A new report (pdf) from a Dutch counterintelligence agency warns of the growing role of the Internet in Islamic extremist circles.
“The Internet is an important platform for radicalisation and can even serve as a virtual [terrorist] training camp. Jihadis not only use the Internet as a resource, but can also attack the Internet itself with terrorist activities (the Internet as a target) or use the Internet against other targets (the Internet as a weapon),” and so forth.
See “Jihadis and the Internet,” National Coordinator for Counterterrorism (Netherlands), February 2007.
Fortunately or unfortunately, much of the report is overly credulous and cannot be taken at face value, according to George Smith of GlobalSecurity.org and the Dick Destiny blog.
Among other examples, he noted the report’s citation to an online manual on the use of botulinum toxin as a weapon. But the manual itself is either a hoax or a primitive misunderstanding, and has previously been debunked by Dr. Smith, a chemist (Secrecy News, 08/08/05).
It “is an example of someone professing to know what he is doing on poisons who profoundly and obviously does not know what he is doing,” Dr. Smith said in 2005.
The new Dutch report excludes “the now large critical body of work” on the magnitude and character of the terrorist threat, Dr. Smith said. “It’s the standard script.”
In recent months, we’ve seen much of these decades’ worth of progress erased. Contracts for evaluations of government programs were canceled, FFRDCs have been forced to lay off staff, and federal advisory committees have been disbanded.
This report outlines a framework relying on “Cooperative Technical Means” for effective arms control verification based on remote sensing, avoiding on-site inspections but maintaining a level of transparency that allows for immediate detection of changes in nuclear posture or a significant build-up above agreed limits.
At a recent workshop, we explored the nature of trust in specific government functions, the risk and implications of breaking trust in those systems, and how we’d known we were getting close to specific trust breaking points.
tudents in the 21st century need strong critical thinking skills like reasoning, questioning, and problem-solving, before they can meaningfully engage with more advanced domains like digital, data, or AI literacy.