These efforts at nuclear compellence, using the threat of escalation to coerce NATO to limit its support for Ukraine, introduce dangerous loopholes that can be exploited by non-state jihadi actors such as ISIS and al-Qaeda, who possess no stake in global stability and are religiously motivated to see the downfall of a global order they view as sinful. These loopholes can be exploited via a false flag attack by imitating what appears to be (but is not) a NATO-backed conventional weapons attack on Moscow with the deliberate intent of triggering a nuclear war.

Jihadi terrorists, unlike state actors, do not seek to maintain a status quo. They are apocalyptically motivated, seeking to bring about the conditions for their version of an Islamic caliphate.

ISIS, al-Qaeda, and aligned groups are motivated by a destructive, apocalyptic worldview. In a 2007 video, Osama bin Laden had promised to use massive weapons to upend the global status quo, destroy the capitalist hegemony, and help create an Islamic caliphate, while Saudi cleric Nasir al-Fahd said, “If Muslims cannot defeat the kafir in a different way, it is permissible to use weapons of mass destruction, even if it kills all of them and wipes them and their descendants off the face of the Earth.”

ISIS aims to weaken and ultimately destroy state actors, including Russia, which they view as an enemy for its role in propping up the Assad regime in Syria. Furthermore, ISIS has a history of calling for attacks on Russia, specifically in retaliation for Russia’s military involvement in Syria and its broader fight against Islamist movements in the North Caucasus. If their leaders or the leaders of al-Qaeda can exploit a loophole to trigger a large-scale conflict between Russia and NATO, they might see this as a means to cripple both powers, creating a vacuum wherein they can establish their Caliphate.

One of the most disturbing scenarios arises from the possibility of ISIS orchestrating a false flag conventional weapons attack that manages to trigger a nuclear response and thus leads to all-out nuclear war. In today’s interconnected global landscape, terrorist groups can exploit modern technologies, cyber capabilities, and regional instability to mislead major powers. A well-executed false flag attack could deceive both NATO and Russia into believing they are under attack from the other, prompting a rapid escalation into a nuclear conflagration.

Imagine a scenario where ISIS or an affiliated group, through bribery or threats, gains control of a missile system from a third-party state or rogue military element and manages to smuggle this system into a NATO nation with porous border security, such as Romania. From this site, they launch a salvo of conventional missiles at Moscow, which the Russian government might interpret as either a NATO-supported attack or at least an action by rogue members of the NATO chain of command. Russia would be unlikely to consider the possibility that the launch was in fact performed by an uninvolved third party such as ISIS.

Within Putin’s revised nuclear doctrine, a sufficiently embarrassing non-nuclear strike on Russian territory could provoke a nuclear retaliation. This scenario becomes even more plausible if Russia believes the attack was coordinated by a NATO member or supported with NATO-provided weaponry. Thus, a false flag operation can exploit the lowered red lines Putin has established, triggering a nuclear launch by Russia, which would in turn be met with massive nuclear relation by NATO and America—leading to wider nuclear conflict.

ISIS’s leaders are not known for long-term survival planning, especially in the event of a global catastrophe like nuclear war. Their ideology prioritizes martyrdom and the apocalyptic fulfillment of their religious vision over practical concerns about survival in a post-nuclear world. If a NATO-Russia nuclear conflict were to lead to a nuclear winter—an environmental catastrophe that would devastate agriculture and global ecosystems—ISIS may believe that their movement, or at least their ideological successors, would survive through divine intervention or sheer resilience.

ISIS’s apocalyptic vision and willingness to exploit global chaos makes them a serious threat to global security, especially in the context of Russia’s current nuclear posture. Russian and NATO forces must work to enhance intelligence-sharing and establish clearer lines of communication to avoid falling victim to such a false flag operation. Furthermore, global powers must consider the broader implications of lowering nuclear thresholds in an age where non-state actors can exploit such vulnerabilities. Robust systems for verifying the origins of attacks, improved missile defense technologies, and clear diplomatic channels are essential to prevent any false flag attempt from succeeding.

For Russian military strategists, in particular, understanding the apocalyptic motivations of groups like ISIS is crucial. Putin’s strategy of nuclear compellence might seem effective in deterring NATO’s involvement in Ukraine, but it also opens dangerous new avenues for manipulation by non-state actors. By setting conditions where even a conventional attack could provoke a nuclear response, Russia risks falling into a trap set by terrorist groups that wish to bring about the universal Caliphate and wipe the global slate clean. This cannot happen.

Jonathan Rodriguez Cefalu is a researcher of security vulnerabilities in artificial intelligence systems and was the first discoverer of a critical vulnerability called “prompt injection,” which enables hijacking the actions and instructions of numerous AI systems. Jonathan discovered prompt injection as part of his work as co-founder of an AI safety & security firm called Preamble. Oksana Bairachna is an associate professor of management at the Odesa National University of Technology (ONTU) and a contributor to Preamble’s research on global strategic stability.

Why and How ISIS Leaders Might Exploit Putin’s Nuclear Compellence to Destroy Russia was originally published on Global Security Review.

These early civil defense measures were eventually neglected and then forgotten after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the Soviet Union ended in 1991. Such measures were mirrored in the USSR under General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, but by no means neglected afterward.

Civil defense is, by nature, a community-wide activity. The more people participate and help, the better the results for the entire citizenry. This includes improved morale and will to resist, fewer combat casualties, and prolonged lifespans in case of conventional or nuclear war.

The organization of processes, the laying down and buildout of infrastructure, the first-responder rehearsals, and pervasive homefront readiness drills all require group dedication in the face of natural popular skepticism, even active resistance by a vocal few.

Although there is ample room for volunteerism, and for more formalized national service (especially for those well above military draft age), governments at different levels do need to take overall charge. This ensures efficient coordination, direction of available funding into the most pressing needs, and arranging for efficient communication and reasonable compliance.

With Vladimir Putin’s many nuclear threats, it is once again time to ensure the nation has effective civil defenses against nuclear employment. It may not be the 1950s and 1960s, but civil defense matters.

This is perhaps a prime case where today’s financial-industrial and high-tech oligarchs (billionaires) can work with and/or under contract to the federal government, or even on their own initiative, to assure that, for example, America is hardened against electromagnetic pulse attack, cyber assaults, and nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction attacks. These may not be traditional civil defense measures, but they are civil defense for the modern era.

This collaboration is already happening in the space domain where President Putin’s “Sputnuke” threatens to totally disrupt space operations, and where President Xi Jinping’s growing space-dominance capabilities threaten to disrupt current civil society.

Effective civil defense measures are as central to effective nuclear deterrence and ally assurance as is nuclear modernization. Effective civil defense also includes ensuring the societal supporting infrastructure, such as housing, hospitals, and food stocks, are secure and survivable under even the most highly stressed circumstances.

In fact, an essential component of a truly superb American deterrence strategy must be a comprehensive program of being able to absorb an attack and nevertheless survive. Only in this way can the United States make it clear to adversaries, as President Richard Nixon said, “Not today, Comrades. Not ever.”

Church and synagogue groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), such as the Red Cross or Doctors without Borders, and fraternal organizations, such as the Shriners or the Boy Scouts can also play a significant role in providing the ultimate in community civil defense. Examples of such efforts abound from the current conflict in Ukraine and Israel.

Exactly how much civil defense is the right amount? Nuclear strategists Thomas Schelling and Herman Kahn were never able to agree. Such agreement is even less likely today.

The right answer to civil defense is likely a programmatic solution that is affordable and optimizes the strengths of local communities. The right amount of civil defense should be a discussion between the federal, state, and local governments. The challenge for any civil defense effort is that more than two-thirds of all federal spending and about half of all state spending are dedicated to mandatory social programs. This leaves very little room for civil defense programs, which must compete with all other government functions for an ever-dwindling percentage of federal and state budgets.

For most Americans, the threat of nuclear strikes on the homeland is an abstract threat. Thus, they would rather have immediate government services than look to an event that may never happen. This leaves the prospects for improving civil defenses low. Much as in the Cold War, it may be up to Americans to look to their survival in the event of the unthinkable.

Joe Buff is a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies. The views expressed are his own.

Modernizing Civil Defense Is Wise was originally published on Global Security Review.

Since 2021, Russia upgraded or modernized approximately 85 percent of its strategic nuclear arsenal. China undertook what then-Commander of United States Strategic Command, Admiral Charles Richard, called “a strategic breakout,” with “explosive growth in their nuclear and conventional forces.” North Korea went from a fledgling 1980’s nuclear program to possessing an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the continental United States. Iran’s nuclear program goes deeper underground, figuratively and literally, to avoid US threats and complicate US risk assessment.

Little occurred in the US nuclear arsenal during the same two decades. The nuclear enterprise is attempting to modernize each leg, with debatable levels of success. In June 2023, the Biden administration publicly confirmed and accepted American numerical nuclear inferiority for the first time since the end of the Cold War. The administration posits deterrence comes from quality over quantity. But how is a triad that is 30–50 years old qualitatively better than a new Russian arsenal?

The non-strategic nuclear arsenal rose in prominence as the Ukraine war began and Russia began making threats to attack the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s member states. Production of the B61-13 and life extension of the W80-4 emphasize regional nuclear deterrence and may preempt strategic conflict at a lower level but may arrive too late. Retiring the B83 purportedly transfers the hard and deeply buried target (HDBT) responsibility to the B61-13, streamlining the Department of Energy’s sustainment and modernization expenses. The Department of Defense is still weighing a 2022 study, evaluating future HDBT targets to demonstrate viability of the non-strategic capability.

Since 2021, the nuclear enterprise began receiving long-overdue attention, but it will take years to yield results. The enterprise competes for American talent, amongst lucrative technological fields, that it needs for successful reconstruction and for addressing the needs of the triad. The Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) authorized $500 million more than requested for plutonium pit production reconstitution at Savannah River and Los Alamos National Laboratories.

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) goal is to produce at least 80 plutonium pits per year, between the two facilities, by 2030. Assuming 80 pits per year went into refurbishing 85 percent of deployed nuclear warheads, matching Russia’s accomplishment, that pace would require nearly 16.5 years and almost 20 years for a 100 percent refurbishment. In FY 2024, the NNSA is requesting 8.6 percent more money than enacted in FY 2023 for the Product Modernization Program to support strategic nuclear weapons modification and life extension.

The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy, refocused on strategic-level concerns, reprioritizing strategic power over Russia and China higher than post-9/11 terrorism. The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) called for nuclear modernization, as previous NPRs did, but was followed by the financial resources outlined in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act required for execution.

There is a nexus between terrorism, nuclear weapons, and immigration. Iran sponsors Hezbollah, Houthi rebels, and Hamas’ terror campaign against Israel. If Iran develops a nuclear weapon and provides it to any of these groups, the US may be left searching for nuclear fingerprints in the aftermath of a detonation. The Federation for American Immigration Reform reported Customs and Border Patrol data showing 3.2 million aliens illegally crossed into the US between October 2022 and October 2023. Among those apprehended, 172 aliens were suspected terrorists. One hundred sixty-nine attempted an illegal entry at the southern border. The notion of an attack on the homeland by terrorists using a smuggled weapon of mass destruction is a credible threat.

Law Enforcement sources assert terrorists can employ nuclear weapons without sophisticated delivery systems on US soil. Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker described the US as extremely vulnerable to a catastrophic terrorist attack. Swecker suggested that the mismanaged southern border is the key source of that vulnerability, concurring with a warning presented in December 2023 by the Department of Homeland Security. Preventing such dangerous exposure belongs at the forefront as policymakers seek to correct three years of negligent border protection. American strategic deterrence once overshadowed immigration, reducing temptation from adversaries abroad.

Nuclear-armed nations and proliferators alike must remember any nuclear attack against the United States from a terrorist organization will result in retaliation against the nation providing the weapon, as codified in the Bush Doctrine found in the 2002 National Security Strategy. While internal politics unnecessarily expose the US, those responsible can project strength by reiterating the consequences of exploiting that vulnerability and reemphasizing nuclear deterrence.

Terrorism and nuclear war are real. The US cannot afford to alternately overlook one in favor of the other. When adversaries see vulnerabilities, it invites aggression. Controlling who and what comes across US borders is essential to keeping Americans safe. Maintaining a modern, reliable, and lethal nuclear deterrent can foundationally dissuade terrorist attacks on US soil.

Dan Wasserman was both a missile operations and maintenance officer in the United States Air Force. He remains active in the field. The views expressed are his own.

Do Not Let Terrorism Distract from Deterrence was originally published on Global Security Review.

The Problem

In a population of 336 million, the potential death of 270 million Americans is 80 percent of the citizenry. Yet, fentanyl remains undesignated as a weapon of mass destruction (WMD). A 1961 analysis suggested that a Soviet nuclear attack on the United States, consisting of 553 nuclear weapons with a total yield of over 2,000 megatons, would kill 50-60 million Americans out of a population of 179 million—30 percent of the American population.

According to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, the highly lethal China-Mexico fentanyl nexus is a sophisticated enterprise of illicit trafficking of precursor ingredients and refined product, as well as money laundering designed to evade authorities at all levels of government. Drug Enforcement Agency Administrator Anne Milgram stated, “Today, drug cartels in Mexico are mass-producing fentanyl and methamphetamine largely sourced from chemicals in China, and they’re distributing these substances throughout the United States. We are finding these deadly drugs in every state; in cities, suburbs, rural areas, and local communities spanning the country.”

As recently as December 2022, the DEA announced it seized “more than 379 million potentially deadly doses of fentanyl.” This is enough to kill the entire population of the United States and Canada.

The Director of National Intelligence’s 2024 Annual Threat Assessment notes that “Mexico-based TCOs (transnational criminal organizations) are the dominant producers of illicit fentanyl for the US market and that China remains the primary source for illicit fentanyl precursor chemicals and pill pressing equipment.” However, the report offers no explanation for the 76,725 fentanyl deaths in 2023.

This is more than just transactional narco-crime. It is a complex and deliberate example of gray zone warfare. Twenty-five years ago, two Chinese People’s Liberation Army colonels penned Unrestricted Warfare, which proposed asymmetric tactics for China to “fight a non-military war.”

The book describes a potential attack vector as “drug warfare,” which is “obtaining sudden and huge illicit profits by spreading disaster in other countries.” In other words, the trafficking of lethal fentanyl allows China to weaken the fabric of American society, burden the United States with $1.5 trillion in annual costs, and potentially kill catastrophic numbers of American citizens. This is done without firing a single shot. Colonel Qiao Liang wrote, “The first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden.”

China and the US have different approaches to counternarcotics cooperation. While the US tries to keep it separate and distinct from the overall bilateral geostrategic relationship, China views its counternarcotics cooperation as subordinate to its quid pro quo geostrategic relations. As the rapport between the two countries worsens, China’s willingness to cooperate with or acquiesce to the US on counternarcotics efforts decreases. This was demonstrated when China “formally suspended bilateral counternarcotics cooperation in August 2022, in response to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.”

A Solution 

It is time to address the fentanyl scourge with a new approach. First, the American government must acknowledge the China-Mexico fentanyl crisis for what it is—gray zone warfare. The 2022 National Defense Strategy describes gray zone methods as “coercive approaches that may fall below perceived thresholds for US military action and across areas of responsibility of different parts of the US government.”

Gray zone actions are performed by actors seeking to challenge or violate international customs, norms, and laws in pursuit of their national security interests without provoking a direct military response. Moreover, gray zone attacks from foreign powers can challenge national stability by exploiting societal divides and domestic vulnerabilities to destabilize or undermine societal harmony or confidence.

This risk is not limited to cyber-attacks upon critical infrastructure or terrorist attacks in American cities. Simply viewing the fentanyl crisis strictly from a criminal point of view limits responses to the law enforcement tool. Acknowledging the fentanyl crisis as a form of warfare will allow the integrated responses of the military to proactively engage the threat and begin to execute a real deterrence strategy for the future.

Second, it’s time to declare fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction (WMD). The federal government defines a WMD as “any weapon that is designed, intended, or has the capability to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of persons through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors.” We can all agree that the potential death of 80 percent of America’s population meets these criteria.

In 2019, the Trump administration considered but declined to declare fentanyl a WMD, instead declaring the opioid crisis a public health emergency. In 2021, the Biden administration issued an executive order declaring a national emergency with respect to international trafficking of illicit narcotics, including fentanyl.

Congress recently introduced HR 7190 “to require the Assistant Secretary for the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office of the Department of Homeland Security to treat illicit fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction and for other purposes.” Designating fentanyl as a WMD would elevate the threat of fentanyl to the American people from criminal behavior to a national security threat status and from a narco-trafficking burden to a class of gray zone warfare.

Third, the United States, a member of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, also known as the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), must designate fentanyl as a chemical weapon. To do this, the CWC definition of chemical weapon, which includes toxic chemicals that “can cause death, temporary incapacitation, or permanent harm to humans,” including their precursors, must be updated to include — intent.

Many CWC and WMD thinkers remain focused on traditional weaponized chemical munitions rather than the weaponization of synthetic opioids, like fentanyl, for the intentional exploitation or purpose of attacking a person or group or for spreading discord. Whether the attack vector is a 105-millimeter mustard gas munition or sold on the streets of America through the Chinese-sponsored fentanyl pipeline, the intent is the same: to kill.

Congressman David Trone (D-MD) declared in 2022 that China was “critically involved in the 64,000 deaths we had because they are pretty much the lone supplier of [fentanyl] precursor chemicals, which they are shipping to Mexico.” This is corroborated by the 2024 Annual Threat Assessment and the FBI director’s testimony.

Of the over 107,000 deaths-by-overdose in 2022, 68 percent were attributed to synthetic opioids like fentanyl. This is almost double the number of traffic fatalities for the same year. Since dead customers are not repeat customers, the motive is not profit but death and societal destruction through the calculated use of gray zone warfare.

America embarked on a twenty-year war on terror after 2,977 people were killed by a single terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. Fentanyl “has killed more Americans than the Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam Wars combined” and one kilogram of fentanyl is enough to kill 500,000 people.

Despite recent sanctioning of 25 China-based companies and individuals allegedly involved in the production of chemicals used to make fentanyl, China appears disinclined to actually stop precursor exports. As Attorney General Merrick Garland stated, “We know that this global fentanyl supply chain, which ends with the deaths of Americans, often starts with chemical companies in China.”

Treating fentanyl as a national security threat would allow a truly integrated approach to first combating and then deterring the drug with a Department of Defense response. It is time to hold China accountable for an activity emanating from within its borders. After all, the United States has gone to war for far fewer deaths.

Col. Curtis McGiffin (U.S. Air Force, Ret.) is Vice President for Education at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies and visiting professor at Missouri State University’s School of Defense and Strategic Studies. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

It’s Time to Declare Fentanyl a National Security Threat was originally published on Global Security Review.