Throughout history, terrorists (and insurgents) have gravitated towards the newest and most sophisticated communication technologies available. They have often seen the potential in such technologies very quickly, and have proven adept at developing flexible and creative new applications almost as quickly as these technologies have become available to them. In particular, they have used communication technologies to sidestep the traditional media, which has made it possible for such groups to get their message out to their followers in a direct, unfiltered fashion.
Thus, for example, in Iran, the Shah might have controlled the media and the Ayatollah Khomeni might have been exiled to Paris, but personal cassette tapes had been developed and become widely available for personal use by the late 1970s. They were perfect for the Ayatollah's supporters, at the time an anti-government insurgency. After a sermon had been recorded by him in Paris, copies could be made with relatively little difficulty, for relatively little cost. And at this point each copy was easily portable, easily hidden on the person of an individual supporter, and easily passed from one supporter to the next after it had been listened to. In this fashion the exiled Ayatollah's message was spread throughout Iran despite his lack of access to traditional media within the country, a smart use of technology in those pre-Internet days.[1] Today, al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups have found ways to use online video-sharing sites such as YouTube, Liveleak, and Google Earth to provide precise targeting and mapping for operations, continue to explore aggressively the potential of such new applications as Twitter,[2] and are discussing the possibilities for an "invasion" of the social networking site Facebook.[3]
Today terrorism is a media event in a second sense. This is the age of the YouTube War. Terrorists (and,
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- ↑ Majid Tehranian, "Review of Small Media, Big Revolution: Communication, Culture, and the Iranian Revolution," International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 27, No. 4, November, 1995, pp. 523–525, available from links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0020-7438%28199511%2927%3A4%3C523%3ASMBRCC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y. The reviewer makes clear, however, that these tapes alone were not sufficient for the revolution to succeed.
- ↑ See 304th MI Bn OSINT Team, "Al Qaida Like Mobile Discussions and Potential Creative Uses," Supplemental to the 304th MI Bn Periodic Newsletter, October 16, 2008. Although marked For Official Use Only, the document has been posted to the web by the Federation of the American Scientists at www.fas.org/irp/eprint/mobile.pdf. The author points out that there is no confirmation some of the technologies discussed in the paper are being used in the ways proposed by Islamists on chat rooms. The point is that they are aggressively seeking to develop as many applications as possible, p. 2. There is no question that many of the applications, even of technologies now quite commonplace, are as creative as any of the past—for example using cell phone interfaces as a medium for the dispersal of propaganda, p. 3.
- ↑ Noah Shachtman, "Online Jihadists Plan for 'Invading Facebook'," Wired blog network, Danger Room, December 18, 2008, available from blog.wired.com/defense/2008/12/online-jihadist.html. When Facebook was made aware of an Islamist presence on their site (by a media inquiry), the page was shut down immediately, which has not been the reaction of every site informed they were hosting such material. See Joel Mowbray, "Jihadist Group Trying to 'Invade' Facebook Gets Shutdown," Foxnews.com, December 19, 2008, available from www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,470385,00.html. The Psychological Operations Officer for the CJSOTF-AP does report Facebook and other social networking sites being used by some of the larger insurgent groups in Iraq as a way to get their message out as of 2009. David Jenkins, Interview with the Author, Fort Carson, CO, May 19, 2009.
