Had the honor of presenting with @Blyth_Crawford and @AmarAmarasingam on an @EradicateHate_ plenary on the throughline of threats from violent extremists by examine the recent history of mass shooters. Here are some key points from my presentation #EradicateHate 1/n
A key point we have found from our threat assessment of these recent incidents & the ideological material evidence they left behind is what we're calling the "wiki effect" of these attacks, where each individual attackers contributes to the larger product of violent extremism 2/n
The most recent attacker in Buffalo is most explicit about this feature of contemporary ideologically motivated violent extremism. In our analysis of the killers writings we found that 67% was identical to the Christchurch shooters. ctc.westpoint.edu/the-buffalo-at… 3/n
the attacker also borrows from the writings of the Charleston shooter, the Unabomber, Halle attacker, Poway, El Paso, etc. These threat actors and those who will come after them are following a cultural script. 4/n
This cultural script pushes each attacker to exceed the death toll of those of past attackers, incite future attacks, and honor those who came before them (the culture of Martyrs). 5/n
When trying to understand what comes next, we need to understand how threat actors use malevolent creativity (creativity that is used by threat actor(s) to fulfil goals they regard as desirable, but has serious negative consequences, that are desired, for some other group.) 6/n
What this means is that attacker's innovate. This can be how some of these actors use drones for reconnaissance, or perform physical reconnaissance of target locations, or do demographic research to find the most dense population of victims icsr.info/2021/12/20/vio… 7/n
They also improve their operational security, as they learn from failed and successful plots, they instruct each other on how to test equipment and weapons for flaws as they learn from past shooters who had weapon or gear failures. 8/n
the buffalo attacker himself, in testing his gear, found out his weapon was jamming 24hrs before the initial date he chose for his attack. Had he not tested his gear, the attack would likely have failed, or would have lead to less casualties. 9/n
in the closing of his discord diary, the buffalo shooter tells his future audience "I need you guys to do a deep analysis of all mistakes I made and how to fix them." This part of the wiki effect for tactics techniques and procedures. 10/n
The attacks we have seen since 2011 underscore the need for practitioners in this space to consider these attacks and the material these attackers left behind not as individual singular incidents, but rather as a continuum in a larger body of work and incidents. 11/n
We need to consider the ecological and cultural dimension of these incidents and how threat actors will continue to emerge in this space. 12/n
Realistically I am not one to believe that we will ever eliminate violent extremism. Though I do believe there is an important need to improve how we mitigate the impact of these threats actors and build societal resilience to the harm posed by these attacks. 13/end
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