• Is the United States Heading for a Rural Insurgency?

    The intrusions of white supremacist militias into cities to intimidate, and at times attack, protestors from the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement highlights the possibility of rural insurgency, Vasabjit Banerjee writes. Does the United States face a rural insurgency? Mao Zedong allegedly remarked that rebels should inhabit their environment as fish in the sea, which was the case in mid-20th Century China with its rural hinterland where the vast majority of the population resided.Banerjee notes that the political geography of the United States — withless than 2 percent of the American population living in 100 percent rural countries – means that the “sea” for rural rebels is small. But the grievances, resources, and opportunities which typically undergird rural insurgencies are present. “Consequently, militia groups deserve more scrutiny from security forces and a unified political consensus to deter and suppress them in order to maintain peace and stability.”

  • Rebuttal: Ukraine Is Emerging as Critical Node for White-Supremacy Extremists

    Foreigners are still networking, training and fighting on both sides of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, cultivating skills and connections that strengthen the transnational white-supremacy extremist networks of today—which, though far from monolithic, are more violent, more organized and more capable than even five years ago.

  • 50,000 Benghazis, 109 Katrinas: U.S. COVID-19 Death in Perspective

    The United States now counts over 200,000 dead in direct connection with the novel coronavirus. Elizabeth Hunt Brockway writes that to grasp the enormity of this figure, we need to see how this massive number stacks up to Pearl Harbor, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and other iconic events of mass death, suffering, and pain seared into the American collective conscience.

  • Group Portrait of America's Jihadists

    A new report by RAND’s Brian Michael Jenkins answers the following questions:1) What is the collective profile of Americans traveling or attempting to travel abroad to join jihadist groups? 2) Among Americans associated with terrorism or terrorist organizations, are there significant differences in the demographics or backgrounds that propelled some to go abroad and some to instead join the jihadist movement at home? 3) What can the collective profile of America’s jihadists reveal about the dimensions and nature of the terrorist threat, the statistical profile of those who respond to jihadist recruiting appeals, the effectiveness of the U.S. response to the threat, and the results of that response?

  • Making Highways, Tunnels, and Bridges More Resilient to Extreme Events

    The EU-funded RESIST project aims to provide a methodology as well as tools for risk analysis and management for critical highway structures (in the case of bridges and tunnels) that will be applicable to all extreme natural and man-made events, or cyber-attacks to the associated information systems. Its goal is to increase the resilience of seamless transport operation and protect the users and operators of the European transport infrastructure by providing them optimal information.

  • How Serious Are Threats to the U.S. Homeland?

    The 17 September hearing on “Worldwide Threats to the Homeland,” as its title suggests, does not make for happy watching. Daniel Byman and Seamus Hughes write that, indeed, statements by FBI Director Christopher Wray and National Counterterrorism Center Director Christopher Miller duly assess an array of dangers related to national security, including election interference, a more aggressive Russia and China, and emergent technologies. Most of their remarks, however, focused on terrorist groups and networks and the threats they pose. “The biggest danger the directors warned about is from lone actors who self-radicalize and act on their own.” Byman and Hughes write. “Wray warned that the most recent uptick is from anti-government violent extremists, some of whom have white supremacist views but many of whom, like the Three Percenters and boogaloos, see themselves as patriots fighting government ‘tyranny’.”

  • Anarchist Groups Tied to Riots in 4 U.S. Cities

    Far-right groups in America such as the anti-government Boogaloo Boys have long used a host of tactics and platforms to incite violence, including dehumanizing memes, online forums and organized militias. Now, left-wing groups are employing many of the same tactics against police and other targets during the social justice protests since the death of George Floyd, according to a new report.

  • Network-Enabled Anarchy: Excerpts from the Report

    The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a non-partisan organization, developed a tool to analyze extremist discourse on social media, and earlier this year used it to analyze the growing threat posed by the far-right, anti-government Boogaloo Bois movement. NCRI has now released a study of the increasingly more extreme social media discourse by leftist extremists.

  • Portland and Kenosha Violence Was Predictable – and Preventable

    The U.S. reached a deadly moment in protests over racial injustice, as back-to-back shootings in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Portland, Oregon, on 25 August and 29 took the lives of three people and seriously injured another. It was tragic – but not surprising. The shooters and victims in Kenosha and Portland reflect an escalating risk of spontaneous violence as heavily armed citizen vigilantes and individuals mobilize at demonstrations and protests.

  • Words and Deeds: Increasingly Militant Social Media Discourse by Far-Left Extremists

    The increasingly militant social media discourse by anarcho-socialist extremists is worrisome, even if far-left extremists are not viewed by security experts inside and outside government as posing as much of a domestic terrorism threat as do far-right extremists and Islamist jihadists — at least not yet. A new report by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) – a sequel to an earlier report on Boogaloo Bois — analyzes the increasingly militant languages of social media postings by anarcho-socialists, noting that on the far-right violent words preceded violent actions. It may be the case on the far-left as well.

  • Are Counter Violent Extremism Interventions Effective?

    Government efforts to counter the propaganda and radicalization that lead to violent extremism are becoming more common around the world, but there’s little research on whether such programs work. RAND conducted three randomized controlled trials of what are called countering violent extremism (CVE) interventions. The results were mixed, but one conclusion was inescapable: countering violent extremism is not an easy task, and programmers should not always assume their content will be successful.

  • The Genetic Engineering Genie Is Out of the Bottle

    Usually good for a conspiracy theory or two, President Donald Trump has suggested that the virus causing COVID-19 was either intentionally engineered or resulted from a lab accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Scientists have now conclusively proved that the virus was not designed in a lab, but Vivek Wadhwa writes that if “genetic engineering wasn’t behind this pandemic, it could very well unleash the next one. With COVID-19 bringing Western economies to their knees, all the world’s dictators now know that pathogens can be as destructive as nuclear missiles.”

  • Captivating Conflagration: Arson as a Terrorist Tactic

    The 2018 Camp Fire in California and the 2019 bushfires in Australia killed dozens of people, destroyed thousands of homes, and scorched millions of acres, inflicting widespread pain and steep economic costs. The most extreme terrorist groups aspire to achieve this level of death and destruction. It therefore comes as no surprise that the use of arson for terrorist purposes is not a new phenomenon. Jihadists; extremists on the far right and the far left; as well as special interest extremists, have used arson to send political messages for years.

  • 19 Years after 9/11, Americans Continue to Fear Foreign Extremists and Underplay the Dangers of Domestic Terrorism

    Nineteen years after the 9/11 attacks, Americans’ ideas of what terrorism is remain tied to that morning. But focusing solely on Islamist extremism groups like al-Qaeda when investigating, researching and developing counterterrorism policies does not necessarily align with what the numbers tell us. Homegrown far-right extremism also poses a persistent and lethal threat to the lives and well-being of Americans. This risk is often underestimated because of the devastating impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It is imperative to support policies, programs and research aimed at countering all forms of violent extremism.

  • On 9/11, Interrogating the Assumptions that Undergird the “Forever War”

    For nearly two decades, the 11th of September has been a solemn one, dedicated to remembering those lost in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Luke Hartig, who served as Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council (NSC), writes that“as the pain and trauma of that day has receded in recent years, the anniversary of 9/11 has also become a reminder of a fact we would have found inconceivable at the time: that we continue to wage war some two decades later.” It is, therefore, time to interrogate the assumptions which have undergirded the War on Terror.