U.S. political polarization exacerbates security risks
Global interstate conflicts now intersect with U.S. extremism, immigration disputes and unconventional security vulnerabilities.
In a nutshell
- The U.S. now faces more security threats than in the last century
- Political polarization helps attackers, hinders responses
- Terrorism within the U.S. can exploit domestic division
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The wars in Iran and Ukraine show that great-power conflict between states is no longer confined to discussions among security planners or think tanks but is now a pressing reality with real-world effects on the global economy and human safety. Since World War II, the United States has faced periods of great-power competition and, since 2001, has adapted to the threat of terrorism. Yet the U.S. has not faced an environment in which threat of state conflict and attacks by lone wolf terrorists or state proxies so frequently overlap.
The geopolitics of the conflict in Iran, the potential for a Chinese attack on Taiwan and Russia’s stymied yet ongoing attack on Europe are formally and militarily confined to the other hemisphere. Nevertheless, the domestic U.S. problems of illegal immigration, online radicalization and cartels in Mexico lay the groundwork for these interstate conflicts to take place within the U.S. in the form of proxy terrorist attacks and unconventional warfare.
An apt illustration of this dynamic unfolded in late February 2026. Mexican security forces, with the assistance of U.S. military intelligence, launched a raid against the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (JNGC) in western Mexico. The cartel’s leader, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes (“El Mencho”), was killed in the raid. The aftermath of his death included the cartel’s attacks on the Mexican government, including arson attacks, roadblocks and urban violence. What is less known is the collaboration between Mexican drug cartels and Iran.
In 2011, two Iranian nationals, one with ties to the Quds Force and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), were arrested and charged for attempting to recruit a Mexican cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. The Iranians’ “Mexican” contact was working undercover for the Drug Enforcement Agency. Multiple Iranian nationals in the U.S. have been arrested with ties to groups such as Hezbollah and for criminal activity. The Ayman Joumaa network, a criminal syndicate connected to Hezbollah, was found to be laundering $200 million per month for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. By some American estimates, Hezbollah receives more money through drug trafficking than directly through Iranian state sponsorship.
While operations like these are small in scale, their ability to destabilize society and threaten security is significant.
In 2024, the Treasury Department announced that Hezbollah was laundering money through the Black Market Peso Exchange and illicit financing networks spanning the Americas, Europe and the Middle East. In the aftermath of the El Mencho killing and Operation Epic Fury in Iran, the U.S. federal government released a threat assessment warning of potential drone attacks on California and on American law enforcement personnel operating on the border. These international, state-level threats and the dangers posed by terrorist groups and organized crime are reaching a conflagration that renders them inseparable.
Shortly after Operation Epic Fury began, the U.S. witnessed several lone wolf terrorist attacks on civilian targets. On March 7 in New York City, two Muslim teenagers inspired by the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) attempted to detonate improvised explosives at a protest outside Gracie Mansion, the New York City mayor’s residence. At Old Dominion University in Virginia on March 12, a former U.S. Army National Guardsman named Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, with a past conviction of supporting ISIS, opened fire on civilians before being subdued by students. That same day, a man named Ayman Muhamed Ghazali rammed his car into a synagogue in Michigan.
According to the Israeli government, Ghazali’s brother was a Hezbollah commander named Ibrahim Muhammad Ghazali. The case of the Ghazali brothers appears to demonstrate a direct link between the war in Iran and terrorism in the U.S. That this attack was inspired by a Sunni terrorist group such as ISIS and carried out in solidarity with Iran and its proxies, which are overwhelmingly Shia, shows that even sectarian divisions may no longer offer a meaningful analytical metric to gauge Islamist threats. Such attacks carry a high degree of political impact despite their relatively low levels of sophistication.
This dynamic is shown by arrests in the U.S. of Chinese nationals, seizures of biological materials and the closure of unlicensed laboratories linked to Chinese entities. While operations like these are small in scale, their ability to destabilize society and threaten security is significant and tied to geopolitical competition between the U.S. and China.
Concerns over the security of biological research grew following the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2023, authorities in Reedley, California, discovered an unlicensed biological research lab linked to a Chinese national with a Canadian arrest warrant and a $330 million judgment for stealing intellectual property. The lab itself was not only unregistered, funded by Chinese banks and poorly managed, but it also contained pathogens that included Covid-19, HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and the Ebola virus.
Perhaps most alarming was the discovery of genetically engineered mice designed to mimic human immune responses. A similar lab was later discovered in a raid in Las Vegas in 2026. Chinese nationals connected to the University of Michigan, who were smuggling biological materials, were arrested, showing that safeguarding access to weaponizable compounds presents real challenges. As the actions of terrorist cells are affected by broader geopolitical dynamics, phenomena like illegal Chinese labs cannot be divorced from great-power competition between the U.S. and China.
Why political polarization inhibits responses
Increased political polarization within the U.S. over the past 15 years manifests itself in policy formation, while in security and law enforcement it is less explored. Polarization exacerbates the risks posed by lone wolf terrorists, criminal proxies of state actors and foreign agents operating within the U.S. At the core of this polarization in law enforcement and security are divisions over immigration enforcement, and among judges and prosecutors who follow a progressive agenda of criminal justice reform by allowing early releases from detention and reducing prosecution for crime.
Differences in immigration philosophy are evident in border arrests under the administrations of Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump. A conservative estimate of 6.7 million illegal migrants entered the U.S. during the Biden administration, and an estimated 14 million illegal immigrants were residing in the U.S. as of 2023.
Cartels involved in human trafficking and threatening national security were earning roughly $13 billion annually as of 2022 during the Biden years, as opposed to an average of $500 million in income from human trafficking in 2018 under President Trump. Connections between cartels and foreign threat actors from Iran and China effectively made the migrant crisis an opportunity to establish footholds within the U.S.
Standoffs between predominantly Democratic city and state governments holding “sanctuary” policies for illegal migrants and the federal government seeking mass deportations create operational hurdles with national security ramifications. These standoffs are driven by political division and are one element of a deeper divide over immigration and criticisms of controls on who enters the country.
For example, the terrorist who attacked the synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan, was a naturalized citizen from Lebanon with family connections to Hezbollah. An Afghan national who was brought to the U.S. during the pullout of Western forces, named Rahmanullah Lakanwal, shot two members of the National Guard in Washington, D.C. in November 2025. In June of the same year, an Egyptian national named Mohamed Soliman was charged with throwing Molotov cocktails at a pro-Israel demonstration in Boulder, Colorado. Soliman was living in the U.S. illegally on a B-2 visa that had expired two years earlier.
Politicization of the border and citizenship along partisan lines reached a fever pitch earlier this year after the deaths of American citizens in Minnesota by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Transportation Security Agency (TSA), which is responsible for safeguarding America’s airports and screening travelers, remained unfunded until late April due to a legislative standoff in Congress, eroding security in the U.S. aviation sector.
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Sanctuary policies that ignore federal detainer orders disconnect local law enforcement from national law enforcement. Between January and December 2025, in New York alone, the state released 6,947 criminal illegal immigrants rather than transferring their custody to the federal government. Some of these criminals, such as Selman Cevik from Turkiye, are on terrorist watch lists.
Beyond immigration, political divisions and bureaucratic inefficiency in the justice system are also contributing to the worsening national security landscape. For example, the attacker at Old Dominion University was convicted in 2017 for supporting ISIS and spent seven years in prison before being released in 2024 for completing a treatment program for drug abuse.
International threats become domestic ones when polarized views of immigration disrupt interagency cooperation in law enforcement and intelligence. This polarization inhibits effective responses to smaller-scale attacks, such as lone wolf and other terrorist activities conducted by non-state actors with the backing of foreign powers. These divisions incentivize smaller attacks and organizations, as external threats remain coherently manageable within American military capacity.
Scenarios
Most likely: More low-risk attacks with high political impact
Polarization creates an environment where controlling political narratives becomes a primary goal, translating into how laws are formed, enforced and interpreted. Polarization on immigration and questions of sovereignty hamper policy implementation between different levels of local, state and federal government. This, in turn, creates gridlock and adversaries are incentivized to conduct attacks that exacerbate existing divisions.
Islamist and far-right terrorism can create damaging feedback loops that link back to political debates about immigration policy. This affects border security and the way threats posed by drug cartels are mitigated.
Adversaries like China and Russia have an incentive to inflame internal divisions rather than engage in direct military confrontation. Both Beijing and Moscow exploit political divisions and manipulate political narratives to change electoral outcomes and policy. Because polarization lowers costs for adversaries, low-level terrorist attacks and domestic espionage operations become an attractive course of action.
Less likely: Overt state-led attack on the U.S.
Direct state-led attacks on the U.S. itself are possible, though less likely given the country’s geography and its political polarization. Russia, China and Iran all seek to harm American interests; however, their direct military activities take place in regions outside the U.S.
Russia’s goal of regaining Central and Eastern Europe within its sphere of influence threatens American allies and the U.S. due to treaty obligations and economic interests. Nonetheless, it does not directly threaten the U.S. China’s military is keeping a close watch on Taiwan while also needing to protect its western territories bordering Afghanistan and India, as well as support its Belt and Road projects in Africa. While Iran is engaged in a war with the U.S., its main adversarial focus is still on Israel and the Arab Gulf states.
Thus, the primary threats to the U.S. from state actors are conventionally focused elsewhere. This does not mean that state actors cannot or will not attack the U.S. or American military forces abroad; rather, it incentivizes foreign adversaries to exploit domestic political divisions through smaller attacks and cognitive warfare.
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