New York Hasn’t Faced a Threat Like This Since 9/11

T wenty-five years after September 11, the United States confronts a paradox. We have built the most capable counterterrorism enterprise in the world. We dismantled terrorist networks, eliminated senior leaders, disrupted plots, improved intelligence sharing, and prevented another externally directed attack on the scale of 9/11. Yet terrorism did not disappear. It evolved.

That evolution is increasingly visible in New York.

The recent arrest of a woman accused of plotting to bomb the New York State Capitol in the name of ISIS is a stark example. According to federal authorities, she pledged allegiance to ISIS, constructed an explosive device, and contemplated additional attacks. The alleged plot was disrupted. That is a success — and precisely the kind of success that can inadvertently breed complacency. When counterterrorism works, nothing happens. The public sees another arrest rather than the attack that might have occurred.

We have both spent significant portions of our careers confronting terrorism — one as a federal terrorism prosecutor and the other in intelligence, special operations, and at the White House. What concerns us is not simply any single case. It is the changing character of the threat.

The terrorists who attacked America on September 11 belonged to a hierarchical organization with leaders, training camps, communications networks, international travel, and an elaborate operational plan. Those characteristics created vulnerabilities that the United States became extraordinarily good at exploiting.

Today’s threat is often different. An individual does not necessarily need to travel overseas, join an organization, or receive detailed instructions from a terrorist commander. Extremist organizations have learned to inspire people remotely and encourage them to act with whatever weapons are available — a vehicle, knife, firearm, or homemade explosive. Wars, civilian suffering, political polarization, and social grievances provide propaganda that extremist organizations readily exploit. This makes the threat simultaneously more diffuse and more difficult to detect.

At the same time, some of the advantages American intelligence and law enforcement developed after 9/11 are under pressure. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan substantially reduced our presence and human access in a country where terrorist organizations continue to operate. Technical collection and over-the-horizon capabilities remain important, but they cannot completely replace human intelligence, persistent access, liaison relationships, and understanding what is happening on the ground.

Technology presents another challenge. Encryption and rapidly evolving communications platforms make it easier for extremists to consume propaganda, find like-minded individuals, and communicate beyond the visibility that investigators once possessed.

None of this means Americans should surrender their privacy or civil liberties. The opposite is true: Maintaining public confidence and legitimacy is essential to effective counterterrorism. But as we strengthen safeguards against surveillance abuse, we must also avoid recreating unnecessary barriers between intelligence and law enforcement. One of the central lessons of 9/11 was that information collected but not connected can be almost as dangerous as information never collected at all.

The law must evolve as well. Federal terrorism statutes were extraordinarily effective against individuals who joined, financed, or acted at the direction of designated foreign terrorist organizations. But increasingly, the person moving toward violence may be self-radicalized and inspired by an organization without ever formally joining it or receiving orders from it. Recent court decisions underscore the difficult legal questions this evolution presents.

New York has authorities of its own. Six days after September 11, the state enacted Penal Law Article 490, recognizing terrorism as a distinct category of criminal conduct. A quarter century later, state leaders should examine whether New York’s laws and prosecutorial authorities remain suited to the threat we face today rather than simply the one lawmakers envisioned in 2001.

That review should extend beyond prosecution. When individuals repeatedly demonstrate both an intent and a capability for serious violence, New York’s criminal-justice, mental-health, and threat-management systems need lawful mechanisms to intervene before threats become attacks. Mental illness, personal grievance, hatred, and extremist ideology can intersect in complicated ways. We should neither explain away ideological violence as mental illness nor label every disturbed offender a terrorist. Good threat assessment requires following the evidence wherever it leads.

That same discipline should guide our political leaders. Jihadist terrorism should be identified as jihadist terrorism. Antisemitic violence should be called antisemitic violence. Violence motivated by other extremist ideologies should be described just as plainly. Mental illness should be recognized when the evidence supports it. Political affiliation should not determine whether we name a threat.

New York should therefore concentrate on several fundamentals: fully supporting the NYPD, New York State Police, Joint Terrorism Task Forces, and other agencies responsible for detecting threats; preserving lawful information sharing among federal, state, and local authorities; ensuring prosecutors have appropriate tools for increasingly self-directed terrorist actors; protecting vulnerable religious and government institutions; and strengthening threat assessment and intervention before dangerous individuals move from rhetoric to violence. None of this requires returning to the fear that followed September 11. Nor should every disturbing act of political violence be described as terrorism. Precision matters. So does perspective.

The United States is far better prepared for terrorism than it was on September 10, 2001. That achievement should give Americans confidence — but not complacency. New York survived September 11 and helped build many of the institutions that subsequently protected the country. Twenty-five years later, the challenge is different. The threat is more fragmented, more individualized, and often harder to see.

The enduring lesson of 9/11 is not that we should forever prepare to fight the last terrorist organization. It is that threats adapt, and successful institutions must adapt with them. The danger today is not that New York has forgotten September 11. It is that we may remember the last threat so well that we fail to recognize the next one.

Saritha Komatireddy served for more than a decade as a federal terrorism prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York and as chief of staff of the Drug Enforcement Administration. She is a candidate for New York attorney general. Christopher P. Costa served as special assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council 2017-18 and is executive director of the International Spy Museum.