This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, November 16, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

After bombings take dozens of lives in Paris, it's worth examining the ways U.S. authorities attempt to reduce the risk of

terrorist activity here at home, and how effective those programs have been.

John Mueller and Mark Stewart are co-authors of the new book, Chasing Ghosts, The Policing of Terrorism, we spoke today.

ISIS only really exists as a meaningful thing for the last year or so, a year and a half.

The attacks seem to have been inspired by ISIS or called for

by ISIS, but they don't seem to have been, unlike 9-11, for example, orchestrated by the

terrorist organization abroad.

The Paris attack is really, you know, obviously horribly destructive, but the other attacks

that have been inspired, at least seemed to have been inspired by ISIS, have been generally really quite pathetic.

All right, so what does it matter that these were inspired by rather than directly orchestrated by this group? It just means that these are not ISIS attacks in the

direct sense that it's not like al-Qaeda organizing things abroad and sending people abroad to do things.

There's been plenty of inspirational stuff going around and the result at least up until Paris

has been pretty limited.

Yeah and it also makes the attacks much more random in nature.

So you may not be part of an organized campaign in that sense and that might well be just a one-off.

All right, so, but I mean given the destruction the public policy reaction seems to be more concentrating toward attacking in these various

other, these various countries in which this group operates.

Yeah, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense if it's basically. countries in which this group operates.

Yeah, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

If it's basically inspirational, getting rid of ICE is a really good idea.

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