Growing Blind Spot
Adding to the intelligence challenge is the fact that Al Qaeda’s resurgence has been fueled in large part by a new generation of Islamic extremists, many of them veterans of the Arab Spring uprisings, who are extremely sophisticated in their use of social media for propaganda, recruitment and especially communication. The Islamic State shock troops that captured nearly a third of Iraq in a matter of days used Twitter as a battlefield communication platform, for instance, in an offensive that resembled blitzkrieg by flash mob.
“You know, they all fly in a swarm. There’s no leader there. There’s nobody who says, ‘Yeah, we have a map and we have to go this way,’” Dutch intelligence chief Rob Bertholee recently told CBS News. “But, amazingly, they all go the same way.”
According to recent interviews with a number of top U.S. intelligence officials, those technologically advanced Islamic extremists have carefully studied the blueprint on U.S. signals intelligence collection provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who is now seeking asylum in Russia. Not surprisingly, they have found ways to short-circuit that electronic dragnet.
“Given the Snowden revelations and the lack of responsibility on the part of the media in reporting them, we’re already seeing a marked change in terms of terrorist trade craft,” said a senior Obama administration counterterrorism official, who insisted on speaking on background. Increasingly terrorists targets under close surveillance, U.S. intelligence officials say, have simply dropped off the electronic grid. “Combine a much more savvy generation of terrorists in terms of communications skills with these revelations about our collection methods, and I do worry that we have been blinded to terrorist plots.”
As a number of ascendant terrorist groups jockey for primacy, U.S. intelligence experts also fear they will compete for legitimacy by launching spectacular attacks on the West, the coin of the realm when Islamic extremists compete for followers and funds. Given the number of European jihadists now fighting in Syria and their proximity to the continent, the first blow may well fall in Europe, but no one can be sure. What the U.S. and Western intelligence agencies share is a vague foreboding that they are about to be blindsided.