Jacob Ware

Exciting news: GOD, GUNS, and SEDITION is out today in paperback! My @cfr_org and @columbiaUP book, co-authored with the great @hoffman_bruce, tells the story of far-right terrorism in America and beyond—a topic that sadly remains as relevant as ever. amazon.com/God-Guns-Sedit…

"The #Iran war seems to be superseding earlier grievances and instead uniting disparate extremist forces against the United States." With @ColinPClarke for @latimes. latimes.com/opinion/story/…

Deaths from terrorism in the West surged by 280 per cent in 2025, contrasting starkly against a global decline of 28 per cent, reveals the Global Terrorism Index 2026 (GTI). visionofhumanity.org/global-terrori…

The United States has suffered four terrorist attacks since the war in #Iran broke out. Yet our counterterrorism infrastructure continues to atrophy. My thoughts on the challenges ahead, with @ColinPClarke in the @latimes. latimes.com/opinion/story/…

"The U.S. desperately needs functional counterterrorism," me and @Jacob_A_Ware for @latimes @latimesopinion latimes.com/opinion/story/…

Proving it is better to be lucky than smart, I negotiated deep access to Demis Hassabis and DeepMind in November 2022. A week later, ChatGPT launched, and I began my deep-dive conversations with Demis and his team just as AI moved from the fringe to the mainstream. The result is The Infinity Machine. It's been a wild and fascinating ride.

Where is the Trump Administration's counterterrorism strategy?

I was honored to play a small role in the latest @ICCT_TheHague report, assessing anti-government extremism and its interaction (and tension) with democratic governance. More to come from me on this subject very soon! icct.nl/publication/re…

“I am hopeful that this actually might be a place where we can rally together as a country and say enough is enough.” Discussing nihilistic violent extremism (NVE) and youth radicalization with @SeamusHughes and Peter Beck on the @lawfare podcast. open.spotify.com/episode/0PKQvS…

“This will go down as one of the most egregious failures in targeting and civilian harm-mitigation in modern U.S. history.” @WesJBryant @HannahAllam propublica.org/article/trump-…

Just brilliant reporting by @HannahAllam in @propublica, profiling the exceptional work of my friend @WesJBryant amid the devastating U.S. killing of over 150 Iranian schoolchildren in Minab. Arguably the greatest stain on America in my lifetime. propublica.org/article/trump-…

Three weeks into the war with Iran, a number of observations as someone who spent years war-gaming this scenario. 1. The U.S. and Israel may have produced regime transition in the worst possible way. Ali Khamenei was 86 and had survived multiple bouts of prostate cancer. His death in the coming years would likely have triggered a real internal reckoning in Iran, potentially opening the door to somewhat more pragmatic leadership, especially after the protests and crackdown last month. Instead, the regime made its most consequential decision under existential external threat giving the hardliners a clear upperhand. Now we appear to have a successor who is 30 years younger, deeply tied to the IRGC, and radicalized by the war itself – including the killing of family members. Disastrous. 2. About seven years ago at CNAS, I helped convene a group of security, energy, and economic experts to walk through scenarios for a U.S.--Iran war and the implications for global oil prices. What we’re seeing now was considered one of the least likely but worst outcomes. The modeling assumed the Strait of Hormuz could close for 4–10 weeks, with 1–3 years required to restore oil production once you factored in infrastructure damage. Prices could spike from around $65 to $175–$200 per barrel, before eventually settling in the $80–$100 range a year later in a new normal. 3. One surprising development: Iran is still moving oil through the Strait of Hormuz while disrupting everyone else. In most war games I participated in, we assumed Iran couldn’t close the Strait and still use it themselves. That would have made the move extremely self-defeating. But Iran appears capable of harassing global shipping while still pushing some of its own exports through. That changes the calculus. 4. The U.S. now finds itself in the naval and air equivalent of the dynamic we faced in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a recipe for a quagmire where we win every battle and lose the war. We have overwhelming military dominance and are exacting a tremendous cost. But Iran doesn’t need to win battles. They just need occasional successes. A small boat hitting a tanker. A drone slipping through defenses in the Gulf. A strike on a hotel or oil facility. Each incident creates insecurity and drives costs up while remind everyone that the regime is surviving and fighting. 5. The deeper problem is that U.S. objectives were set far too high. Once “regime change” becomes the implicit or explicit goal, the bar for American success becomes enormous. Iran’s bar is simple: survive and keep causing disruption. 6. The options for ending this war now are all bad. You can try to secure the entire Gulf and Middle East indefinitely – extremely expensive and maybe impossible. You can invade Iran and replace the regime, but nobody is seriously going to do that. Costs are astronomical. You can try to destabilize the regime by supporting separatist groups. It probably won’t work and if it does you’ll most likely spark a civil war producing years of bloody chaos the U.S. will get blamed for. None of these are good outcomes. 7. The other escalatory options being discussed are taking the nuclear material out of Esfahan or taking Kargh Island. Esfahan is not really workable. Huge risk. You’d have been on the ground for a LONG time to safely dig in and get the nuclear material out in the middle of the country giving Iran time to reinforce from all over and over run the American position. 8. Kharg Island can be appealing to Trump. He’d love to take Iran’s ability to export oil off the map and try to coerce them to end the war. It’s much easier because it’s not in the middle of IRan. But it’s still a potentially costly ground operation. And again. Again, the Iranian government only has to survive to win and they can probably do that even without Kargh. 9. The least bad option is the classic diplomatic off-ramp. The U.S. declares that Iran’s military capabilities have been significantly degraded, which is how the Pentagon always saw the purpose of the war. Iran declares victory for surviving and demonstrating it can still threaten regional actors. It would feel unsatisfying. But this is the inevitable outcome anyway. Better to stop now than after five or ten more years of escalating costs. Remember in Afghanistan we turned down a deal very early in the war with the Taliban that looked amazing 20 years later. Don’t need to repeat that kind of mistake. 10. The U.S. and Israel are not perfectly aligned here. Trump just needs a limited win and would see long-term instability as a negative whereas for Netanyahu a weak unstable Iran that bogs the U.S. down in the MIddle East is a fine outcome. If President Trump decided he wanted Israel to stop, he likely has the leverage to push it in that direction just as he pressured Netanyahu to take a deal last fall on Gaza. 11. When this is over, the Gulf states will have to rethink their entire security strategy. They are stuck in the absolute worst place. They didn’t start this war and didn’t want it and now they are taking with some of the worst consequences. Neither doubling down with the U.S. and Israel nor placating the Iranians seems overwhelmingly appealing. 12. One clear geopolitical winner so far: Russia. Oil prices are rising. Sanctions are coming off. Western attention and military resources are shifting away from Ukraine. From Moscow’s perspective, this war is a win win win. 13. At some point China may have a role to play here. It is the world’s largest oil importer, and much of that supply comes from the Middle East. Yes they are still getting oil from Iran. But they also buy from the rest of the Middle East, and a prolonged disruption in the Gulf hits Beijing hard. That gives China a real incentive to help push toward an end to the conflict.

A terrific collection of counter-extremism and counterterrorism pieces curated by @thomasjoscelyn and @just_security. Very grateful to have contributed (twice)! justsecurity.org/119009/counter…

Also maybe of interest: "the NVE term is a dramatic and ambitious attempt to better classify (and therefore securitize) violence that has been traditionally derided as 'meaningless' mass murder into a serious, organized, and sustained threat." @lawfare lawfaremedia.org/article/a-terr…

Writing for @CFR_org, SFS Prof @hoffman_bruce warns that a prolonged war with Iran could increase risks of asymmetric retaliation by Iran, while raising concerns about whether DHS has the resources to respond. Read more: on.cfr.org/4cMyUbH

"Violence has a way of breaking containment." @campbellnyt @tarangoNYT nytimes.com/2026/03/14/us/…

What can we learn from the attempted ISIS-inspired IED attack outside Gracie Mansion? In my new analysis for @HSTodayMag, I examine the radicalization pathways, operational indicators, and prevention challenges shaping today’s terrorism threat. hstoday.us/featured/isis-…

Two possible terrorist attacks in the United States today, at Old Dominion University in Virginia and Temple Israel in Michigan. It’s fair to say, as is so often the case, that “The Terrorism Warning Lights Are Blinking Red Again.” @GrahamTAllison foreignaffairs.com/united-states/…

We'll see how the reporting shakes out, but my co-authors and I spent a considerable amount of time on his ISIS case, including interviewing the agents on that case. We wrote it up for our ISIS book, an excerpt of the chapter is here: airforcetimes.com/opinion/commen…