The war on terror, which has lasted 16 years, has become much more technologically sophisticated, but so have terrorist groups. The internet has become critical for those groups, who use it to recruit young people and spread their extremist messages. Take for example the Levant Liberation Committee, known in Arabic as Tahrir al-Sham. They are the result of a merger between the Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front and other militant groups in Syria, according to Vanity Fair. The group’s fighters are less religious than those from other groups and are not tied to a geographic location, like ISIS is. They are more nimble, and therefore more dangerous. Vanity Fair calls them ISIS 3.0. Our infrastructure is also extremely vulnerable to cyber attacks, and Tahrir could take down local, regional, or even national power grids. Vanity Fair writes that they could disrupt cellphone, G.P.S. and satellite communications, not to mention that they could hack into government computers and publish all types of classified military and intelligence information. Vanity Fair writes that it is unknown how long the group will be around, but they clearly already know how to shape and deploy information to their advantage. A crowdsourcing campaign had run for only six hours, and they recruited over a dozen young followers. The internet offers speed that old battlefields did not, and what doesn’t resonate can quickly be changed or adjusted.
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