FBI Director: Potentially thousands of people are exposed to ISIS propaganda through social media. ABC News.

An ISIS flag. Public Domain. 

FBI Director James Comey claims that thousands of people are reading online propaganda from ISIS via various social media platforms. ABC News. ISIS new strategy of using social media has made it very difficult for intelligence services to monitor Jihadi recruitment. In the past, people had to search out extremists, often on Jihadi forums. Now anyone can use there phone and see ISIS propaganda via Twitter and Facebook. The recent attack in Garland, Texas shows how hard it is for the FBI to find these messages. Just hours before the attack, the FBI issued a warning to Garland police that an attack might be imminent. Such difficulty is common as ISIS often sends instructions to communicate via encrypted systems after making contact with people on Twitter or Facebook. 

My Comment:

I've got some criticism for the FBI in this case. After all, isn't the NSA running massive and invasive electronic surveillance throughout the globe? Are those programs completely useless? It's not like the attackers in Garland hid their intentions. They posted right before the attack, and to the FBI's credit, they at least warned people. But shouldn't the FBI be monitoring these accounts all the time? If ISIS is primarily recruiting via Facebook and Twitter, shouldn't they focus their efforts there instead of on phone data?  

Either way, it is clear that ISIS is very tech savvy. Using Twitter and Facebook to recruit has some obvious advantages. Obviously, it is incredibly easy for people to look for ISIS accounts on social media. All you need to do is write what you are looking for in the search bar and you can be talking to an extremist within seconds. Twitter and Facebook do crack down on these accounts, but it is trivial to set up a new one. 

The shear volume of traffic on both websites helps as well. If you were in charge of trying to monitor ISIS recruitment on twitter alone you would face a gargantuan task. From what I can tell, it looks like there are 1.29 million tweets about ISIS alone in the past month. That is pretty much impossible for people to monitor, especially considering that's just one hashtag they are using. There is so much noise from everyone else on Twitter, including this blogger, that it can be hard to figure out who the actual extremists are. 

This is a huge reason why ISIS is as successful as it has been. They are able to spread their propaganda freely and face little consequence for their actions. Twitter and Facebook have been unable to ban them, and it is very hard to monitor what they are doing. And they are not only recruiting people to fight in Iraq and Syria, they are trying to inspire home grown terrorists. 

So how big is the threat of home grown attacks? A few other articles claimed that ISIS could be capable of a 9/11 style attack in the United States. I don't think that is at all credible. The latest attack in Garland was armature hour and it showed. They were able to get weapons and found a target but that is all that can be said for them. The attackers struck where their enemy was strong, and were unable to even hit their targets. They did not collect intelligence and died for there trouble. 

To be clear, the threat of a 9/11 style attack in America are slim. Even a Charlie Hebdo style attack seems unlikely. The problem isn't the will to attack, ISIS certainly wants to attack America. But they just don't have the trained recruits to pull it off. Remember, the attackers had training in Yemen and acted like professionals. You can't just pick up a rifle if you want to pull off a terrorist attack. You need to know how to use your weapon. You need to have a soft target where you are unlikely to find resistance. And you need to plan, plan, plan. 

The kind of people that ISIS is likely to recruit aren't going to be able to do any of these things. That isn't to say they aren't a threat. A complete moron with a gun can do a lot of damage, especially if they pick an area without many police or armed civilians. Just look at any of the school shootings in America. None of those people were trained, but they attacked soft targets where nobody would be able to shoot guns. But pulling off a major hijacking or other military style operation? I doubt it. 

The threat is much larger in Europe though. ISIS has easier access to the EU, and has a massive pool of recruits, some which are already radicalized, compared to the tiny, mostly non-radical, population of Muslims in the United States. It is much easier for ISIS (or AQAP for that matter) to get trained people and weapons in Europe then it is in the United States. Europe in general seems to be a softer target in general due to their complete lack of gun rights for civilians and their less militarized police. 

As for 9/11 style attacks in general, I think the chances of it happening again are slim to none. Not only are airports and airplanes the hardest targets to hit, those kinds of attacks are so much easier to expose and stop then the Charlie Hebdo/two guys with rifles style attacks. Why waste the effort when you can have a similar impact by using lower scale attacks?