After 9/11, dozens of state-run “Fusion Centers” popped up all over the country. Now there are roughly 79 of them in operation, and they exist in virtually every state. The point of these centers is supposedly to facilitate cooperation between the federal government and the states in order to gather intelligence and prevent terrorist attacks and other serious threats to the homeland. But here’s the strange thing: They don’t appear to be doing that.
A couple years ago, investigative reporters at The Nation found that the Fusion Center in Central Florida was investigating, “Criminal and Violent Extremist Use of Emojis.” The Fort Worth Fusion Center, meanwhile, was preoccupied with a plot to break the Netflix star Joe Exotic out of prison, while the Capital Region Fusion Center was busy looking into viral TikTok challenges. The Washington State Fusion Center, for its part, opened an investigation into a report , “concerning a homeowner working on cars in his driveway and letting oil run down the street into Mission Creek in Olympia.”
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