Former CIA targeting officer Sarah Adams details how terrorist threats to the United States have grown far beyond the 9/11 era, with al-Qaeda expanding from 5,000 members to over 200,000 worldwide, operating 50+ training camps in Afghanistan alone, and maintaining sleeper cells and active plotting networks inside the U.S.
CIA Background and Tradecraft
Adams grew up in the Midwest and emphasizes that CIA officers often come from ordinary, trusting small-town backgrounds rather than the cinematic stereotype, which helps them build rapport across cultures.
Key traits for intelligence work: scrappiness (persisting through constant failure and chaos), patience, pattern recognition without forcing connections, and comfort with deception — knowing adversaries lie systematically.
Deception tactics include downplaying important figures (as seen in the bin Laden courier case), falsely reporting leaders dead to halt U.S. pursuit, and paying informants who fabricate intelligence for ratings.
Adams captured a senior Taliban leader after his teenage son stole his phone and used it for two days, revealing his location — a break caused by family error, not high-tech surveillance.
Living Under Direct Threat
Adams operates under a known assassination plot from al-Qaeda’s military commission, which plans global operations; surveillance teams have been spotted at her home.
A Hezbollah-affiliated group in Iraq has a public bounty on her ($350,000, requiring the hunter to live in Iraq), but she considers the al-Qaeda plot far more serious.
She maintains an offensive mindset: “You want to come to my country… step on my grass, it’s going to be a bad day for you,” shaped by years living in Pakistan and Libya where threats were daily reality.
The FBI dismissed her warning about the plotter’s history (400 assassinations in Benghazi), treating it as routine threat noise.
Security Lapses and Institutional Complacency
Adams argues U.S. security has become lax: Secret Service failures at Trump events, unchecked magnetometers at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and a cultural shift away from vigilance.
After withdrawing from Afghanistan, the U.S. lost 98% of its intelligence collection there (per CENTCOM), forcing reactive domestic monitoring instead of overseas disruption.
The public believes terrorists haven’t tried to attack since 9/11; in reality, the U.S. stopped dozens of plots annually by aggressively targeting al-Qaeda’s external operations leaders — a campaign halted for a decade.
Situational awareness is eroding: citizens absorbed in phones miss surveillance indicators (e.g., a terrorist building a deer blind near Mar-a-Lago went unnoticed).
9/11 Lessons and the New Attack Waves
The 9/11 Commission cited a “failure of imagination”; today, Adams sees the same inability to conceive of suicide bombings on U.S. soil despite al-Qaeda planning them as 10% of their next wave.
Al-Qaeda’s military commission has planned multiple coordinated waves: October 7th (with Hamas, ISIS, Taliban fighters trained in Afghan camps), a European plot, embassy attacks, Jewish site targeting, and a major U.S. homeland plot.
October 7th involved ~8,000 attackers from multiple groups, not just Hamas — a scale obscured by tight information control that prevents connecting dots across theaters.
Iran is the structural hub: a 20+ year alliance with al-Qaeda (senior leaders sheltered by Soleimani and IRGC intelligence), enabling training, logistics, and joint planning across Hamas, Hezbollah, Taliban, and others.
Shoe Bomb Revival and Invisible Bomb
DHS briefly dropped shoe screening; al-Qaeda immediately resumed shoe bomb prototyping. The threat returns when adversaries believe a vector is unmonitored.
The “invisible bomb” (non-metallic, binary chemical initiator) defeats standard magnetometers; it can be worn through venues with only walk-through metal detectors (sporting events, some government buildings).
Al-Qaeda is saving this capability for a strategic surprise in their next major operation; limited testing may have occurred in Somalia.
Terrorist Funding: A Global Enterprise
Al-Qaeda earns ~$1.5B/year from Afghan opium (20% cut), plus cuts from gold, emerald, and uranium mines across North Africa.
Legitimate revenue: ownership stakes in Egyptian and Somali ports, and >50% of Hajj travel bookings (moving operatives under cover of pilgrims).
U.S. and international aid (State Dept, DoD, World Bank, UN, WFP) is siphoned: cash flows through Afghan banks to Taliban-chosen families; WFP trucks deliver directly to al-Qaeda camps.
Humanitarian and counterterrorism funds are effectively laundering money to terrorists; corruption is systemic and documented via overhead surveillance.
Training Camps and Recruitment Pipeline
Afghan camps (e.g., Al-Farouq) now function as open “terrorism universities”: any group (al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, Hamas, etc.) sends recruits for specialized training — urban ops, guerrilla warfare, suicide bombing, engineering.
Indoctrination starts at age 9–10; military-age recruits choose fighter or suicide bomber tracks.
Engineering students are prized recruits: creative problem-solvers for bomb-making, fake documents, and novel weapons; many come from wealthy, connected families who provide influence access.
Terrorist groups mirror Chinese influence operations: embed in local institutions, buy legitimacy, exploit pre-existing social networks of elite recruits.
Sleeper Cells and Domestic Infrastructure
ODNI acknowledges >18,000 known foreign terrorists on U.S. soil: some run Hezbollah/Hamas fundraising and influence ops; others conduct surveillance, bomb-building, and safe-house logistics for future attacks.
ISIS claims 2,500 illegal-status operatives in the U.S. (plus green-card holders and citizens), completely off books — no reliable IDs, often using corrupt driver’s license systems (e.g., 1,500 licenses registered to a one-bedroom apartment in California).
Casing of churches and synagogues is ongoing; Adams advises delaying live streams by 30 minutes to reduce propaganda value and deter targeting.
Terrorists are task-driven, not “sleeping”: they research targets, case locations, maintain cover jobs, and manage impatience to avoid premature attacks that compromise larger plots.
Ideology, Not Religion
The driving ideology is a restored Islamist caliphate (last seen in the Ottoman Empire) that excludes Christians, Jews, secular Muslims, and all dissent — enforced by killing police, judges, activists, and entire bloodlines.
This is not mainstream Islam; Muslim communities fight these groups more intensely and longer than the West (e.g., Kurds defeating ISIS, Libyans expelling terrorists from Benghazi at great cost).
Gulf states (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman) suppress this rhetoric in mosques; the U.S. allows it under “suicidal empathy,” missing partners who know how to counter it.
Benghazi: A Case Study in Liberation
Adams returned to Benghazi in 2024 after a 2014–2017 civil war expelled al-Qaeda/ISIS: women now dominate public life (driving, markets, hospitals), but 50% of terrorists died fighting, 10% detained, rest dispersed to Tripoli, Turkey, Europe, and back to Afghanistan.
Terrorists migrate to the next jihad zone; liberation requires local will, massive sacrifice (8,000 local troops killed), and sustained rebuilding to prevent terrorist aid from re-entry via social services.
University Infiltration and Influence Operations
Foreign state and non-state actors fund U.S. universities to shape curricula, create institutes, and recruit engineering students for technical skills and future influence.
The model: capture elite youth early, give them platforms, and harvest their credibility and networks as they rise — identical to Chinese long-term influence strategy.
Universities resist scrutiny due to funding dependence; the scale of ideological subversion is obscured by financial opacity.
Havana Syndrome and Directed Energy Threats
“Havana syndrome” (anomalous health incidents) dates to 1950s Moscow embassy microwave attacks; pulsed energy weapons disrupt the central nervous system, causing cognitive fog, motor control loss, and career-ending disability.
Russia is the primary actor; China now possesses the technology; proliferation makes attribution harder. Weapons are portable (room-to-room), not truck-mounted.
U.S. government covered up incidents, denied care, corrupted records, and rebranded the phenomenon to avoid confronting Russia — driving officers out of service.
A journalist investigating Epstein reported similar targeting in New Mexico; the threat actor is unclear due to proliferation and lack of U.S. investigation.
Social Media as Psyops Infrastructure
TikTok (banned in China, replaced by educational Douyin) and algorithmic feeds on all platforms reinforce narrow worldviews, radicalizing users incrementally — from mild content to extremist ideology.
Algorithms optimize for outrage and retention; influence operations pay for placement; transparency is nonexistent.
Adams advocates algorithmic user control (sliders for viewpoint diversity) and detachment as the only reliable defense — noting a non-social-media user perceived reality more clearly than heavy users.
Preparedness Over Fear
Adams rejects fear-based living: “You can’t live based on fear. But knowing the threats out there, you can prepare around them.”
Practical steps: family emergency plans (not dependent on one person), situational awareness (leave when something feels wrong), home readiness (food, water, cash, defense for 1–2 weeks), and community hardening (e.g., delayed live streams).
She lives normally — farmers markets, e-bikes, neighborhood life — arguing all Americans should, informed but not paralyzed.
