Ten years after the terrorist attacks, five leading experts weigh in on the state of the jihadist movement, U.S. intelligence, and the cost of safety.

Martha Crenshaw It depends on what we mean by safer. If we're asking how likely it is that we'll experience an attack of the magnitude of 9/11, I don't that it's likely. Our awareness of the possibility is so much greater. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the attack, is in custody. Other major players are dead or under arrest. Osama Bin Laden is gone. The drone strikes in Pakistan have been very effective. However, we're not entirely safe from the threat of terrorism against U.S. interests and citizens abroad. We're still vulnerable in many ways. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are still threats. They've inherited anti-Americanism from the original Al-Qaeda, and while Al-Qaeda central is weakened, these affiliated groups will likely become stronger because of the power vacuum that's left in the jihadist movement. These different factions could unite. Al Qaeda itself was a merger of different national movements. This could happen again -- they could reconstitute themselves into a very powerful organization.

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar We are safer -- up to a point. In 2003 I wrote that there was little reason to think we were safer than we were on Sept. 11, 2001, and that in order to improve our security we would need to invest in meaningful long-term changes rather than focusing on quick fixes. Much has changed today. American attacks have been devastating to al-Qaeda, showing how 9/11 was perhaps a tactical success for the group but almost certainly a strategic miscalculation. Americans have forged alliances with countries throughout the world, sharing financial intelligence and pooling efforts to disrupt terrorist mobility. Many communities have made important strides in safeguarding airports and chemical plants. Federal lawmakers enacted landmark, bipartisan food safety legislation to bolster the safety of the food supply, and doctors working with public health authorities have enhanced their capacity to respond to infections and biosecurity threats such as the H1N1 virus. Meanwhile, pressing issues like cyber-security and emergency preparedness are starting to receive much-needed attention.

But Americans continue to face profound challenges, too. We must work to enhance the infrastructure that protects our public health, cyber-security, and emergency response.  The Sept. 11 attacks starkly show the need to reconcile security goals with laws and constitutional principles. Policy makers and the public must focus attention on strengthening the economic and social foundations supporting America’s long-term position in the world. At the same time, the nation must remain determined, creative, and vigilant in confronting the continuing threats posed by non-state actors and failed states.

Karl Eikenberry If we talk about the defense of the homeland, we are clearly safer against the international terrorist threat. Our level of awareness is much higher. We were asleep when we got hit. And the systems that we've established, I think have made us safer. Now, that's very specifically against the terrorist threat. Is the United States of America stronger on a relative basis than on 9/11/2001 -- are we a stronger nation? I think the answer is no. I think that our economic strength has declined. And I think there's been a degree of militarization of our foreign policy over the last decade that’s made us less attractive globally.

Thomas Fingar We are safer with respect to the danger of a major terrorist attack than we were 10 years ago but not with respect to other risks that endanger more of our citizens and are more likely to occur. We have spent billions of dollars to detect, prevent, and respond to terrorist threats from abroad and we have reduced the already low probability of death or injury from terrorist attacks to even lower levels. These gains have had a high opportunity cost because achieving them was at the expense of efforts to reduce other dangers. Far more Americans continue to die from inadequate hospital procedures, unsafe food, drunk drivers, and other well-known dangers than have died in terrorist attacks. We will not be much safer until we address these and similar problems, repair and replace our aging infrastructure, and do more to prepare for the more severe weather that will result from climate change. 

Amy Zegart Osama bin Laden is dead. Yet 10 years after 9/11, it would be dangerous and wrong to think that the terrorist threat is behind us. Violent Islamist extremism comes from many places, not just the 50 to 100 core al Qaeda fighters holed up along the Af/Pak border. The years 2009 and 2010 have seen a spike in plots against the U.S. homeland. Nearly all of them have come from radicalized homegrown terrorists or “franchise” groups with loose and murky ties to the core al Qaeda organization.

In addition, WMD terrorism remains a haunting future possibility. And the FBI has not made the leap from crime fighting to intelligence. FBI analysts, whose work is vital to connect dots and protect lives, are still treated like second class citizens -- labeled “support staff” alongside janitors and secretaries, and relegated to middle and lower rungs of the bureaucracy. So long as FBI analysts are treated like second-class citizens, Americans will get second-class security. These three factors -- diversification of the terrorist threat, the potential to combine destructive motives with devastating weapons, and the FBI's continued weaknesses -- suggest that the future may not be any safer than the past.

We sat down with recipient of the FSI Global Underdevelopment Action Fund, Professor Beatriz Magaloni to learn more about her research plans and how her work will address the larger issues of poverty and governance in Latin America and beyond.

Beatriz Magaloni, associate professor of political science at Stanford, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI), and director of the Program on Poverty and Governance (PovGov) at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, was recently awarded a grant through FSI's Global Underdevelopment Action Fund. Over the past ten years, Professor Magaloni has pioneered cross-national comparative research focused primarily on Latin America and Mexico. Leading the PovGov program, Professor Magaloni launched research projects examining political incentives for heath improvements, the role of women and family-planning decisions, public goods provisions in indigenous communities, and drug-related violence in Mexico.

We sat down with Professor Magaloni to learn more about her research plans and how her work will address the larger issues of poverty and governance in Latin America and beyond.

Professor Magaloni, tell us more about the work you are conducting with the support of the FSI Global Underdevelopment Action Fund?

We are using the support of the FSI Action Fund to expand a governance project that we started in Oaxaca, Mexico in 2009 to the Chiapas region. The Oaxaca research project focused on examining the effects of political institutions on public goods provision. In 1995, the state of Oaxaca allowed indigenous communities to decide if they wanted a form of traditional indigenous governance called “Usos y Costumbres,” or party governance. Our team studied the variations in these two forms of municipal governance and how they shape the provision of welfare-enhancing public goods, such as clean water, sanitation and sewage, and roads. The findings in Oaxaca showed that traditional governance leads to higher levels of civic engagement in collective decision-making and better provision of public goods. However, one key finding revealed that women enjoyed significantly lower levels of participation in civic life and governance overall. 

Why might this be?

More traditional structures of governance in indigenous communities were disempowering for women but the research carried out in Oaxaca revealed a positive effect on social and political participation among recipients of conditional cash transfers through Oportunidades.

For those of us unfamiliar with the Oportunidades program, please tell us more.

Oportunidades is a social program funded by the Mexican federal government that provides conditional cash transfers to poor women in exchange for their direct engagement in activities related to child nutrition, health, and education.

Why are you expanding the study to Chiapas?

A policy prescription that emerged from our results in Oaxaca led us to re-evaluate the possibility of establishing “Usos y Costumbres” beyond Oaxaca, and this grant will allow us to study the state of Chiapas. The state of Chiapas is traditionally party dominated but has a strong blend of traditional forms of governance. The baseline survey will be designed in Chiapas to understand how traditional governance practices are integrated into the party governance. We will ask if poor indigenous communities are better or worse off by choosing to govern themselves through customary law and participatory democracy, versus delegating decisions concerning the provision of public goods to political parties. This will allow us to identify how governance and patterns of civic engagement differ in both of these states and the effect on provision of local goods.

Stanford graduate students and post-doctoral scholars will be integral to our efforts to administer the survey and perform subsequent analysis.

How will women be central to your study in Chiapas?

The main addition to the survey will be a substantial segment devoted to the role of women in civil society with the goal of answering a number of questions regarding civic and political participation. Conducted at the household level, it is designed to gain a fuller picture of how women in Chiapas are influenced and shaped by the Oportunidades program.

In addition, our study in Chiapas will examine the following factors pertaining to women and governance:

1. The dynamics of governance in Mexico's indigenous regions and the ways in which women participate in collective decision-making and influence the distribution and access to public goods and services in the community.

2.  The relationship between Oportunidades and women's decision-making role in the provision of public goods.

3. The effects on health and educational outcomes that may be associated both with conditional cash transfer programs and women's participation in collective decision-making.

4. The policy implications for economic development and promoting human capital.

Who are you collaborating with on this project?

Ewen Wang is the co-investigator on this project. She is an associate professor of Surgery/Emergency Medicine at the Stanford School of Medicine and will be instrumental in collecting new data on health and education for children who are recipients of the Oportunidades program. We also are engaging inter-institutional collaborators from our partner universities, including; Alberto Díaz-Cayeros, Associate Professor of International Studies at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego; and Vidal Romero, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM).

What are the expected results or outcomes of this study?

The outcomes of this work have both theoretical and policy-relevant implications. The data we collect on the effect of participatory governance in indigenous regions in Mexico and how conditional cash transfer programs enable civic participation of women will have much broader application beyond Mexico's borders. A lot of other governments are experimenting with the use of conditional cash transfer programs and the result of this study should help inform public policy.

In Mexico, a policy brief highlighting the results of the survey will be prepared and presented to policymakers to describe the effects of local governance, civic engagement, and their impact on economic development. Policy recommendations will be presented to advise Chiapas (as well as other states in southern Mexico with a high prevalence of indigenous populations) on constitutional reform that gives autonomy to indigenous communities with respect to municipal collective decision-making.

Finally, a book-length project will be under development that describes how traditional governance in indigenous regions of Mexico shapes civic engagement, participation of women, and impacts the provision of public goods and services. The new data generated by this study will present new findings on how governance shapes the status of maternal and child health services in Chiapas, having much broader implications in the field of health policy.

Brazil’s House of Representatives last month approved profound changes to the Forest Code, a series of laws to regulate the country’s land use. The changes would jeopardize ecosystems and allow deforestation of about 20 million more hectares than the original Forest Code, according to estimates by Gerd Sparovek of the University of São Paulo (see go.nature.com/n8lwfu). The Brazilian Senate must seize its last opportunity to block the changes.

The proposed changes would substantially increase carbon emissions. Assuming that half of the newly affected forest (10 million hectares) will be given over to agriculture and that the average carbon biomass in the Amazon, Atlantic Forest and Cerrado is 50 megagrams per hectare (L. F. Alves et al. Forest Ecol. Manage. 260, 679–691; 2010), emissions would amount to some 500 teragrams of carbon — on top of the 100–300 Tg that arise annually from deforestation of the Amazon (J. P. H. B. Ometto et al. Oecologia 143, 483–500; 2005).

The government’s efforts to decrease Amazon deforestation would be wasted, as would investments made in the ethanol industry for a cleaner environment. Brazil’s commitment to the environment could lose credibility internationally, causing developed countries to raise import taxes on Brazilian agricultural products, making them less competitive. 

Such serious consequences would offset any short-term gain by the Brazilian agricultural sectors that might result from changes to the Forest Code.