‘All Terrorism is Revolutionary’

By Bruce Hoffman

Bruce Hoffman is a professor at Georgetown University and the Shelby Cullom and Kathryn W. Davis Visiting Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security at the Council on Foreign Relations.  He has served as a commissioner on the Independent Commission to Review the FBI’s Post-9/11 Response to Terrorism and Radicalization, a Scholar-in-Residence for Counterterrorism at the CIA, and an adviser on counterterrorism to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in 2004.

The United States has been at war against terrorist groups such as al Qaeda and ISIS for over 15 years now, with every violent attack that takes place on the streets of the West prompting fears of a renewed terrorist threat. But not all heinous acts of violence are considered terrorism. The Cipher Brief’s Levi Maxey spoke with Bruce Hoffman, a professor at Georgetown University and director at the Center for Security Studies, about how to define terrorism and what distinguishes it from other forms of political violence.

The Cipher Brief: Philosophically how do you define terrorism?

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

Access all of The Cipher Brief’s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+ Member.

Subscriber+

Categorized as:InternationalTagged with:

Related Articles

How Safe Would We Be Without Section 702?

SUBSCRIBER+EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW — A provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that has generated controversy around fears of the potential for abuse has proven to be crucial […] More

Search

Close