• Examining Violent Extremists’ Radicalization, Mobilization, and Reintegration

    The National Institute of Justice recently awarded nearly $1.5 million to START researchers for two new projects examining violent extremists’ radicalization, mobilization, and reintegration. Each project builds off the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) and associated datasets to educate law enforcement and criminal justice professionals, and provide them with strategies and best practices for terrorism prevention and extremist reintegration in their communities. 

  • In the Terrorism Fight, Trump Has Continued a Key Obama Policy

    President Donald Trump has rescinded, reversed or otherwise ended many of former President Barack Obama’s signature policies – but not a prominent one. When it comes to fighting terrorism, the current commander-in-chief has upheld, and even extended, his predecessor’s linchpin strategy: using U.S. military special operations forces and targeted killings on a grand global scale.

  • America Shouldn’t Abandon Its Allies in the Sahel

    In mid-January the leaders of France, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mauritania met to discuss how to bolster counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel region, where Islamist terrorist activity has been steadily increasing. The background for the summit meeting were reports that the United States was considering reducing its contribution to an involvement in that campaign against Islamist terrorism. “. For the people in the Sahel, a U.S. retreat would leave them even more vulnerable to future terrorist attacks. Simply put, an American withdrawal would be penny-wise, but pound-foolish,” Olivier Rémy-Bel writes.

  • It Is Now 100 Seconds to Midnight

    The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock is now closer to midnight than ever in its history. The Bulletin cites worsening nuclear threat, lack of climate action, and rise of “cyber-enabled disinformation campaigns” in moving the clock hand. December 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the first edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, initially a six-page, black-and-white bulletin and later a magazine, created in anticipation that the atom bomb would be “only the first of many dangerous presents from the Pandora’s Box of modern science.”

  • Artificial Intelligence and the Manufacturing of Reality

    The belief in conspiracy theories highlights the flaws humans carry with them in deciding what is or is not real. The internet and other technologies have made it easier to weaponize and exploit these flaws, beguiling more people faster and more compellingly than ever before. It is likely artificial intelligence will be used to exploit the weaknesses inherent in human nature at a scale, speed, and level of effectiveness previously unseen. Adversaries like Russia could pursue goals for using these manipulations to subtly reshape how targets view the world around them, effectively manufacturing their reality. If even some of our predictions are accurate, all governance reliant on public opinion, mass perception, or citizen participation is at risk.

  • Better – and Broader – Contingency Plans

    Life, they say, is uncertain. This is why governments and businesses make contingency plans that detail what to do in a disaster and how to handle the unexpected. But some events can be catastrophic across a region, and that calls for a more comprehensive approach.

  • Germany Bans Neo-Nazi Group “Combat 18”

    The German government has banned the neo-Nazi group Combat 18, and the German police conducted raids across Germany, after links were discovered connecting the group to the killing last June of pro-immigration politician from Angela Merkel’s conservative party. Combat 18 is the armed wing of the Blood & Honor neo-Nazi network which was founded in Britain in 1992 and established its German branch in 2000. Europol has warned that the network is getting stronger in more than a dozen European countries. The group chose the number “18” for its name because these numbers are the first and eighth letters in the alphabet —A and H— which are Adolf Hitler’s initials. The group’s motto is “Was Es braucht” (“What it takes”).

  • How Amazon, Geico and Walmart Fund Propaganda

    Lenin is sometimes said to have predicted that capitalists would sell Russia the rope with which they would be hanged. L. Gordon Crovitz writes that “Yet not even Lenin could have imagined Vladimir Putin’s success in getting some of the largest Western companies to subsidize his disinformation efforts by advertising on his government-run ‘news’ websites.”

  • Swiss Police Suspect Russian “Plumbers” of Being Spies in Davos

    Police in Switzerland suspect a pair of Russians they probed five months ago in Davos were Russian intelligence agents. The Swiss police said both men had diplomatic passports and were in the early stages of a Russian spying operation.

  • The Drone Beats of War: The U.S. Vulnerability to Targeted Killings

    The explosions from the recent U.S. drone attack that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani have sent shock waves reverberating across the Middle East. David Baron and Nora Bensahel write that those same shocks should now be rippling through the American national security establishment too. “Regardless of what happens next, one thing is certain: The United States has now made it even more likely that American military and civilian leaders will be targeted by future U.S. foes,” they write.

  • Rejecting U.S. Pressure and Security Concerns, U.K. to Give Huawei Role in 5G Development

    British Prime Minister Boris Johnson appears set to give the go-ahead for Chinese telecom giant Huawei to play a role in the development of Britain’s 5G wireless network — a move that risks jeopardizing intelligence-sharing between Britain and America, according U.S. officials.

  • Letting “A Fox Loose in A Chicken Coop”: U.K. Intel Anxious about Huawei Deal

    High-level officials at the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent of the U.S. NSA (and Britain’s largest intelligence agency), said they were concerned about the imminent decision by the government of Boris Johnson to allow Huawei access to the U.K.  new telecoms network infrastructure. A high-level GCHQ source told The Times that handing Huawei access the U.K. telecom networks would be akin to “letting a fox loose in a chicken coop.”

  • "Redirect Method": Countering Online Extremism

    In recent years, deadly white supremacist violence at houses of worship in Pittsburgh, Christchurch, and Poway demonstrated the clear line from violent hate speech and radicalization online to in-person violence. With perpetrators of violence taking inspiration from online forums, leveraging the anonymity and connectivity of the internet, and developing sophisticated strategies to spread their messages, the stakes couldn’t be higher in tackling online extremism. Researchers have developed the Redirect Method to counter white supremacist and jihadist activity online.

  • YouTube’s Algorithms Might Radicalize People – but the Real Problem Is We’ve No Idea How They Work

    Does YouTube create extremists? It’s hard to argue that YouTube doesn’t play a role in radicalization, Chico Camargo writes. “In fact, maximizing watchtime is the whole point of YouTube’s algorithms, and this encourages video creators to fight for attention in any way possible.” Society must insist on using algorithm auditing, even though it is a difficult and costly process. “But it’s important, because the alternative is worse. If algorithms go unchecked and unregulated, we could see a gradual creep of conspiracy theorists and extremists into our media, and our attention controlled by whoever can produce the most profitable content.”

  • Norway Government Collapses over Repatriation of IS Terrorist’s Spouse, Kids

    The governing coalition in Norway has lost its parliamentary majority after the far-right, populist Progress Party announced today (Monday) that it was leaving the government after the cabinet’s Friday decision to allow a Norwegian woman to return from Syria with her two young kids. One of the children requires medical treatment. The woman left for Syria in 2013 to marry an ISIS terrorists, and the children were born in Syria. The dilemma with which Norway has been grappling is reflected in other countries across Europe, which must decide whether or not to allow their citizens who left to join the fight in Syria or marry IS terrorists to return home.