Last month, Canberra followed London and Ontario in putting the Base, a white-supremacist group with the bulk of its membership in the United States, on its terrorism list. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Varsha Koduvayur describe the group, and why they think America should take similar steps:

The Base was established in 2018 by Rinaldo Nazzaro, a U.S. citizen living in Russia. Although the group has not carried out any attacks, its explicit goals make the dangers associated with it clear enough. The Base’s ideology is accelerationist: it aims to commit violent acts to foment a civil war, to overthrow the current system, and ultimately to establish a white ethno-state. Nazzaro, who goes by the pseudonym Norman Spear, has defended the use of terrorism to achieve the Base’s goals.

In a June 2018 post on Gab, a social network associated with the far-right, he wrote “it’s only terrorism if we lose. If we win, we get statues of us put up in parks.” The group’s ideology is also overtly anti-Semitic; Nazzaro tweeted in 2018 that his goal was to “prepare for the armed struggle against Z0G,” using the acronym for “Zionist Occupied Government,” a term often employed by white supremacists that reflects the belief that Jews secretly control the U.S. government. Nazzaro went on to state his mission was to free “our people from Z0G oppression.”

In October, two members were sentenced to prison for plotting to carry out an attack at a gun-rights rally in Richmond, Virginia. In February, a member pled guilty for stirring up an intimidation campaign against Jewish Americans and Black Americans, during which he encouraged his online followers to vandalize property belonging to these two groups, calling it “Kristallnacht,” in reference to the 1938 Nazi pogrom. Three other Base members were charged in Georgia for being part of a criminal street gang and for plotting to murder a couple they thought belonged to the far-left group Antifa.

On Tuesday, a Hizballah drone attack injured three people in northern Israel. The next day, another attack, targeting an IDF base, injured eighteen people, six of them seriously, in Arab al-Amshe, also in the north. This second attack involved the simultaneous use of drones carrying explosives and guided antitank missiles. In both cases, the defensive systems that performed so successfully last weekend failed to stop the drones and missiles. Ron Ben-Yishai has a straightforward explanation as to why: the Lebanon-backed terrorist group is getting better at evading Israel defenses. He explains the three basis systems used to pilot these unmanned aircraft, and their practical effects:

These systems allow drones to act similarly to fighter jets, using “dead zones”—areas not visible to radar or other optical detection—to approach targets. They fly low initially, then ascend just before crashing and detonating on the target. The terrain of southern Lebanon is particularly conducive to such attacks.

But this requires skills that the terror group has honed over months of fighting against Israel. The latest attacks involved a large drone capable of carrying over 50 kg (110 lbs.) of explosives. The terrorists have likely analyzed Israel’s alert and interception systems, recognizing that shooting down their drones requires early detection to allow sufficient time for launching interceptors.

The IDF tries to detect any incoming drones on its radar, as it had done prior to the war. Despite Hizballah’s learning curve, the IDF’s technological edge offers an advantage. However, the military must recognize that any measure it takes is quickly observed and analyzed, and even the most effective defenses can be incomplete. The terrain near the Lebanon-Israel border continues to pose a challenge, necessitating technological solutions and significant financial investment.