1. ISIS has just claimed the London Bridge attack, through a bulletin from its news agency Amaq, which was published in one of the few rooms on the app Telegram that is still posting ISIS propaganda following the operation by @Europol which aimed to deplatform the group: 
2. The statement from ISIS says the attacker - whom we know was a convicted terrorist recently released from jail - was acting in its name. ISIS says that he was “responding to calls to target the nationals of Coalition countries.” By now we should know what that phrase means:
3. That phrase is lifted from a famous speech by Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the group’s former spokesman. In 2014 and in repeated speeches later, he called for ISIS followers around the world to carry out violence in situ using any means they could - a knife, a car, even a rock.
4. What those words typically indicate is that the attacker in question was inspired by ISIS’ ideology — meaning he heard Adnani’ call to action, and he acted. Rather than having been dispatched directly by ISIS itself. But bear with me as I give you my usual rant ...
5. For years, we have been conditioned to think that a “directed” attack is the real deal and an “inspired” one is not. But that distinction has been eroded by ISIS, which succeeded in mobilizing dozens of people to do deadly acts through its propaganda alone.
6. Some of the deadliest attacks in the West linked to ISIS were “only inspired” by the group, including Omar Mateen’s killing spree at Pulse nightclub in Orlando which claimed 49 lives and the Nice truck ramming which killed 87.
7. Interesting detail: The claim of responsibility appeared at 12:55 pm EST on a new app that ISIS is using called TamTam, according to @AmarAmarasingam. It appears on the channels I follow in Telegram two minutes later at 12:57 pm EST. (I’m in Europe, 7h time difference).
8. So as their ecosystem on Telegram was decimated, the group is simply migrating to another ecosystem.
