As America approaches the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the threat from international terrorism may seem like a distant memory. But some experts believe the United States is more vulnerable to a horrific reprise today than it has been in years.

In the middle of the third decade after the strikes in New York and Washington that killed almost 3,000 people, upended American life and spawned two horrifically costly wars that changed the course of history, it is tempting to see global Islamic terrorism as yesterday’s problem: A dark chapter the U.S. and the West have largely overcome, thanks to a series of successful military campaigns, domestic intelligence improvements and the decimation of terrorist networks.

And there are indeed many experts, scholars and policymakers who make that case, citing Exhibit A: the absence of any similarly scaled attack ever since.

But there are two notable cases worth considering, neither of which generated a lot of headlines.

In December 2025, an Al Qaeda operative was sentenced to life in prison in New York after he received hundreds of hours of commercial flight training in the Philippines as part of a plot to hijack an airplane and fly it into an American building.

And in 2024, three U.S. citizens conspiring to mount a coup in the Democratic Republic of Congo were able to purchase a flamethrower attachment that fit on a drone — from a U.S company that charged them $1,499.

There are many veterans of the war on terror who say Americans are unknowingly living in a uniquely dangerous time when it comes to terrorism. They say that was already true — even before the second Trump administration — after President Joe Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and his focus on Russia and China. But some also say Trump has made things much worse by dismantling some of the most important counterterrorism defenses, including chasing out experienced and valuable counterterrorism hands.

Now, they say — with intelligence agencies hollowed out, FBI agents forced to support immigration raids, international alliances deeply frayed — the United States is more blind and less capable against terrorism than it has been in years.

“The foundation is still there, their ability to strike us is still there, and we have lost the focus on it,” said Christopher O’Leary, a former FBI counterterrorism agent and an MS NOW contributor. “The ideology has not died … We have fewer personnel, less expertise, fewer authorities and less interagency support … and our international partners no longer trust us.”

MS NOW contributor Marc Polymeropoulos, who hunted Al Qaeda terrorists around the Middle East as a CIA operator, added, “Terrorism is not a problem until it is, so you always have to be vigilant. The rank and file at CIA and FBI are absolutely dedicated to this mission. The question is resources and personnel. The experience that’s walking out the door is really, really worrisome.”

To O’Leary, Polymeropoulos and many others, the New York case and the flamethrower drone attachment illustrate how the aspirations of Islamic extremist terrorists have persisted across the decades even as new technologies present fresh avenues for attacking and killing American civilians.

Cholo Abdi Abdullah

Cholo Abdi Abdullah, a 34-year-old native of Kenya, joined al-Shabab, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Somalia, in 2015, according to court records. It was four years after Osama bin Laden was shot and killed by U.S. special operators. Abdullah received military-style training before being recruited to join al-Shabab’s “international scheme to execute a mass-casualty terrorist attack,” as prosecutors put it.

Between October 2017 and July 2019, al-Shabab paid for Abdullah to become a student at a flight school in the Philippines, where he spent hundreds of hours training to become a commercial pilot. At the time of his arrest in the Philippines in July 2019, he had completed all but one of the requirements for his commercial pilot licenses and had almost reached the “instrument rating” status required to get a job as a pilot with a major airline.

At the time of sentencing, then-U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton — now the director of national intelligence — said Abdullah admitted to the FBI that he was prepared to die in his terrorist attack.

“Cholo Abdi Abdullah was a highly trained al-Shabaab operative who was dedicated to recreating the horrific September 11 terrorist attacks on behalf of a vicious terrorist organization,” Clayton said.

The Abdullah case was a counterterrorism success story, involving crucial help from allies and highlighting America’s prowess at eavesdropping on communications. It’s one of hundreds of such terror plots that have been unraveled since 9/11.

But experts question whether today’s FBI is similarly equipped to detect the next one.

Loss of resources

According to research into federal records by former FBI agent Philip Fields, 1,139 FBI special agents — around 9% of the agent workforce — left the bureau in 2025, with an average of 21.8 years of federal service.

That included 407 agents in leadership positions. 

Two hundred thirty-two FBI intelligence analysts left, averaging 19.6 years of service.

This exodus has come amid a 5% cut to the FBI’s budget, leaving fewer resources for counterterrorism. But an even bigger diversion of resources, current and former FBI officials say, stems from Director Kash Patel’s mandates that FBI agents across the country devote significant portions of their time to supporting immigration raids and violent crime patrols by local police and the National Guard.

“I feel like we’re back in the 1990s, being complacent about the terrorist threat, dismissing Al Qaeda and ISIS.”

Bruce Hoffman, terrorism expert and Georgetown University professor

“Since the first day of his second term, President Trump and his Administration have dismantled critical national security agencies and programs and diverted significant resources and attention away from the fight against terrorism,” says a report titled “Failure to Protect: How the Trump Administration Gutted, Politicized, and Weaponized America’s Counterterrorism Infrastructure,” released in July by Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

“These actions are the result of a combination of ideologically motivated firings and realignment of personnel and the wielding of government resources — from grants to counterterrorism authorities — as a weapon against political opponents. The Administration’s actions have left Americans far more vulnerable to a potential terrorist attack, and left law enforcement officers and agents without the tools to protect our nation,” the report says.

The Trump White House disagrees, telling MS NOW that this administration has made counterterrorism a priority.

“All of President Trump’s actions — including making our federal agencies more efficient — have made our homeland safer and the entire administration more responsive to potential threats,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said.

“The Biden administration allowed millions of illegal aliens and unvetted Afghan nationals, including terrorists and other national security threats, into our country — proving that more people in government does not mean better outcomes,” Kelly said.

Matthew Levitt, director of the counterterrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that under both the Biden and the Trump administrations, it was clear there was an effort to rationalize the US counterterrorism infrastructure, which was competing with other priorities, like pandemic response.

“Counterterrorism was still a priority, of course, but one priority among many, like great power competition,” Levitt said.

Levitt said not enough attention has been paid to groups that may be growing and pose a threat down the line to the U.S.

“One concern is that as we rationalize our counterterrorism posture and focus most on those groups overtly threatening the homeland today, are we paying enough attention to groups that are growing and are dangerous, have capability, have intent, aren’t acting on it yet, but could very quickly, because we’ve been caught off guard many times before,” Levitt said.

Leavitt also noted that U.S. counterterrorism officials are being asked to do more to stop threats to the U.S., but with fewer resources.

“Hundreds of FBI agents have either left the bureau or been reassigned from counterterrorism to other tasks like immigration,” Levitt said.

“The men and women who are working counterterrorism across the various U.S. government agencies are incredible people and working really hard to keep America safe,” Levitt said. “But they are working within a heavily polarized and politically within a heavily polarized society, and that makes their job more difficult.”

Other experts who believe the FBI’s counterterrorism capabilities are as weak as they have been in many years note that the CIA and other intelligence agencies have lost key personnel, while others have been diverted to focusing on Latin American drug cartels.

And they say Al Qaeda and ISIS, though set back by decades of military pressure, have metastasized through franchises that are now thriving in the world’s ungoverned spaces, including Somalia and the Sahel region of Africa — a global hotbed of violent extremism where a number of insurgent groups have their origins.

“I feel like we’re back in the 1990s, being complacent about the terrorist threat, dismissing Al Qaeda and ISIS,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert and professor at Georgetown University.

And the dangers have multiplied, he said — more Al Qaeda and ISIS offshoots, plus adversaries including Iran, Russia and North Korea that could engage in asymmetric attacks.

“We have a lot more threats today than we did 25 years ago to concern ourselves with,” Hoffman said.

FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson denied the bureau’s capabilities have been diminished, saying, “This is false and disconnected from reality — the FBI’s counterterrorism work is as successful as it ever has been. Over the last 18 months we’ve disrupted over 1,000 terrorists, up 19%, conducted 4,200 Foreign Terrorist Organization-related arrests, up 42%, and disrupted 55 FTO’s, up 96%. Last December the FBI disrupted four different terror plots in four states in one month alone – and this summer we worked with partners to stop a plot against UFC 250 before it could get off the ground.”

“Under the leadership of the Trump administration, we’re moving faster, more decisively, and more effectively to crush threats of terrorism everywhere — and our success speaks for itself,” he added.

But a former senior FBI official told MS NOW that the lessons of 9/11 are being forgotten and that the continuing loss of experienced FBI agents endangers the country.

The former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing concerns about retaliation, said large numbers of agents with national security experience continue to leave the bureau. The former official said current agents have told him that agents are rapidly leaving both large and small field offices.

The Trump administration’s claims of high recruitment levels are false, the former official said. The bureau is both losing experienced agents and struggling to recruit new ones. They said it will take years for the bureau to recover.

“I think it’s even worse than people said,” the former official said, referring to the exodus of agents. “It’s really bad.”

The Iran factor

“The FBI believes Iran is capable of a variety of attack options against U.S. targets,” top bureau official Robert Wells told Congress in 2024. “It’s clear the Iranians are determined to carry out attacks in the United States.”

Wells has since left the FBI.

U.S. officials fear that Iran is far more capable than ISIS or any Al Qaeda offshoot of orchestrating a complex terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland.

Officials say the Iranian regime has never been more motivated to strike, after a U.S. military campaign that killed its senior leadership.

“Iran has proven capable of developing lethal operations against Americans at home and abroad and probably will attempt to pursue such efforts again,” according to an unclassified U.S. intelligence threat assessment earlier this year.

Just last month, officials in Minnesota detected a cyberattack on three dozen municipal water systems in the state; the attacks eventually hit other states across the country. A U.S. official with knowledge of the matter told MS NOW it was likely the work of Iranian hackers.

The Sahel factor

“If you look at the Sahel, you have a collection of failed states, semi-failed states and ungoverned spaces, and they are spreading like wildfire over there,” said O’Leary, the former FBI counterterrorism agent. “The French have withdrawn and the U.S. isn’t doing much.”

For the 12 months ending around mid-2026, the Africa Center for Strategic Studies counted about 9,900 deaths associated with militant Islamist violence in the Sahel, a region sitting just south of the Sahara Desert. That was 42% of the total in Africa — more than Somalia. The center estimates that there have been nearly 49,000 deaths in the Sahel since 2022.

While some experts say the jihadists in the Sahel have shown little inclination or ambition to attack the U.S. homeland, American military officials are concerned that that could change at any moment.

“ISIS leadership is [in] Africa. Al Qaeda’s economic engine is in Africa. Both of these groups share the will and intent to strike our homeland,” Gen. Dagvin Anderson, commander of U.S. Africa Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in May.

Asked whether AFRICOM can disrupt those threats, he replied, “That is very difficult for us to ascertain in the Sahel right now given our limited posture.”

If international terrorists do attempt to strike the U.S. homeland, counterterrorism experts say new technologies such as artificial intelligence and drones have created new options for mass violence.

The flamethrower example is telling.

The flamethrower

A quick online search will bring you to the website of an American company selling flame throwers, specifically offering the TF-19 Wasp flamethrower drone attachment for “industrial, agricultural, and entertainment applications.” The company boasts the device has a 30-foot range, a 1-gallon fuel capacity and 100 seconds of firing time.

Current and former counterterrorism officials have long pointed to drones as potential mass casualty weapons, and this is the sort of wrinkle that deeply concerns them.

Last year, the Justice Department charged a group of American men from Utah with attempting to mount a coup in the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to court papers, two of them purchased the TF-19 Wasp flamethrower drone attachment from a U.S. company, as well as the required heavy-lift DJI drone to fly it. They then practiced installing it at a residence in Utah before transporting the weapon to Africa, according to prosecutors.

According to the criminal complaint, the would-be rebels — who were charged in December 2025 and are awaiting trial in the U.S. — “intended to attach a flamethrower device to a drone and use it as an incendiary device to light people on fire.”

Those facts formed the basis for prosecutors to charge the men with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction.

The flamethrower attachment seems particularly menacing, but U.S. officials fear drones could be used in a variety of potential mass casualty attacks, carrying bombs, poison gas or even biological weapons.

The FBI told Congress in a threats report last year that inexpensive small drones create “real risks to public safety and national security from criminals, foreign intelligence services, and terrorists.”

The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies have limited tools at their disposal to defend against this threat.

Many of the technologies the military uses to defeat or jam drones overseas cannot be used on American soil, for fear of interfering with commercial aircraft. Until recently, only the FBI and DHS were allowed to take down drones. A new federal law extended that authority to other police agencies. But experts agree that American counterdrone technology is in its infancy and may not be capable of defeating a determined terrorist attack using multiple drones.

A recent report by the Congressional Budget Office showed that even the U.S. military is not poised to defend all of its installations from drone attacks, let alone civilian installations in the United States, where many of the military counterdrone technologies are off limits.

In July, some of the most experienced voices in counterterrorism testified before the House Intelligence Committee on the next generation of threats. Seth Jones, president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted that drones — enabled and guided by artificial intelligence — are on that list.

“We have a huge challenge in the advances of technology, including from drones and AI-enabled drones. A huge threat and an inability right now to find a practical solution,” Jones told the committee.

Looking ahead

The same committee released a review last month of the original 9/11 Commission Report. That report, released in 2004, served as a comprehensive autopsy of the attack, detailing the failings in counterterrorism that had led to it. But the report also became a road map for reform across intelligence agencies, much of which is still employed today.

In the August report, which serves as a “retrospective assessment and a forward-looking roadmap,” the committee makes recommendations that it says require “whole-of-government cooperation, strong congressional oversight, and a well-equipped Intelligence Community that is both effective and accountable.”

“Our nation’s adversaries are actively exploiting our free and open society and are working in imaginative ways to achieve their strategic objectives,” the report reads.

“We must learn from our past and not lose sight of this reality.”

David Rohde and Casey Gannon contributed to this reporting.

The post 25 years after 9/11, some experts believe the U.S. has let its guard down appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.