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As a former military intelligence officer, serving in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), I monitored foreign threats to the US homeland, identifying adversary plans, intentions, and capabilities that could harm Americans. I predicted the Russian invasion of Ukraine more than a year before it happened. In March, in my Fox News Digital article titled “Ignore FBI Director’s Urgent Warning About Terrorist Threats at Your Own Risk,” I predicted terrorist attacks that would occur within the US homeland, such as those that occurred on New Year’s Day in New Orleans and Las Vegas.
Here are three main reasons why we are likely to face more terrorism in America this year. This time it will be something we haven’t seen before.
Bureaucratic inertia stifles defense against threats
Bureaucratic inertia prevents government agencies from acting on threats they themselves identify and warn about. During last year’s annual congressional briefing on the top “global threats” facing the United States, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that terrorist threats have reached “an entirely different level” from the already aggravated situation. Wray mentioned the “elevated” threat posed by “domestic violent extremists, who are inspired by jihadism, extremists, domestic violent extremists, foreign terrorist organizations and state-sponsored terrorist organizations.”
He also singled out violent gangs and smugglers with ties to ISIS who enter the country through the southern border. It was in March 2024.
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New Orleans police and federal agents are investigating a terrorist attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, Wednesday, January 1, 2025. (Chris Granger/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)
Wray’s concerns, however, did not translate into a heightened security posture to be adopted by intelligence, security and law enforcement agencies that could have averted the tragic events in New Orleans and Las Vegas and saved American lives.
Millions of migrants, mostly men of military age, including criminals, terrorists and foreign intelligence operatives, continued to flow into our country. A very dangerous transnational criminal group from Venezuela, The Aragua trainas of November, it has established operations in 16 states, including New Jersey and New York. They attack Americans, at will.
To date, the border has not been fully secured, allowing millions of illegal crossings, straining local law enforcement and making communities insecure. The notorious free mobile app called CBP One app is still widely available on the Apple App Store and Google Play. Aliens of all kinds who want to enter the United States use it to schedule remote interviews to qualify for asylum and entry into our country. This is all thanks to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Has the FBI implemented any of the 18 recommendations of the 2012 William Webster Commission to improve and detect terrorist threats? What action, if any, was taken after Wray’s warning in March? These are fair questions that Americans can ask their government. Especially considering we’ve had two assassination attempts on President-elect Trump, mysterious drone flights over our military installations, and rampant crime committed by members of a transnational criminal group—all since March.
FBI Director Christopher Wray arrives to testify during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on June 4, 2024 in Washington, DC (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Threats ‘over the horizon’ seemingly ignored
There is a whole new threat looming over the horizon. And it hasn’t even made it onto the government’s list of obligations yet. Drone warfare is the best example of such an emerging threat, fueled by the democratization of high-tech capabilities such as unmanned aerial systems (UAS). UAS is the general name for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV – aircraft or drone), but it encompasses the entire operational system of the UAV, including the ground control station (which houses the pilot who operates the UAV); communication hardware (connecting UAV and controller); payload (cameras, sensors, explosives, etc.); and flight planning software.
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UAS are easily the most dangerous threat our homeland has ever faced for three reasons. They are commercially available, relatively inexpensive, easy to maneuver, extremely difficult to identify and characterize, and have an almost unlimited carrying capacity. You can equip the drone with a non-kinetic payload, such as a sensor or camera, or a kinetic or lethal capability, such as an explosive device, bomb, or WMD (Chemical, Biological, Radiological).
A masked Islamic State terrorist holds an ISIS flag in 2015. (History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Originally used by our military for surveillance purposes and later as a counter-terrorism tool to take down terrorist leaders, drones are now widely available and used, including by terrorists. Drone warfare is being operationalized and perfected in Russian-Ukrainian conflict and in combat zones in the Middle East.
Drones are the perfect ability to target soft targets and crowds, which the homeland is full of. Here’s what a 2023 study commissioned by the US Department of Homeland Security stated: “The growing use of UAS in both private sector and government operations likely means more people will have access to these systems and the expertise to operate them in the future, making the use of UAS for attacks increasingly likely.” The study highlighted the fact that “UAS can also give the operator the ability to operate anonymously and a greater chance of avoiding detection and capture.” This characteristic can be very attractive to terrorists as well as state actors who are adversaries of the US.
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Back in 2018, the US government knew about the threat of drones. Kirstjen M. Nielsen, then-Secretary of Homeland Security, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, “The US is unprepared for the growing threat of drones,” and was helpless against them. She even revealed that “terrorist groups like the Islamic State want to use armed drones against our homeland and American interests abroad.”
And yet, to this day, we are vulnerable to drone attacks. It became very apparent to everyone how helpless we still are in the face of such attacks during the recent mysterious drone incidents. For weeks since November, unidentified drones have reportedly flown over military sites and critical infrastructure facilities in multiple East Coast states, including New Jersey and New York, with neither federal nor state security agencies stopping them. The White House and the Pentagon have even admitted that they do not know the origin of these drones.
A Ukrainian air intelligence serviceman carries a drone in the direction of Bakhmut, Ukraine, on May 10, 2024. (Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The politicization of intelligence services leads to the wrong goals
The entire government security apparatus is now politicized, shifting its focus from foreign threats, such as terrorists, to American dissidents. Instead of identifying and stopping those hell-bent on harming Americans, our government agencies target their own citizens who oppose the spread of awakened ideologies in our society. Catholics, whose religious beliefs prevent them from accepting things like transgenderism, and parents, who protest against the brainwashing of their children in left-wing ideologies, such as critical race theory (CRT), that are engulfing our public schools, are now seen by government agencies as domestic threat actors.
This disgusting politicization comes from the very top. President Biden has minimized the terrorist threat to the homeland, including that coming from ISIS. In June 2021, Biden said: “According to the intelligence community, white supremacist terrorism is the deadliest threat to the homeland today. Not ISIS, not al Qaeda – white racists.” Is it any wonder that the FBI’s top agent initially dismissed any links between the New Orleans shooter and terrorism or ISIS? This is despite the fact that the attacker, 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar from Texas, had an ISIS flag on his Ford truck, with which he deliberately rammed into a group of civilians who were celebrating the New Year in the French Quarter, killing 14.
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army medic convicted in the shooting deaths of 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5, 2009. (U.S. Government Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences via Getty Images)
Similarly, the FBI failed to identify Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, who shot and killed 13 people and wounded 31 at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009 as being involved in terrorist activities—despite the fact that Hasan was in regular contact with the known terrorist, Anwar al-Awlaki. In his correspondence, Hasan, an American-born Muslim, discussed suicide bombers and whether it was permissible to “kill innocents for a valuable target.”
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According to a 2012 report by the William Webster Commission on the FBI, Counterterrorism, Intelligence, and the November 5, 2009 events at Fort Hood, Texas, FBI agents with the San Diego Joint Terrorism Task Force were aware that Hasan had contacted al . -Awlaki many times before the shooting. However, the FBI’s Washington field office determined that Hasan “was not involved in terrorist activities.” The FBI therefore did not issue an alert about Hasan’s terrorist ties to the Department of the Army and the Pentagon, both of which classified the incident as workplace violence rather than an act of terrorism. The 2012 report made 18 formal recommendations to the FBI to improve and detect terrorist threats.
The new Trump administration has promised to depoliticize government agencies. The appointment of Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat, as Director of National Intelligence as part of a Republican administration is a step in the right direction. Intelligence should be non-partisan. Intelligence officials should not be afraid to speak truth to power even if their line of analysis conflicts with the policies of the current president. But eradicating government inertness will be a much bigger task. Let’s see if DOGE can get government bureaucrats to put up defenses against the drone threat and save Americans.
