The world has become strangely numb to terror. Sometimes an atrocity will be sufficiently horrifying – the murder of Charlie Kirk, say – to cause mass shock and anguish. Yet now reports of car rammings or knife rampages or foiled Islamist plots feel almost routine. We have become inured to ideological violence.

In the quarter-century since 9/11, the specter of terrorism has almost become a fact of modern life. Last year, America was one of the few western countries to see a rise in terrorism, with 13 recorded attacks and 28 deaths. Today even the most appalling acts generate only a brief sense of widespread outrage. And then the news cycle moves on.

No mass killing has come close to the scale of the Twin Towers attacks. That is partly because we now live in a near-permanent security state, often without knowing it. Whenever we travel by air or attend a mass outdoor event, our faces are scanned, our bodies searched, our belongings inspected. Our communications are increasingly monitored.

Those who are motivated to kill are often, to use the official rubric, self-radicalized

Those who are motivated to kill are often, to use the official rubric, self-radicalized

That, in turn, has caused terrorism to adapt and become more low-level and stochastic. Modern attacks are usually conducted by lone wolves operating........

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