In the days following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, the FBI quietly distributed a bulletin to police departments across California. The warning described unverified information that, as of early February 2026, Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles launched from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United States, specifically against unspecified targets in California.
The bulletin was careful in its language: the information was unverified, the timing and targets unknown. But the fact that federal law enforcement considered the threat credible enough to distribute to state and local police departments was itself significant. It pointed to a threat environment that many public safety agencies are not yet configured to address.
Michael Balboni, Founder and Managing Partner of RedLand Strategies, who served as New York State’s top Homeland Security official, joined ABC News Live on March 11, 2026, to break down what that environment actually looks like for security professionals on the ground.
Balboni’s analysis centered on two parallel threats that require different responses but share a common source: the war with Iran and the incentives it has created for those who seek to harm the United States.
The first track is organized retaliation. The drone bulletin represents this category. Iran has historically used asymmetric tactics, including proxy networks and indirect methods, to project force beyond its borders without direct military engagement. A pre-positioned drone platform in international waters is consistent with that doctrine. It does not require an operative living inside the country. It requires planning, equipment, and the ability to act at a time and place of Iran’s choosing.
The second track is radicalization: individuals already inside the United States who may be inspired by the conflict to act independently, without direction or coordination from the Iranian state. This threat is harder to predict and, in some ways, harder to disrupt precisely because it does not require a network. A person who was not previously on law enforcement’s radar can become a threat very quickly if the conditions for radicalization are present.
Both tracks are active. Both require attention. And as Balboni’s ABC News appearance made clear, they call for security professionals to think about the current environment as genuinely multi-dimensional, not as a single type of threat that can be addressed through a single type of response.
The FBI bulletin was distributed to California law enforcement. But the threat environment it describes does not stop at state lines. Drone technology is mobile. Inspired individuals are everywhere. The question for public safety executives and emergency managers across the country is whether their organizations have thought through what a response to either of these threat vectors would actually look like.
For many agencies, the answer is that their frameworks were built around threat types that predate this moment. A security posture designed around conventional criminal threats or even traditional terrorist attack scenarios may not map cleanly onto either an unmanned aerial threat originating offshore or a rapidly radicalized individual with no prior law enforcement contact.
Preparation in this environment means building the capacity to detect threats earlier, share information more effectively across jurisdictions, and communicate clearly with the public when a threat materializes. It means reviewing what coordinating mechanisms exist with federal agencies when a threat has a national security dimension. And it means ensuring that crisis communication plans are in place before an incident occurs, not developed in response to one.
This kind of systems-level preparation, across emergency management, threat assessment, and crisis communication, is the work that RedLand Strategies helps organizations build. Michael Balboni’s background as New York’s top Homeland Security official, combined with his current role as President of Adelphi University, puts him at the intersection of exactly the institutions that need to be thinking about this most carefully: government, higher education, and the private sector.
The FBI bulletin noted that the 12-day bombardment of Iran had severely degraded its capabilities to carry out a drone attack of the type described. That is meaningful short-term reassurance. It is not a permanent resolution.
Threat environments shift. Capabilities are rebuilt over time. The radicalization track does not depend on Iranian military capacity at all. And as Balboni’s analysis underscored, the period following active hostilities is not a period to stand down preparedness efforts. It is a period in which the less visible dimensions of a threat can develop in ways that are harder to track.
The organizations best positioned to navigate that environment are the ones that invested in their security frameworks before they needed them.
