This year began alarmingly with the terrorist attack on New Orleans’ famed Bourbon Street. The assailant, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. Army veteran with a troubled past, claimed to have joined the self-proclaimed Islamic State in 2024 and displayed its flag in the truck he used to mow down and kill 14 people and injure some three dozen others. That incident tragically wiped away any illusion that the threat of terrorism has passed and that groups like the Islamic State, which were more active a decade ago, had been completely deprived of their capacity to continue to inspire attacks in the United States. A hard look at recent terrorist trends and targeting highlights how we are in fact at a critical turning point in global terrorism. Terrorists are embracing new tactics and seeking different target sets in order to overcome the mostly effective countermeasures and security procedures that have thwarted their attack plans in the past.
Islamist terrorists in organizations such as al-Qaeda have uniquely mastered the art of coordinated, simultaneous assault, which have been among the most consequential terrorist operations of the early 21st century: including the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks as well as the 2004 Madrid commuter train bombings and the 2005 attacks on London transport. But the even more complex swarming attacks, such as those in Mumbai, India, in 2008; Paris, France, in 2015; and Israel in 2023, have been even more devastating. Deliberately designed to crash defenses and completely collapse any response, swarming shatters decision-making and chain of command, overwhelms first responders, and paralyzes effective, timely intervention. In one concerning development, actual human attackers are not needed to carry out swarming attacks today. Remote-controlled unmanned aerial systems, or drones, such as those that plagued Langley Air Force Base and New Jersey towns and cities last year, attacking targets in American cities would pose a nightmare that the country is patently unprepared for and unable to counter. The United States has fortunately avoided such an instance thus far, but a drone swarm targeted a military parade field in the Syrian city of Homs in late 2023, killing around 100 people. The threat is aggravated considerably by the absence of reliable counter-unmanned aircraft system platforms, as well as legal confusion of which agencies have authority to shoot down airborne systems.
Hand in glove with this trend is terrorism’s increased targeting of concerts and sporting events. Last summer’s cancellation of Taylor Swift’s planned concert in Vienna was not an aberration — nor was a July 2024 stabbing attack at a Swift-themed dance class in Southport, England. The Islamic State’s attack on Paris’ Bataclan during a 2015 heavy metal concert claimed the lives of 89 persons. Its attack two years later after an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, killed 23. And, almost a year ago, the Islamic State murdered 130 concertgoers at a Moscow venue. The terrorist plots to derail the 2024 Paris Olympics coupled with the Islamic State’s 2015 suicide attack on the Stade de France during a France-Germany soccer match underscore how sporting events have also been targeted. These attacks, targeting revelers, target the most innocent manifestations of civilian life, in turn maximizing the crippling effect of terrorist attacks. Precisely that message was sent on Oct. 7, 2023, as Hamas launched a frontal attack on young partygoers at the Nova music festival.
Almost four decades ago, Palestinian terrorists during the First Intifada (1987 to 1993) had set wildfires as an additional means to attack Israel. Although the tactic resurfaced in that country in 2016, these kinds of arson attacks have been infrequent. In the aftermath of the terrible wildfires that have plagued the Los Angeles metropolitan area in 2025, terrorists in the Islamic State and al-Qaeda began to actively call for the weaponization of arson in the United States. By encouraging this tactic, both groups hope to further undermine the nation’s economy and spread fear among its residents. “Burn the wealth of the disbelievers . . plung[e] them into a spiral of great financial losses,” one Islamic State post urged. “All you have to do go on a ‘camping trip’ to one of the forests near residential districts, then set a fire & withdraw quietly.” In other words, climate-related vulnerabilities might allow terrorists to cause catastrophic damage, possibly outstripping the human, economic, and environmental costs of just about any terrorist attack in history.
Yet such spectacular terrorist attacks still pale in comparison to the everyday violence caused by weapons and dual-use technologies that form part and parcel of American daily life. This underscores further the formidable challenge faced by those responsible for countering these threats, who must not only account for new tactics and targeting but also nimbly prepare defenses at more traditional targets. Jabbar’s attack on New Orleans was so disquieting precisely because it was so simple. Indeed, the city of New Orleans’ decision to cancel the Sugar Bowl college football game on Jan. 2 out of an abundance of caution was testament to terrorism’s ability to disrupt. Since 2011, five vehicular attacks such as the one that occurred on Bourbon Street on New Year’s Day have killed 18 people at five local parades in the United States. Counterterrorism practitioners are then left battling two dueling dynamics: the continuation of relatively low-technology violence with the catastrophic specter of the spectacular.
Abetting this vein of tactics is the troubling development of ultraviolence having become a defining characteristic of contemporary terrorism. The Islamic State, to which the New Orleans assailant swore allegiance, arguably changed the nature of terrorism with its unbridled visual depictions of particularly gruesome executions and other wanton acts of violence. The Islamic State quickly learned that videos of these atrocities simultaneously galvanized the world’s attention and attracted recruits, donations, and support. Hence, what may previously have proven repellent was instead generating voluminous “likes” on social media and effectively publicizing the group’s existence and cause. Brian Michael Jenkins’ famous adage that “terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead,” appears to now be outdated. It was also a means to thoroughly terrorize the Islamic State’s enemies — most especially through its wanton targeting of women and attendant rape and sexual enslavement. Indeed, the barbarity of the now well-documented assault — including accounts of torture, rape, desecration of corpses, and even reported necrophilia — demonstrates how ultraviolence has become a prominent fixture of terrorist operations over the past decade.
Effectively countering a revived the Islamic State coupled with a myriad of existent threats means ensuring our defenses are sufficiently robust, adaptive, and flexible. Complacency about terrorism is a longstanding problem. For instance, the then-U.S. ambassador to Kenya lobbied the State Department for two years to upgrade security at the embassy in Nairobi. Her pleas were dismissed, and on Aug. 8, 1998, 228 people were killed and 4,000 were injured in a suicide truck bombing carried out by al-Qaeda. More recently, a 2019 report by a private security company urged that bollards be repaired or replaced in New Orleans’ French Quarter to prevent precisely the kind of vehicle attack that killed 14 people earlier this year. Among the damning conclusions in the report was that “security [was] handled in a patchwork manner . . . [that] render[ed] any proposal or initiative dead in the water.”
It is therefore imperative that, by anticipating threats, the appropriate countermeasures are firmly in place. This means taking the threat of terrorist attacks seriously, thinking innovatively, and dedicating resources that address the recommendations of security professionals about personal, physical, and digital security. Gaming simulations are an important tool, for instance, to prepare adequately and protect against mass casualty events at especially high value venues, such as celebratory events, concerts, and sports matches. Additional, privately funded and staffed firefighting capabilities may be needed in certain critically vulnerable locations. Defensive tactics, techniques, and procedures along with enhanced training to respond to swarming attacks and drone attacks are desperately needed given the absence of such protocols, technologies, and legal authorities. Finally, enhanced cooperation, coordination, and information sharing between the public and private sectors coupled with greater security awareness are essential to prevent future tragedies such as the one in New Orleans that kicked off 2025.
Bruce Hoffman is the senior fellow for counterterrorism for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations and CEO of The Hoffman Group.
David Brannan is a professor at the Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School and vice president of The Hoffman Group
Jacob Ware is a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an analyst at The Hoffman Group.
Image: Department of Homeland Security via Wikimedia Commons
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