Friday marks 25 years since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon. The attacks transformed international security and launched the US-led war on terror. The US invaded Afghanistan in pursuit of Al-Qaeda and toppled the Taliban regime for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden and his associates.

Twenty-five years later, the Taliban are back in power, the US has left Afghanistan, and Al-Qaeda remains closely allied with the Taliban government. Yet global militancy has changed significantly in this period, and it no longer defines international security. US-China competition has replaced the war on terror as Washington’s organizing priority, and counterterrorism has slipped to a second-tier concern as resources and attention shift toward countering China’s rise.

The most significant development in global militancy over these 25 years has been the split between Al-Qaeda and Daesh. Daesh broke away in 2014 and soon eclipsed its parent as the world’s most prominent terrorist group, a serious blow to the global militant movement. Since then, the core leadership of both groups has weakened while their regional affiliates have grown stronger, keeping their respective brands alive.

But declining visibility is not the same as declining capability. -Abdul Basit Khan

By one measure, both groups are past their prime: their attacks no longer dominate global headlines. For terrorist groups, publicity is oxygen. They use violence to draw attention to their grievances, political demands and ideological goals, and the media’s fading interest shows how far they have slipped from the center of world politics.

But declining visibility is not the same as declining capability. Both Al-Qaeda and Daesh have proven flexible and resilient under sustained counterterrorism pressure. They decentralized their structures, giving regional franchises the autonomy to plan and carry out attacks. They forged alliances with local militant groups and embedded themselves in local conflicts, obscuring their presence while continuing their campaigns under a different strategy. In effect, they have localized global militancy without abandoning the goal of a so-called global Sunni caliphate. They have also used digital and social media platforms for recruitment, propaganda, fundraising and communication to compensate for their losses on the ground.

Both groups are adopting emerging technologies as well. They have weaponized drones and use them for reconnaissance, experimented with 3D-printed weapons, and turned to generative artificial intelligence to expand and diversify their propaganda.

Their targeting has shifted too. Al-Qaeda in particular is no longer fixated on high-profile international attacks, and spectaculars on the scale of 9/11 or the 2005 London bombings have become far rarer. Terrorist networks increasingly rely on homegrown lone actors who radicalize online and carry out low-intensity attacks such as stabbings and vehicle rammings. Their calculation is that a steady series of such attacks, if well executed, can deliver similar strategic gains at far lower cost.

Violence, in other words, is now one tool among several. Terrorist networks have hybridized their approach, investing in narrative, ideological and information warfare online and, in parts of Asia and Africa, in governance and state building. Judging their strength by their violent output alone is therefore misleading. Understanding and countering the threat requires a multidisciplinary approach, not a narrowly security-centric one.

The geography has shifted as well. For two decades, the epicenter of global militancy lay first in Afghanistan and then in the Middle East. It has now moved to Africa’s Sahel, which accounted for more than half of all terrorism-related deaths worldwide in 2025, according to the Global Terrorism Index. Daesh and Al-Qaeda have both made significant gains there even as their affiliates suffered setbacks in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the Internet has replaced ungoverned sanctuaries as the main arena of radicalization. Would-be militants no longer need to risk traveling to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or Yemen. Recruiters find them online, draw them onto encrypted platforms and work on their thinking there.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, global terrorism is more diffuse: more manageable in some respects, but less predictable. More alarmingly, both the age at which people are radicalized and the time it takes have fallen. Children as young as 12 and 13 have been drawn into militant plots.

With international resources and attention for counterterrorism in short supply, regional organizations must improve intelligence sharing and coordination against transnational threats. And because radicalization has moved from conflict zones onto the Internet, and into people’s homes, governments, technology companies, civil society and academia will need to work together to prevent and counter violent extremism. Against a threat that has evolved this far, a security-centric approach alone will fall short.

Abdul Basit is a senior associate fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. X: @basitresearcher