How Trump Made it Much Easier Take Out Terrorists Around the World

CENTCOM Forces Kill the Senior Military Leader of Al-Qaeda Affiliate Hurras al-Din (HaD) in Syria

On Feb. 23, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces conducted a precision airstrike in Northwest Syria, targeting and killing Muhammed Yusuf Ziya Talay, the senior military leader of… pic.twitter.com/trhDvgdgne

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 1, 2025

When Dr. Sebastian Gorka started his job as the senior director for counterterrorism at the White House’s National Security Council, one of the first things he did was order new lanyards for his team with eight letters and an ampersand: WWFY & WWKY. These cryptic abbreviations were drawn from a quote from Gorka’s boss, President Donald Trump: “We will find you, and we will kill you.”

Gorka has fashioned that directive into a new policy that streamlines the process for the CIA and U.S. military to find, fix, and finish terrorists all over the Islamic world. The old protocols held that the president or national security adviser had to sign off on every strike. Now the authority to approve these air strikes and drone strikes sits lower down the chain of command.

“We undid four years of the insanity of the 8,000-mile UAV joystick,” Gorka told The Free Press.

In practice, one U.S. intelligence official told The Free Press, midlevel CIA and military officers in charge of targeting teams now have the authority to approve the operations. Another senior Trump administration official told The Free Press, “There are still significant levels of checks and balances in place, and the president has confidence in his military to act within their lawful authorities.”

To demonstrate the change in approach, Gorka relayed a story of a visit to a facility where analysts were watching an ISIS command center near Bosaso, Somalia, composed of a complex of caves. Gorka learned that the analysts had been watching the ISIS recruiter and facilitator, Ahmed Maeleninine, for a year and a half.

When Gorka briefed Trump in early February, the president was bewildered that Maeleninine and his henchmen had not been taken out. “What do you mean, we’ve been surveilling them for a year and a half? Kill them,” Gorka recalled Trump saying. On February 11, U.S. Africa Command announced that Maeleninine had been killed along with 13 other ISIS operatives. Gorka said he watched the operation unfold at a secure location with national security adviser Mike Waltz. “We watched that cave complex turned into a sheet of glass,” Gorka said.

Since Trump took office in January, the U.S. has killed at least 23 jihadists in air strikes in Syria and Somalia. These strikes include a February 23 drone attack that killed a facilitator for al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate, Hurras al-Din, trumpeted a week later on social media by U.S. Central Command. That strike appeared to use a missile known as the “Ninja bomb” that slices and dices the target instead of exploding on impact, a munition designed to minimize civilian casualties.

— Eli Lake in How Trump Loosened the Rules for Hunting Terrorists