Last week, the White House released a statement 2026 US Counterterrorism Strategy. As far as strategies go, the document is inconsistent with previous counter-terrorism strategies and is full of bigotry, misconceptions, and a failure to understand the nuances of terrorists’ ideologies and methods of operation. The document represents a departure from the professionalism and focus given to previous counter-terrorism strategies and appears to de-prioritize the most immediate terrorist threats.
Despite the fact that the United States is currently at war with Iran, there is little discussion about terrorism supported by Iran or led by Iran, although at various points in the strategy, there are praises for President Donald Trump and how he is handling the war.
To be honest, there are a few things the strategy gets right: its emphasis on preventing terrorists from obtaining weapons of mass destruction; the importance it places on hostages and illegally detained US persons; and his recognition that jihadist groups such as the Islamic State of Khorasan and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula continue to be among the most powerful actors seeking to conduct external operations against the West.
However, on balance, the document is highly political, despite claims that the strategy is “political” and will not be used for “privileged purposes.” It also misidentifies the fundamental threats facing the United States. It focuses on three lines of effort: the legacy of Islamic terrorists, left-wing extremists, and drug terrorists and transnational gangs. The threat these actors pose to the United States and its interests is undeniable. However, bald-faced fandom aside, it is the terrorist threats missing from the document that provide the greatest cause for fear.
Take part titled “The Goals of Our CT Strategy,” using the acronym counterterrorism. Here, the document mentions the threat posed by “the exploitation of new weapons, such as drones, by militant groups and Jihadists, as well as the supply of these technologies to terrorists and state actors, namely, Iran, China and Russia.”
This is a very poor treatment of the threat posed by emerging technologies in the hands of terrorists and extremists. Internationally, terrorist groups have abused it drones in an unprecedented manner, as evidenced in the Sahel region, where the al Qaeda alliance Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin has launched coordinated attacks against the strategic government of Mali. property using an arsenal of cheap drones. The rise of the threat of terrorist drones, which can be traced in part to the invention of combat drones. Russia-Ukraine warit is clear that it is not only in the areas of terrorism and conflicts.
Various branches of the Islamic State have encouraged drone attacks in Western countries, and repeated use of drone weapons. guidelines continue to proliferate in the online ecosystem connected to the Islamic State. Just last October, jihad drone plot and young Belgians who aimed to target Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, among others, it was discovered. A 3D printer was found in the basement of one of the suspects, which may have been used to help create the payload mechanism attached to the drone. The case illustrates the ease with which emerging technologies—and their convergence—can lead to new, compelling capabilities in the hands of a single actor.
There is almost no treatment of the most horrific technological abuses perpetrated by terrorists: namely, the large role of the Internet in the radicalization of homegrown terrorists. Apart from the latest reference to the need to promote propaganda, the blatant misuse of social media platforms, cloud services and chat applications by extremists—attacks that provoke the country—do not receive proper treatment in the strategy. In fact, after reading it, one is left wondering if the Trump administration even knows the extent to which terrorists are working online to recruit, radicalize, and raise funds, as the document lacks policy guidance for countering terrorism in the digital space. Thus, no attention is paid to the greater threat posed by the convergence of AI-generated tools and these pre-existing online echo chambers and channels of hate.
From the recent Islamic State-led squares to increase true crime society-linked violence In the United States, the role of digital platforms in violent plots is the sine qua non of domestic terrorism. The increasingly alarming trend of extremist violencewith its very young characters, it is completely left out of the document. However, this kind of radicalism is often remembered for its violent plots: Young criminals imitate each other’s beauty, and flashbacks to earlier plots are a digitally enabled phenomenon. The absence of a comprehensive strategy at home and abroad to prevent the misuse of new weapons systems and dual-use technology by extremists is alarming, and it appears that the administration is entering an ongoing threat.
When Trump took office at the beginning of his second term, one of his first actions was to designate many drug trafficking groups and international criminal groups as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs): Cártel de Sinaloa, Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, Cártel del Noreste (formerly Los Zetas), Cáacana, Cártel Nueva, Gofu Unidos (an alliance of several criminal groups), as well as two international gangs from South America, Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, and Tren de Aragua, which were also designated. This is not to say that tackling drug trafficking organizations and international gangs should not be a priority. These groups are dangerous and smuggle drugs into the United States, contributing to the fentanyl epidemic that has caused death and addiction, destroyed lives and contributed to a public health crisis.
But counterterrorism resources are limited, and diverting manpower and funding to fighting gangs diverts these assets from countering the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and their allies around the world. Furthermore, it remains unclear what the benefits of designating drug traffickers as FTOs are. This has traditionally been an issue for law enforcement and, as former counterterrorism officer Jason Blazakis has noted“The result of combining criminal groups and terrorist organizations will be an FTO list so reduced that it will lose its meaning.” After all, they are terrorists motivated by politics and affect political change, with criminal groups looking for profit and largely wanting to avoid confronting the government face-to-face. Corpses are bad for business, even if corporations remain violent corporations.
Completely abandoned is any discussion of extreme right-wing politicswhich has proven to be among the most dangerous forms of terrorism in the past decade in the United States. Right-wing extremists launched a deadly attack in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2018 (11 killed); El Paso, Texas, in 2019 (23 killed); and Buffalo, New York, in 2022 (10 killed), fueled by white supremacy, neo-Nazi beliefs, and anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant ideology. Online extremism is thriving and has helped create a global network of like-minded people who respect Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch shooter, who killed 51 people after attacking a mosque in New Zealand in 2019, and Anders Breivik, the Norwegian right-wing terrorist who attacked camps in Utoya and Oslo in 2011. Radical racism and xenophobia have been left unaddressed in this strategy, even as far-right extremist groups such as Atomwaffen Division and The Base have threatened the United States and maintained international relations. In addition, plots that can be perceived as illegal violence often rely on elements of extremist, right-wing and neo-Nazi ideologies.
Strategy failure Addressing the threat posed by far-right extremism is deliberate and seems especially bad given the amount of space devoted to left-wing violence, including anarchists, antifa, and what the document calls “gender extremism”. Left-wing extremists have been on the increase in the past several years, but this should not be surprising. Following major events in the United States over the past decade—including the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the January 6, 2021, storming of the White House, all by right-wing extremists—it was inevitable that left-wing activists would respond. There is a concept known as exchange radicalizationwhich specifies that extremist groups incite the rhetoric and/or actions of other groups, including political violence and terrorism.
In another part of the document, the report says: “Europe must increase its CT efforts immediately.” The European section features US Vice President JD Vance’s lecture to attendees of the Munich Security Conference in 2025, addressing issues of immigration and cultural values. And while pointing out lax immigration policies and their ties to terrorism is not inherently wrong, persuading allies to cooperate with US goals is unusual. It also ignores the rich history of intelligence cooperation and counterterrorism cooperation that helped the United States deal with the threat of foreign fighters during the height of the Islamic State caliphate.
Loading logic features elsewhere in the strategy, too. As African governments in the Sahel deal with insurgencies, revolutions and remain at the center of terrorist violence, the strategy says that the United States “will expect regional and local partners to accept a greater share of the CT burden.” Such a world view, which seems to be based on the zero-sum logic of winners and losers, those who pay too much and those who pay too little, is contradictory and incompatible with counter-terrorism, which remains a matter of collective security.
Overall, the counter-terrorism strategy makes the United States less secure as a nation. Real threats are on the horizon, but the Trump administration would rather play politics with terror than demand a data-driven assessment that would help prioritize which threats to address with already limited resources. For an administration that often avoids accountability and internal audit, the end result can be disastrous.
