The Evolution of Terrorism: Phil Gurski on Changing Tactics, Deradicalization, and National Security

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): A Further Inquiry

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/04/09

Phil Gurski is the President and CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting. He worked as a senior strategic analyst at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) from 2001-2013, specializing in Al Qaeda/Islamic State-inspired violent extremism and radicalization.  From 1983 to 2001, he was employed as a senior multilingual analyst at Communications Security Establishment specializing in the Middle East.  He also served as senior special advisor in the National Security Directorate at Public Safety Canada from 2013 until he retired from the civil service in May 2015 and as a consultant for the Ontario Provincial Police’s Anti-Terrorism Section (PATS) in 2015.  Mr. Gurski has presented on Al Qaeda/Islamic State-inspired violent extremism and radicalization across Canada and around the world.  He is the author of “The Threat from Within: Recognizing Al Qaeda-inspired Radicalization and Terrorism in the West” (Rowman and Littlefield) and “Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security” (Rowman and Littlefield). He regularly blogs (Terrorism in Canada and the West – available on his Web site) and tweets on terrorism. Gurski explains how 9/11 changed terrorism, with groups like ISIS encouraging simple, unpredictable attacks. He critiques deradicalization programs, emphasizing the difficulty of proving ideological change. Canada lacks an intelligence culture, failing to prioritize national security. Compared to the U.S., Canada has fewer domestic extremists, yet Islamist extremism remains the dominant threat. Gurski argues that media censorship fails to prevent radicalization, as misinformation spreads rapidly online, fueling fear and misinterpretations of terrorist motivations and threats.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How have terrorist acts evolved over the past 150 years, particularly in this so-called fourth phase of terrorism?

Phil Gurski: Each group has its specialty, if you will. The IRA was known for bombings. The FLQ in Quebec also relied heavily on bombings in the 1960s and 1970s. Other groups focused on firearms, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and booby traps.

9/11 was a turning point. Before that, hijackers didn’t intend to fly planes into buildings. During the peak of hijackings in the 1970s and 1980s—by Palestinian groups, Italian groups, and Japanese groups—they would take over a plane, fly it to Cuba, and demand something in return: the release of prisoners, money, political recognition, or even just media attention.

9/11 changed everything. The hijackers had no intention of landing in Cuba. They had no intention of surviving. Their goal was to crash those planes into buildings, killing themselves, the passengers, and everyone on the ground. That was unprecedented.

Interestingly, to my knowledge, we haven’t seen a similar large-scale attack since when planes were deliberately flown into buildings. Instead, groups like ISIS adapted.

ISIS perfected what I call the “Nike form of terrorism”—just do it. You don’t need an AK-47. You don’t need to hijack a plane. Just look around your house. Do you have a machete? A butcher block with a knife in it? Pick one up, go to a store, a synagogue, a mall—anywhere—and start stabbing people while yelling, “Allahu Akbar,” or something similar.

Or get in your car and drive. When did we start seeing vehicles used as weapons in terrorist attacks? We saw it in 2006 when an Al-Qaeda sympathizer drove an SUV into pedestrians at the University of North Carolina. We saw it in 2016 when a terrorist in Nice, France, killed 86 people by driving a truck into a crowd. London. Berlin. Barcelona. It keeps happening.

This is why terrorism has evolved. It has become simpler, easier to carry out, and harder to detect in advance. That’s the challenge security agencies are facing today.

To the best of my knowledge, only Islamist extremists use this kind of tactic. No other groups have adopted it in the same way.

For God’s sake, we even saw a golf club used in 2018 at a Canadian Tire in Scarborough. A woman who was an ISIS wannabe—she got as far as Turkey before being turned back—returned to Canada, put an ISIS bandana around her head, walked into a Canadian Tire, picked up a golf club, and started swinging it at employees.

Who would consider a golf club a weapon of terror? If you’ve seen me golf—it’s ‘a weapon of terror’ in my hands. I can’t golf for shit. But a golf club is not normally seen as a weapon of terrorism.

What ISIS has done is say, “Use whatever you can. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist for this. You don’t need to build an IED.”

Pressure cooker bombs—used in the Boston Marathon attack—can be made by anyone because the instructions are available online. That’s why the couple in Victoria tried to use the same method to attack Canada Day in 2013. Thankfully, they were thwarted by the RCMP. We’ve entered an era where anything can be used as a weapon in an act of terrorism.

Jacobsen: What about cases where former extremists or terrorists leave their groups and begin working on deradicalization efforts? I recently was interviewing the head of a group organized to combat antisemitism. We discussed individuals who have left extremist groups and now help to deradicalize others. How effective are these methodologies? Does having a former extremist bolster the message?

Gurski: I have a very biased view of the national security world. My working assumption—correct or incorrect—is: Once a terrorist, always a terrorist.

Deradicalization programs have been the rage for the past 25 years. Most countries have at least one at some level. The basic idea behind them is that, with the help of a mentor, psychologist, social worker, healthcare worker, or religious counsellor, you can get someone to abandon the ideology they held as a terrorist.

Maybe you can. Maybe you can’t.

The problem I—and many others—have identified is that a key distinction is rarely made: deradicalization versus disengagement.

• Deradicalization means the individual no longer holds the extremist ideology. They no longer believe in the cause. They won’t advance it and might even advise others against it.
• Disengagement simply means they stop engaging in terrorist activities, but it does not necessarily mean they’ve abandoned the ideology.

The difference is critical. Disengagement is observable. If I stop walking to the library every morning, someone can notice that change.

But how do you observe deradicalization?

You can’t. That’s why counterterrorism efforts remain such a difficult challenge.

You take someone’s word for it—unless you’re conducting a polygraph or, my dear Star Trek fan, engaging in mind reading, a Vulcan mind meld, or something similar. You can never determine with absolute certainty that someone has truly deradicalized.

We have seen individuals who disengage and claim to have deradicalized but ultimately re-engage down the road, including here in Canada. I know of a well-known case involving a former member of the Toronto 18.

That was the terrorist plot uncovered in 2006, which I worked on. One of the individuals served his prison sentence and was released. About a year later, he stole his cousin’s passport, changed the photo, and travelled to Somalia to join al-Shabaab. He was later killed in a terrorist attack. He had told the world, “Yes, I’m a good boy now. I don’t believe in that ideology anymore. You can trust me.” Yet, just twelve months later, he died carrying out a terrorist attack.

I appreciate the efforts people are making in the realm of deradicalization. However, having spent years on the front lines of counterterrorism while working for CSIS, I require an extraordinary amount of proof before accepting someone’s claim that they no longer believe in the ideology that led them down that path in the first place. My working assumption is that they still pose a threat.

Jacobsen: In democratic societies, leadership tends to be cyclical—whether Conservative, Liberal, NDP, or otherwise. How do different political leaderships, depending on the party or leader, alter the country’s stance on these issues?

Socially, some individuals may hold an overly optimistic or even naïve view of the capacity for change in those who commit these acts. In contrast, others adopt a more skeptical perspective regarding the potential for genuine reform.

Gurski: Well, I have bad news for you first. Across political lines, national security has never been a priority in Canada. No political leader discusses it. Nobody cares about it. It’s not a vote-grabber. That’s why you hear nothing about national security.

We are approaching an election in Canada, likely by 2025 at the latest, yet national security is completely absent from the conversation. The discourse is dominated by inflation, housing prices, tuition fees, and healthcare—everything except national security.

Canada lacks what I call an intelligence culture. By that, I mean that people do not understand the value of intelligence, its utility, or why it should be more effectively integrated into policymaking and decision-making. We see this play out in real time with the foreign interference inquiry into China. The final report was released today, confirming what many of us already knew—intelligence was ignored.

Of course, I know it was ignored. We had been providing intelligence for decades, but no one was listening.

Does political leadership matter in this context? I don’t think so. Conventionally, one might expect Conservatives to take a tougher stance on national security issues like counterterrorism, whereas Liberals might be more lenient. However, in Canada, it does not make a difference. That said, this particular iteration of the Liberal government has arguably been the worst in Canadian history regarding national security.

We cannot even discuss Islamist extremism in this country.

It’s seen as a racist term, even though the rest of the world uses it. Yes. We have a government that is so deeply wedded to political correctness that we can’t have honest conversations about threats to national security and public safety.

As you said, governments come and go all the time. We are well overdue for a change.

This government’s best-before date expired long ago, and most Canadians recognize that. I have no idea if the Conservatives would be any better, as the polls seem to suggest. The Harper government wasn’t significantly better at national security than the Trudeau government.

We need a government that understands national security and will allocate the resources and attention it deserves.

Jacobsen: How does the cultural response to terrorism differ between Canada and the United State, extending that commentary into government response, efficacy, and inaction?

Gurski: In my opinion—and in the opinion of many others who have worked in intelligence in Canada—we have a very immature, verging on nonexistent, intelligence culture in this country.

By the way, it wasn’t always this way. During the Second World War, Canada had a robust intelligence culture, particularly within the Canadian military, and it served us well. That has changed for various reasons beyond the scope of this conversation.

The Americans, however, have a very mature intelligence culture. First, they have vastly more resources and personnel, and they take intelligence far more seriously. Intelligence plays a much greater role in decision-making and policymaking in the U.S. than it does here in Canada.

For example, Canada is not equivalent to the CIA. We are one of the few countries without a dedicated foreign intelligence service. CSIS is a domestic security intelligence service, although it can operate outside of Canada for national security. However, it does not collect foreign intelligence, defined as intelligence on the intentions and capabilities of foreign states.

The Communications Security Establishment (CSE) can collect foreign intelligence but only signals intelligence—it cannot collect human intelligence. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the FBI, CIA, and NSA (their signals intelligence agency, akin to Canada’s CSE) and 17 other agencies comprise the U.S. intelligence community. We do not have that infrastructure in Canada.

Americans take intelligence and national security much more seriously. Part of that is because the U.S. has long embraced its role as the world’s policeman, particularly since the end of the Second World War. However, we’re seeing some changes under the current administration, and that role may be diminishing—stay tuned.

Another major difference between our two countries is that the U.S. has long had a much more significant problem with both far-right and far-left extremism.

Think of the Weather Underground, a far-left domestic terrorist group that sought to overthrow the government. Think of Antifa—some would argue it qualifies as a terrorist movement when it engages in violent activities. Then there’s the range of neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and white nationalist groups operating in the U.S.

We have some of these groups in Canada, but they exist much less than they do in the United States. They’re not nearly as serious. A good example would be the Proud Boys. The Proud Boys were created by a Canadian and played a role in the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

I don’t think they have carried out any acts of violence per se—I could be wrong, but I don’t follow the far right that closely. Canada has a Proud Boys chapter, which the Trudeau government listed as a terrorist entity the day after the U.S. Capitol attack.

The Proud Boys in Canada couldn’t organize a piss-up in a bar if you gave them a hundred-dollar tab. They’re useless. They’re not violent. Do they have views that are un-Canadian—i.e., rude? Yes. But lots of people have rude opinions. That doesn’t mean they have ever acted on them violently.

What I’m saying here is that, whether it’s the far left or the far right, Americans have much more experience with politically motivated violence from both sides of the spectrum than we do in Canada. I would argue that many of the attacks labelled as “far right” here are more accurately classified as hate crimes rather than acts of terrorism, which are distinct under the Canadian Criminal Code.

Take the attack in London, Ontario, in 2021, where a man ran down a Pakistani Muslim family. That was a hate crime. It wasn’t an act of terrorism, as far as I’m concerned, but many have disagreed with me. We’ve already talked about the incel movement before as well.

Those are hate crimes. Misogynistic hate crimes, yes—but not acts of terrorism, as far as I’m concerned. The two countries have very different ways of looking at national security, public safety, intelligence, and the scale of our problems.

Fun fact: When I retired from CSIS in 2015, the agency was on the verge of shutting down its far-right investigations desk because there was nothing to examine. We had spent years analyzing threats nationwide, and no one was worth worrying about.

That has changed. Think of the attack in Quebec City in January 2017. Again, whether it was a hate crime or terrorism is a fine line. But there’s no question that far-right extremism has garnered more attention in the past few years than in the previous twenty-five years here in Canada.

That said, Islamist extremism is still, by far, the dominant form of violent extremism both here in Canada and worldwide. Think of the number of arrests made in the past eight months. We had a father and son in Toronto linked to ISIS. We had a Pakistani student on a visa, apparently attempting to travel to New York to kill Jews.

In the fall, there were arrests in Ottawa, Calgary, and Edmonton. The list goes on and on. These are all ISIS sympathizers or Islamist extremists. Islamist extremism still dominates both internationally and in Canada—although the government doesn’t want you to know that because discussing it is considered “racist,” which is ludicrous and highly inaccurate.

Jacobsen: What about copycats? One principle in media reporting on suicide, by analogy, is to limit coverage to avoid inspiring copycats. Does this rule hold for terrorist or extremist acts? Are there any principles the media should follow when reporting on these incidents?

Gurski: I’ve got bad news for people who espouse that view.

It’s called the Internet. So if CBC, CTV, Global, Rebel News, or whatever media outlet decides not to report something—and you often hear, “We’re not going to name the person, we don’t want to give them importance. We don’t want to make them sound bigger than they are”—well, sucks to be you, Shirley, because it’s already all over the Internet on multiple platforms, social media included.

So, taking this high-minded stance of “We’re not going to celebrate terrorism by naming the group or the individual”—great, congratulations on that. And a buck and a half will get you a cup of coffee at Tim’s. Meanwhile, the entire Internet is already talking about it.

The Internet is a wonderful invention. When I started in intelligence a bazillion years ago, there was no Internet. It’s fantastic for information, and spreading propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation. So this highly moralistic stance of We’re not going to engage—sure, whatever.

It doesn’t matter. The other day, I heard statistics about where Canadians, especially youth, get their news. Guess how many are watching CBC? They found three kids in Gander who still do—that’s about it. Everyone else is getting their information from social media.

So, whatever state broadcasters or outlets like Global News decide to do on principle, it makes little difference.

Jacobsen: Regarding online spaces and the spread of information, disinformation, and misinformation—do intelligence professionals, generally speaking, feel cynical about the public’s ability to parse truth from manipulation in cases like these?

Gurski: I don’t know if I would call it cynicism. There’s just an acceptance that there’s not a lot you can do to stop it. The information is going to get out somehow.

The quickest way to make something popular is to ban it. Think of anything in history that was banned—prohibition in the 1920s made booze much more desirable.

You can’t stop this stuff. But our saving grace, as I mentioned earlier, is that most people engaging with this kind of information—whether disinformation, propaganda, or extremist content—don’t act on it. They’re either cowards or incompetent.

So, yes, you worry about it. It keeps you up at night. But this is important, and I can’t underscore it enough—look at Canadian history. What is the reason we’ve been a country for what now? Coming up on 158 years this July, since 1867.

Using the broadest possible definition of terrorism—including lethal acts where people have died—we’ve had maybe 20 actual terrorist incidents in 158 years.

What does that tell you? First, it tells you that terrorism in Canada is relatively infrequent compared to other types of crime. By contrast, in places like Somalia or Nigeria, you can’t go 158 minutes without a terrorist attack. That’s how rampant it is there.

We are incredibly fortunate in Canada, which is all the more reason not to embellish or overemphasize the issue. This whole war on terrorism concept? What a stupid idea.

That’s been about as successful as the war on drugs. And I wrote an entire book on this in 2019—An End to the War on Terrorism. We need to stop using this terminology. It’s not a useful way to frame things.

Yes, terrorism is real. Yes, it must be dealt with. But it remains a relatively infrequent occurrence. I don’t see anything changing in the immediate future—at least not here in Canada.

I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know what will happen in five minutes, let alone five years from now. But suppose history is any indication of the immediate future. In that case, I don’t see the groundwork being laid or conditions being created that would lead to a massive increase in terrorism anytime soon.

Jacobsen: What about the impacts on regular people? Terms like “white nationalist terrorism” and “Christian white nationalist terrorism” get thrown around. The same happens with “Islamist terrorism,” but these terms are often conflated with broader categories. Many people don’t have a precise definition of what they mean.

How does this overhyped rhetoric impact ordinary communities—whether it’s rural Euro-Canadians or small-town Muslim communities?

Gurski: Right. That’s a great point.

Unfortunately, as of January 2025—and frankly, for about the past ten thousand years—most people are not particularly bright. They don’t understand nuance, and they don’t understand definitions.

When I was with CSIS and Public Safety Canada, we took the time to define our terms carefully. When we talked about Islamist extremism, we explained exactly what it meant. We made it clear that this was distinct from Muslim terrorism or Islamic terrorism. We used Islamism for a reason, and once we explained it, most people appreciated the distinction.

The problem is that we can go to great lengths to use precise terminology and explain what it does and does not mean—but then a media source runs a headline like Muslim terrorism is a problem. And the average idiot in rural Saskatchewan—no offence to Saskatchewaners—sees that headline and concludes, Oh, well, that must mean the local mosque in Regina is responsible. Which, of course, is ridiculous.

Jacobsen: We love Saskatchewan here at A Further Inquiry.

Gurski: But that’s exactly how misinformation spreads. Regardless of our terminology, people will always take it too far and do something stupid.

Let me give you a good example of this. Last year, there was an attack on a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, England. A young man, originally from Rwanda but born in Wales to Rwandan refugee parents, took a knife and stabbed 15 little girls, killing three and injuring a dozen more.

The police went out of their way to do two things:

1. They did not call it an act of terrorism.
2. They refused to name the suspect.

And they did that for exactly the reasons you just cited. They knew that if they called it terrorism, there would be riots. If it turned out the perpetrator was Muslim, mosques would be firebombed.

But guess what? There were riots in the streets anyway.

Shortly after, I was pinged on X by someone who followed me. They claimed to have the name of the attacker and told me he was a failed Syrian refugee who was pending deportation from the UK.

I wrote back and asked, “Where are you getting this from?” because I’m not seeing it anywhere else. I wanted to corroborate their information before drawing any conclusions. And he wouldn’t get back to me.

As I said, I’m not publishing this. I work in intelligence, and information has to be corroborated from reliable sources. Otherwise, it’s useless. It’s like journalism—you verify your sources. But in the absence of reliable information, people make it up anyway. They drew their conclusion that the attacker was a Muslim kid.

Then, when the news came out that he was Rwandan, that took the wind out of their sails—until six months later when it was revealed that he was Muslim and had an al-Qaeda manual on his laptop. He had also experimented with making ricin.

Yet, the government still did not call it Islamist extremism—which, to me, is ludicrous because it was Islamist extremism. Yes, he was a messed-up kid. Yes, he had a history of violent behaviour. He had been in trouble at school, maybe had PTSD from Rwanda—who knows? There were all kinds of things going on in his head. But there was an Islamist element to what he did. His actions were consistent with jihadist ideology.

So why attack a Taylor Swift-themed dance class? Well, Taylor Swift is seen as a slut who dresses like a slut and sings. The Taliban has banned women from singing in Afghanistan. That tells you everything you need to know about how jihadists view women in music.

There were ideological links, so it didn’t matter whether authorities named them or not—people would react.

If the police don’t release the information, it spreads on social media within minutes. It was false information, but it made the rounds. As a result, mosques were attacked in England and Ireland.

Jacobsen: Any final thoughts?

Gurski: We need to get better at all of this. We need to get better at trusting our security intelligence agencies. Yes, they could always use more resources—but I’ll give the government credit for funding them. The real issue? They need to take intelligence seriously. Otherwise, they could put a For Sale sign on CSIS.

Jacobsen: Thank you, Phil. Appreciate it.

Gurski: Yep. Stay in touch. If anything else comes up, let me know. Cheers.

Jacobsen: Cheers, Phil. Bye.

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