Twenty-five years ago, the world discovered how far a terrorist organization could go, capable of preparing for years a coordinated operation, hijacking commercial aircraft and turning them into weapons. The September 11, 2001 attacks, planned by Al-Qaeda, killed nearly 3,000 people and profoundly altered global geopolitics.
Since then, the terrorist threat has evolved significantly. Today, groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda demonstrate the capacity to operate in a decentralized manner, with autonomous cells that can plan attacks with fewer resources and less preparation, making detection by authorities more difficult.
The current complexity of the threat led one expert to state that "we are flying blind," suggesting that intelligence and security services face growing difficulties in anticipating attacks from isolated actors or small cells that do not follow traditional patterns of financing and communication.
This new scenario represents an unprecedented challenge for security forces, which need to constantly adapt their strategies to respond to an increasingly diffuse and unpredictable threat, while maintaining the balance between security and civil liberties.
