Covert Contact 85: Terrorists and Technology

Levi West returns to examine how terrorist organizations use social media, encryption, and cryptocurrencies, and how much those tools actually change their capabilities. We begin with ISIS's highly visible online presence and the tendency to treat its use of new platforms as something without precedent. Levi places that activity in a longer history of terrorists adapting to the communications technologies available to them, from the printing press to television.

We discuss the difference between the attention generated by English-language propaganda and the consequences of ISIS's activities in Iraq and Syria. Its declining presence on open platforms also raises a difficult question: when should companies remove extremist material, and when might leaving it accessible help investigators understand the people and networks involved? The answers look different from law enforcement, intelligence, and civil liberties perspectives.

That tension becomes more complicated when moderation relies on automated systems or blunt rules. We look at the risk of removing material that documents abuses in Syria, the loss of potential evidence, and inconsistent treatment of different kinds of extremism. Our discussion of white supremacist messaging also considers the relationship between promoting an ideology and encouraging individual acts of violence.

Encryption and cryptocurrency present another set of tradeoffs. They can create real obstacles for investigators, but adopting them requires skills and introduces technical, practical, and financial limitations. We discuss why familiar criminal networks and established ways of moving money continue to matter, and why online reach cannot fully substitute for physical infrastructure, personal relationships, and territorial control.

Throughout the conversation, we try to keep the threat in proportion. New technology deserves careful attention, but publicity and technical novelty are poor substitutes for assessing an organization's actual capacity to cause harm. Understanding both the benefits and the vulnerabilities of these tools gives us a more useful picture than treating each new platform as a decisive terrorist advantage.