So are they stopping anything serious? It's a safe bet they're not.

The planning for 9/11 took several years, $500k in financing, and had a lot of moving parts between recruiting, research, travel/visas, flight training etc. It's hard to believe that people motivated at that level would truly be deterred by what you see happening at the typical American airport these days.

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_cam...:

> As of August 2024, at least 780 persons from 48 countries have been detained at the camp since its creation, of whom 740 had been transferred elsewhere, 9 died in custody, and 30 remain; only 16 detainees have ever been charged by the U.S. with criminal offenses.

Given what we do know about the secretive and illegal activities of the federal government during the War on Terror I don’t think it’s a reasonable assumption that everyone accused of terrorist activity got their day in court.

But the counterpoint to that is that a gunman almost succeeded in killing Trump despite showing the behaviours online and offline of your stereotypical amateur assassin.