Editor’s note: This piece is part of Lawfare’s collection “9/11 at 25: The Legal Architecture of the War on Terror, Twenty-Five Years On,” examining how 9/11 remains—or doesn’t—embedded in current legal and policy frameworks, a quarter century after the attacks. Read the full collection here.

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One of President Donald Trump’s closest aides, Natalie Harp, worked in the White House for more than a year without completing the normal security clearance process, according to a recent MS Now report.

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Artificial intelligence systems are starting to do more than answer questions. New AI “agents” can remember information from previous interactions, plan a series of steps and use digital tools to complete tasks.

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The argument in Washington over the past few months has been about whether to ban Chinese AI models or restrict them. What has been less examined is what Beijing intends to do with the open-weight – that is, publicly available and downloadable – models its labs have built. Beijing has started to answer that question, and not with one voice.

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A mother in New York State who claims to oppose vaccines because of her Catholic faith lost an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) this week—though Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch said they would have granted her application. For now, the woman’s kindergarten-aged son must be vaccinated to attend school. 

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Trump Loses the Other Strait  (Robert F. Worth, The Atlantic)
The Houthi advance is bad news for the U.S., and even worse news for Saudi Arabia.

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Rules Designed to Create Chaos  (Quinta Jurecic, The Atlantic)
The Trump administration is hoping to put so many restrictions on mail-in balloting that people simply won’t be able to vote that way at all.

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The worst terrorist attack in world history occurred on September 11, 2001. Many security failures contributed to permitting the attacks to occur, including the inability of the legal immigration system to stop the 19 hijackers from receiving temporary nonimmigrant visas to travel to the United States. Fortunately, the system has improved, and vetting failures have become far less frequent after the attacks. 

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As much as 15.2 terawatt-hours of electricity could be generated annually at non-powered dams — enough to supply more than 1.4 million homes, according to an updated assessment of hydropower technical potential across the nation compiled by researchers at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Idaho National Laboratory (INL).

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25 Years After 9/11, What Are We Failing to Imagine Now?  (Colin P. Clarke and Clara Broekaert, Foreign Policy)
The counterterrorism community struggles with how technology might be applied to novel use cases.

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Top Signs You’re Heading for a Quagmire  (Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy)
Failed wars are predictable, if you know what to look for.

The Truth and the Lies About Islam in Europe  (Economist)
Islam poses no serious danger. But Islamism and the fear of Islam do.

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With rockets propelling it down the sled track at Sandia National Laboratories, a semitrailer loaded with mock nuclear weapons slammed into a barrier. It took mere moments to complete the second and final full-scale crash test of the Mobile Guardian Transporter, a next-generation system that will carry nuclear weapons and other sensitive materials for the Department of Energy’s Office of Secure Transportation.

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Argonne researchers study the movement of dust particles from concrete surfaces during a simulated radiological contamination scenario, measuring how pedestrians and moving cars affect the spread of the particles.

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As devastating wildfires continue to burn across the western U.S. and Canada this summer, they’re taking a serious toll on the electrical grid. Every year, wildfires, some sparked by birds or even high winds, cause significant damage to grid infrastructure.

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Reporting highlights

●  Evidence From Britain: A trove of evidence from Britain that became public only after the FBI closed its 9/11 investigation raises questions about a Saudi man who assisted two of the hijackers.

●  Suspicions: Material seized in 2001 from Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi student who had lived in San Diego, intensified suspicions about what he knew before the attacks.

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On September 5, Guyana received six people expelled from the United States who were not Guyanese: four Cubans and two Afghans, according to Guyanese reporting. Guyana’s government says the arrivals were vetted, had no criminal backgrounds, and entered under a one-year arrangement administered with the International Organization for Migration. Officially, their placement is temporary.

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Friday marks 25 years since the September 11 terror attacks. Americans are spending the week remembering those who lost their lives and honoring the first responders and others who sprang into action to help. The attacks cast a long shadow, stretching beyond Ground Zero, the Pentagon, and Flight 93 to transform not just the United States but the world.

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It was 25 years ago today that the Western world completely changed following the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11th, 2001. The shock of these horrific terrorist attacks caused a seismic shift in security policy both in Washington and Canberra. While the initial shock justified a major response, the focus on non-state and counterterrorist threats soon consumed a generation of national security policy, military resources, intelligence efforts and intellectual attention.

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When ADL published its first report on 9/11 conspiracy theories in 2003, it noted that the internet allowed an “unprecedented cross-fertilization of antisemitic ideas” and that they contributed to a “new form of global antisemitism.” The report also noted that these conspiracy theories were likely to endure and “form the basis of a new antisemitic canard that will linger for decades and be used to demonize Jews and Israel.”

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Twenty-five years after 9/11, the surveillance infrastructure built and expanded in its aftermath has become part of a far larger digital ecosystem — producing tools that can collect and analyze information on a scale unimaginable in 2001.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, did more than reshape the nation’s approach to terrorism. They changed the architecture of American intelligence and policing. They expanded how government agencies collect, share and analyze information, and brought national security tools deeper into ordinary law enforcement.

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