TerrorismWhy the latest wave of terrorism will get worse before it gets better

By Bruce Newsome

Published 23 June 2017

The latest attacks in London and Manchester – like last year’s attacks in Orlando, Florida and St. Cloud, Minnesota — epitomize what I call the newest form of terrorism. The newest terrorists aim to kill as many people as possible, as frequently as possible, as horrifically as possible, intimately, suicidally, with the most accessible weapons, in the most accessible public spaces. Terrorism will get much worse before it gets better. Religious ideologies, access to weaponizable materials and ease of communications, along with the massing of targets, are all moving in the wrong direction. This makes terrorism easier and counterterrorism harder.

The latest attacks in London and Manchester —  like last year’s attacks in Orlando, Florida and St. Cloud, Minnesota — epitomize what I call the newest form of terrorism.

The newest terrorists aim to kill as many people as possible, as frequently as possible, as horrifically as possible, intimately, suicidally, with the most accessible weapons, in the most accessible public spaces.

Defining what terrorism is can be contentious but over the years scholars have identified several distinct waves. The “old” wave of terrorism from the 1960s was largely secular, aiming for political representation, ideological change and separatism.

In the 1990s, a group of scholars identified the rise of what they dubbed “new terrorism.” New terrorists, these scholars argued, tend to be religiously motivated – and, because religious terrorists are usually more interested in killing outsiders than causing political change, they tend to be more lethal.

Although the term “new” refers to religious terrorism more than recent terrorism, terrorism emerged as predominately religious in the 2000s. While this term has its critics, our research shows it is a distinct category that is getting riskier.

Now, more than 20 years since new terrorism was identified, my colleagues W. James Stewart, Aarefah Mosavi and I at the University of California Berkeley have analyzed what we term the “newest terrorism.” Our forthcoming book, “Countering New(est) Terrorism,” offers the first big data analysis of new/religious versus old/secular-political terrorism.

The new(est) terrorists
While the new terrorists prioritized spectacular lethality in long-planned hijackings or bombings of mass transit, offices or hotels, the “newest” terrorists encourage more frequent active violence, hostage-takings and kidnappings. They seek to kill in the most horrifying ways. They distribute acts of violence widely in time and space. They do not just wait for an infrequent spectacular attack like 9/11.

That means the aggregate lethality and economic costs are increasing, even though the average lethality per attack is decreasing.

The characteristics of religious terrorism become trends among terrorists in general, as secular terrorists shift to the latest technologies, methods and even intents. For instance, in February 2013, a Marxist Kurdish separatist group carried out its first suicide bombing on the U.S. Embassy in Turkey.

Terrorism data
The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) is a federally sponsored, freely available dataset that covers both international and domestic terrorist events. It includes more than 150,000 incidents from more than 200 countries and territories, for the years from 1970 through 2015.