This book explores the innovations and advances in terrorist tactics and technologies to help fill the gap in the contemporary terrorism literature by developing an empirical theory of terrorist innovation. The key question concerns the global historical trends in terrorist innovation, as well as the critical factors responsible for the differences in practices among terrorist organizations. The first part of the book provides an overview of the tactics and technology used by terrorists in the last century and identifies the key trends for the future. The second part compares four differing terrorist organizations with the aim of identifying key factors in producing innovative tactics and weaponry. The volume provides a historical explanation of the trends in terrorist innovation and also has policy relevance, as the ability to identify signature characteristics of innovation-prone terrorist organizations is a critical element in predictive threat assessment. Understanding Terrorist Innovation will be of great interest to students of terrorism studies, security studies and political science in general.

Essential reading on how technology empowers rogue actors and how society can adapt. Never have so many possessed the means to be so lethal. A dramatic shift from 20th century "closed" military innovation to "open" innovation driven by commercial processes is underway. The diffusion of modern technology--robotics, cyber weapons, 3-D printing, synthetic biology, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence--to ordinary people has given them access to weapons of mass violence previously monopolized by the state. As Audrey Kurth Cronin explains in Power to the People, what we are seeing now is the continuation of an age-old trend. Over the centuries, from the invention of dynamite to the release of the AK-47, many of the most surprising developments in warfare have occurred because of technological advances combined with changes in who can use them. That shifting social context illuminates our current situation, in which new "open" technologies are reshaping the future of war. Cronin explains why certain lethal technologies spread, which ones to focus on, and how individuals and private groups will adapt lethal off-the-shelf technologies for malevolent ends. Now in paperback with a foreword by Lawrence Freedman and a new epilogue, Power to the People focuses on how to both preserve the promise of emerging technologies and reduce risks. Power is flowing to the people, but the same digital technologies that empower can imperil global security--unless we act strategically.

This book offers a detailed and practically oriented guide to the challenges of conducting terrorist fieldwork. The past decade has seen an explosion of research into terrorism. However, field research on terrorism has traditionally been surrounded by many myths, and has been called anything from "necessary" and "crucial" to "dangerous", "unethical" and "impossible". While there is an increasing interest among terrorism specialists in conducting such research, there is no single volume providing prospective field researchers with a guideline to such work. Conducting Terrorism Field Research aims to fill this gap and offers a collection of articles from experienced authors representing different risk groups, disciplines, methodological approaches, regional specializations, and other context-specific aspects. Each contributor provides a road-map to their own research, describing planning and preparation phases, the formalities involved in getting into conflict zones and gaining access to sources. The end product is a 'how to' guide to field research on terrorism, which will be of much value to terrorism experts and novices alike. This book will be of much interest to students and researchers of terrorism studies, war and conflict studies, criminology, IR and security studies.

This book explores the innovations and advances in terrorist tactics and technologies to help fill the gap in the contemporary terrorism literature by developing an empirical theory of terrorist innovation. The key question concerns the global historical trends in terrorist innovation, as well as the critical factors responsible for the differences in practices among terrorist organizations. The first part of the book provides an overview of the tactics and technology used by terrorists in the last century and identifies the key trends for the future. The second part compares four differing terrorist organizations with the aim of identifying key factors in producing innovative tactics and weaponry. The volume provides a historical explanation of the trends in terrorist innovation and also has policy relevance, as the ability to identify signature characteristics of innovation-prone terrorist organizations is a critical element in predictive threat assessment. Understanding Terrorist Innovation will be of great interest to students of terrorism studies, security studies and political science in general.

Provides a comprehensive empirical overview of the nature and evolution of both modern transnational and domestic terrorism Based on statistical data from the world's largest terrorism database Will be of much interest to students of terrorism and political violence, criminology, political science, and IR/Security Studies

The Oxford Handbook of Terrorism systematically integrates the substantial body of scholarship on terrorism and counterterrorism before and after 9/11. In doing so, it introduces scholars and practitioners to state of the art approaches, methods, and issues in studying and teaching these vital phenomena. This Handbook goes further than most existing collections by giving structure and direction to the fast-growing but somewhat disjointed field of terrorism studies. The volume locates terrorism within the wider spectrum of political violence instead of engaging in the widespread tendency towards treating terrorism as an exceptional act. Moreover, the volume makes a case for studying terrorism within its socio-historical context. Finally, the volume addresses the critique that the study of terrorism suffers from lack of theory by reviewing and extending the theoretical insights contributed by several fields - including political science, political economy, history, sociology, anthropology, criminology, law, geography, and psychology. In doing so, the volume showcases the analytical advancements and reflects on the challenges that remain since the emergence of the field in the early 1970s.

In recent years, senior policy officials have highlighted increased signs of convergence between terrorism and unconventional (CBRN) weapons. Terrorism now involves technologies available to anyone, anywhere, anytime, deployed through innovative solutions. This indicates a new and more complex global security environment with increasing risks of terrorists trying to acquire and deploy a CBRN (Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear) attack. This book addresses the critical importance of understanding innovation and decision-making between terrorist groups and unconventional weapons, and the difficulty in pinpointing what factors may drive violence escalation. It also underscores the necessity to understand the complex interaction between terrorist group dynamics and decision-making behaviour in relation to old and new technologies. Unconventional Weapons and International Terrorism seeks to identify a set of early warnings and critical indicators for possible future terrorist efforts to acquire and utilize unconventional CBRN weapons as a means to pursue their goals. It also discusses the challenge for intelligence analysis in handling threat convergence in the context of globalisation. The book will be of great interest to students of terrorism studies, counter-terrorism, nuclear proliferation, security studies and IR in general.