For years, Mike Jensen has led a team of researchers probing the connections between the U.S. military and extremist acts. As Congress and Department of Defense leadership downplay the risk, Jensen’s research shows what he calls a growing threat.
Jensen is research director at the University of Maryland’s START center, which studies terrorism and ways to fight it. He and his team found hundreds of connections between extremist criminal acts and military members since 1990.
“I describe it as a small but very big problem,” Jensen said.
The man who committed the ISIS-inspired attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day was an Army veteran. More than 200 of those charged in the Jan. 6 insurrection, now pardoned, had military backgrounds too. Court records show a neo-Nazi convicted this month of plotting a hate-filled attack on Baltimore’s power grid is a former member of the National Guard.
We've got the news you need to know to start your day. Sign up for the First & 4Most morning newsletter — delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.
"This is a concern that was growing before January 6th and has continued since then,” Jensen said.
The group’s latest report found a rising number of extremists with connections to the U.S. military.
In the first 20 years of the START study, about seven individuals with military backgrounds were involved in extremist crimes each year. Since 2011, that number jumped to 40. In most recent years, from 2018 to 2023, it jumped to 75 per year.
While the number is small, its growth is concerning, Jensen said.
Jensen told the News4 I-Team his research and recent incidents around the country lead him to believe, “That threat in the last month or so has been emboldened, in many ways.”
His research shows extremists with military backgrounds are often more dangerous once they’re radicalized.
“They have spent years in the armed forces, where they learned all of the skills and techniques necessary to be highly lethal if they choose to be,” he said. “Military members or veterans were far more likely to engage in mass-casualty plots and attacks than those without a similar skill set.”
Neither researchers nor the News4 I-Team is suggesting veterans are likely to be extremists; there’s no evidence of that. But there is evidence veterans are sought out by extremist groups.
“From a leadership point of view, they prize their organizational abilities. They like the credibility that it gives them. So, it is absolutely an issue,” said Cody Zoschak, an extremism researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
“The Pentagon has a very difficult job ahead of itself,” Zoschak added.
What the Defense Department has said and done about extremism
Extremist connections have been banned in the military for years. After Jan. 6, new recommendations to identify and address extremism in the ranks were adopted.
But Congress specifically prohibited funding efforts to counter extremism efforts in the past two National Defense Authorization Acts.
At his confirmation hearing, new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth played down the issue of extremism in the ranks.
“Things like focusing on extremism, senator, have created a climate inside our ranks that feel political when it hasn't ever been political. Those are the types of things that are going to change,” he said. “It was a made-up boogeyman to begin with.”
START’s report found most extremist criminals with military ties, 85%, were veterans and not active duty. Jensen said that shows the need to not only combat the issue in the ranks, but also as troops retire and return to civilian life.
Sign up for our free deep-dive newsletter, The 4Front, to get standout News4 stories sent right to your inbox. Subscribe here.
“You can't pretend a problem away. You can't pretend that something doesn't exist and then hope that you're right. We have the data. We have the evidence. We know that there's a problem there,” he said.
The News4 I-Team reached out to the Department of Defense about any efforts to identify extremism.
Experts tell the I-Team there are still efforts to screen out recruits with extremist ideologies. Our questions to the department included what is done for those in the active ranks and transitioning out. The I-Team did not receive a response by our deadline. We will update this report if spokespeople reply.
