The United States’ War on Cyber Terrorism

Earlier today, I asked if the internet was America’s new front for the War on Terror. 

The United States Air Force is predicting 200 million cyber attacks per year by 2015. Cyber defense is taking priority in the Air Force as it tries to fend off attacks while becoming more reliant on automation.

A recent Air Force report entitled “Global Horizons” says new cases of malware have increased more than tenfold, from 9 million in 2007 to more than 100 million in 2012. More than 200,000 new malicious programs are registered daily. The report reflects the Air Force’s Cyber Vision 2025 which recommends the Air Force invest heavily in a cyber warrior workforce.

Computing now pervades everything the U.S. military does.

The American government is taking threats of cyber terrorism seriously, because a possible cyberwar could see anonymous foreign computer hackers penetrating government networks to create political and economic instability, friction between the U.S. and its allies, and destroy infrastructure such as the U.S. oil and gas industry.

Government officials are worried that a coordinated cyberattack on critical infrastructure could shut down key government services and create chaos across the public and private sectors.

What do you think? Is the threat of cyber terrorism as dangerous as some make it out to be?

Jihadi Cool

Al Qaeda’s dissemination of jihad ideology has become more sophisticated over the last decade. Al Qaeda invested large amounts of capital into creating books, magazines, and music videos that are designed to appeal to Muslims under 30 years of age. Language and graphics are designed with a specific local audience in mind so that al Qaeda can properly target young Muslims in a desired region. Al Qaeda is paying close attention to what material their targeted demographics respond to and connect with.

Al Qaeda has expanded into cyberspace

Al Qaeda’s reach in Cyberspace is multifaceted. The network has a variety of different messages available on the internet that are designed to resonate with different groups. Al Qaeda’s franchises and affiliates, like the one in Iraq that I posted about yesterday, tend to focus on local issues that affect a particular local population. However, the traditional centralized body of al Qaeda tends to disseminate messages that are more global in scope.

Jihadi Cool is a term that was originally coined by Marc Sageman, a psychiatrist and former CIA operations officer, to encapsulate the phenomenon of al Qaeda’s influence within Cyberspace. Jihadi Cool describes rogue vigilantism by politically disenfranchised Muslim youths. Jihadi Cool appeals to those radicalized youths who are often described as “wannabe thugs.”

Has the new front for the War on Terror become the internet? Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and all electronic social networking media have become problematic, because al Qaeda operatives can operate behind electronic aliases and disseminate Jihadi propaganda. This propaganda then plays on Muslim youth’s politics of despair, in that these youths have a worldview where they perceive the Muslim world’s (Dar al-Islam) hegemonic power as being stripped away. Then there are the wars in Syria and Afghanistan, the political strife in Egypt, and the constant battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia over who will be the voice of the Middle East. Western popular culture and secular political forces are no longer the only targets of al Qaeda. The Sunni organization is increasingly getting into sectarian conflicts with Shi’ites. 

Al Qaeda essentially uses electronic social networking media to encourage random disgruntled youths into acts of violence against the West, Shi’a institutions, and the governments of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. By hiding their propaganda in forms of popular media, such as rap videos available in various languages, al Qaeda can provide a cultural counterweight to Shi’a popular influences which both excites and provokes impressionable youth into becoming soldiers for al Qaeda’s distinctive version of discord which often includes suicide bombers and large body counts.