Page 18 - Cyber Terrorism and Extremism as Threat to Critical Infrastructure Protection

SECTION I: EXTREMISM, RADICALIZATION AND CYBER THREATS AS AN IMPORTANT
SECURITY FACTORS FOR COUNTERING TERRORISM PROCESSES

may explain the rise in European knife attacks, as well as those using vehicles to run over
pedestrians (Brzuszkiewicz, 2018).

Similarly, diplomatic channels provide invaluable sounding boards for the potency of inter-
ventions on audiences abroad, and individuals outside domestic boundaries but potentially
shaping attitudes and opinions of those ripe for terrorist group recruitment at home. These
channels, however, are also limited in their ability to extend findings beyond a small circle.

Looking wider, threat finance trends serve as important benchmarks for the potential of action
and organizational legitimacy, as does an increase/decrease in incidents of contact or related
activities within a social network of analysis. Once more, even these finance-based data points
are – at best – correlated to extremist potential, not action.

Critiques of the above are not intended to discredit efforts, but rather to highlight a glar-
ing oversight in current approaches. Despite a seeming abundance of resources, interest and
collected data intended to tackle the jihadi violent extremism problem in Europe, the conti-
nent remains wedded to solutions founded in data points and/or counter-narratives. Europe
is anything but alone in this mindset; machine learning and artificial intelligence expenditure
across the globe is rapidly on the rise (Columbus, 2019). For this problem, this expenditure,
by increasing computational power, is intended to maximize data prediction towards lower-
ing future violent extremist instances and the associated risks. In doing so, however, they also
ignore what lies behind the numbers. Bigger and faster does not equate to better or smarter.

5 Marketing Counter-Radicalization

Marketing researchers continue to explore ways to best create and disseminate persuasive
message campaigns capable of eliciting the strongest attitudes and opinions about products,
services and ideas in niche audiences. The internet, of course, has only increased the potential
of marketing campaigns. Nearly every form of online interaction and communication is now
tracked, mapped, and sorted into assessable audience and individual patterns.

Despite countless everyday instances of marketing campaign success, there is surprisingly
limited, if any, application of these concepts to counter-radicalization. This is a glaring over-
sight, as jihadi extremists – if Brzuszkiewicz’ (2018) explanation of a two-pronged grievance
schema is an accurate picture of the sentiment landscape – should be prime candidates for
marketing-driven campaigns emphasizing non-violent alternatives.

5.1 Nets for Trust

For example, in their analysis of the Ukranian banking industry, Kuznetsova et al. (2019)
devised a four-stage marketing model to address the Ukranian population’s lack of trust in
this sector. The model – which they termed ‘nets for trust’ – is based on principles derived
from the ‘boiling frog effect’ (Hoffman, 2003) which, as its name suggests, describes how to
successfully boil a living frog. If the frog is suddenly placed into boiling water, it will imme-
diately jump out, due to the extreme temperature contrast. If this same frog is placed in tepid
water slowly brought to a boil, it instead fails to see the inherent danger, and ultimately will
be cooked to death. Through an extremist lens, this effect highlights the fallacy of dramatic

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