Concerns Grow Over Stress of Military Life

Two acts of New Year's violence are stark reminder of a vexing issue

- By Nina Feigenbaum and Lucien J. Robbs

The two men had vastly different military careers that seemed unlikely to intersect.

Army Master Sgt. Matthew Liversberger was an elite special forces soldier who repeatedly deployed to the Afghan front lines, while Army Staff Sgt. Shamsud-Din Jabbar spent years quietly supporting troops through administrative work.

Their stories overlapped in two shocking acts in the early hours of 2025, with an exploded Tesla Cybertruck in Las Vegas, in what authorities have determined was a suicide, and a terrorist attack that killed 14 in New Orleans.

The two episodes have become stark reminders of one of the most persistent and vexing threats facing the U.S. military, a tragic turn toward violence from extremist radicalization or mental-health struggles.

Military experts and veterans say that while Jabbar and Livelsberger's actions aren't representative of the men and women who serve, the struggles and pressures that haunted them are all too common. The Department of Defense has acknowledged for years that too many of its service members have fallen sway to extremist ideologies or resorted to violent outbursts. The New Year's Day events are raising new questions about the government's efforts to help service members and veterans and its ability to detect the warning signs.

While authorities initially looked for a connection between the episodes, they appear to have "no definitive link," according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation-and they reflect two different challenges.

Jabbar, a 42-year-old consultant retired from the Army, crashed a rented pickup truck into a crowd of revelers in New Orleans, killing 14 and injuring dozens more. In recent months, Jabbar had secretly been embracing Islamic State propaganda that inspired him to commit mass murder. Police recovered an ISIS flag from his truck, as well as social-media videos filmed in the hours before the attack in which Jabbar declared his allegiance to the terrorist group.