Revered Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies failed to detect the signs of an imminent Hamas attack on Israeli villages near the Gaza Strip. The surprise attack was planned within Hamas’s military wing and highlights both Israel’s intelligence blind spots as well as Hamas’s use of “old-school techniques” like in-person communication.

Straight Arrow News contributor Katherine Zimmerman explains the challenges of counterterrorism and outlines what both Israel and the United States must do to stay one step ahead of their adversaries.

Nations, including the United States, meter the dedication of their national security resources to defending against terror attacks based in part on the assessment of the threat, and, of course, resources needed to protect against other national security interests. As the assessed threat goes down, so to do the resources to monitor it.

While this is less likely to have been the case for Israel, it is certainly the case for the United States with regard to the threat from al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Years of U.S. special forces and the CIA hunting down terrorists and eliminating attack capabilities, “mowing the grass” in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen, has reduced the terror threat.

U.S. intelligence assesses some groups have the intent, but not the capability, to attack. But as resources go down, so to should our confidence in the fidelity of the threat landscape from our intelligence. While such a catastrophic terror attack remains a remote possibility, we must also assume that al-Qaeda and the Islamic State will use all the tools at their disposal to ensure any attack is a surprise.

The United States needs to ensure that, as it has reduced counterterrorism resources down to a sustainable level, it maintains sufficient sources of intelligence to see when the threat changes, and to assume that groups with the intent to strike the United States are always trying to find a way.