Armed groups rely on various types of labor resources. Among these laborers are people who are dedicated to the goals of the group, people who are only interested in immediate profit, and people who don’t want anything to do with the work or the war, but have no choice—those who are forced to labor. Forced labor is the least preferable source of labor for any armed group, but as ISIS recently started losing its war in Iraq and its financial resources, it was faced with fewer labor supply options and greater demand for labor... 

Serving as the crossroads of three continents, the Mediterranean Sea has carried warships, commerce, and culture since the dawn of civilization. It was at the very center of the ancient Western world and enabled the earliest surges of globalization. In the twenty-first century, the Mediterranean still makes it possible for much of the world to share the benefits of human development, but it also conveys the consequences of insecurity. Refugees from war and migrants seeking a better life (and criminals exploiting both) ply its waters day and night, creating a host of security issues for the region’s governments...

Given the recent proliferation of affordable and user-friendly small unmanned aircraft systems (sUASs, or “drones”) in the commercial marketplace, security professionals around the globe are grappling with how to safely, efficiently, and legally protect critical infrastructure sites from misuse of this emerging technology. While much attention has been afforded to the dangers drones pose to aircraft, most public research has overlooked sensitive facilities such as nuclear power plants, electrical power stations, and major ground transportation hubs...

Like the emerging threat of hybrid warfare, which blurs the lines between state-sponsored aggression and insurgency, the delineation between criminal organizations and terrorist organizations can be hard to distinguish. Networked organized crime organizations, such as criminal motorcycle gangs (CMGs), are more similar to terrorist organizations than they are different. The incentives for their activities are the main difference between CMGs and terrorists; for instance, biker gangs primarily want money and prestige, while terrorists want political change...

On 19 April 1993, a religious sect known as the Branch Davidians, living near Waco, Texas, became a household name when the world watched live on television as 76 followers died at the hands of the FBI. The FBI described those who died in the inferno as members of a murderous cult who were being manipulated by a religious charlatan and who were committed to violently resisting any intrusions. As investigations unfolded, however, the FBI’s narrative increasingly appeared to be inaccurate...

This interview is taken from the collection of the Combating Terrorism Archive Project (CTAP).  On 22 May 2016, Dr. Doug Borer, US Naval Postgraduate School, talked with Vera Mironova, a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Maryland and a fellow with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. They discussed Mironova’s research into how terrorists organize themselves and manage their divisions of labor...

This interview is taken from the collection of the Combating Terrorism Archive Project (CTAP).  On 3 February 2017, noted terrorism expert Dr. Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University, visited the US Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, California. Dr. Michael Freeman of the Defense Analysis Department at NPS spoke with Dr. Hoffman about the lessons on counterterrorism in Dr. Hoffman’s history of the founding of Israel, Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917–1947 (Knopf, 2015), and about the West’s strategies to defeat ISIS and Salafist terrorism...

Over dinner the other night, a friend asked me, in light of my recent retirement, what I learned about the students I taught over the past 18 years—the majority of whom were military officers or civilians engaged in some form of counterinsurgency or counterterrorism activity across the globe. It was an interesting question, and one I admit I was reluctant to answer, partly because what I learned about my students is inseparable from what I learned from them—and what I learned from them is impossible to express casually over dinner. But the question hung in the air, so I muttered something deliberately opaque and changed the topic...