The Unsecure World

Almost every part of the world faced uncertain times in 2025 and beyond. The threat to the security of people everywhere was real, from extremism and terrorism to antisemitism.

Extremism had many faces – Right-wing, Left-wing, neo-Nazi and Islamic versions the main ones that worried security chiefs.

The United States has seen action from Antifa, a far-Left organisation (anti-fascist) born of the ideology that violent resistance is required against the far-Right, targeting neo-Nazism. Antifa and neo-Nazism previously were active in Australia and probably still on the radar of security agencies.

Terrorism is among the most alarming of all threats as a sub-set of extremism, whether aimed at civilians, military or government.

Australians were shocked to learn in 2025 that a terrorism plot against the leader of the Opposition in the Australian parliament had been uncovered. The plot is alleged to have involved the use of a drone to bomb Peter Dutton’s home in Queensland with home-made explosives.

Just as shocking as the proposed method was the fact that the person charged was 16 years-old. He was arrested in 2024 and was committed to stand trial later in 2025.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw told a Senate committee  that police responded to 1,009 threats against lawmakers in the 2023-24 fiscal year and likely to increase in the 1024-25 fiscal year with the total at  712 by March 2025.

According to the Globel Terrorism Index 2025 released in March, Australia had become one of seven Western countries ranked in the worst 50 for terrorism. The others were Germany, the US, France, the UK, Canada and Sweden.

The findings followed warnings from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) that “lone wolf” terror attacks remained a major threat.

The GTI report noted there were five terrorism incidents in Australia in 2024, none in 2023. ASIO put the number of attacks, disruptions or incidents in 2024 at nine.

GTI researchers reported that conflict in Gaza had caused instability in the Middle East and stoked terror attacks in the West.

According to the GTI, the number of countries experiencing at least one terrorist incident increased from 58 to 66 in 2024, the highest since 2018. For the first time in seven years more countries (45) reported a higher impact from terrorism than those showing improvement (34).

In January 2025, a man identified as  Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a small truck through a crowd of people in the US city of New Orleans, killing at least 15 and wounding at least 30 others. The FBI said the driver was a 42-year-old army veteran from Texas. An Islamic State flag was attached to the tow-bar of the truck. The victims were celebrating New Year’s Day in the Bourbon Street party area, in the city’s French Quarter. After driving through the crowd, the man got out of the truck and started firing a gun. Police returned fire, killing him.

The man’s action was put down as an Islamic extremism-inspired lone-wolf act. The FBI said Jabbar posted videos on social media indicating that he was inspired by the ISIS terrorist group. 

Terrorist attacks had not stopped, even though methods had changed.

The act epitomises what the Centre for Strategic and International Studies said in its report handed down in March 2025: “Most domestic terrorist attacks in the United States are carried out by lone actors or small groups who believe in a wide range of ideologies, such as white supremacy, partisan extremism, and Salafi-jihadism.”

Antisemitism was widespread. According to a global survey  by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in 2024, antisemitism reached alarming levels worldwide; it found 46% of adults globally – representing approximately 2.2 billion people – held significant antisemitic beliefs, more than doubling in prevalence over a decade.

Each region of the world had its own specific concerns. But it was clear many people were not feeling as safe as they were half a century ago and even a decade ago in some places.

Terms such as counter-terrorism, hate-speech and radicalism entered everyday usage amid security concerns.

Radicalising of young people to do the dirty work of others was a major issue in many countries.

The spectre of a terrorism, whether a lone-wolf act or a mass attack   was always in the minds of those charged with keeping people safe.

Security threat levels in the modern-day global environment were assessed on a combination of factors:

• Available intelligence. Judgments based on a range of information, including the level and nature of terrorist activity, comparison with events in other countries and previous attacks. Intelligence reveals only part of the threat picture. 
• Terrorist capability. What terrorists might be capable of based on previous attacks or from intelligence. 
• Terrorist intentions. Examination of aims of the terrorists and the ways they may achieve them, including possible targets for attack. 
• Timescale. This is the tricky bit. Some previous attacks had been years in planning. More recently, some attacks seemed almost spur-of-the moment. Lone-wolf incidents were now more likely than such attacks as those over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, or in the US in 2001 (known as 9/11).

Weighing up the assessments globally, Right-wing extremism and Islamist terrorism appeared to pose the most significant threats.

In Australia, an investigation in 2025 by the ABC television program Four Corners revealed a national security agent who infiltrated a pro-Islamic State  (IS) network had discovered that an Islamic preacher had links to global terrorist leaders and aimed to inspire young Australian jihadists.

In the UK, assessments identified a combination of terrorism and state-sponsored threats, particularly from Russia and Iran.

The UK Government in 2025 put the threat (to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) from terrorism as “substantial,” mid-range on the scale used. An attack was considered likely.

The threat of Islamist terrorism was considered the most significant, by volume. The MI5 director-general reported in 2025 that the threat from al-Qaeda and ISIS (both still active in parts of the world, the latter most prominently) was worsening, with the amount of counter-terrorism casework related to Islamic extremism running at around 75%.

State-sponsored threats also had escalated significantly. Russia and Iran were described as acting with “increasing recklessness.” Investigations into state threats increased by 48% through 2024.

Russia was seen as the “more professional opponent,” engaging in plots involving assassination (including poisonings), kidnap, and sabotage; effectively waging a “secret war” against the UK.

Russia and Vladimir Putin’s “henchmen” were “on a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets,” according to Sir Kenneth McCallum, Director General of MI5.

Cyber threats also posed another major security risk. The National Audit Office reported that the cyber threat to UK Government was severe and advancing quickly, with significant gaps in cyber resilience across critical IT systems. Concerns also surrounded threats to infrastructure. Russia would be a prime suspect, based on its attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure and suspicions that it was behind sabotage attacks elsewhere in Europe, including on undersea communications cables and pipelines.

Perceived threats throughout Europe were similar to those identified by the UK, albeit in different measures: Cyber and hybrid threats, terrorism and politically motivated violence, state-sponsored threats, critical infrastructure vulnerabilities, social cohesion and disinformation and geopolitical instability. The latter became a more significant issue amid the change of government in the US amid President Trump’s likely withdrawal from various security guarantees, including a threat to downgrade US involvement in NATO.

In the US from 2019 to 2020, the biggest security threat had been Right-wing extremism, responsible for 90% of attacks.

Based on the 2025 Homeland Threat Assessment by the Department of Homeland Security, the biggest threat in the US  had become a tangled combination of terrorism, cyber-attacks, and state-sponsored threats.

DHS notes from 2025:

• Lone offenders and small groups were considered the greatest threat, capable of carrying out attacks with little to no warning
• Domestic violent extremists (DVEs) and foreign terrorist organisation (FTO)-inspired homegrown violent extremists (HVEs) posed a significant threat
• Ongoing international conflicts, such as the Israel-Hamas conflict, may motivate violent extremist actions.

Cyber threats to critical American infrastructure also were a major concern with China, Russia, and Iran the likely suspects.

State-sponsored threats, especially from China, were thought to pose significant risks, particularly to economic security.

DHS expected China, Iran, and Russia to continue using subversive tactics to undermine confidence in US democratic institutions and domestic social cohesion, with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) likely to play a part.

It would always be the case that those who suffered most from extremist attacks would be ordinary citizens.

As noted by ASIO boss Mike Burgess, Australia was facing a level of threat never seen before.

Australia faced a complex and evolving security landscape, Mr Burgess said, with multiple significant threats identified by ASIO and other national security agencies.

He explained: “ASIO’s Futures Team pours over classified intelligence, reviews open-source information, consults experts and uses structured analytical techniques to develop in-depth assessments about future trajectories and vulnerabilities.

“We do not predict future events, rather we chart broader trends in the security environment.”

In his annual security threat update, in February 2025, he said ASIO was charting “significant changes in the security climate.”

Australia’s terrorism threat level was “Probable” meaning there was a greater than 50% chance of an attack or attack planning in the next year.

How reliable are ASIO assessments?

ASIO director-General Mike Burgess, 2025: “We provided early warnings about the growth in nationalist and racist violent extremism… we put the radicalisation of young Australians on the national agenda… we predicted the growth in grievances, conspiracies and anti-authority beliefs and updated our terminology accordingly… we assessed withdrawal from Afghanistan would not have immediate security implications for Australia but could prove problematic in the medium term… when we raised the terrorism threat level in August last year (2024) I said we should expect spikes in politically motivated violence. We were correct about all those things.”