What are the Successes & Failures of American Counterterrorism Policy? (Future Security Forum 2026)

And now I want to introduce uh Megan Keeler um who's the chief operating officer of the global soft foundation. We heard a little bit um Megan is uh the yin to Stu Braden's Yang. Uh maybe I don't know which one >> they compliment each other. That's right. >> Just just a little a sentence about the Global Special Operations Foundation. Um, as as Stu mentioned, um, he they asked me to be chairman 10 years ago and I was like, I'm totally underqualified. I'm not the right guy for this. Uh, but has gone from basically Stu and Megan into now running um the biggest global special operations uh, meeting in the world. 25,000 people take over downtown Tampa and it's thank to Megan and to Sue that that happens. So, over to you, Megan. >> Don't remind me of what's on my horizon, Peter. Geez. Um well, it's my absolute pleasure and privilege to moderate this panel. Um what are the successes and failures of American counterterrorism policy? We have a stellar slate of speakers. We are down one. You might have noticed uh Javed could not be here, but don't worry, we um we are fully stocked. Um they also were very fortunate in that they all know each other and worked with each other. Um so that's very nice and I think will lend to a great conversation. We're going to talk about the successes first of the last 25 years. And Chris, I'll I'll start with you. What do you list among the most important successes of American counterterrorism policy over the last 25 years? >> Megan, thanks thanks for the question and thanks for uh for Arizona State New America hosting us. Um it's a privilege to be here with everyone and to open this up talking about successes. I think Peter Bergen's book I had an opportunity to to read it early on when it was a galley and he makes the point that uh we certainly succeeded in terms of preventing a 9/11 and we cannot forget that uh the mobilization of the military the mobilization there you are Peter the mobilization of the intelligence community and the way we came together in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 was significant and I think all of us here sitting on the stage our ethos those was to prevent a homeland uh strike on the scale certainly any strike any attack but certainly on the scale of 9/11 so that's the biggest success and also we got very very good at disrupting terrorist networks overseas very adept at that now we can talk about some of the shortfalls later but those were the major successes very good at the tactics techniques and procedures of dismantling terrorist groups groups, breaking down some of the organizational stove pipes, but most importantly preventing an attack on the scale of 9/11. >> And Josh, just to touch on something that we haven't yet really talked about here today, what would you say are the successes on the domestic counterterrorism policy front? I will echo uh Chris's thanks for the chance to be part of this panel, especially to be up here with three tremendous uh public servants and friends is is a great privilege. Christy and I somehow got got the the short straw off and together in briefing Congress in the last administration and the body language here is a lot more more friendly. So, >> and jeans this time. Yeah, >> exactly. So, it's it's a treat to to to get to be here. And um you know that that word domestic is uh complicated and and merits un unpacking in this context because we can often mean in counterterrorism uh two different both very important things. We can mean attacks that occur domestically. 9/11 itself occurred domestically. Things like the Pulse nightclub attack occurred domestically. But they are acts of international terrorism according to our laws. And then we can mean domestic terrorism uh acts uh not connected to international terrorist groups or international terrorist ideologies. And that in and of itself, the fact that 25 years after 9/11, your good question requires that unpacking and that division shows the complexity of of this area. I mean, we have evolved to a point at which uh we can look back after 25 years and say, as Chris rightly noted, there has not been another 9/11 in the subsequent 25 years, which I don't think is how most Americans expected on the morning of September 12th, 2001 the next 25 years to go. Product of extraordinary sacrifices and efforts and strategy and and vision. At the same time, um, we have threats that are more diffuse on the international front, including many that would like to be domestic in their incarnation. And we have an evolving, percolating uh, challenge of domestic terrorism, actors whom we classify under our law and policy as not connected to an al-Qaeda or an ISIS, but who pose a threat to um to use violence in the name of some politics or some ideological agenda. uh and that is something where uh all of that is horrible when there's violence, horrible when there are victims. But in particular that that second category I think is challenging because by its definition, by its overlap with domestic currents of dialogue or even politics um can be particularly polarizing, can lead to a lot of fingerpointing and a lot of a lot of less of the unity we saw after 9/11 about what the enemy or the adversary or the threat was. And despite a lot of efforts um including by folks sitting up here to craft strategies tailored to the sensitivities of that threat um it's not one that I think we've formed consensus on at least in public imagination how to think about it let alone how to tackle it. >> Christy, how would you describe today's terrorist threat? Sort of picking up on some of the things that Josh was alluding to there. >> Yeah, it's a it's a mixed bag, right? you've got um you you do have your traditional uh terrorist threats as posed by um a very different al-Qaeda threat, but still aworked al-Qaeda threat that is um present in lots of different parts of the world from Southeast Asia to West Africa, though um uh less focused on the far enemy, less focused on the United States. Um you have ISIS and elements associated with ISIS including the way that ISIS sort of democratized uh the terrorist threat first for the first time really leveraging the interconnectedness that uh the social media environment that the internet brought and finding ways to inspire individuals to to attack in the name of ISIS. Um, but you also have other ideologies or other motivations that are around racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism. You have individuals that um find themselves as lone attackers but springing from sort of these online communities that that spur them to action in very sort of highly individualized ways, very idiosyncratic ways that I actually think make it a much different sort of intelligence problem than we faced on 911 when we were dealing with the the need to dismantle a very clear and somewhat hierarchical terrorist organization as presented by um as presented by al-Qaeda. Uh you've got uh state sponsored threats. You've got the Iranian threat, the the Shia proxies um and various individuals that Iranian state agents are willing to work with to meet out their um retribution aims or other um other sort of uh ideals of projecting power across the world. And what it means is that um the counterterrorism fight that we started immediately most 9 post post 911 that I think the Bush administration deliberately framed as a global war on terror to try and build as broad a coalition as possible. um has actually sort of morphed into a much more complex uh landscape of threats that our security institutions uh internationally and domestically are asked to to stay on top of. Um and the tools that we've built for one are not necessarily the best tools uh to use for another and it requires an incredible amount of agility and collaboration across the diverse set of community actors. Just in reaction to that, do you think that the US government's counterterrorism policy has sufficiently adapted to this new landscape that you just described? >> Uh, I mean, I think um, in large part, yes. If you look across successive administrations from the Bush administration to the Obama administration, the first Trump administration actually was um the first to really name some of the domestic terrorism aspects as well done Chris um a as a major and emerging threat on the scene um that presented a real um challenge for Americans here in the homeland. I mean, you see that we've both held steady as a counterterrorism community in a very sort of nonpartisan objective way as we've traced the threat. Um but but the way that the threat presents when you're dealing with individuals that um spring from very sort of low signal environments means that the intelligence problem of today's terrorist threat of preventing every individual from conducting a mass attack versus the intelligence problem of preventing an al-Qaeda from plotting across multiple geography. freeze and across a a wide network of individuals. It's just a very different intelligence problem. And and so what it requires is a different toolkit that is less focused uh for at least those individual threats on what intelligence you can collect and more focused on the kind of information sharing that happens with state, local, tribal, territorial, community leaders who can kind of understand what's happening in their own community and be more preventative at their level of intervention as opposed to the federal level of intervention. And Josh, given that change or evolution, I should say, how um what did you anticipate these various levels that you know Chrissy just said it's more than now federal? We've got local and law enforcement, etc. What are the what are the challenges that you would anticipate that those various levels in the toolkit would encounter? >> Christy knows I'm going to talk about the app, the the the brief, short-lived uh >> It's back. It's back. The National Counterterrorism Center had an app which I thought was uh wonderful because people have their phones and if things are able to be pushed at the unclassified, maybe even law enforcement sensitive or FOO levels, you got to get that information to people where they can utilize it. We use the phrase in the field, but this was literally in the field. Then at some point, the the app uh got got canned. So, I'm delighted. Uh the best news I've heard all day is that the app is is back. But I use that as a microcosm to to talk about uh information sharing because if what you need is you know cooperation between federal agencies like uh CIA and FBI and others there was a lot of good work done post 911 to get right some things that as the 911 commission report uh lays out were not right beforehand and at least contributed to uh an awful outcome. that is as Christy rightly says um different sized but also differently oriented with different stakeholder problem from what does it mean to help a beat cop in state local territorial or tribal government understand that what seems like an assault or something still criminal and still awful if you can recognize some language you come across if you can recognize a tattoo you see if you can recognize a you know a manifesto left behind is actually someone who is undertaking violence or attempting or conspiring to undertake violence in a political or ideologically motivated way. In other words, it might well qualify as as domestic terrorism. And that is a different kind of information sharing and um one that really requires it's hard enough to work across the apparatus that is the national security part of the federal government or the executive branch alone. to figure out how to do that across the state, local, territorial, and tribal enterprise has added degree of difficulty. Not not trying to create a false contrast here. That was also true for the international terrorism threat. Hence, a lot of post 911 innovation in that area. But um I think there is still um there is still work to be done at least as as I last saw it in getting actionable intelligence especially not things that you might have also read about in in the media a week earlier but actionable intelligence on some of these plots that aren't months in the making but are instead showing signs of sort of hastening to action quite quickly to those who can actually prevent that violence. Well, now you've got me wondering what the icon would have looked like for that app when you, you know, bought it from the store from the app store. >> You don't have to reveal it, but >> it it was called act knowledge. >> Act knowledge. >> ACT knowledge. >> Got it. >> There was a lot of pun in there, but it was high performance. >> Hey, look, we're counterterrorism professionals, not marketers. It was not >> I like it. >> Like, >> but you could download it. I'm excited. I I got something to Google later. Um Chris, to take it back actually to the international level and um multilateral alliances cooperation, especially drawing on your experience um in special forces, how would you assess the millill and you know partners and allies? We've talked a lot about it on different sessions today. How would you assess that cooperation in the CT fight today? Yeah, I appreciate that question and and we already referenced Stu Braden's here, a supporter of this uh this platform and Stu could answer that question very well, but I'm going to take take a shot at it and tell you that from working with foreign partners for decades and even in the current in in the current climate, partners will tell you that at the operational level, we continue to cooperate on counterterrorism. It's never been Republican, Democrat, and certainly our international partners understand the importance. It's a rich legacy that in many ways goes back to the Second World War. It's still out that out there. Um, just in the last two weeks, I've probably engaged in my role at the International Spy Museum probably a dozen foreign partners. And I knew we were going to have this discussion. And I would never betray confidences and tell you which countries, but each one of those countries I spoke to said the operational coordination is still happening that and uh certainly it carried us through decades of of the fight. We couldn't have done it without Afghan partners. Couldn't have done it without Iraqi partners. In many ways, some of the actionable intelligence that we did develop tactical, I attribute that to our foreign partners that likely save lives, perhaps my own. So, u I'm very grateful for that and uh that was an important aspect of the counterterrorism fight and we don't want to ignore that by with and through partners is how we accomplished that mission so well. >> Thank you. Christie, can you comment on how this is something we hear a lot um that tactical counterterrorism successes can have strategic impact and is that still the case when we are looking at these smaller more ad hoc you know more diffuse threats that we've been discussing? Yeah, I mean uh if you think about the success of a single operation like the raid to try and capture and that eventually killed Osama bin Laden, that's a tactical operation um that is incredibly strategically important for the overall story arc of uh our post 911 fight. Same is true for the operation that killed uh you know uh Abu Omar al- Bbaghdadi or uh Iman al- Zawahari and counterterrorism is this uh world where uh the tactical is strategic. The single operation or the single attack that you stop or the single warning that you provide that may have stopped the attack but you may never know with certainty that it was the intervention that mattered. These small decisions end up having a strategic impact over time and uh it's often hard to tell exactly how to how you can trace those. Some of the big highv value uh targeting operations are some of the easiest ones to sort of demonstrate the the the that how much tactical impact uh or how tactical operations have strategic impact. But it happens like in the dayto-day of counterterrorism all the time. Um as an intelligence professional professional as an analyst there are so few fields where um everyday decisions everyday sort of analytic products everyday warning um vehicles that you provide to forward deployed forces or um the state department or civilians overseas um that where those can have a major impact on saving lives and uh it's one of the I think most rewarding ing things that counterterror terrorism professionals feel is this real connection to um a mission that has impact every day. >> This is a I think question for all three of you. Um Josh, I'll I'll start with you. Um moving from we there are many successes. We started out with the with the big one um preventing a a catastrophic attack on the homeland. the um penetration of enemy networks. Chris went through quite a few things. Technology capabilities um fusion centers inter agency collaboration has has improved a lot. I think that's that's uh universally agreed. Um do you do you worry uh that we in the US government but also in the civilian populace have we become complacent when it comes to counterterrorism? Oh, we're all worriers in the counterterrorism business. It's our job to worry. But I do worry, and as the the lawyer on the panel, maybe I'll take an angle in trying to answer that, which is that, you know, we we've heard a lot, I think rightly heard a lot about cultural, social, and maybe political unity in the immediate wake of 9/11. And I and I think it's right to try to remember that and as best we can recover that. But in terms of putting in place enduring legal structures that would avoid showing complacency and would instead allow this enterprise uh to continue to do what it needs to do even when focus of politicians of the public of anyone moves on to other things. The track record 25 years later is is not superb. We rely on a authorization for use of military force that was passed in the uh immediate days after 9/11 to deal with a range of threats that has evolved. Uh I in working in the executive branch been part of interpretations that I think are quite defensible to to deal with the threats that have emerged since. But it's certainly not optimal uh it certainly wasn't crafted at the time. I think to last 25 years in a world where the terrorism threat has evolved as dramatically as it has. We're sitting up here uh talking about intelligence gathering and intelligence sharing with one of the post 911 creations FISA section 702 having lapsed and whatever one's view on that law as it existed or that law as one might want to see it reauthorized or not there's a range of views on that. the idea that we haven't figured out what it means for the US government to have the benefit of a court order to take to US companies when non-Americans abroad exploit uh US-based te telecommunications platforms to do bad things. Um that's not great because that problem very much still exists. It's actually become bigger than just terrorists. Um, we could say the same about the parameters of the organization Christie led very aly magnificently the National Counterterrorism Center and what role it plays in domestic terrorism versus international terrorism threats. These things are legally unsettled and for an enterprise that unfortunately I think needs to remain that's a bit of a misfit. >> Chrissy. Yeah. Um there is uh when when I started as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center um you know the the mandate was really how do you handle the counterterrorism fight but do it with significantly less you know and I mean that is reasonable considering that we were at that point 20 years after 9/11. Um it was reasonable considering how much of our counterterrorism archite our national security architecture had been devoted to counterterrorism to at the expense of things like uh a pivot to Asia, our focus on China. You know, you see the sort of dynamic that exists here today uh around kind of the adversarial nature and the strategic competition that we have to be better armed to fight in. And so making room in your counterterrorism fight for other national security priorities is actually a really important national security priority uh for us to manage as counterterrorism professionals. How you do that with while taking care of what is a very diverse uh terrorism landscape while trying to ensure that um the architecture that you built that relies on collaboration across communities uh doesn't somehow uh become a weakness as opposed to a strength because if all of a sudden we don't have US military reporting from the Middle East anymore on counterterrorism priorities because we only have deployed forces or focus of intelligence resources in the Asia-Pacific. You know, that has a detrimental impact on DHS's ability or FBI's ability to see into the homeland and understand how those threats might present here. And so the job of the counterterrorism community in a time when you are managing a threat environment that is persistent but shouldn't have to be at the top of your national security agenda is to sort of figure out what that appropriate balance is between staying ahead of the threat, getting the resources you need without asking for everything and overdominating a national security agenda that you know frankly the threat doesn't require today. and like doing that uh as a community of leaders across CIA, NCTC, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, the National Security Council, the state and local tribal territorial leaders, the fusion centers, like this very broad, you know, community that we built over time. Like that's a hard thing to do and it requires leaders in place that are willing that understand the complexity of what we built that know how to make that complexity work when it absolutely has to when you have a strategic threat that must be dealt with but also how to like how to be balanced and objective about the threat today that you're managing. Uh and and you know continuing to invest in that but not overinvest in that is the trick. Christie or >> Yeah, I'll be brief, but I I agree with both what uh Josh and Christie just said. I would just add as I was leaving the White House in 2018, I did a lengthy interview with CTC Sentinel, which was my opportunity for the record really to talk about some of the successes in the first year of the first Trump administration. And candidly, I could see the writing on the wall. In some ways, we were victims to our successes. some of our successes during that year. The physical caliphate went away from ISIS work from previous administrations as well as then the Trump administration. It was a cooperative effort. There was continuity and that's a good takeaway from this conference. There was excellent continuity, not only friendships and colleagues, but uh continuity, and that's important. But I also recognize that we're going to start to pivot to uh great power competition. And what I argued then and I continue to argue it, it's not an either or proposition. We can do both. We absolutely can do both. And I'll I'll offer one vignette. Uh my concern was over correction and Christy took a call from me. I was outside of the government and she graciously uh listened to me expressed my concerns on overcorrection and I appreciated that. But we both had the same concerns. That said, 2017, day one of the Trump administration first one, we were worried about a prevent pervasive threat against commercial aviation from non-state actors. All these years later, the first day of the second Trump administration, there was reporting that the Russians were playing around with the possibility of bringing down an aircraft. So I have no details on on that but that just underscores the notion that the threat has evolved and it is more uh dire today than it even was 8 10 years ago. How would and this is really any one of you could answer um how would you characterize the success or failure or both of eliminating safe havens over the last 25 years. So um I think you guys have talked about this in other conferences and other panels. So I'm uh I I will I will um be brief but what I would say is one you have to be sensitive to the degree to which a group who doesn't present a threat to you today once given safe haven may actually in the time and space that that safe haven affords them um gain a transnational uh agenda in a way that presents a threat to you in the future. So how you monitor the safe havens and how you manage safe havens I think is a really important intelligence problem uh and if you see where groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS are finding a center of gravity today it is not in the Middle East it is in parts of East and West Africa where um our relationships are not as strong our intelligence infra infrastructure is much different our investment in new intelligence infrastructure I is is quite different than in the past. And so, um, you know, being very sensitive to where the threat is metastasizing, how local it is at any given moment, but having an intelligence infrastructure that allows you to see when that local focus has actually become a transnational one. That's the trick of managing the threat and being put putting yourself in a proactive footing. And I think it it is fundamentally an intelligence problem that we don't always have the resources to go everywhere all at once. >> Ahead, Josh. >> You're getting a lot of consensus on this panel for better or or for worse. But I'll just add to to Christiey's good good reactions that, you know, I feel like we've been those in the counterterrorism community have been hearing the argument for decade, decade and a half now. sanctuary doesn't matter in a world in which you can reach out via social media and and encrypted apps or both and and perpetuate attacks that way. And I just this is another one where I don't think it's an eitheror. I mean, the rise of ISIS was uh an awful vicious cycle type of feedback loop between establishing some physical entrenchment initially in Syria and then into Iraq and touting it in these bombastic and very glitzy and to some people very appealing ways uh online and then being able to take more physical and geographic space because of the intimidation factor and the recruitment factor that enabled. And that just built on itself until suddenly an entity controlled effectively controlled and legally controlled but effectively controlled territory the size of the United Kingdom. And it just seems to be not a distinction but instead an unfortunate type of feedback loop that terrorist groups want to try to perpetuate and then grow uh using. And so that's a long way of saying I don't think physical safe haven has gone into irrelevance even in a world in which it may not be a prerequisite for every single plot because it also isn't that. >> Do you have anything? >> I'll just say that I advocated for CT pressure any way we could apply it to make sure terrorists couldn't plan, make sure they couldn't sleep. That was the conventional wisdom during my time at at the NYSE. And I should say for this audience in particular that I came into the Trump administration with this idea that I could focus more on counter radicalization in some of the more uh the softer side of CT, but it wasn't it just wasn't the reality. I didn't want uh terrorists to uh continue to be able to plan in down aircraft, etc. >> Well, somehow we got to the two-minute warning. Uh, I'm going to Josh, you mentioned there's been a lot of consensus on this panel. So, here's my attempt at some discord. If you are going to host a movie night with your friends that are not in the national security arena that you're having them over and you're going to screen one film to talk about the last 25 years post 911 counterterrorism fight, what movie would that be? First of all, you're assuming we have friends beyond this community, first of all, but >> big assumption on my part, but I I like you, so you must have friends. Um, >> come on. >> I'll go with what I think is is a classic. Um, not specifically about terrorism or counterterrorism, but it seems to me there is a lot to learn from Doctor Strange Love. A lot to learn about how to think about weapons, how to think about one's adversaries knowledge of your capacity, and I think it appeals outside this. All right. With a classic, Joshua with a classic, Dr. Strange Love, Christie. >> Oh, man. Um, I don't know how to follow up on that. Um, so there's obviously like Zero Dark 30, Hurt Locker. Yeah. >> Was it good? I actually >> Why I thought of this question is because I watched Zero Dark 30 with my teenage son over the weekend and it provoked a lot of good discussion. So, I thought I should ask these guys right here. >> Um, Hurt Locker is a really good one. um and uh felt very familiar in certain ways and outlandish in others. Um but I I guess I would say um when I was in London in my last like overseas trip for NCTC, we went to go see Operation Minsmeat, which is right so good. Um so it it's basically about like a intelligence operation to trick the Germans in advance of the D-Day operation. So if you if you care about the intelligence role in anything, this is a hilarious way of understanding the importance of intelligence operations from a human perspective and uh from a a strategic bundling perspective as well. >> Great. >> So I finally get to outpace Josh Guilter. I'll never outpace you, Christie, but I will tell you I wrote a u a syllabus for Georgetown, Understanding Terrorism through Film. So it's a little unfair. Wow. I did not know the second. >> My wife, my wife, if she was here, she would attest to the fact that I've made her life miserable. She's watched 40 films on terrorism since January. But I will tell you, one of my favorite films is a film uh from a lare a lare novel, A Most Wanted Man. I don't know if anybody's seen it. It's a pretty good film. It's one of the few films that is a nexus between spying and counterterrorism. So, I really applauded it when La Lare uh published it and of course he's now deceased, but it's a pretty good movie. So, that's my my recommendation for august audience >> for the nerdiest. >> Yep. It's I have two things to Google now. I don't I've never heard of that movie. Uh but please join me in thanking uh this illustrious panel.