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3 weeks ago | 
csis.org | Daniel Byman |Alexander Palmer |Riley McCabe |Skyeler Jackson
Terrorism remains a threat to U.S. citizens, assets, and interests despite the national security community’s decreasing focus on counterterrorism. In 2025, domestic terrorism represents a greater threat to the United States than do international terrorist organizations. Most domestic terrorist attacks in the United States are carried out by lone actors or small groups who believe in a wide range of ideologies, such as white supremacy, partisan extremism, and Salafi-jihadism.
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Jan 21, 2025 | 
csis.org | Daniel Byman |Alexander Palmer |Skyeler Jackson
The IssueDespite the recent attack in New Orleans, longer-term trends suggest that jihadist terrorism in the United States is not resurgent. The number of jihadist plots and attacks in the United States has been low since the territorial defeat of ISIS. The average lethality of jihadist terrorist attacks has also fallen since the peak of the caliphate.
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Aug 8, 2024 | 
csis.org | Alexander Palmer
The killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31 has pushed Iran’s leaders into a dangerous corner. Tehran has few options but to escalate the conflict, as it did with its attack against Israel in April. That attack led to a chorus of statements labeling Iran’s actions as “destabilizing,” arguing that it was part of a malign regional strategy, and calling for a punitive Israeli counterattack.
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Mar 6, 2024 | 
thehill.com | Alexander Palmer
On Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a plan for the administration of Gaza following IDF military operations in the territory. Netanyahu’s plan consists of four pillars: Israeli “security control” in Gaza, administration via Palestinian technocrats, tight control over Gaza’s borders, and reconstruction funded by an international coalition. The vague plan raises several worrying questions that must be answered if security in the region is to be improved.
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Mar 6, 2024 | 
csis.org | Seth Jones |Alexander Palmer
China’s defense industrial base is operating on a wartime footing, while the U.S. defense industrial base is largely operating on a peacetime footing. Overall, the U.S. defense industrial ecosystem lacks the capacity, responsiveness, flexibility, and surge capability to meet the U.S. military’s production and warfighting needs. Unless there are urgent changes, the United States risks weakening deterrence and undermining its warfighting capabilities.
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Oct 12, 2023 | 
foreignaffairs.com | Kenneth M. Pollack |Daniel Byman |Alexander Palmer |Ebenezer Obadare
“We are at war,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced as his country struggled to make sense of the ghastly surprise attack by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on October 7. In the wake of the killing of over 1,000 Israeli citizens, Israeli forces pushed south and Netanyahu called up 300,000 reservists. The Israeli military has now cleared the towns and villages assailed by Hamas fighters and has set its sights on the Gaza Strip—the enclave ruled by Hamas since 2007.
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Oct 11, 2023 | 
foreignaffairs.com | Matthew Levitt |Daniel Byman |Alexander Palmer |Elliott Abrams
Hamas’s attack on October 7 took nearly everyone by surprise—most devastatingly, Israel, which struggled to respond as hundreds of fighters streamed across the border from the Gaza Strip to unleash a campaign of terror. But in the months before the attack, Hamas had in fact warned that a conflict could be coming.
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Oct 10, 2023 | 
csis.org | Daniel Byman |Alexander Palmer
On October 7, Hamas launched a multipronged assault on southern Israel, killing hundreds of people and taking as many as 150 hostages. Israel responded with airstrikes that have also killed hundreds, a full blockade of the Gaza strip, and a declaration of war. So far, more than 1,600 people have been killed and thousands more wounded in the fighting.
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Oct 9, 2023 | 
foreignpolicy.com | Daniel Byman |Alexander Palmer |Tal Trachtman Alroy
Israel’s southern communities woke up to a surprise attack on Saturday by heavily armed Hamas militants who infiltrated the country by land, sea, and air. The country’s embattled prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared Israel was at war, calling up thousands of reservists and responding with aerial attacks on Gaza. As analysts have pointed out in FP, the fact that Hamas has taken hostages significantly complicates Israel’s response. How did we get here? What happens next?
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Oct 8, 2023 | 
news.com.au | Alexander Palmer |Jamie Seidel
Intelligence failure? Government inaction? Or the natural consequence of months of political crisis? Israel is struggling to come to grips with how its military – one of the most advanced in the world – was so comprehensively surprised. First came the drones. Taking a page from Ukraine’s giant-killing tactics in resisting the Russian invasion, Palestine’s Hamas group deployed waves of small commercial drones to attack Israeli observation posts across the occupied territories.
