While much remains unknown about the man who carried out an attack in New Orleans on New Year's and another who died in an explosion in Las Vegas the same day, the violence highlights the increased role of people with military experience in ideologically driven attacks, especially those that seek mass casualties.
In New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a veteran of the U.S. Army, was killed by police after a deadly rampage in a pickup truck that left 14 people dead and dozens more injured. It's being investigated as an act of terrorism inspired by the Islamic State group.
In Las Vegas, officials say Matthew Livelsberger, an active-duty member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, shot himself in the head in a Tesla Cybertruck packed with firework mortars and camp fuel canisters, shortly before it exploded outside the Trump International Hotel, injuring seven people. On Friday, investigators said Livelsberger wrote that the explosion was meant to serve as a "wake up call" and the U.S. is "terminally ill and headed toward collapse."
A Tesla Cybertruck burns early Wednesday after exploding outside President-elect Donald Trump's Las Vegas hotel.
Service members and veterans who radicalize make up a tiny fraction of a percentage point of the millions and millions who honorably served their country.
Still, an Associated Press investigation published last year found that radicalization among both veterans and active-duty service members was on the rise and hundreds of people with military backgrounds were arrested for extremist crimes since 2017. AP found that extremist plots they were involved in during that period killed or injured nearly 100 people.
The AP also found multiple issues with the Pentagon's efforts to address extremism in the ranks, including that there is still no forcewide system to track it, and a cornerstone report on the issue contained old data, misleading analyses and ignored evidence of the problem.
Since 2017, both veterans and active-duty service members radicalized at a faster rate than people without military backgrounds, according to data from terrorism researchers at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland. Less than 1% of the adult population is serving in the U.S. military, but active-duty military members make up a disproportionate 3.2% of the extremist cases START researchers found between 2017 and 2022.
Federal prosecutors revealed in court filings that federal agents seized over 150 pipe bombs and other explosive devices in a December raid on the Virginia home of Brad Spafford. This seizure is described as the largest by number of completed explosive devices in FBI history. Spafford was initially charged with possessing an unregistered short-barrel rifle, with additional charges likely related to the explosives. Prosecutors cited evidence of political extremism, including Spaffordβs alleged use of President Joe Biden's images for target practice and comments supporting political assassinations.Β
While the number of people with military backgrounds involved in violent extremist plots remains small, the participation of active military and veterans gave extremist plots more potential for mass injury or death, according to data collected and analyzed by the AP and START.
More than 480 people with a military background were accused of ideologically driven extremist crimes from 2017 through 2023, including the more than 230 arrested in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection β 18% of those arrested for the attack as of late last year, according to START. The data tracked individuals with military backgrounds, most of whom were veterans, involved in plans to kill, injure or inflict damage for political, social, economic or religious goals.
The AP's analysis found plots involving people with military backgrounds were more likely to involve mass casualties, weapons training or firearms than plots that didn't include someone with a military background. This held true whether or not the plots were carried out.
The jihadist ideology of the Islamic State group apparently connected to the New Orleans attack would make it an outlier in the motivations of prior attacks involving people with military backgrounds. Only about 9% of such extremists with military backgrounds subscribed to jihadist ideologies, START researchers found. More than 80% identified with far-right, anti-government or white supremacist ideologies, with the rest split among far-left or other motivations.
Police officers stand near the scene where a vehicle drove into a crowd Wednesday on New Orleans' Canal and Bourbon streets.
Still, there have been a number of significant attacks motivated by the Islamic State and jihadist ideology in which the attackers had U.S. military backgrounds. In 2017, a U.S. Army National Guard veteran who'd served in Iraq killed five people in a mass shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport in Florida after radicalizing via jihadist message boards and vowing support for the Islamic State. In 2009, an Army psychiatrist and officer opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas, and killed 13 people, wounding dozens more. The shooter was in contact with a known al-Qaida operative prior to the shooting.
In the shadow of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol β led in part by veterans β law enforcement officials said the threat from domestic violent extremists was one of the most persistent and pressing terror threats to the U.S.
The Pentagon said it is "committed to understanding the root causes of extremism and ensuring such behavior is promptly and appropriately addressed and reported to the proper authorities."
Kristofer Goldsmith, an Army veteran and CEO of Task Force Butler Institute, which trains veterans to research and counter extremism, said the problem of violent extremism in the military cuts across ideological lines. He said the Biden administration tried to address it but Republicans in Congress opposed such efforts for political reasons.
"They threw, you know, every roadblock that they could in saying that all veterans are being called extremists by the Biden administration," Goldsmith said. "And now we're in a situation where we're four years behind where we could have been."
