Two years ago, I wrote an essay that some readers waved off as alarmist, dramatic, or “too dark.” It was called “The Terrorist Attacks of 2025,” and the message was simple: if the West continues to treat its borders as a cosmetic accessory rather than a core function of statehood, we’ll eventually import dangers we can’t anticipate or control.

At the time, the objections flowed in as predictably as the tides. Most people crossing borders aren’t terrorists. We have vetting systems. Intelligence sharing works. America and Europe have humanitarian obligations.

All fair points… but beside the point.

Yesterday, Zero Hedge added a fresh jolt of reality to this conversation — one that makes my original warning look almost optimistic. Their piece put forward a disturbing theory about a former Afghan special-forces soldier, evacuated to the United States during the 2021 fall of Kabul. He recently ambushed and murdered two U.S. National Guard troops.

A New Theory

According to investigators, one possibility is that he didn’t act out of ideology but under coercion. The theory goes that the Taliban threatened his family back home and forced him to attack on American soil, using the oldest weapon known to man: fear for one’s loved ones.

If that theory is even partially true, it means the Taliban — or any hostile regime — may have discovered a new way to weaponize refugee flows. They don’t need to sneak terrorists in. They can blackmail decent people already inside Western borders. Neither background checks nor fingerprints will catch that. “Enhanced vetting” won’t see that. You cannot interview your way around a father worrying about his family being tortured because he didn’t obey orders.

This is a national security threat no border agent can detect. And that makes it far more dangerous than anything we talked about a decade ago.

Why Borders?

When I wrote “The Terrorist Attacks of 2025,” my primary concern was operational. Borders exist to create separation — between citizens and non-citizens, safe territory and hostile territory, known individuals and unknown ones. When that separation dissolves, you lose the ability to manage risk. I worried about extremists impersonating migrants. I worried about radicalized individuals riding mass-migration waves into the West. I worried about the political paralysis that prevents Western governments from saying “no.”

What I didn’t fully anticipate was the possibility that Western refugee programs themselves could create a pool of highly skilled, perfectly vetted, deeply vulnerable individuals who can be turned against us through sheer coercion. If the new theory holds, we didn’t import refugees. We imported leverage points.

Pathological Altruism

And here’s the uncomfortable truth: this is a danger we created for ourselves. During the chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan, the West rushed to bring over thousands of individuals, many of them heroic allies who helped U.S. and coalition forces for two decades. But we could not bring their families. Those people remain under Taliban control. And that means every Afghan evacuee with loved ones still trapped in Afghanistan lives with a sword hanging over his head. Some may resist. Some may comply. No one — not even they — knows which category they fall into until the phone call comes.

This changes the entire calculus of refugee policy. It means a person can arrive with flawless credentials and still become a risk years later. A foreign actor can transform an innocent, well-intentioned person into a weapon. The threat doesn’t originate in the individual, but in the regime controlling his family. You can’t profile that, or screen for it. You can only not create the conditions for it in the first place.

That brings us back to borders — not as political symbols but as vital organs. Without functioning borders, a nation cannot manage risk, filter threats, or prevent adversaries from turning humanitarian systems into attack vectors.

But for years, Western governments, paralyzed by ideology and terrified of bad headlines, have treated borders as if they’re optional. The consequences of that mistake are now beginning to surface — tentatively, tragically, and perhaps inevitably.

Guarding borders isn’t about being cruel or fearful. It’s the bare minimum for compassionate policy. The state can’t help the innocent if it can’t identify the dangerous. It can’t maintain safety inside if it doesn’t know who enters from outside. It can’t run a refugee program if hostile regimes can weaponize the very people we’re trying to protect.

I’m not arguing against refugees, per se. It’s an argument against wishful thinking. If a refugee’s family remains under the control of a terrorist regime, that refugee is at risk of coercion — pure and simple. And once inside Western borders, that coercion becomes our problem.

I warned about this in 2023: not a flood of terrorists, but a flood of unknowns. Not an invasion, but an infiltration by circumstance. Not malice, but vulnerability. Borders are not walls to keep the world out; they are filters to keep a country functioning. Remove the filter, and you inherit every problem in the world — including ones no one has ever seen before.

Whether this particular Afghan case ultimately proves to be blackmail or something else, the logic stands. Open borders carry hidden costs that only reveal themselves when it’s too late. Western governments must stop pretending humanitarian intake is risk-free. And Americans must understand that anyone admitted is subject to manipulation by regimes that hate America.

Wrap Up

A nation guards its borders not because it despises the world, but because it values what’s inside. The West has forgotten that. The West’s enemies are thrilled it has.