US counterterrorism experts warn that staffing and funding pressures are eroding post-9/11 safeguards

A warning at the 25-year mark

Counterterrorism specialists are warning that the United States is accepting greater risk as experienced personnel leave, budgets tighten and national-security attention shifts toward other priorities. The concerns were reported by the Guardian on September 10, one day before the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The assessment is not a warning of a specific imminent plot. It is a broader argument that the institutional capacity built after 2001 is under pressure and could become less effective at identifying an evolving threat.

Resources are being stretched across more missions

Experts cited a combination of personnel losses, weakened morale, constrained funding and the diversion of counterterrorism resources toward cartels and politically defined domestic threats. The United States has also spent years rebalancing intelligence and defence priorities toward strategic competition with China and Russia. That shift has broad bipartisan roots, but specialists interviewed for the report argued that recent choices have accelerated the thinning of expertise devoted to violent extremist organisations.

The external threat has changed, not disappeared

The United Nations Security Council’s monitoring team reported in August that al-Qaeda’s senior leadership remained marginalised, while its ability and intent to conduct operations abroad were unclear. That finding cuts against claims of a simple, immediate return to the threat environment of 2001. It also leaves substantial uncertainty: decentralised affiliates, online radicalisation and individuals acting with limited direction can create risks that differ from the centrally planned operation that produced the September 11 attacks.

Why institutional memory matters

The post-9/11 system was built around stronger information sharing, sustained analysis of overseas networks and closer coordination among agencies. Specialists now fear that retirements, departures and competing missions could weaken those habits before the consequences are visible. Terrorist threats are episodic, so long periods without a mass-casualty attack can encourage governments to reduce resources. The danger identified by the experts is complacency rather than evidence that another attack of comparable scale has already been planned.

What to watch

The practical test will be whether Congress and the administration preserve specialist analytical capacity while reorganising agencies around state competitors and other security challenges. Scrutiny will also focus on how the government allocates counterterrorism staff, whether agencies retain experienced officers, and how the updated national strategy distinguishes credible violence risks from partisan priorities. Future UN monitoring reports will provide an important external measure of changes in al-Qaeda and Islamic State capabilities, but domestic preparedness will remain primarily a question of US institutional choices.