ISIS Planned Chemical Attacks | International Norms on Cyber Operations | U.S. Successful Hypersonic Missile Test, and more

“Travel and technology,” Wray said, “have really blurred the lines between foreign and domestic threats.” The FBI director said the frequently cited expression of “connecting the dots” to stop a terrorist attack has taken on a new kind of urgency for many investigators because attackers can mobilize so quickly and often are not part of a large, well-established network.  In many terrorism cases, Wray said, “you’re talking about largely lone actors, maybe one or two other people who don’t have to do a lot of plotting, who don’t need to have a lot of money … don’t need to do a lot of training, and whose targets are pretty much everywhere.” As a result, Wray continued, “there are very few dots out there, as compared to, say, the 9/11 model of an al-Qaeda sleeper cell. … With fewer dots and much less time in which to connect those dots, it may well be that Ken’s folks have one dot and we have the other dot, and if we’re not super latched up, we’re going to miss the only picture that’s out there and it’s got to happen fast.

Exploiting a Crisis: How Benin Became the New Frontline for Jihadists (Marco Simoncelli and Davide Lemmi, DW)
Northern Benin is at the center of a security crisis which has moved south from the Sahel. Poverty and climate change have provided fertile ground for criminals and extremists.

How the ‘Great Replacement’ Myth Inspired a Wave of Racist Terror Attacks  (Tim Hume et al., Vice)
Joshua Fisher-Birch, a researcher at the Counter Extremism Project, said that Tarrant’s so-called manifesto was full of in-jokes and memes from internet and gaming culture. He referenced a dance from the game Fortnite, and joked that one old PlayStation game had “taught [him] ethnonationalism.” Before getting out of his car and launching the attack, Tarrant told his livestream followers to subscribe to the popular YouTuber PewDiePie. His followers have responded in kind, with the gunman who attacked a mosque in Baerum, Norway, in 2019, posting a meme shortly before the shooting depicting Saint Tarrant, with himself as a “disciple.” “[Tarrant] really created this this whole subculture in a sense of neo-Nazi accelerationists,” said Fisher-Birch. But it’s not just Tarrant’s methods that have caught on, but also the underlying ideology that motivated his crimes. These far-right gunmen have all subscribed to a racist conspiracy theory known as “the great replacement” – the title that Tarrant gave to the rambling document he posted online – which has gained increasing currency in right-wing circles over the past decade or so. The theory, a rehash of longstanding far-right narratives around the erasure of white people, holds that white populations are being actively “replaced” by non-white immigrants.

Watchdog Finds Department of Homeland Security Falls Short in Addressing Domestic Terrorism Threat (Nicole Sganga, CBS News)
The top watchdog at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) found that the DHS “could do more to address the threats of domestic terrorism.”  The revelations, in a new 29-page report, follow an uptick in mass shootings that have been shaking the country and prompting questions about the federal law enforcement response. Last month, a state grand jury indicted the alleged Buffalo mass shooter Payton Gendron on charges of domestic terrorism motivated by hate in addition to 10 counts of first-degree murder. In the department’s response, DHS Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy, and Plans Robert Silvers also committed to developing national-level statistics on domestic terrorism by June of next year. DHS spokesperson said the department “will work to implement” the inspector general’s suggestions and added that since last year, DHS has issued bulletins and other products to provide information to Americans about the terrorist threat environment and threats, including six National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) bulletins, which communicated information about threats and about “resources for how to stay safe during the heightened threat environment.

The International Law Sovereignty Debate and Development of International Norms on Peacetime Cyber Operations  (Mark Visger, Lawfare)
The United Kingdom’s positionon sovereignty has limited progress in working toward state consensus on prohibited behaviors in cyberspace. By electing to treat sovereignty as a principle rather than as a substantive rule, the U.K. maintains that violations of sovereignty do not, on their own, constitute violations of international law. This position touched off the well-known debatesurrounding sovereignty, with most states rejecting the U.K.’s position and concluding that a violation of sovereignty in fact violates a state’s international law obligations. 

US Military Announces Successful Hypersonic Missile Test  (DW)
The US military announced it had successfully carried out hypersonic missile tests this week, amid growing concern that Russia and China are leading the race in this particular field.