Foxwell, Joseph W. How Is the Terrorist Threat Changing?

American Foreign Policy

Interests 31.6 (2009): 389-399. Galileo. Web 20 July 2016.
According to Foxwell, terrorism is hard to predict because terrorists are not rational.
Cyber terrorism can come in any form, from stealing government secrets to denial-ofservice attacks which block the government from their own servers for anywhere from
hours to days. These cyber terrorists aim to bankrupt their opponents. In addition, these
attacks have led to criticism of U.S. counterterrorism programs and policies. What the
Obama and Bush administration have done to handle these attacks is deny all success of
terrorists through minimizing the role they have in events that could be misconstrued as
terrorist attacks. These policies go as far as total concealment, if possible, of terrorist
roles in these attacks. Foxwell states that we cannot allow the losses in the renewed
terrorist offensive against our community defeat us. This heightened state of readiness is
needed so that the nation will be better prepared for avoiding these events.
This article addresses presidential policies in our research question. Bush and Obamas
policies to ignore all terrorist involvement versus working towards ending the war on
terrorism is a counterterrorism program millennials feel need to be changed. Ignoring the
presence of terrorism does not bring millennials peace; in fact, it causes more paranoia.
Foxwell brings attention to the change in the way terrorists are committing attacks.
Instead of the usual mass casualties with weapons of mass destruction, terrorists have
shifted to cyber terrorism, which if the public knew more about would cause more of a
panic. Cyber terrorism poses the biggest threat to millennials since the majority of their
lives revolve around technology. In order to better understand cyber terrorism and relate
it to our research question, Foxwell needed to include how these terrorists are reaching
out to young Americans and how they are recruiting them to join their terrorist groups.