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TERRORISM
November 21 marks the 25th anniversary of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, or CTD. In the time since its creation, the division has worked to counter the constantly evolving threat of terrorism at home and abroad.
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TERRORISM
This article explores five factors that were key to facilitating innovation in Facebook’s approach to countering the Islamic State—and that I argue are more generalizable. They are: people, organization, legitimacy, tools, and collaboration. It also identifies lessons that can be learned from that experience.
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BIOTERRORISM
Experts worry that, within a few years, AI will put that capability into the hands of tens of thousands of people. Without a new approach to regulation, the risk of bioterrorism and lab leaks will soar.
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TERROR FINANCING
The overwhelming bipartisan support a plan to revoke tax exemptions for nonprofits deemed supportive of terrorist organizations once enjoyed has dwindled as critics worry about constitutional overreach.
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ARGUMENT: PRTISAN POLITICS & VIOLENCE
One of the most alarming trends in terrorism is the growth in anti-government extremism. “The heightened risk of terrorist attacks motivated by partisan beliefs does not just endanger individual lives but also threatens the democratic process itself, casting a shadow over open discourse and discouraging civic engagement,” Riley McCabe writes.
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HOMELAND DEFENSE
Homeland defense issues my be referred to as seams of ambiguity which doesn’t clearly define itself as either a defense or a law enforcement issue, and our adversaries have discovered the seam and they’re playing along that seam. And that’s what thrusts us into the gray areas that we’ve been talking about for at least two decades now.
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TERRORISM
There may be an element of schadenfreude in watching Russia fail in the Sahel in a major play against Western interests and get caught in a mess, from which it can only extricate itself with a loss of face. But the problem is that the result of this failure has been to turn the Sahel into a center for extremist violence that risks spreading further.
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EXTREMISM
Historically, Canada has always had a few active far-right groups, including the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and Nazis and fascists before the Second World War. But that was then. Now, the far right has a different strategy.
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TERRORISM
Israel’s war against Hezbollah and Hamas, while inflicting considerable damage, has yet to strike a crippling blow to either of the Iran-backed terror groups, according to a top U.S. counterterrorism official.
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TERRORISM
It is curious to note that the ‘jihadist’ tag is almost exclusively given to violent Sunni extremists. In fact, the Arabic term of “muqawama” (resistance) is now replacing jihad across West Asia. Deriving its resonance from the Shia ideology of resistance against the ‘oppression’ of Islam’s larger Sunni community, the term is now getting applied to rising pan-Islamist opposition towards the US-Israeli sway over the region.
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ARGUMENT: NON-IDEOLOGICAL POLITICAL VIOLENCE
When it comes to extremist motivations for political violence, their varied sources and the role of mental health make it difficult to attribute a root cause and who might have been responsible for leading them down that road. Benjamin Allison writes that thelack of ideological clarity among those who commit acts of political violence is not uncommon.
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TERRORISM
Research from Europe and America suggests women frequently receive lesser sentences for terrorism-related crimes than male offenders. What do we know about prosecuting female terrorists in England and Wales?
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MARITIME WAR
The US Army should consider borrowing a page from the playbook of Yemen’s Houthi militants. The character of war is always changing, and the Houthis’ ongoing attacks against shipping in the Red Sea may prove to be one of the more significant inflection points in military history.
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TERRORISM
ISIS remains an enduring security threat and its narrative has sustained through the attacks and propaganda carried out by its affiliates. Socio-political grievances and religious repression will continue fueling support for ISIS. There is a lack of global appetite to counter the ISIS threat due to geopolitical confrontations and armed conflicts raging worldwide
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TERRORISM
The diffusion of innovation theory highlights that most organizations, groups, and individuals adopt innovations in the mid-to-late product lifecycle. This applies to technology adoption by terror groups: most violent non-state actors will adopt technology once it has crossed several thresholds, including cost, availability, testing (i.e., proof of concept), and ease of use.
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POLITICAL VIOLENCE
Mobilizations by extremist groups in 2024 are on track to be at their lowest level since 2020, according to a new report, but public officials — particularly those who work on elections — continue to face hostile threats.
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TERRORISM
Al-Qaeda has begun increasingly replicating the tactics employed by its Salafi-jihadi rival, Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIS), in Africa’s Sahel region by relying on powerful affiliates like Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM). It has done so to revitalize its ideological appeal and rejuvenate its primacy in the global jihadi fold, even as ISIS has remained the deadliest terror group for the ninth consecutive year.
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INTELLIGENCE FAILURES
Hours after the Hamas attack of October 7 began, they were widely attributed to an apparent Israeli intelligence failure, with pundits pointing to several possible sources, including a misunderstanding of Hamas’ intentions, cognitive biases, and an overreliance on the country’s technological superiority. Building on previous literature on surprise attacks and intelligence failures to examine both Israel’s political level and intelligence level prior to October 7, 2023, the findings suggest that the attack was likely not the result of a single glaring failure but rather the accumulation of several problems at both levels.
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EXTREMISM
On the grim anniversary of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 terror massacre in southern Israel, when thousands of terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages, anti-Israel student group demonstrations on U.S. campuses again featured extreme pro-terror messages that glorified the attack and sought to disrupt campus life. Some events were marked by vandalism, intimidation and harassment.
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7 OCTOBER: ONE YEAR ON
The turbulent year since Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel draws to a close, marked by a sharp escalation in conflict between Israel and Iran and its proxies. Four CFR experts assess the changes since the attacks.
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The long view
Patriots’ Day: How Far-Right Groups Hijack History and Patriotic Symbols to Advance Their Cause, According to an Expert on Extremism
Extremist groups have attempted to change the meaning of freedom and liberty embedded in Patriots’ Day — a commemoration of the battles of Lexington and Concord – to serve their far-right rhetoric, recruitment, and radicalization. Understanding how patriotic symbols can be exploited offers important insights into how historical narratives may be manipulated, potentially leading to harmful consequences in American society.