PAIGE COSTANZI CAPSTONE – INSS 5390 DR. VALERO 10 DECEMBER 2016 The Islamic State’s Information Warfare: Social Media and Propaganda Engineering For decades, the United States has faced a growing threat of Islamist terrorism towards the homeland. The rise of the self-identified Islamic State, commonly known as ISIL or ISIS1, has been effectively utilizing social media outlets as an informational instrument to promote its cause, recruit more members, and cause havoc amongst the globe. Through various social media platforms, movies (i.e. The Flames of War), YouTube videos, and their very own online multi- language magazine Dabiq, which has recently been replaced with their new online multi- language magazine Rumiyah, the Islamic State has become adept at manipulating media to gain support and create an ideological movement. “The analysis of the digital audiovisual campaigns released by ISIS since January 2014 suggests that ISIS has established a new kind of terrorism, using marketing and digital communication tools not only for “socializing terror” through public opinion as previous terrorist groups did, but also for making terror popular, desirable, and imitable.”2 The Islamic State is well funded, organized, and grounded in the authority of religious texts and words of Islamic scholars. It now controls multiple border crossings along with various weapons and infrastructures throughout their controlled territory in Syria and Iraq. Their extreme violence and use of various media outlets for recruitment and scare tactics is a growing concern in this fight. The Islamic State has developed new tactics, to include a multi-million dollar media campaign, to create a unified worldwide Islamic State with Sharia Law as the basis. The phenomenon of the rise of the Islamic State correlates with the rise of technology and social media, compared to al-Qaeda which did not have a very good media campaign to spread their message. “Between March 2014 and November 2016, 124 individuals in the U.S. affiliating with ISIS have been interdicted by law enforcement, whether traveling to fight, recruiting, fundraising, planning to travel, promoting ISIS, or initiating or carrying out attacks which averages about 5.1 ISIL arrests per month on American soil. In comparison, in the ten years following 9/11, an estimated 176 Americans were indicted, arrested or identified as terrorists/terrorist supporters affiliated with al-Qaeda.”3 The Islamic States success stems from the creation of the new Caliphate in July of 2014 in Syria and Iraq, after nearly 90 years of the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Abu Bark al-Baghdadi was declared the new Caliph of Caliphate and The Islamic State now controls territory in both Syria 1 The Islamic State will be referred to as either The Islamic State, ISIL, or ISIS throughout the paper depending on the source of information. 2 Lesaca, Jessica. “On Social Media, ISIS uses modern cultural images to spread anti-modern values,” Brookings Institute, 2015. http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/techtank/posts/2015/09/24-isis-social-media-engagement 3 Gorka, Sebastian and Katharine Gorka. “ISIS: The Threat to the United States,” Threat Knowledge Group, 2015. http://threatknowledge.org/isis-threat-to-usa-report/ and Iraq, with affiliate branches in Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sinai, West Africa, Yemen, Khorasan, and the North Caucasus regions.4 Additionally, the Islamic State has a robust supply stream of resources, money, and fighters which continues to support its overall mission of global jihad expansion. Although coalition forces are hoping the Islamic State falls in Syria and Iraq, their ideology and mass expansion both physically and virtually is a force to be reckoned with for many more years to come. America’s response to this threat has been solely based around a battle of arms, rather than a battle of ideas. The United States must recognize that the foundation of this war of ideas is built upon theological Islamic ideology and therefore must render information as its most influential instrument of national power to counter their messages in cyberspace. Information as an instrument of power has been poorly wielded by the U.S. government to defeat the Islamic State; ignorance of the fact that terrorism is being carried out in the name of Islam to wage jihad against America makes it harder for U.S. policy-makers to defeat this ongoing threat. These extremists are now taking their ideological movement to the internet in order to recruit, radicalize, and attack their enemies both physically and virtually. Whether dead or captured, the internet provides jihadists with a virtual immortality. Indoctrination, recruitment, financing, training, and ideological messages continue 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in the cyberspace battlefield. Globalization has given rise to a ‘skill revolution’5 that enhances the capabilities of groups to carry out their agenda more effectively than ever before. Social media outlets and virtual communications have allowed the Islamic State to grow into a powerful organization that the world has not seen before. SOCIAL ENGINEERING –ISLAMIC STATE PROPAGANDA TOOLS Technology is an enabler; we have to get to the root of the problem which is the ideological goals of the human behind the technology. The single most effective tool for detecting Islamic State supporters has been through their social media activity; in the first 9 months of their existence, the Islamic State recruited an estimated 20,000 foreign fighters and an estimated 4,000 Westerners via social media. However, tracking terrorists on social media is not that simple; for example, the planning for the 2015 Paris attacks went completely undetected by French intelligence.6 4 Leigh, Karen, Jason French and Jovi Juan. “Islamic State and its Affiliates,” Wall Street Journal, 2016. http://graphics.wsj.com/islamic-state-and-its-affiliates/ 5 Cha, Victor, “Globalization and the Study of International Security.” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 37, No. 3 (May, 2000), p. 391-403 6 Gorka, Sebastian and Katharine Gorka. “ISIS: The Threat to the United States,” Threat Knowledge Group, 2015. http://threatknowledge.org/isis-threat-to-usa-report/ “ISIL is well versed in the power of the media, they have been joined by a new generation of millennial recruits. The average age of foreign fighters who traveled to join ISIL is 24, meaning tools like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are what they’ve grown up with.”7 In the context of global jihad, this is a dangerous combination. A study“ISIL done released by the845 Brookings Instituteaudiovisual revealed that ISIL released 845 audiovisual campaigns between January 2014 and Septembercampaigns 2015, between or more than January 2014 and one every day for a year and a half. Qualitative analysis of all 845 campaignsSeptember shows 2015, or that more than 15 percent are directly inspired by real films, videogames and musicmore videothan one clips of contemporary popular culture, such as the films Saw, The Matrix, Americanevery day Sniper, for a year and V for and a half.” Vendetta; or videogames like Call of Duty, Mortal Combat X and Grand Theft Auto. The study further revealed that ISIL supporters control more than 46,000 Twitter- Brookingsaccounts Institute through which 8 they release their messages. Senior Islamic State leaders are calling for ‘all’ individuals to join their cause and attack the kuffar.9 These types of broad orders are given out through social media platforms and propaganda tools such as al-Qaeda’s magazine Inspire and the Islamic State’s magazine Dabiq, and are directed towards anyone who may be reading or listening. There is a shift in the traditional chain-of-command now becoming a virtual chain-of-command, making dismantling or disrupting emerging operations and strategic direction an extraordinarily difficult thing to achieve for the Intelligence Community. Building a Brand Online: The Caliphate The Internet serves as a critical instrument of power for enabling and directing the goals and objectives of many terrorist organizations. The Islamic State’s sophisticated use of the Internet demonstrates their operational effectiveness while simultaneously undermining the goals of the 7 Singer, P.W. and Emerson Brooking. “Terror on Twitter,” Popular Science, 2015. http://www.popsci.com/terror-on-twitter- how-isis-is-taking-war-to-social-media 8 Berger, J.M. “The ISIS Twitter census: Defining and describing the population of ISIS supporters on Twitter.” Brookings Institute, 2015. http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/03/isis-twitter-census-berger-morgan 9 A person who rejects God and the word of Prophet Mohamed. US government and US interests. The Internet allows the Islamic State to build their brand, sell their image and messages, recruit members and supporters to their organization, build wealth, and virtually spread Islamic State franchises all around the world. As a result, the Islamic State has been more successful in conducting attacks and recruiting members since the declaration of its Caliphate in 2014 than any other terrorist organization in history. Why do terrorist organizations rely on the man-made Internet, a system that should be looked at as haram (Arabic for forbidden) in the Islamic world due to its accessibility and knowledge of Western cultures and traditions? The Islamic State, along with other terrorist organizations, rely on the Internet to serve as its foundation to reach audiences that could otherwise not reach geographically. Rather than attacking the Western man-made Internet in forms of cyber hacks, they are using it to survive and thrive. If the Islamic State does attempt a hacking act, it is usually to continue to spread their message on popular websites, or to steal personally identifiable information to target individuals for future attacks. The Internet has multiple characteristics that make it an ideal tool for terrorist organizations to manipulate, below are the more obvious characteristics that have been utilized by terrorist organizations globally.