Last week, the Trump administration released the official 2026 United States Counterterrorism Strategy. The document is a mess, replete with typos, hyperbolic assertions, and an obsession with former President Joe Biden. The bigger problem, however, is that it's not an actual strategy. It's more a long set of notes for a campaign speech, a repackaging of President Trump's various preoccupations and prejudices that frames everything the administration doesn't like as 'terrorism' and any actions it has already taken as 'counterterrorism.' As the security expert and Atlantic contributor Juliette Kayyem told me, such reports used to be serious documents meant to 'guide our intelligence and law-enforcement agencies,' as well as inform 'the citizenry, including state and local leaders.' This report, unfortunately, is anything but serious, and good luck to anyone trying to make sense of it. But someone has to figure it out, because it is still an official product of the United States...
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