New book of interest from the Center for Complex Operations at National Defense University, Convergence: Illicit Networks and National Security in the Age of Globalization.

Free download of full volume in PDF, at:
http://www.ndu.edu/press/convergence.html

Living here in the Boston area, the past week has been an almost sleepless blur. Here are some news stories for which I was interviewed:

• CBS Evening News
• Cincinnati Enquirer
• Terra.com (in Spanish)
• Arise TV
• NY Daily News
• CNBC
• Boston Herald
• Metro US
• Christian Science Monitor
• Liberation (in French)
• Inside Higher Ed
• CNBC (#2)
• CNBC (#3)

A bunch of other tv and radio interviews (CNBC, BBC, Fox, CTV Toronto, SunTV, etc) as well as some other international ones in Russian and Japanese – probably these can be found online as well. Over the past week, I’ve been struck by the thought that the only time I get these calls is when something bad happens. This can be a depressing business, not for everyone. Those of us who study terrorism must maintain a healthy sense of optimism in human nature, despite the lessons of history…

A new “Overview of U.S. National Intelligence” has been released by the ODNI, and is available online at: http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/USNI 2013 Overview_web.pdf

A few years ago, our journal Perspectives on Terrorism published a very popular resource article by Benjamin Freedman, “Terrorism Research Centres: 100 Institutes, Programs and Organisations in the Field of Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, Radicalisation and Asymmetric Warfare Studies“. 

Now that the Center for Security Research and Technologies at UMass Lowell is up and running (see http://www.uml.edu/CSRT), we’re going to need to update that list . . .

In case you missed it, here’s a link to the new US Strategy for Homeland Defense and Defense Support of Civil Authorities

http://www.defense.gov/news/Homelanddefensestrategy.pdf

Assessing Inspire Magazine’s 10th Edition

By Scott Stewart  [ VP of Analysis at STRATFOR ]

Republished with permission of Stratfor.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released the 10th edition of its English-language magazine, Inspire, on March 1. After discussing its contents with our analytical team, initially I decided not to write about it. I concluded that Inspire 10 conformed closely to the previous nine editions and that our analysis of the magazine, from its inception to its re-emergence after the death of editor Samir Khan, was more than adequate.

Since making that decision, however, I have been very surprised at how the media and other analysts have received the magazine. Some have overhyped the magazine even as others have downplayed — even ridiculed — its content. I have heard others say the magazine revealed nothing about al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. All these reactions are misguided. So in response, I’ve endeavored to provide a more balanced assessment that can be placed in a more appropriate perspective.

A Balanced Assessment

I am certainly not among those who want to sensationalize the threat the magazine poses. Inspire 10 is not going to launch the grassroots jihadist apocalypse al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula seeks to foment any more successfully than the magazine’s previous nine editions. The fact that a photograph of Austin, Texas, appears in the magazine does not mean that the city is somehow being secretly targeted for attack by jihadist sleeper cells.

But laughing at the magazine or dismissing it as irrelevant would be imprudent. The magazine has in fact inspired several terrorist plots. In some cases, the connections to the magazine have been obvious, as in cases where plotters have attempted to assemble improvised explosive devices using instructions provided in Inspire magazine’s first edition. This happened in July 2011, when U.S. Army Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo was arrested as he attempted to assemble explosive devices he planned to use in an attack against a restaurant in Killeen, Texas, that was popular with soldiers from nearby Fort Hood.

In November 2011, the New York Police Department arrested Jose Pimentel, also known as Muhammad Yusuf, a 27-year-old Dominican-American. Pimentel was arrested at an apartment in Manhattan as he was allegedly constructing homemade improvised explosive devices, again following the instructions provided in Inspire.

» Continue reading “Inspire Magazine’s 10th Issue”

The Directorate of National Intelligence has just released the 2013 Worldwide Threat Assessment, which places cyber security as a higher threat than terrorism. Interesting . . . [ Click here to download the full report ]

With that in mind, perhaps the 2013 European Cyber Security Conference (May 16, in Brussels) will draw a lot of attention. Details are online at: www.eucybersecurity.com

The 2d edition of Homeland Security and Terrorism has now been published by McGraw-Hill.

Information is available online at the following link: http://www.mhprofessional.com/product.php?isbn=0078026296

The 7^th annual conference of the Society for Terrorism Research will take place in London on June 27- 28, 2013. For information see their website at: www.uel.ac.uk/strconference and follow on twitter @strconference. Click here for the Call for Papers STR 2013

An excellent new report on violent far-right extremists, published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, is available here.

This study provides a conceptual foundation for understanding different far-right groups and then presents the empirical analysis of violent incidents to identify those perpetrating attacks and their associated trends. Through a comprehensive look at the data, this study addresses three core questions: (1) What are the main current characteristics of the violence produced by the far right? (2) What type of far-right groups are more prone than others to engage in violence? How are characteristics of particular far-right groups correlated with their tendency to engage in violence? and (3) What are the social and political factors associated with the level of far-right violence? Are there political or social conditions that foster or discourage violence?

URL: http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/challengers-from-the-sidelines-understanding-americas-violent-far-right

Also of related interest, the report and data on Homegrown Terrorism Cases, 2001-2011 by the New America Foundation and Syracuse University’s Maxwell School. URL: http://homegrown.newamerica.net/

My article, “A Framework for Analyzing the Future Threat of WMD Terrorism,” has been published in the Winter 2012 issue of the Journal of Strategic Security, and is now available online at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol5/iss4/9/

The academic journal Global Change, Peace and Security has recently published an article of mine on kidnapping by terrorist groups, using data 1970-2010. You can download a free copy of the article at the following link:  http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/btfYeiyeHpf37ICu4rS6/full

My newest book has just been released by Taylor and Francis. Details are available online at:

http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/books/details/9780415639613/

My article on West Africa, co-authored with Vanda Felbab-Brown, has been published by the journal Terrorism and Political Violence. A summary is available for free on the Brookings website [ Click Here ] and the full version of the article is available for free at the following link:  http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/IPbdZnuckan5GzsKd3j7/full

A special issue of Counterterrorism Exchange on “Social Media in Jihad and Counterterrorism” is now available. Click here to download a free copy.