The Threat Podcast

On September 30th, a Fly Dubai flight to Tel Aviv with 174 people aboard suddenly plunged more than 17,000 feet. In the cockpit, a 29-year-old Omani co-pilot had attacked the captain with the plane’s crash axe and tried to take control — intending, the UAE says, to crash it into the terminal at Ben Gurion Airport in a suicide attack inspired by 9/11. Passengers and crew overpowered him and the plane landed safely. Al-Qaeda never ordered it — but its media machine embraced him within hours. Is this what Al-Qaeda’s future looks like: no orders, no money trail, just inspiration?

Jay Solomon and Hagar Chemali are joined by two of the world’s leading experts on Al-Qaeda: Dr. Bruce Hoffman, Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, and returning guest Dr. Sara Harmouch of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.

They discuss why the attack bears Al-Qaeda’s signature even without a direct link; how the attacker was radicalized not in Afghanistan but in Melbourne, and how he slipped into the cockpit despite Oman barring him from flying over extremist views; the chilling insider threat in aviation and the breakdown in intelligence-sharing that let him through; why the Dubai–Tel Aviv route, born of the Abraham Accords, made Israel the perfect target for a group bent on destroying peace; the coordinated speed of Al-Qaeda’s propaganda response across its franchises; the mystery of whether Hamza bin Laden is alive or a convenient ghost while Saif al-Adel quietly steers from Iran; and the deepening danger of Al-Qaeda’s long relationship with Tehran. Plus: why Hoffman warns it may take another tragedy to shake our complacency.

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Three years after Hamas's 2023 attack on Israel, American campuses are still filled with activists making common cause with militant Islamists — and the alliance has moved from the quad into the halls of power, helping elect New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and propel Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. It's called the Red-Green Alliance: a convergence of the secular far left and political Islam. It feels new, but its roots run back through the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Bolsheviks, and Marx himself.

Jay Solomon and Hagar Chemali are joined by Dr. Craig Considine, senior lecturer in sociology at Rice University and author of the new book When Marx Meets Islam.

They discuss the "four godfathers" of the ideology — Marx, Gramsci, Fanon, and Edward Said — and how the oppressed-versus-oppressor binary shifted from class struggle to identity politics; Gramsci's "war of position" to capture culture from within academia and civil society; why October 7th was more coordinated than it looked and how Hamas won the PR war on TikTok; Considine's own account of being targeted, boycotted, and smeared at Rice after he publicly opposed Hamas; the "five fronts" of the soft war, from the classroom to foreign funding by Qatar and China; and whether this unholy alliance will hold — or, as in Iran, the Islamists will eventually turn on their leftist pawns. Plus: Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance, and why Considine says the West must refuse to tolerate the intolerant.

Find Dr. Craig Considine's When Marx Meets Islam wherever books are sold, and follow him on X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

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A U.S.-registered company called ETS Solutions North America won a piece of a $2 billion Army combat vehicles contract — testing equipment for a future warfare program. The problem: it shares a founder, an owner, and business ties with a Beijing firm that the U.S. government blacklisted just three months earlier, one whose ownership traces up to China's premier state contractor for rockets and ballistic missiles. In other words, a company effectively linked to China's missile program was brought in to test equipment for the U.S. Army — and nobody caught it in the vetting process.

As Xi Jinping visits the White House, Jay Solomon and Hagar Chemali are joined by Ian Talley, veteran national security and economics reporter and co-author of the Charon investigation that uncovered the case.

They discuss how adversaries exploit loopholes in defense contracting to access some of the Pentagon's most sensitive testing data; why a mere $2 million slice of a $2 billion contract can be all it takes to get inside the supply chain; China's military-civil fusion doctrine, which legally compels any Chinese company to hand over information to Beijing; why weak enforcement and the rollback of the Corporate Transparency Act have stripped away the "night vision" that once let officials see who really owns a company; and how the same playbook has surfaced with Hezbollah-linked router vendors holding FBI and DHS contracts. Plus: how pay-for-play corruption in Washington makes the whole system leak.

Find Ian Talley's work and the full Charon investigation at charon.com/brief.

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Three decades ago, the CIA and French intelligence secretly collaborated to arrest and render Carlos the Jackal — the Venezuelan-born Marxist who became the world's most notorious terrorist — from his villa in Khartoum. He's been in a French prison ever since. Now, drawing on newly obtained intelligence files from the US, Europe, and the former communist bloc — and a rare face-to-face prison interview with Carlos himself — one of America's premier investigative journalists tells the full story of his rise and fall.

Jay Solomon and Hagar Chemali are joined by Joby Warrick, veteran Washington Post investigative reporter and author of the new book The Jackal, whose previous work includes the Pulitzer-winning Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS.

They discuss how a kid from Venezuela named after Lenin latched onto the Palestinian cause and helped internationalize terrorism through made-for-TV spectacles like the 1975 OPEC ministers' kidnapping; the "Red-Green Alliance" between the secular far left and Arab militants, and why it's resurfacing on today's campuses; the extraordinary multi-country operation that finally captured him; and Warrick's own surreal encounter with a 75-year-old Carlos — still an incorrigible showman who bragged of killing 83 people and said his only regret was not killing more. Plus: why Iran and Russia are reviving the Cold War playbook of harnessing radical rage through hired proxies, and where the line runs between radicalization and mass violence.

Find Joby Warrick's books, including The Jackal, at jobywarrick.com, and follow him on X @jobywarrick.

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When ISIS seized Mosul in June 2014 and declared it the capital of their caliphate, a young historian at the university decided someone had to keep the record. For four years he published to the world as "Mosul Eye" — the only independent voice inside the occupied city — while ISIS hunted him and he walked past their fighters every morning. No one knew who he was. Not the journalists in London and New York who built their coverage on his posts. Not even his own family.

Jay Solomon and Hagar Chemali are joined by Dr. Omar Mohammed — the man behind Mosul Eye, now their colleague at George Washington University's Program on Extremism — whose new memoir The Mosul Eye has drawn praise from Pope Francis to General David Petraeus.

He walks them through how ISIS took a city of millions so quickly, the calculated illusion that lulled residents before the iron fist came down, and the daily public brutality he forced himself to witness and document. He describes the cat-and-mouse tradecraft of running multiple identities at once — even befriending the brother of an ISIS intelligence chief — and his harrowing escape across the Syrian border with a hard drive full of evidence and an ISIS fighter riding beside him. And he recounts how Mosul Eye evolved from witness to lifeline: coordinating civilian rescues from a Paris bus between US Central Command and Iraqi forces on the ground, saving families trapped in basements — and the brother he could not save. Finally, a sobering reflection on ISIS's real legacy, and why he now worries less about the extremist waving a flag than the one in a suit and tie.

Find Dr. Omar Mohammed's memoir The Mosul Eye wherever books are sold, including an audio edition, and his work at GW's Program on Extremism, where he leads the Antisemitism Research Initiative.

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In July, a New York jury convicted 28-year-old Hadi Matar of terrorism for the 2022 stabbing of novelist Salman Rushdie at a literary festival — an attack prosecutors tied to material support for Hezbollah. The verdict got remarkably little coverage, yet it marks the latest chapter in a saga that began in 1989, when Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie's death over The Satanic Verses — a fatwa Iran has never lifted.

Jay Solomon is joined by Dr. Suha Hassan, a counterterrorism expert specializing in radicalization, jihadist movements, and the interplay between religious narrative and violence, who earned her PhD from George Mason University and teaches at the American Public University.

They discuss why Matar's attack fits a much larger pattern of Iranian operations on Western soil — from the plot against journalist Masih Alinejad to a wave of attacks across Europe; how Iran "weaponizes narrative" to radicalize and mobilize lone actors through what Dr. Hassan calls a "killing vessel" model; why lifting the fatwa was theologically impossible for the Islamic Republic; how AI and social media are now supercharging martyrdom messaging; and why, from Tehran's vantage point, the current conflict with the US may only just be beginning.

Find Dr. Suha Hassan's writing at Homeland Security Today, where she is a columnist.

On July 10th, Spanish police arrested Fergie Chambers — heir to the Cox Enterprises empire, self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist, and one of the most prolific funders of radical causes worldwide — while he vacationed with his family in Ibiza. The US wants him extradited. His wife says he's been charged with funding the Palestinian terrorist group, Hamas, which she denies. And the global left has rallied around him as a political martyr.

Hagar Chemali and Jay Solomon are joined on The Threat by Dan Adler of Vanity Fair, who spent extensive time with Chambers while reporting a landmark 2024 profile — meeting him in New York, then video-calling him from his new base in Tunis after he fled the US.

They discuss how Chambers cashed out $250 million in 2023 and channeled it through his Babochki Collective into causes ranging from Palestine to anti-police work in Georgia. They also explore his commune in rural Massachusetts; his role in the radicalization of a 21-year-old protégée, Calla Walsh, now operating out of Lebanon and Iran; the blurry line between genuine ideological commitment and "radical chic" spectacle; and why his extradition fight in a Spain openly hostile to the Trump administration could make him a global cause célèbre. Plus: the horseshoe question — why anti-imperialist rhetoric now echoes from both the far left and the far right.

Note: Chambers has not been convicted, and his indictment remains sealed. Much of what's discussed is allegation and open reporting.

To learn more about Fergie Chambers and his radical network, please read Dan Adler’s and Jay Solomon’s investigative pieces.

The Life and Times of Fergie Chambers by Dan Adler, Vanity Fair May 2024

The Radicalization of Calla Walsh by Jay Solomon, The Free Press March 2026

How Fergie Chambers Buit a Radical Funding Network and Landed in a Spanish Jail by Jay Solomon, The Free Press July 20206

Most people think Al-Qaeda died with the 9/11 era. It didn't — it's arriving exactly where it always intended to go. In Mali, an Al-Qaeda affiliate known as JNIM has encircled the capital, choked off its fuel supply, and now controls roughly half the country using drones, Starlink terminals, and $50 million ransom payouts. It's on the verge of becoming the first Al-Qaeda affiliate to effectively govern an entire nation — and its leaders are talking about an Islamist superstate across West Africa.

Jay Solomon and Hagar Chemali are joined by Sarah Harmouch — an expert on Al-Qaeda and counterterrorism, CEO of the risk assessment firm H9 Defense, and a fellow at George Washington University's Program on Extremism.

They discuss why JNIM doesn't want to storm Bamako but simply let it fail, how the group modifies commercial drones and turns captured bases into resupply events, the chain of allegiance linking JNIM back to Al-Qaeda's core leadership, why kidnapping-for-ransom has made it one of the richest jihadist groups alive, and the million-dollar question hanging over it all: when does a local insurgency become a launchpad for the next global attack? Harmouch lays out where West Africa could be in five years — and why, by the time Washington notices, it may already be too late.

An upstate New York mother of two is arrested for allegedly raising $30,000 for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. American activists travel to Tehran and chant "death to America" on Iranian state TV. A pop-up extremist group called Dample appears online almost overnight — and just as quickly goes dark. How does radicalization move so fast, and who's pulling the strings from abroad?

Jay Solomon and Hagar Chemali sit down with Lara Burns — former FBI special agent with over 20 years in counterterrorism, now head of terrorism research at George Washington University's Program on Extremism. She led the DOJ's largest-ever terrorism financing case, the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation.

They discuss how propaganda escalates into material support and violence, why "pop-up" groups no longer need hierarchy or headquarters to mobilize, the unprecedented role of foreign adversaries like Iran and China in sowing discord online, and a chilling historical parallel: how the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran united far-left and Islamist factions to topple a modernizing state. Burns calls it "radicalization by applause" — and argues that defeating it can't fall on law enforcement alone.

Find Lara Burns's work at GW's Program on Extremism, and on her podcasts Intifada: Hamas in the US, Then and Now and Echoes of Terrorism.

A trilateral framework agreement signed by the US, Lebanon, and Israel has done something that seemed unthinkable just a few years ago — and it's put Hezbollah on its back foot. For decades, the group justified its weapons as the only way to push Israel out of Lebanon. This deal flips that logic entirely: it's Hezbollah's disarmament that will restore Lebanese sovereignty and end the occupation.

Jay Solomon and Hagar Chemali are joined by Marwan El Amine — a Lebanese Shia oppositionist, activist, and columnist for This Is Beirut and Nida Al Watan — who has faced repeated threats from Hezbollah for consistently calling out its corruption and violence.

They discuss why Lebanon has become the linchpin in countering Iranian influence across the region, how the Shia community is responding to the prospect of peace, why Hezbollah's real threat isn't Israel but Lebanese sovereignty itself, and what the US and international community must do to undermine the group permanently — starting, as Marwan puts it, with the head of the snake in Tehran.

Find Marwan El Amine's work in This Is Beirut and Nida Al Watan, where he works to give voice to Lebanon's silent Shia majority.

Have a question or tip for the show? Reach us at [email protected]