When Javed Ali first drove past the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, 2001, he could not have imagined that a quarter‑century later he would be working inside the very building that survived the attack. Ali’s career, which has taken him from the Defense Intelligence Agency to the Department of Homeland Security and now to the University of Michigan, offers a front‑row view of the massive national‑security system built after the deadliest foreign assault on U.S. soil.
What the post‑9/11 system has achieved
Federal officials credit the new architecture with making a repeat of the 9/11 plot far more difficult. The United States has not experienced another terrorist attack approaching the scale and complexity of the 2001 attacks that killed 2,977 people. Intelligence and military operations have dismantled much of al Qaeda’s leadership, while a suite of new agencies, surveillance authorities, watchlists and intelligence‑sharing mechanisms were created to close the gaps the 9/11 Commission identified.
The 2026 U.S. intelligence community assessment notes that counter‑terrorism operations have degraded al Qaeda and ISIS’s ability to quickly rebuild leadership and plan large‑scale attacks on the homeland.
Emerging threats
Success against the 2001 threat, however, has not eliminated terrorism. Today’s most dangerous risks involve individuals radicalized online, small cells that leave little warning, foreign terrorist groups that inspire attacks from afar, and an expanding layer of cyber and state‑sponsored threats that can strike without an airplane.
According to the 2026 Annual Threat Assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Islamist terrorist groups have shifted from planning “large‑scale complex attacks” to focusing on information operations and propaganda designed to inspire or enable people in Western countries.
The assessment recorded at least three Islamist terrorist attacks in the United States in 2025 and noted that law‑enforcement disrupted at least 15 U.S.–based Islamist plotters that year. Roughly half of those disrupted had some online contact with foreign terrorist networks or were inspired by them.
Lone actors and small cells
The New Year’s Day 2025 incident in New Orleans, where a Texas‑born U.S. citizen drove a pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street, killing 14, underscored the danger of lone actors. The FBI described the attack as terrorism and highlighted how the perpetrator had become increasingly isolated before adopting extremist views.
Ali explains that the investigative challenge has flipped. The 9/11 plot required 19 hijackers, overseas leadership, financing, international travel, flight training and years of planning. Today, a lone offender may leave far fewer pieces of evidence, making detection and disruption far more difficult.
“We are safer from a certain type of threat,” Ali said, “but we are not immune from terrorism, and other types of threats are much more difficult to identify.”
Cost and scale of the response
Congress created the Transportation Security Administration just two months after the attacks, calling it the largest civilian undertaking in U.S. government history at the time. The Department of Homeland Security followed in 2003, consolidating parts of 22 agencies and now employing more than 260,000 people across missions ranging from border and aviation security to cybersecurity, intelligence and emergency response.
Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates that post‑9/11 wars and related obligations have cost roughly $8 trillion, with more than $1.1 trillion spent on homeland‑security efforts since DHS was created.
Looking ahead
Officials stress that continued vigilance, robust intelligence sharing, and community engagement remain essential. While the nation has succeeded in preventing another large‑scale coordinated attack, the evolving landscape demands that law‑enforcement and intelligence agencies adapt to the decentralized, online‑driven nature of modern terrorism.
Original reporting: Fox News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
