• Alabama safe school technology tests may keep children safer

    Safety and security technology tests underway at a Jackson County, Alabama school could help keep Alabama’s schoolchildren safer if implemented statewide. Rather than developing an emergency response to an active shooter incident, the project focuses on expanding the perimeter of protection to help ensure interception of a potential shooter. Components of the system also provide law enforcement with enhanced situational information.

  • Insect Allies: Friend or foe?

    In 2016 DARPA launched the Insect Allies project, budgeting $45 million over four years to transform agricultural pests into vectors that can transfer protective genes into plants within one growing season. Scientists are concerned that such technology might be used for nefarious purposes. In a recent Science article, the scientists note the profound implications of releasing a horizontal environmental genetic alteration agent – implications that touch on regulatory, economic, biological, security, and societal issues.

  • Why don’t most people become radicalized?

    To understand what leads people into violent extremism, scientists are turning the question on its head and asking why it is that most young people don’t become radicalized.

  • U.K. set to outlaw Hezbollah in its entirety, not just its so-called “military wing”

    The United Kingdom is set to proscribe the Iranian-backed, Lebanese-based terror organization Hezbollah in its entirety. The U.K. outlawed Hezbollah’s “military wing” as a terrorist entity in 2008, but the “political wing” of the organization is not currently restricted.

  • Former U.S. officials challenge report linking terrorism, immigration

    A group of former national security officials is pushing back against a controversial Trump administration report on the link between terrorism and immigration, saying the report gives the false impression that immigrants are responsible for the majority of terrorist attacks in the United States.

  • U.S. again names Iran as leading terrorism sponsor

    The United States has once again named Iran as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, accusing it of fueling conflicts and undermining governments throughout the Middle East. An annual survey on global terrorism, released by the State Department on 19 September, said Iran and its proxies are responsible for intensifying multiple conflicts and undermining U.S. interests in the region.

  • Identifying extremists online even before they post dangerous content

    The number and size of online extremist groups using social networks to harass users, recruit new members, and incite violence is rapidly increasing. New research has found a way to identify extremists, such as those associated with the terrorist group ISIS, by monitoring their social media accounts, and can identify them even before they post threatening content.

  • U.S.-provided security sector assistance in Africa largely failed

    The United States has sought to combat security threats in Africa – whether terrorism or, in a previous era, communism – principally by providing security sector assistance (SSA) to partner governments on the continent. Two new studies suggest that U.S.-provided SSA in Africa has largely failed to achieve its goals.

  • The far right and reciprocal radicalization

    Could fragmentation within the Far-Right contribute to increasingly extreme responses to Islamist terrorism? There is increasing evidence of instrumental responses from some of the most extreme groups, which seek to encourage the strategic use of violence.

  • The role of grievances as precursor to extremism, terrorism

    Researchers have failed to properly study the role of specific grievances as a precursor to extremism and acts of terrorism, often substituting large macro-level issues as a proxy for individual reasons behind attacks. Amilee Turner, doctoral candidate at KU, “In a nutshell, what scholars have appeared to not realize or have neglected to account for is the fact that individuals or groups that are deprived in an absolute sense, whether that is through unequal distributing of resources or materials within society, are not the same as individuals or groups expressing perceived, relative deprivation, like frustration or anger, entitlements and injustices toward another individual or group within a society that motivates their engagement in civil conflict or war.”

  • The first line of defense against acts of targeted violence

    Tragic events at the Boston Marathon, African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, and Pulse nightclub in Orlando remind us that ideologically motivated violent extremists pose a persistent threat to Americans of all backgrounds. Our first defense against attacks is grounded in our understanding and response to terrorism within our country. While the ideologies that support acts of targeted violence are diverse, so too are our responses and prevention activities.

  • Experts: Int’l community must target terrorists who use human shields

    Because terrorists use human shields to protect themselves or cause civilian casualties “without facing consequences,” it is imperative that “terrorists and their sponsoring regimes must be held accountable for their brutal practice of using civilians as human shields,” argued two experts.

  • UN Report: With aid from Iran, al Qaeda is resurgent

    A United Nations report found that although the threat of ISIS has diminished, as the terror group is transitioning from “a proto-State network to a covert network,” al Qaeda is newly resurgent with support from Iran. The report states, “the global Al-Qaida network continues to show resilience. Al-Qaida’s affiliates and allies are much stronger than those of ISIL in certain places, including Somalia, Yemen, South Asia and the Sahel.”

  • Interactive map pinpointing extremism and hate across U.S.

    Last week, in advance of the first anniversary of the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released the ADL H.E.A.T.(Hate, Extremism, Anti-Semitism, Terrorism) Map — an interactive map detailing extremist and anti-Semitic incidents in the United States. The map is a visual reflection of select proprietary datasets developed by ADL experts in its Center on Extremism.

  • Corbyn pressed on wreath laying at the grave of a Black September terrorist

    In 2014, Jeremy Corbyn, now leader of the Labor Party but then a back bencher, was invited to Tunisia to attend a conference on the Middle East. He used the occasion to visit the cemetery where several PLO terrorists are buried (the PLO had moved its headquarters from Beirut to Tunisia in 1982). Corbyn claims that he laid a wreath at the grave of a PLO leader who was killed in an Israeli commando raid in 1985 – but pictures show that he laid a wreath about 20 meters away, at the grave of a Black September terrorist who took part in the killing of 11 Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics.