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When CSIS published Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency two years ago, cybersecurity was not a major issue for public policy. Along with the work of many others, our first report helped to change this. However, the new energy in the national dialogue on cybersecurity has not yet translated into sufficient progress. We thought then that securing cyberspace had become a critical challenge for national security, which our nation was not prepared to meet. In our view, we are still unprepared.

In our interview, Brian Fishman, Facebook’s Counterterrorism Policy Manager, provides a detailed
description of how Facebook is using artificial intelligence and a dedicated team of counterterrorism
specialists to remove terrorism content from its platform. Given the emergence of a new
generation of leadership within al-Qa`ida, it is critical to understand the evolving threat from the
group in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

The Internet poses a number of challenges for academics. Internet specificities such as anonymity, the decontextualisation of discourse, the misuse or non-use of references raise methodological questions about the quality and the authenticity of the data available online. This is particularly true when dealing with extremist groups and grass-root militants that cultivate secrecy. Based on a study of the far-right on Twitter, this article explores these methodological issues. It discusses the qualitative indicators we have developed to determine whether a given Twitter account should be included in the sample or not. By using digital traces drawn from profiles, interactions, content and through other visual information, we recontextualize user’s profile and analyze how digital traces participate in providing far right ideas with a wider representation.

Summary Report on conference organized by the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Cooperation with the Royal Jordanian National Defence College.

Islamic State videos have often been associated with savage violence and beheadings. An in-depth scrutiny however reveals another striking feature: that female bodies are absent, blurred or mute. Examining a few Islamic State videos in depth, the article suggests that the invisibility of women in tandem with the ostentatious visibility of male bodies enable gendered and embodied spectators to indulge in homoerotic as well as heterosexual imaginaries. In contrast to studies on visual security and online radicalization which assert that images affect an audience, this article focuses on the interaction between video and audience and argues that spectators are not only rational and emotional but embodied and gendered as well. Islamic State videos do not only attract western foreign fighters through religious–ideological rhetoric or emotional impact but also through gendered forms of pleasure and desire that enable carnal imagination and identification. The article probes the analytical purchase of carnal aesthetics and spectatorship.

This report presents the main theories and ways radical groups influence and attract individuals online, and the most common tools and strategies governments use to counter its impact.