Finland is the latest country to join France’s nuclear umbrella, having finalized a deal with Paris earlier this week. This sounds like there will be nuclear weapons in Finland, a country that shares a 1,340-kilometer-long border with Russia and has an historic rivalry with it (see the Winter War).

Thankfully, Finland’s president, Alexander Stubbs, has clarified that no nuclear weapons will be stationed in his country. Instead, the agreement is meant to have Finnish conventional and French nuclear capabilities coordinate and communicate with each other in the event of a conflict between NATO and Russia. 

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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. 

In 2018, the Cato Institute published my original research documenting terrorism visa-vetting failures from 1987 to 2016. The report demonstrated for the first time that visa vetting failures became much less common in the years following 9/11—despite the US government’s even more aggressive foreign policy and far more legal immigration and travel than before 9/11. 

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Twenty-five years ago today, terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners and flew three of them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands of people in the deadliest terrorist attack in American history. The fourth plane crashed after its passengers fought back, preventing the plane from reaching the hijackers’ intended target. On September 15, 2001, Congress gave President George W. Bush an authorization to use military force against those responsible for the September 11 attacks. He signed it on September 18. One week later, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel—a small but authoritative division that provides legal advice to the president and the agencies—explained that he had not needed it. The president already held broad constitutional power to use force, OLC concluded, and “Congress’s power to declare war does not constrain the President’s independent and plenary constitutional authority over the use of military force.”

That opinion has never been withdrawn.

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Nineteen Islamist terrorists murdered 2,979 people on September 11, 2001. The government’s counterterrorism (CT) response to 9/11, which was the deadliest terrorist attack in world history, included domestic security measures like the TSA, the PATRIOT Act, surveillance, and numerous wars overseas that we lost. The costs of 9/11 were horrific, and the response was gargantuan. When studying public policy, we must ask: Was the counterterrorism response to 9/11 worth it? Did it save enough lives to pay for itself or at least break even?

No, not even close. For CT spending to equal the value of lives saved, it would have to have saved between 390,000 and 442,000 lives, or between 15,600 and 17,680 per year since 9/11. From September 12, 2001, through September 10, 2026, I estimate that 347 total people were murdered on US soil by all terrorists of all ideological motivations and locations of birth. That includes some victims in attacks since that analysis was published. Thus, all CT spending would have to have saved 1,124 to 1,274 times as many lives as were taken by terrorists in attacks on US soil for the benefits of CT spending to equal the costs in terms of lives saved. 

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Twenty-five anniversaries in, let’s drop the “clear blue September sky” line and recalling where we were when the attack happened. Nearly 3,000 Americans were killed that day, and the suffering of their families dulls over time but will never end. 

Still, people use anniversaries to reflect on events both good and bad, and 9/11’s 25th has been and will be used to shape our consensus on what the terror attacks and the ensuing Global War on Terror were.

My piece in the Independent Review for the 20th anniversary says much of what I have to say about the world produced after 9/11.

In the absence of major international or domestic constraints, policy can become extravagant. The period from 2001 to the present represents a promiscuous waste of money, lives, and diplomatic attention, for which almost no one in charge of the policy has paid serious consequences…. Policies whose costs can be avoided, defrayed, or hidden are likely to be oversupplied.

I would add two additional points. As should any analyst, I think first about my own failures. Perhaps the biggest one is that I opposed the Iraq War in part because I thought at the time that radical Islamist terrorism was a huge threat to the United States and that invading would both distract us from fighting terrorism and make the threat worse. In 2002 and 2003, that was a widely held view among the few of us who opposed the war.

But there was one person who got the terror threat right while it was truly heretical to do so: my colleague John Mueller. John wrote an article in the fall of 2002 (!) arguing that 

a case can be made that rather than foreshadowing the future, the attacks may turn out to have been a statistical outlier, a kind of tragic blip in the experience of American national security.

To say that this was ridiculed in 2002 would be an understatement. But John was right.

In 2026, there are opportunities to bet—er, “trade”—on almost everything on sites like Kalshi and Polymarket. Many people use these as a way to gauge likely futures. John was willing to put his reputation on the line with a prediction shared by almost no one at the time. Had we had prediction markets back then, John would have a fleet of Bentleys in his driveway today, and the entire US foreign policy establishment would be rattling a tin cup. It is worth hearing out the heretics sometimes.

Second, twenty-five years later, the GWOT is both over and never-ending. The public has lost interest in large-scale counterterror projects, although it continues to say worries about terrorism are top of mind. But the institutions (DHS, TSA, ODNI) and protocols (presidential drone killings unbound by courts or Congress) set up in response to the attacks endure. As I closed the 2021 article,

ending the other legacies of the post‑9/​11 period will be difficult and many of these legacies may survive as nuts tightened onto the American ship of state by what Robert Higgs has famously termed the “ratchet effect.”

Giving governments extraordinary powers in times of crisis seems irresistible. But it is often worth resisting, because this ratchet only tightens.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board published an opinion piece remarking on Congress’ failed attempts to fund America’s military. The article laments, among other concerns, that the war in Iran is draining US munition stockpiles. It includes a quote from General Michael Guetlein, who warns that “there is no Golden Dome” should the federal government fail to approve the money requested for the project. The Journal’s argument places the blame squarely on Congress approving too little of funds—or that’s at least what the Editorial Board wants you to think. 

In a way, the fault does belong to Congress. Policymakers create a country’s national security strategy. This requires matching military means to foreign policy goals. In truth, the real problem is America’s defense strategy: US policymakers are reaching for nonsensical goals. 

Take the Iran war. The Trump administration has yet to provide evidence that Tehran was close to building a nuclear weapon. Now the administration has shifted the war’s aims to prioritize reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Simply put, the administration has no clear objective for its war, which risks becoming endless. A forever war means that money, military equipment, and American lives could be wasted for years to come.

The Trump administration announced a major oil deal with Venezuela on Friday that would purportedly give the United States rights to 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil, or 20 percent of the country’s oil reserves. Much information and key details are still lacking, but everything we know about the deal is troubling:

• It expands state corporatism by giving the US government a large, and possibly majority, stake in a major joint oil venture in Venezuela, an entity the Wall Street Journal reports “would be the world’s second-largest corporate holder of proven reserves after Saudi Aramco.” State-owned enterprises are a bad idea anywhere, but as Scott Lincicome observes, this comes after the US government under Trump has already taken equity in 31 private companies. As Scott says, “This isn’t even ‘creeping’ socialism anymore.”
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