Twenty-five years after 9/11, analysts still can't agree on whether Al Qaeda is a spent force or a resurgent threat. Generation Jihad's Bill Roggio and co-host Will Selber speak with guest Graeme Wood, staff writer at The Atlantic, and unpack his new article on the group's uncertain legacy.

The conversation digs into Al Qaeda's true objectives, the blurred line between its "core" and its regional affiliates, and mounting evidence of the group's expanding footprint inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The three debate how to judge Al Qaeda's 25-year campaign — and whether Syria's new president, a former Al Qaeda commander, signals the jihadist group's decline or its evolution in the Long War.

The latest report by the United Nations Security Council Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team states that Africa has become the main battlefield for both the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, that Al Qaeda’s senior leadership remains marginalized, and that Al Qaeda is collaborating with the Afghan Taliban and TTP to project threats into Pakistan. Generation Jihad’s Bill Roggio and Edmund Fitton-Brown, FDD senior fellow and former coordinator of the UN Monitoring Team, unpack the new 1267 report on the global state of the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, and their affiliated groups.

They challenge the report’s claim that Al Qaeda’s leadership is marginalized, highlight a $50 million ransom that strengthened its network, and examine what a UN assessment can and cannot reveal about the Long War’s current threat.

https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n26/171/00/pdf/n2617100.pdf

The weapons flowing through the Axis of Aggressors don't move in one direction—they boomerang. In the second installment of this two-part episode, Generation Jihad's Bill Roggio continues his conversation with Bradley Bowman, senior director of FDD's Center on Military and Political Power, and Ryan Brobst, CMPP deputy director, digging deeper into the mechanics of authoritarian convergence.

Bowman and Brobst trace how Iran's Shahed drone became a shared arsenal—copied by China, produced by North Korea, and returned to Tehran in upgraded form after Russia improved it on the battlefields of Ukraine. They break down the munitions crisis draining US and allied stockpiles, explain why North Korea may be in its strongest strategic position in decades, and unpack the "trilateral tango" between Kim Jong-un, Beijing, and Moscow. The conversation closes with a five-line grand strategy for countering the axis—and a sobering warning about what happens if Washington waits for the next crisis to act.

For Part One, check out: https://www.fdd.org/podcasts/2026/08/11/china-russia-iran-north-korea-inside-the-axis-of-aggressors/