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Authors: Jeffrey D. Simon
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an anti-abortion militant on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in November 2015 that killed three people, a massacre of nine African-American churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015 by a white supremacist sympathizer who wanted to start a race war, and the killing of a Transportation Security Administration agent at Los Angeles International Airport in November 2013 by an anti-government militant. 2
The Internet has proven to be the game changer in the world of lone wolf terrorism. Lone wolves no longer have to feel truly âaloneâ as they can fantasize about being part of an extremist movement by just reading blogs, tweets, or entering into chat rooms. One of the key challenges will be to determine what the âtippingâ points are that propel an otherwise nonviolent individual who may be expressing radical and extremist views or just venting on the Internet to actually follow through with an attack.
For a long time, lone wolves were ignored by policy makers, intelligence officials, and terrorism experts. Even today, despite the prevalence of lone wolf attacks throughout the world, the idea that the individual terrorist can be as dangerous as large-scale terrorist organizations is still a difficult concept for some people to accept. It is important, however, to remember that terrorist attacks are not always complex operations that require detailed planning, resources, training, and leadership directed by a group. Lone wolves, whether motivated by political, religious, or idiosyncratic reasons, have proven numerous times that they can have profound effects on governments and societies by their acts of violence. Unfortunately, we are likely to see more of these types of attacks in the coming years. It is a threat that shows no signs of abating anytime soon.
Jeffrey D. Simon
Santa Monica, California
June 2016
Jeffrey D. Simon has been among the most creative thinkers in the study of terrorism. He warned about overreactions to terrorism and the problems in declaring a âwarâ on terrorism back in the 1980s in an article for Foreign Policy that became the genesis for his first book The Terrorist Trap: America's Experience with Terrorism . He was also among the first to systematically assess the threat of terrorists using biological weapons in an essay he wrote while at RAND in the 1980s. Now he has once again broken new ground in this first, comprehensive, and fascinating journey into the world of the lone wolf terrorist.
In nature, a lone wolf hunts outside of the pack. Deprived of company, relying on his own cunning and ferocity, he is a determined and dangerous predator. In popular literature, a lone wolf is the archetypal antiheroâtough, self-reliant, and ruthless as required. Unconstrained by feckless politicians or cautious bureaucrats, he does what is necessary to get the job doneârescue innocent victims, save civilization. The annals of crime also record lone wolvesâstalkers, serial killers, mad bombersâdriven by grievance, cause, or madness.
Lone wolves recently have come to be viewed as a growing terrorist threat. Unprecedented unilateral intelligence efforts and growing cooperation among intelligence services and law-enforcement organizations worldwide have rendered the terroristsâ operating environment more hostile. While still not optimal, domestic intelligence collection in the United States since 9/11 has uncovered and thwarted all but three terrorist plots inspired by al Qaeda's ideology. Those three plots were carried out by lone operators: Carlos Bledsoe,who killed one army recruiting officer and wounded another in Little Rock, Arkansas; Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed thirteen of his fellow soldiers and wounded thirty-two others at Fort Hood, Texas * ; and Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to set off an explosive device in Times Square, New York.
There is greater confidence today that large terrorist conspiracies will be
The Internet has proven to be the game changer in the world of lone wolf terrorism. Lone wolves no longer have to feel truly âaloneâ as they can fantasize about being part of an extremist movement by just reading blogs, tweets, or entering into chat rooms. One of the key challenges will be to determine what the âtippingâ points are that propel an otherwise nonviolent individual who may be expressing radical and extremist views or just venting on the Internet to actually follow through with an attack.
For a long time, lone wolves were ignored by policy makers, intelligence officials, and terrorism experts. Even today, despite the prevalence of lone wolf attacks throughout the world, the idea that the individual terrorist can be as dangerous as large-scale terrorist organizations is still a difficult concept for some people to accept. It is important, however, to remember that terrorist attacks are not always complex operations that require detailed planning, resources, training, and leadership directed by a group. Lone wolves, whether motivated by political, religious, or idiosyncratic reasons, have proven numerous times that they can have profound effects on governments and societies by their acts of violence. Unfortunately, we are likely to see more of these types of attacks in the coming years. It is a threat that shows no signs of abating anytime soon.
Jeffrey D. Simon
Santa Monica, California
June 2016
Jeffrey D. Simon has been among the most creative thinkers in the study of terrorism. He warned about overreactions to terrorism and the problems in declaring a âwarâ on terrorism back in the 1980s in an article for Foreign Policy that became the genesis for his first book The Terrorist Trap: America's Experience with Terrorism . He was also among the first to systematically assess the threat of terrorists using biological weapons in an essay he wrote while at RAND in the 1980s. Now he has once again broken new ground in this first, comprehensive, and fascinating journey into the world of the lone wolf terrorist.
In nature, a lone wolf hunts outside of the pack. Deprived of company, relying on his own cunning and ferocity, he is a determined and dangerous predator. In popular literature, a lone wolf is the archetypal antiheroâtough, self-reliant, and ruthless as required. Unconstrained by feckless politicians or cautious bureaucrats, he does what is necessary to get the job doneârescue innocent victims, save civilization. The annals of crime also record lone wolvesâstalkers, serial killers, mad bombersâdriven by grievance, cause, or madness.
Lone wolves recently have come to be viewed as a growing terrorist threat. Unprecedented unilateral intelligence efforts and growing cooperation among intelligence services and law-enforcement organizations worldwide have rendered the terroristsâ operating environment more hostile. While still not optimal, domestic intelligence collection in the United States since 9/11 has uncovered and thwarted all but three terrorist plots inspired by al Qaeda's ideology. Those three plots were carried out by lone operators: Carlos Bledsoe,who killed one army recruiting officer and wounded another in Little Rock, Arkansas; Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed thirteen of his fellow soldiers and wounded thirty-two others at Fort Hood, Texas * ; and Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to set off an explosive device in Times Square, New York.
There is greater confidence today that large terrorist conspiracies will be
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