Experts react: What the New Orleans attack tells us about terrorism in 2025

It was a somber begin to 2025. Within the early hours of New Yr’s Day, a person drove a pickup truck via throngs of pedestrians on Bourbon Avenue in New Orleans, leaving fourteen useless and injuring at the very least thirty others. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) mentioned Thursday that the driving force, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, acted alone and was impressed by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). What does the assault reveal about ISIS and the state of worldwide terrorism as 2025 begins? What coverage implications are there for the incoming Trump administration? Our counterterrorism consultants are on the case.

Click on to leap to an skilled evaluation:

Marc Polymeropoulos: A lone wolf is way extra harmful than a terrorist cell

Danielle Cosgrove: The assault exhibits the evolving menace of ISIS’s Digital Caliphate

Morgan Tadych: The assault signifies a troubling sample of on-line radicalization

Doug Livermore: ISIS is diminished within the Center East, however is persisting elsewhere

Mike Nelson: The US should stay vigilant towards the attraction of ‘leaderless jihad’

A lone wolf is way extra harmful than a terrorist cell

Because the investigation unfolds in New Orleans, I get a way that some within the media and regulation enforcement are a bit relieved that this may increasingly “simply” be the work of a lone wolf attacker. It might be counterintuitive, however I’d argue {that a} lone wolf is way extra worrisome and harmful for US counterterrorism officers, as it’s so a lot tougher for each regulation enforcement and the intelligence neighborhood to penetrate the operation itself. That is exacerbated additional if the attacker self-radicalized, receiving inspiration and steerage just about from ISIS propaganda, for instance.

Officers within the counterterrorism world truly favor to analyze terrorist cells, as this offers important alternatives to uncover and recruit the cell members, and likewise doubtlessly intercept communications between cell members and the terrorist mothership. The extra people concerned in a terrorist plot, the bigger probability that one makes a mistake. Whereas in fact it might be a aid to know that there will not be ISIS adherents operating round New Orleans posing a direct public security menace, we should always not relaxation straightforward, as this modus operandi of a lone wolf conducting a automobile assault poses immense challenges to the standard detect/disrupt/deter counterterrorism mannequin that has labored so successfully prior to now.  

—Marc Polymeropoulos is a nonresident senior fellow within the Ahead Protection observe of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Heart for Technique and Safety and a member of the Council’s Counterterrorism Undertaking. He labored for twenty-six years on the CIA in a wide range of area and headquarters operational assignments specializing in counterterrorism, the Center East, and South Asia.

The assault exhibits the evolving menace of ISIS’s Digital Caliphate

Following their formal defeat by coalition forces in 2019, the Islamic State leveraged its technological experience to determine a Digital Caliphate—a digital refuge the place disaffected people searching for neighborhood and goal converge across the imaginative and prescient of a state ruled by sharia regulation underneath a caliph. The Digital Caliphate has expanded quickly, pushed by shifting refugee populations, unresolved border disputes, decentralized planning wants, using generative AI as a information hub, and the position of protests.

The Digital Caliphate signifies a brand new chapter in ISIS’s technological evolution, constructing on the Digital Caliphate by advancing from the dissemination of concepts to the orchestration of motion and violence via digital and technological means. In essence, the Digital Caliphate bridges the proliferation of concepts with the execution of actions via digital instruments.

The New Yr’s assault in New Orleans highlights the evolving menace of the Digital Caliphate. The attacker’s actions mirror its hallmarks, together with seemingly radicalization through unregulated platforms. The shift from bodily territories to digital domains has made it tougher to detect and disrupt lone actors working independently however aligned with extremist ideologies.

This assault serves as a stark reminder that extremism has absolutely tailored to the digital age. The USA’ counter-strategies should evolve at scale and velocity. Policymakers should act decisively to disrupt the Digital Caliphate’s capacity to weaponize business expertise and defend communities from future assaults.

—Danielle Cosgrove is a member of the Atlantic Council’s Counterterrorism Undertaking in addition to a expertise government and distinguished lecturer at Stanford College who beforehand led high-impact battle zone operations and strategic stability initiatives.

The assault signifies a troubling sample of on-line radicalization

The phobia assault on our homeland on New Yr’s Day shares a number of horrifying traits with different current terror arrests made in america and Canada. In all three instances, males disaffected with their lives began to work together on-line with ISIS-linked influencers and websites. Whereas the specifics of Jabbar’s on-line interactions will not be but clear, the presence of an ISIS flag in his rental truck along with early studies of movies that he posted selling extremist content material point out that he was radicalized on-line. Previous to the previous few years, Jabbar appeared to steer a comparatively regular life; as his private life fell aside, he grew to become additional radicalized. 

Particularly, Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-Okay, the Central Asia/Afghanistan-based department of ISIS) has demonstrated a specific social media savvy to increase its Digital Caliphate. In a number of foiled assault plots in 2024, IS-Okay leveraged on-line contact with males searching for an Islamic neighborhood to radicalize and encourage them to commit assaults towards symbolic Western targets. The New Orleans assault follows the same sample, with a not too long ago radicalized US citizen terrorizing a symbolic gentle goal that’s in opposition to IS-Okay’s notion of morality. The USA should monitor on-line areas to try to detect and deter radicalization earlier than it occurs—in instances reminiscent of this, it’s essential to remain “left of increase.”

—Morgan Tadych is an open-source intelligence (OSINT) skilled, Military veteran, and member of the Atlantic Council’s Counterterrorism Undertaking. She spent a lot of her army profession researching strategic Russia/Eurasia points and deployed to conduct counterterrorism missions.

ISIS is diminished within the Center East, however is persisting elsewhere

ISIS’s territorial caliphate within the coronary heart of the Center East has largely crumbled and the group’s continued affect now depends on numerous “provinces” throughout the globe, from the Sahel to Afghanistan. These associates proceed to pose notable challenges, surviving in areas marked by instability, weak governance, and different energetic insurgencies.

All through 2022, I served because the deputy commander of the NATO Particular Operations Advisory Group in Iraq, a job by which I labored carefully with the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service and Federal Intelligence and Investigations Company to root out the few legit ISIS fighters hiding out in caves within the mountainous north. Regardless of the group’s more and more diminished capability in Iraq and Syria, it continues to use the fragmented safety environments there and elsewhere to persist regardless of worldwide stress. Within the Sahel, ISIS associates compete with different bigger terrorist teams for affect, whereas IS-Okay, working in Afghanistan, stays a small however persistent menace to regional safety—as was seen within the Moscow assault of March 2024.

Iran has strategically used ISIS as a bogeyman to justify its malign actions within the area, significantly its affect in Iraq and, till not too long ago, Syria. By portraying itself as a bulwark towards the return of ISIS, Iran goals to keep up its presence and management over strategic territories, consolidating its affect amongst native militias and proxy teams. This harmful narrative obscures Iran’s broader regional ambitions and its position in exacerbating the very situations that foster extremism. This ongoing dynamic permits Iran to proceed utilizing proxies to smuggle weapons and launch assaults towards Israel and threaten different pursuits from inside Iraqi territory. 

Although ISIS is a diminishing shell of its former self, it nonetheless bears continued consideration given each the exploitation of its existence by strategic opponents and potential for resurgence.

—Doug Livermore is a member of the Atlantic Council’s Counterterrorism Group, nationwide vice chairman for the Particular Operations Affiliation of America, senior vice chairman for resolution engineering on the CenCore Group, and the deputy commander for Particular Operations Detachment—Joint Particular Operations Command within the North Carolina Military Nationwide Guard.

The US should stay vigilant towards the attraction of ‘leaderless jihad’

The New Orleans assault represents the newest in a sequence of assaults and threats which have plagued america and its allies for many years. Within the instant aftermath of the assault, there was hypothesis that this was an act of a bigger cell or doubtlessly a posh assault with improvised explosive units positioned as a second wave. Maybe this was a part of a multicity simultaneous assault linked to the weird occasions in Las Vegas. Nonetheless, whereas particulars are nonetheless rising, it seems that this was a tragic however unsophisticated assault by a solo actor who had not too long ago change into extra radicalized by digital messaging and content material towards a gentle goal. In some ways, it was paying homage to assaults like these in San Bernardino in 2015 and Orlando in 2016, in that the perpetrators had been individually radicalized and impressed by Islamist jihadism versus being directed by bigger organizations or conducting assaults that required specialised coaching. Jabbar’s standing as a veteran is paying homage to the assaults of Sergeant Hasan Akbar and Main Nidal Hasan, in that those that had volunteered to serve america grew to become influenced to assault it. 

These sorts of assaults are the manifestation of al-Qaeda strategist Abu Musab al-Suri’s idea of “leaderless jihad,” that mujahideen distributed all through the world would take it upon themselves to conduct assaults towards enemies close to and much. They’re doubtlessly the toughest to anticipate in that there are not any cells to infiltrate, no specialty gadgets or explosives to set off consideration, and, on condition that Jabbar was a native-born US citizen, no immigration screening to have blocked the menace on the border. 

The assault shouldn’t be taken as a sign of re-emerging ISIS power, reasonably as what seems to be the radicalization of an imbalanced malcontent. The hazard, nevertheless, is that there are numerous extra who’re inclined to this type of extremism. As such, america should stay vigilant towards all types of radical Islamism—each the armed formations and the net affect operations.

—Mike Nelson is a retired Military particular forces officer and a member of the Atlantic Council’s Counterterrorism Undertaking.

Additional studying

Picture: Regulation enforcement members work on the website the place individuals had been killed by a person driving a truck in an assault throughout New Yr’s celebrations, in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S., January 2, 2025. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz