One of the central findings of the 9/11 Commission was that the intelligence and law enforcement communities had gathered enough signals to potentially detect and disrupt the plot but failed to "connect the dots" due to poor information-sharing, the siloing of information and other barriers to collaboration.The failure to connect those dots came at the immediate cost of 3,000 American lives – and the death or injury of over 60,000 U.S.servicemembers in the wars that followed the attacks.
The efforts to address the failures that led to 9/11 built the Department of Homeland Security, expanded Joint Terrorism Task Forces, established fusion centers where agencies share information and created new systems for federal, state and local agencies to better work together and prevent attacks.Twenty-five years after the attacks, those systems need to be re-examined and reimagined.US COUNTERINTELLIGENCE ‘WAY BEHIND,’ POST-9/11 RECORD ‘EXTRAORDINARILY NEGLIGENT’, FMR TRUMP WH OFFICIAL WARNSBuilt for a different, slower, pre-social-media era, not only has our threat environment become more complex, but it has also become more dynamic.For organizations, this means the ability to act across borders and virtually.
For individuals, it means the collapse of the timeline between radicalization and violence.Metropolitan Police Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation officers stand guard at a perimeter near the Capital Jewish Museum on May 22, 2025, in Washington.Two Israeli Embassy staff members were fatally shot after attending an event at the Capital Jewish Museum earlier in the evening.
(Tom Brenner For The Washington Post via Getty Images)Today, a troubled individual can consume extremist content online in the morning, causing them to immediately embrace a violent ideology, post online an intention to harm others and launch an attack that same day.DIRECTOR KASH PATEL: WE BROUGHT THE FBI OUT OF THE PAST AND INTO THE AI AGEWhat once might have taken months, is now ...