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Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\nSoon after 9\/11, law enforcement and national security officials identified the perpetrators of the deadliest terrorist attack in American history.<\/p>\n
While Osama bin Laden, the attack\u2019s architect, was killed in 2011 and al-Qaeda is now a shadow of its former self, New York faces no shortage of potential threats a quarter-century after September 11. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch recently said that New York City now confronts the most perilous threat environment that she has seen in her 18 years in government. \u201cIt\u2019s an everything, everywhere all at once terrorist threat environment,\u201d said Rebecca Weiner, the New York Police Department\u2019s Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism.<\/p>\n
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Today, the threats are so wide-ranging, idiosyncratic, individualized, and unpredictable that they require an extensive and creative response\u2014and not just from the NYPD. Protecting New York, which remains the world\u2019s top terrorist target, increasingly requires coordination among federal homeland security agencies, some 18,000 state and local law-enforcement groups, and nonprofit organizations like the Community Security Initiative.<\/p>\n
Created in 2019 by the UJA\u2013Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council with an initial $4 million grant supplemented by philanthropists, CSI is a community-based counterterrorism and security organization that helps protect New York\u2019s 1.8 million Jews and the city\u2019s some 3,400 synagogues, schools, camps, museums, and other Jewish institutions against threats that have soared since Israel\u2019s response to Hamas\u2019s invasion of the Jewish state on October 7, 2023, the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t pick and choose which threats we try to prevent,\u201d observes Mitchell Silber, a former NYPD director of intelligence analysis who has headed the CSI since its establishment. \u201cWe must try to thwart all of them all at once.\u201d In 2025, his group passed along to law enforcement some 221 of these suspected \u201cthreats to life.\u201d This year, the rate has increased.<\/p>\n
In interviews with me, Silber described some of what the NYPD and nonprofits like his are doing to prevent another mass-casualty attack in the city and protect New York Jews from growing threats posed by the Left and the Right, as well as by religiously, ideologically, and grievance-motivated groups and individuals. The current environment, he says, is \u201ca perfect storm\u2014the most precarious moment for American Jews since their arrival on American shores 352 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nationally, four deadly attacks (two of them in the New York metro area) on Jewish targets over a 14-month period from October 2018 to December 2019, which left 16 people dead, led Jewish national security experts to conclude that Jews could no longer rely solely on the NYPD\u2019s impressive resources for their protection. Jewish New Yorkers\u2014the largest Jewish population outside Israel\u2014account for roughly 25 percent of America\u2019s 6 million Jews. About 60 percent of all hate crimes and extremist plots targeting New York and New Yorkers are directed against Jews.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe threat has changed,\u201d said Silber. \u201cSo has our culture. While most people agreed after 9\/11 that terrorism was evil and civilians were innocent victims, now terrorism\u2019s evil seems up for debate and Jews are often seen as legitimate targets. On the internet and even from some politicians, you hear that Jewish terror victims are fair game.\u201d Because of Israel\u2019s massive response to October 7 in Gaza, he said, \u201cit\u2019s not uncommon to hear social media influencers and even politicians say, \u2018they had it coming.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Fortunately, says Silber, the NYPD\u2019s intelligence and counterterrorism \u201carchitecture\u201d\u2014the post-9\/11 counterterrorism programs created by former Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Central Intelligence Agency veteran David Cohen, and the late Michael Sheehan, a former government official and military officer\u2014\u201cremains intact, durable and effective.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since 9\/11, the NYPD, working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation\u2019s New York Joint Terrorism Task Force\u2014which includes representatives from some 50 federal, state, and local agencies\u2014has thwarted roughly 20 known terrorist plots, along with dozens more never publicized, against the city and its residents.<\/p>\n
Some 36,000 officers conversant in 168 languages\u2014roughly 1,000 assigned to counterterrorism\u2014are now supported by a fleet of boats patrolling the waters around Manhattan, counter-drone aircraft, explosive-detection dogs, bomb squads, heavy-weapons teams, additional plainclothes officers, a dozen detectives embedded with police departments overseas, and more than 2,600 Argus cameras linked to a data center staffed by intelligence analysts. There, AI-driven algorithms help detect \u201canomalous\u201d packages and behavior. \u201cAI doesn\u2019t need to take lunch breaks or go to the bathroom,\u201d Silber said.<\/p>\n
With the NYPD\u2019s operational and intelligence practices in its institutional DNA, Silber\u2019s CSI employs what he calls \u201ca layered defense.\u201d His staff, which has grown more than fourfold since October 7\u2014from six to more than 30\u2014advises institutions on how to \u201charden\u201d themselves against attack by installing cameras, coating windows with shatter-resistant film, and establishing safe rooms and emergency procedures. CSI also trains personnel at Jewish institutions to deter and respond to terrorist attacks, should the worst occur. This year alone, the team has worked with Jewish groups on 33 university campuses along the Amtrak Northeast Corridor from Boston to Washington, D.C., where many New Yorkers attend college.<\/p>\n
Increasingly, however, cyber defense, some of it AI-assisted, lies at the heart of CSI\u2019s post-9\/11 deterrence effort. The group\u2019s \u201cthreat detectors,\u201d many of them young, troll social media and public internet platforms\u2014Telegram, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram\u2014in search of often-atomized dangers. To detect and counter what Silber calls \u201cgrievance-fueled\u201d threats, \u201cyou need to be in the Telegram chat rooms\u2014on Gab, 4Chan, and other deep and dark parts of the internet.\u201d Intelligence analysts using AI-guided algorithms scanning the web help threat detectors spot Islamic State and Iran-linked plotting, signs of online radicalization, overt threats to kill and seek revenge, and other forms of violence.<\/p>\n
Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
The threats don\u2019t just involve New York. In November 2024, one of Silber\u2019s threat detectors\u2014\u201cAli,\u201d as he asked to be called, in order to protect his identity\u2014found an alarming post in a chat space on Telegram. \u201cThe message screamed \u2018Islamist,\u2019 \u201d Ali recalled. Following the username, Ali saw myriad disturbing posts\u2014an Islamic State video, a manual on how to assemble a rifle, and a photo of the user holding a knife in front of an Islamist flag. Reviewing the posts, he identified the user and his location\u2014Brazil. He passed the posts to a partner in Brazil who, in turn, passed them along to the FBI and Brazilian law enforcement.<\/p>\n
A month later, Brazilian police announced the arrest of Thiago Jos\u00e9 Silva Barboza de Paula, 44, on suspicion of terrorism in S\u00e3o Carlos, a university city and research hub in southeastern Brazil. A subsequent indictment charged him with working to recruit Brazilians for the Islamic State and Boko Haram and efforts to establish an Islamist caliphate in Brazil and Latin America. A search of his house turned up replica firearms, a machete, and bomb-making manuals and chemicals for making explosives. As a result of what the Brazilian police dubbed \u201cOperation Machete,\u201d Barboza was convicted of membership in a terrorist organization and preparing acts of terrorism. In 2025, he was sentenced to 11 years in jail, later reduced to eight years. This past January, Leandro Claro Telles, aged 16, one of his \u201cstudents\u201d recruited online, was also arrested, again with FBI support. He was charged with seeking to buy weapons and explosives. Barboza has denied the charges and is appealing his sentence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe global jihad still wants to return to the U.S.,\u201d said David Cohen, who helped develop the NYPD\u2019s groundbreaking counterterrorism program and applauds Silber\u2019s work. But perpetrating mass murder no longer requires the involvement of an organized group like ISIS or Iran. \u201cMass casualty can now be the result of a simple grievance\u2014an individual who drives a car bomb into a building,\u201d he said. \u201cGrievance is the taproot of all evil.\u201d And today, he added, Americans\u2014particularly, young Americans\u2014seem to have \u201cgrievances galore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Silber, too, worries about the youthfulness of those posting violent messages. There\u2019s \u201ca lot of activity in the 16\u201319-year-old range, and those as young as 15.\u201d<\/p>\n
However vital they are to the intelligence network that protects New York, groups like CSI, which has a $6.3 million budget this year, cannot operate effectively\u2014much less expand\u2014without indirect government support. Some of that aid comes through the federal Nonprofit Security Grant Program, created by Congress in 2004. Though the program has distributed roughly $300 million annually in grants through the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s Federal Emergency Management Agency to help nonprofits (many of them Jewish) enhance security, funding was reduced and delayed this year.<\/p>\n
In 2024, institutions affiliated with CSI received $43 million in grants. But by July, the Trump administration had approved grants for only 1,600 of the 6,000 applications submitted in 2025\u2014just 27 percent, a significant decline from previous years. FEMA spokespersons have attributed the delays to the state agencies that administer the grants and to repeated Department of Homeland Security shutdowns related to immigration-enforcement disputes. The program\u2019s supporters remain unconvinced. In an email statement, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the New York Democrat, called the funding \u201cessential to protecting New York from terror threats and supporting nonprofit groups who keep our communities safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
If federal dollars for nonprofit counterterrorism groups are constrained and political support is tepid, the same is true at city hall. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose criticisms of Israel and its leadership have created what Silber calls a \u201cpermissive environment\u201d for potential terrorism against Jews, has so far neither reduced funding for the NYPD programs that have helped prevent another 9\/11 nor boosted funding or voiced support for them.<\/p>\n
As mayor, Mamdani now sits through briefings on the nonstop threats facing the city\u2014an experience that may have thrown what Silber calls \u201cbuckets of ice water\u201d on his oft-stated desire to eliminate what Commissioner Tisch considers vital counterterrorism programs. But, Silber notes, the city has done little to strengthen those capabilities. \u201cThe NYPD is trying to police the city and carry out its counterterrorism mission with 34,000 uniformed officers\u2014the same number we had in 1994,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the city has added a million more people since then. Do the math.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Soon after 9\/11, law enforcement and national security officials identified the perpetrators of the deadliest terrorist attack in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-340209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}