Combating Terrorism Center at West Point Objective • Relevant • Rigorous | March 2017 • Volume 10, Issue 3 FEATURE ARTICLE FEATURE ANALYSIS The Virtual Entrepreneurs The Islamic of the Islamic State State’s War on How the group’s virtual planners threaten the United States Turkey Seamus Hughes and Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens Ahmet S. Yayla FEATURE ARTICLE 1 The Threat to the United States from the Islamic State’s Virtual Editor in Chief Entrepreneurs Paul Cruickshank Seamus Hughes and Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens Managing Editor FEATURE ANALYSIS Kristina Hummel 9 The Reina Nightclub Attack and the Islamic State Threat to Turkey Ahmet S. Yayla EDITORIAL BOARD Colonel Suzanne Nielsen, Ph.D. ANALYSIS Department Head Dept. of Social Sciences (West Point) 17 The German Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq: The Updated Data and its Implications Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Price, Ph.D. Daniel H. Heinke Director, CTC 23 Australian Jihadism in the Age of the Islamic State Brian Dodwell Andrew Zammit Deputy Director, CTC 31 The Taliban Stones Commission and the Insurgent Windfall from Illegal Mining Matthew C. DuPée CONTACT Combating Terrorism Center U.S. Military Academy In our feature article, Seamus Hughes and Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens 607 Cullum Road, Lincoln Hall focus on the threat to the United States from the Islamic State’s “virtual entrepreneurs” who have been using social media and encryption applica- West Point, NY 10996 tions to recruit and correspond with sympathizers in the West, encouraging and directing them to Phone: (845) 938-8495 engage in terrorist activity. They find that since 2014, contact with a virtual entrepreneur has been a Email:
[email protected] feature of eight terrorist plots in the United States, involving 13 individuals.