Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks focused US fears on threats from abroad, Americans are now considerably more worried about attacks by domestic extremists than by foreign groups, a Reuters/Ipsos poll has found.
When asked to name the biggest threat to the safety of average Americans, 33 percent of respondents picked "domestic terrorism," while 20 percent picked “foreign terror” and 42 percent pointed to random acts of violence such as mass shootings, the August 28-31 poll found.
The picture was much different a decade ago.
Reuters/Ipsos polling from mid-2013 showed 21 percent of Americans viewed “domestic terror” as the top threat, less than the 28 percent who pointed to “foreign terror” and 51 percent who picked random acts of violence.
Foreign al Qaeda members crashed airplanes into New York City's World Trade Center and the Pentagon outside Washington on September 11, 2001, killing thousands and sparking decades of war, including the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, where al Qaeda leaders were based.
But the US has also seen many domestically inspired attacks, targeting everyone, including Muslims, Black, Latino, Jews and other Americans.
President Donald Trump himself faced multiple assassination attempts, including a 2024 shooting that wounded his ear, and conservative activist Charlie Kirk was gunned down in September 2025 while speaking to university students in Utah.
Asked which ideology-driven attacks pose the bigger threat, 61 percent of respondents in the latest poll picked domestic extremists and 34 percent picked those from abroad.
The legacy of the September 11 attacks remains strong, the survey found. Six in 10 people say they periodically think about the attacks and roughly the same share say they would support a military response if there were another major attack.
But Americans do not believe that wars that followed 9/11 were worth the cost.
Some 48 percent said the war on Afghanistan was not worth its toll, compared with 21 percent who said it was, while the rest were unsure or didn't answer the question. The war on Iraq was similarly unpopular, with 51 percent disapproving and 21 percent approving.
The post-9/11 wars caused an estimated 4.5 million to 4.7 million total deaths, both direct and indirect, across countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Iran.
Domestic surveillance
Six in 10 Americans — including eight in 10 Republicans — think the US government response to the September 11 attacks has been at least somewhat effective in preventing attacks against Americans on US soil.
A bipartisan majority — including 71 percent of Democrats and 75 percent of Republicans — think the beefed-up airport security that took hold following the September 11 attacks has been worth the disruptions to people's trips.
Americans are also more inclined to support government-run airport security, with only 23 percent supporting an idea studied by the Trump administration that would replace federal security with private contractors. Forty-eight percent were opposed, the poll found.
The expansion of domestic surveillance after 2001 has been less popular, with 65 percent opposed to allowing US intelligence agencies to monitor electronic communications of US citizens without a warrant.
A 2008 law that allowed that to happen lapsed in June, though the Trump administration has asked Congress to reauthorise the practice.
Most Americans look back on September 11 as an event that unified the country, and 75 percent of the country thinks it had a major impact on the nation, far more than the 41 percent who think the 2007-2009 financial crisis had a major impact.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted online, surveyed 1,167 US adults nationwide, with margins of error between 3 and 6 percentage points.
