Terror in Cyberspace and the Myth of the “Lone Wolf”

Gabriel Weimann notes some of the ways the Internet is changing terrorism—among them, the role of the so-called “lone wolf”:

In the last few years, no terrorist attacks in the West were conducted, as 9/11 was, by a large group of . . . people. They are conducted instead by individuals acting alone. . . . [These attacks] appeared to have been undertaken by operators who had not been to a training camp and were not part of a terrorist group. However, as in nature, lone wolves do not survive. . . . Part of my research has focused on tracking lone wolves online and we found that all the attackers had a virtual pack behind them, one that we could track and identify. We could see their emails, the websites, the videos they downloaded or uploaded, their postings on Facebook and their tweets—we could see just about everything. All were radicalized, recruited, instructed, trained—and sometimes the attacks were even launched—online. And some terror attacks have been prevented because counter-terrorism agencies monitored the Internet. . . . [I]f there is a virtual pack, and you know how to follow the tracks, it is still possible to interdict the terrorists.

Read more at Fathom

More about: 9/11, Cyberwarfare, Internet, Politics & Current Affairs, Terrorism

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF