New Year's attacks fuel fears of extremism in military

The primary suspects in two deadly attacks on New Year’s Day shared a history of service in the U.S. military, underscoring persistent fears over extremism within the armed services that officials have struggled to uproot.  

The suspect behind a truck rampage in New Orleans that killed 14 people, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was an Army veteran, while the man allegedly behind the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside of the international Trump hotel in Las Vegas, Matthew Livelsberger, was an active-duty service member in the Army.  

While not the first acts of military extremism, the two deadly attacks amplify questions about the number of radical and unstable veterans and active-duty troops and whether the Pentagon’s efforts to identify and root out extremist beliefs is working. 

Heidi Beirich, a co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism who has studied military extremist activity for decades, said the unresolved problem was particularly dangerous because veterans and active-duty service members can kill more efficiently. 

“The military has not adequately addressed the problem, whether it’s white supremacists or Islamic extremists,” she said. “These cases are a reminder of how important it is that people with potential to become extreme aren’t trained in military tactics.” 

Jabbar, the New Orleans attacker, drove a Ford pickup truck through the crowded Bourbon Street before he was shot and killed by police. In addition to the 14 people he killed, he injured dozens more. 

Jabbar, 42, was a U.S. citizen from Texas who served in the Army from 2007 to 2020, including a year or deployment in Afghanistan, and retired as a staff sergeant. It’s unclear if he served in combat, but he was trained as an information technology specialist. 

Police said they found an ISIS flag in his truck and social media posts online sympathizing with the U.S.-designated terrorist group. 

Christopher Raia, the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, said in a Thursday press conference that Jabbar posted at least five videos propagating the ideology of ISIS, which the suspect claimed to have joined last year.

Raia, who said there is no apparent connection between the New Orleans and Las Vegas attacks, explained the FBI was working to understand how Jabbar became radicalized. 

“A lot of questions we are still asking ourselves,” he said. “That’s the stuff that in the coming days, as far as that path to radicalization, that we’re really going to be digging into and make it a priority.” 

Less is known about the motivation of Livelsberger, who police have identified as the suspect behind the Cybertruck that exploded in front of the Trump hotel after it was loaded with explosives. Only Livelsberger was killed in the blast, but seven others were injured.

Livelsberger was an active-duty Green Beret stationed in Germany but was on leave for the holidays, according to media reports. He was an operations master sergeant. 

Todd Helmus, senior behavioral scientist at RAND Corporation and a violent extremist expert, said he was surprised to learn about Livelsberger, as violent extremism is more prominent among veterans who often struggle with a range of factors once leaving service, like mental health issues, finding work and leaving behind comrades. 

“All these issues can be complicating challenges for veterans,” he said. “These life challenges that can happen when people leave military services in the close-knit communities, they might be more at risk of radicalization or recruitment.” 

Helmus added that it was “harder to be a terrorist” in active-duty service. 

“You're hanging out with fellows in your unit on a day-to-day basis,” he said. “And there is a discipline structure that's in place, so I think it’s probably more likely to get picked up if you were on the verge of conducting these types of attacks.” 

But it’s not the first case in recent history of an active military member engaged in extremist violence. In 2023, Robert Card, a U.S. Army reservist, carried out a deadly mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, that killed 18 people. 

In 2020, Steven Carrillo, an active-duty airman at the time, killed two police officers after expressing antigovernment beliefs. He is serving a 41-year sentence. 

And in one of the deadliest shootings ever on a U.S. military base, Nidal Hasan, an Army major and psychiatrist, killed 13 people and injured more than 30 others. Later investigations found that Hasan's colleagues had been aware of signs of his radicalization.

Both veterans and active-duty military personnel have been charged with or convicted for involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, rioting at the U.S. Capitol, where supporters attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election in favor of President-elect Trump.

The Violence Prevention Project has tracked mass shootings from 1996 to 2024. In their database, the project lists dozens of mass shooters with a military background. 

The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland found last year that at least 721 individuals with U.S. military backgrounds committed criminal acts in the U.S. from 1990 through April 2024, with a political, economic, social or religious goal. 

According to START, the number of individuals with military backgrounds engaged in extremist attacks has increased from 11 percent in 2018 to 18 percent in 2022. 

The START data shows that white nationalism and antigovernment extremism make up the bulk of the radicalized veterans and active-duty military extremists, at more than 80 percent. Jihadist-inspired ideology makes up a little more than 6 percent of the cases. 

Under President Biden, the Pentagon has sought to reduce and better identify the number of extremists in the military after Congress required the effort in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2021.  

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin established a commission to oversee those efforts, but the Pentagon has been slow to adopt recommendations, implementing just one on training service members to understand extremism and why it is prohibited.

The military’s biggest extremism problem is mostly related to radical right-wing ideology, and Austin has faced pressure and blowback from GOP congressional lawmakers who have called the effort a political witch hunt. Republicans have argued that extremism remains a minor concern, with very few individuals found with radical views compared to the more than 2 million active-duty and reserve troops, along with around 18 million veterans. 

A late 2023 report commissioned for the Pentagon largely sought to downplay the role of extremists in the military, saying it “found no evidence that the number of violent extremists in the military is disproportionate to the number of violent extremists in the United States as a whole.” 

It did say, however, there is “some indication that the rate of participation by former service members is slightly higher and may be growing.” The report was criticized for using old data. 

While more could be done, a sweeping crackdown on military extremism might not be the best approach, Helmus, from RAND Corporation, argued, comparing it to the overreaction of the U.S. national security sphere following the 9/11 attacks.  

“The best thing the Pentagon can do is to do assessments, to track numbers,” he said. “That's the biggest problem so far, is just open transparency on numbers of individuals, of people discharged. What are they discharged for? To what extent are people being discharged for having radical ideologies?” 

But Beirich, from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, pointed to multiple problems: the Pentagon has deprioritized its extremism efforts, the Department of Veterans Affairs has no programs to help veterans prone to extremist recruitment, and there are no universal standards for tackling the problem among the military branches. 

“We've a whole range of problems when it comes to this issue. And this goes back to the fact that it just wasn't taken seriously for decades under both Republicans and Democrats,” she said. “The Biden administration was really beginning this process, and then it got stalemated in a political divide.”