Armed Drones & Terrorism | Anti-Government Threats | Fumbling Russian Spies, and more

In a departure from the norm, many of those threats are being made in the open, on social media platforms like TikTok, with no attempt to hide their identity. A collection of TikTok videos collated by one Twitter user included numerous calls for violence against the FBI and the government from Trump supporters. “I seen what happened to Trump,” one person says in a video while a weapon and ammunition can be seen on a bed behind him. “Yea, it’s go time. Everyone knows exactly what I’m talking about,” he adds. Other videos include conspiracy theories about IRS agents coming to take their weapons.

House Oversight Chairs Call on Social Media Companies to Address Violent Threats Against Federal Law Enforcement  (HSToday)
“The Committee is seeking to understand how your company plans to prevent your platform from being used to incite violence against law enforcement personnel.”

Antisemitic Threats on Truth Social Continue in the Wake of FBI’s Mar-A-Lago Raid  (Madeline Fixtler, Jerusalem Post)
When a Florida synagogue canceled its “Beach Shabbat” services amid threats against one of its board members, the judge who signed the warrant authorizing an FBI search of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, it felt to some like a pivotal moment in the history of American antisemitism. “The combination of a synagogue in Florida having to cancel Shabbat due to antisemitic threats against the Jewish judge who signed the Trump warrant, combined with right-wing media figures pointing out that Merrick Garland is Jewish, is making me very uneasy as an American Jew,” a doctoral student in American Jewish history named Joel Swanson wrote on Twitter. Many of the attacks on Judge Bruce Reinhardt have referenced his Jewish identity, from a viral tweet by retired baseball player Lenny Dykstra to chatter on pro-Trump message boards. So, too, has criticism of Merrick Garland, the US attorney general who authorized the search as part of an ongoing investigation into whether Trump may have violated the Espionage Act. The torrent of antisemitic vitriol against them have raised concerns that Trump’s base, which has already shown potential for violence, could channel that rhetoric into action.

Do Armed Drones Reduce Terrorism? Here’s the Data.  (Joshua A. Schwartz and Matthew Fuhrmann, Washington Post)
At 6:18 a.m. on July 31, a CIA drone fired the two Hellfire missiles that killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, a former deputy to Osama bin Laden. Since 9/11, the United States has conducted over 14,000 drone strikes like this against suspected terrorist targets. Countries such as Iran, Turkey, Nigeria and Egypt­ have also acquired armed drones and conduct their own strikes. But do armed drone operations reduce terrorism, or do they actually make countries more vulnerable to it? To find out, we analyzed patterns of terrorism in 18 countries — every country that has fielded armed drones to date. The evidence reveals that obtaining armed drones reduces the amount of terrorism a country experiences. Armed drones may raise ethical concerns but appear to be an effective counterterrorism tool. The U.S. killed al-Qaeda’s leader. That might boost terrorism. Some analysts argue that the use of drones increases terrorism for two main reasons. First, drones can cause “blowback” among civilian populations, when drones kill or psychologically terrify noncombatants and violate countries’ sovereignty. For example, data collected by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism suggests that U.S. drone strikes have killed up to 2,220 civilians since 2010, including up to 450 children.

Russia’s Spies Misread Ukraine and Misled Kremlin as War Loomed  (Greg Miller and Catherine Belton, Washington Post)

Sensitive materials obtained by Ukrainian and other security services offer rare insight into the activities of Russia’s Federal Security Service, which bears enormous responsibility for Moscow’s failed war plan and the hubris that propelled it.

The Armed Resistance Against the Taliban Is Still Here (Mohammed Rasool, Vice)
Nestled in hideaways in remote valleys in Afghanistan and in safe houses outside the country, groups of armed militias are operating a growing resistance against the Taliban. These fighters, loyal to the previous Western-backed government, are running a sustained insurgency in areas already hostile to the Taliban. Eleven months after the Taliban claimed to have neutralised the final resistance fighters in the Panjshir Valley, and a year since the Kabul government fell to the Islamists, resistance fighters are regrouping. On Monday, the National Resistance Front – the biggest active anti-Taliban group – used the eve of the first anniversary of the fall of Kabul to announce a new wave of attacks on Taliban outposts in the north of the country. Several hit-and-run attacks on Taliban militants in the outposts and checkpoints in Andrab and Panjshir have already been reported, also in parts Baghlan, Parwan and Kapisa provinces, all of which are north of Kabul. Other small groups have also emerged in the south and east of the country. In a statement to mark the “fall of the regime” in Kabul, the NRF said the group would continue to “fight until the people of Afghanistan are liberated” from the Taliban.  The NRF and other loosely allied groups have carried out a limited series of clashes in areas with large populations of ethnic and religious minority groups, known for their hostility to the Islamists, who target them with impunity.

UK Police Detail ‘Remarkable’ Probe into IS ‘Beatles’ Cell  (France24)
UK police lifted the lid Wednesday on a years-long probe into the notorious Islamic State (IS) kidnap-and-murder cell dubbed the “Beatles” by their captives. Counter-terrorism officers said the hostages’ recollections helped “zero in” on three of the British captors. The IS cell members, who tried to keep their identities hidden, held dozens of foreign hostages in Syria between 2012 and 2015 and were known to their captives as the “Beatles” because of their distinctive British accents. Two of them — 38-year-old Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, 34 — have been brought to justice in the United States for their part in the gruesome beheadings and killings of several Americans. Another, Mohamed Emwazi — dubbed “Jihadi John” — died in Syria in 2015. A fourth alleged British member was remanded in UK custody last week on terrorism charges after Turkey deported him following a jail term there. Ahead of Elsheikh’s sentencing on Friday, British police have now detailed how their nearly decade-long probe unearthed key evidence used by US prosecutors to convict him in April. “The building of the case is described as like putting together very small pieces of a jigsaw,” Richard Smith, the head of London police’s counter-terrorism unit, told reporters at a briefing Wednesday. “What we pieced together here is a trail of breadcrumbs, fragments of breadcrumbs really, amongst a huge amount of other inquiries, which we were then able to present… to a court to assist the prosecution in the US.

Belgian Jihadism: A Thing of the Past? (Brussels Times)
Belgium hasn’t seen any major terrorist attacks since 2016 and Belgium’s Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (CUTA) rates the actual terror threat as two out of four – far lower than previously. Yet this is not to say that the threat has disappeared, with one Arabic studies researcher cautioning that terrorist groups are still active in the country: “You always have to assume that there will be people inspired by terror groups,” said Pieter Van Ostayen of  KU Leaven in De Morgen. “The threat level in Belgium remains at two. That means there is always a possibility of new attacks.” Van Ostayen manages a database with 2,189 names of Belgian jihadist fighters. But keeping track of the people on file is a complicated affair. “In that database are 130 Belgian fighters who we don’t know whether they are still alive. It could be that they are still in Syria or maybe they have found another terrain in the meantime. In the next few years, more and more Syrian fighters will also return. Those who have been convicted here will also be released and it is difficult to tell whether they have been deradicalized.” Van Ostayen mentions one man who was part of the Islamic State (IS) and is currently detained in Norway. Until recently, he had spread radical messages online.