New Year's attacks place new focus on connections between extremism and the U.S. military
Two recent attacks – one in New Orleans that killed 14 people and another in Las Vegas in which a man blew up his vehicle and took his own life – were both carried out by men with military backgrounds.
The New Orleans attacker, who also injured at least 35 people when he plowed a truck into a New Year’s Eve party on storied Bourbon Street, was an Army veteran who served from 2006 to 2015, including a tour in Afghanistan. He was shot and killed during a gunfight with police. The Las Vegas bomber was an active-duty Green Beret.
Both left messages indicating political motives.
The attacks shine new light on the U.S. military’s long-discussed problem of extremist activity in the ranks and among veterans. Recent data has shown that having a military background is the “single strongest predictor” of violent extremism in America, according to researchers at the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START.
But even as attacks, leaks and plots carried out by active-duty military and veterans continue, the Pentagon has stalled in its efforts to combat extremism, and has made almost no progress on goals to better serve veterans transitioning into civilian life that could help insulate them from the influence of extremist groups.
And despite growing concerns about the confusing connection between military service and terrorist activity, experts now worry any planned reforms will completely collapse under president-elect Donald Trump. Trump has long scorned the very notion of domestic extremism, dismissing it as overblown or invented. And Pete Hegseth, the man Trump has tapped to lead the Pentagon, has been vocally critical of efforts to stamp out extremism in the military, calling them a “purge” and writing that they distract leaders from their primary role.
“In the 90s, we were only finding a handful among all the extremist cases where the individuals had some kind of nexus to the U.S. military and now, per year, we're finding 40 or 50 cases of individuals getting involved in criminal events that are clearly motivated by their extremist beliefs,” said Michael Jensen, the principal investigator at START studying the connection between the military and terrorism.
Jensen sees little hope for the stalled reforms, introduced in 2021, that a Paste BN investigation in 2023 showed had largely fallen apart.
“I can't see it being a very realistic outcome that it's all of a sudden going to do a 180 and become a top concern and be the number one priority moving forward,” he said. “The question is, does it lose even more steam? Does it completely end? Is it a reversal of policy? I think that’s where the question lies.”
Through an attorney, Hegseth declined to comment for this story. A spokesman for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.
The nexus between extremism and the military
A new report from START published last month further examines the connection between the military and extremist activity, concluding that the problem appears to be growing.
The report notes that approximately 15% of the people charged with committing crimes at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 had connections to the military, and also finds that “from 1990 through 2023, 730 individuals with U.S. military backgrounds committed criminal acts that were motivated by their political, economic, social, or religious goals.”
Experts are quick to point out that extremist activity by active duty military personnel or veterans nevertheless remains extremely rare, especially given the vast number of Americans who serve.
“There is data to suggest that the number of people who are extremists in the military is very low compared to the number of everyone who has served,” said Katherine Keneally, head of threat analysis and prevention at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “The majority of veterans and service members are serving their country for very good reasons.”
What makes the issue of extremists with military backgrounds so concerning, however, is that they are far more likely to commit acts of mass violence, and also kill people in attacks at a higher rate than people with no military experience, Jensen said.
“They've been trained to have a highly lethal skill set, and so when they choose to use that skill set, they tend to veer towards highly lethal outcomes,” Jensen said. “Military service is the strongest predictor that somebody would plot or engage in a mass-casualty attack – stronger than mental illness, stronger than being a loner, stronger than having any particular ideological affiliation.”
Not only that but the statistics show extremists with military backgrounds also tend to kill more people when they commit attacks, Jensen said. The worst domestic terrorism attack in U.S. history, for example, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, which killed 168 people, was committed by an Army veteran.
These factors make it all the more important to focus on extremism in the military, however rare it may be, Jensen and other experts said.
But recent efforts to enact reforms that would help identify extremists before they enlist and during their service, and that would help educate veterans about the dangers of extremist groups, have largely fallen by the wayside.
Effort to combat extremism in the ranks sputters
In the weeks after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol four years ago, as suspects were rounded up from around the country and charged with crimes, it soon became clear just how many had served, or were still serving, in the U.S. military.
In direct response, in April 2021, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin launched a groundbreaking effort to identify and stamp out extremism in the ranks. Four initial “immediate actions” were followed by an extensive analysis of the problem and a report laid out detailed recommendations to identify, investigate, punish or help service members who had become radicalized.
Two years later, an exclusive Paste BN investigation found that only two of 20 proposed recommendations had been carried out. The Pentagon’s flagship effort to combat extremism had essentially foundered on the rocks.
Bishop Garrison, who led the Pentagon working group that made the more than 20 extremism-related recommendations for the armed forces in 2021, told Paste BN the reforms are even more important today than they were four years ago.
‘It is still important for the department to take a close look at reforms and address them,” Garrison said. "A large part of this is ensuring that service members, whether active duty or transitioning to civilian life, feel comfortable coming forward to their leadership and communities and asking for help.”
Garrison, Jensen and others noted that there has been some progress on this front.
In late 2023, the Pentagon finally released a study it had commissioned to examine the extent of the extremism problem among the troops. But an analysis by The Associated Press late last year found the study had relied on old and flawed data to make its conclusions.
The Army, Navy and Marines all rolled out stringent new definitions of extremist activity last summer, said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism who has testified to Congress on this.
But much remains to be done, she and other experts said.
“The problem is growing as the government is walking away from this issue, and that is concerning,” Beirich said.
Will reform efforts stall under Trump, Hegseth?
Several experts on extremism in the military told Paste BN they’re concerned efforts to stamp out extremism in the military will falter, if not completely fall apart when Trump takes office in January.
The effort has already been politicized. In 2022, the GOP-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee called for a complete halt to the Pentagon’s counterextremism programs, and that year’s National Defense Authorization Act stripped all funding for the effort, a move that was repeated in 2023 and 2024.
Republicans in Congress have long argued that the issue of extremism in the military is overblown and a distraction from the Pentagon’s primary goals, Beirich, Jensen and others said.
Hegseth, who Trump picked in November to run the Department of Defense, has poured scorn on concerns about extremists in the military.
Hegseth himself was removed from a post guarding the 2021 inauguration of President Joe Biden after a superior questioned his tattoos. “I was deemed an ‘extremist’ because of a tattoo by my National Guard unit in Washington, D.C. … My orders were revoked to guard the Biden inauguration,” Hegseth told podcaster and former Navy Seal Shawn Ryan last year.
In his book, “War on Warriors,” Hegseth “downplayed the role of service members in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and he argued that military leaders remain distracted by efforts to root out extremism from the ranks,” the Military Times reported last year.
Given this track record, experts on extremism who were briefly buoyed by Austin’s 2021 efforts say the future looks bleak for any additional progress, especially given the events of New Year's Day.
“The Department of Defense has not taken the steps needed to address this connection and this growing radicalization and I think these incidents last week really reflect that there are many, many things that need to be addressed by the DOD,” said Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “And yet we're not seeing responsiveness from the Department of Defense or other senior officials in the administration to make sure that they're taking steps to address the connection.”