cyberattacks against U.S. adversaries—including in partnership with private companies. The FBI strategy “will direct all 56 field offices on how to pursue counter cyber efforts on behalf of the American people,” Brett Leatherman, the assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division, told reporters on the sidelines of a cybersecurity conference in Washington shortly after announcing the strategy onstage.

That includes joint operations with companies such as CrowdStrike and Microsoft, which are frequently targeted by nation-state hackers themselves. Asked by SitRep about fears that this would open up those companies to retaliation, Leatherman said that foreign nations “are using industry right now to hack us in ways that are outside the norms of cyberspace operations.” But, he said, the United States has “to do it in a way that is lawful. We have to do it in a way that protects organizations just like you protect our own personnel.”

Leatherman also told SitRep that which companies the FBI works with will depend in part on which systems are being targeted and who is best positioned to address a particular hack. “It’s opportunistic based on what the actors are doing in those environments and what capabilities the industry partners bring to that,” he said.

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Put on Your Radar

**Saturday, Sept. 12: **The two-day BRICS summit begins in India.

U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Ireland.

**Sunday, Sept. 13: **Sweden holds parliamentary elections.

The European Union hosts a two-day Arctic summit.

**Monday, Sept. 14: **The International Atomic Energy Agency general conference begins.

**Wednesday, Sept. 16: **European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen gives her State of the European Union address.

**Thursday, Sept. 17: **Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney addresses the European Parliament.

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By the Numbers

**37—**The percentage of Americans who say the United States is unlikely to elect a woman president in their lifetime, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center. That figure is up from 26 percent in 2023.

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Quote of the Week

“This is actual coercion, bullying, and aggression.”

—Philippine National Secretary of Defense Gilberto C. Teodoro Jr., holding up a note that he claimed China passed him onstage at a defense forum in South Korea that criticized a 2016 legal ruling on Beijing’s actions in the South China Sea by an independent tribunal in The Hague.

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FP’s Most Read This Week

• Trump’s Venezuela Oil Deal Is a Farce

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• Trump Has Peaked

  by Ravi Agrawal

• Welcome to the New Defense-Dominant World

  by Stephen M. Walt

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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Trump used his speech at the Republican Party’s midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, on Wednesday to pledge $5,000 to every adult American if the Republicans win the November midterm election and retain control of the House and Senate. “It will be called the Trump dividend,” the U.S. president said. As many have pointed out, keeping that promise would cost $1 trillion and, as it stands, would likely be illegal.

Correction, Sept. 10, 2026: This newsletter has been updated to correct a quote.