By Caroline Thomas – Rise to Peace Fellow

In recent years, researchers, policymakers, and journalists have increasingly had to ask a troubling question: why are young men disproportionately represented in extremist movements, particularly those operating online? While radicalization is never the result of one single factor, there is a recurring pattern that is emerging across different ideologies and platforms. Extremist narratives are especially effective at exploiting crises of masculinity, status anxiety, and unresolved identity formation among young men.

Extremist movements offer emotional stories that frame grievances as social injustice, insecurity as awareness, and anger as strength. In digital spaces, identity, status, and belonging are increasingly sought after and perpetuated by algorithms. Because of this, extremist groups have developed skills in turning personal frustrations into political radicalization.

This post will examine how grievance-based masculinity functions as a tool of recruitment in online extremism, why young men are particularly vulnerable during stages of identity formation, and how extremist groups frame themselves as sources of strength and purpose in an era of perceived masculine decline.

Identity Formation

The process of identity formation during the adolescent period and early adulthood is plagued with uncertainty, experimentation, and social comparison. However, significant factors of identity formation have changed, including where the process occurs and how it unfolds, especially now in an era where social media is a major part of daily life. For many young men across the globe who are experiencing identity formation, digital spaces are becoming the primary arena for construction of identity, social validation, and finding purpose.

Additionally, there are main traditional markers and norms of masculinity, including stable employment, independence, family formation, and social status. These markers have become delayed or inaccessible to young men in recent years, causing crises in ego and masculinity. Research suggests that young men today are more likely than ever to experience unemployment, declining wages, and social isolation. These grievances have resulted in many of society’s young men to feel a lack of purpose or belonging. Additionally, in-person participation in civic organizations, religious groups, and community centers has severely declined, essentially forcing adolescent men to turn to online spaces for belonging and mentorship.

Thus, online platforms can intensify the process of identity formation. Social comparison becomes a quantifiable amount, through likes, followers, and engagement analytics as key indicators for users of “status.” For many young men on the internet who are seeking recognition offline and are struggling to achieve it, these digital numbers become indicators of self-worth and purpose. Many studies on social media and mental health suggest that these feedback loops of likes and followers can actually exacerbate feelings of inadequacy and resentment towards society.

Extremist groups are aware of this toxic digital cycle as well. This is why one of their main goals is to frame themselves as more than ideological groups, but as communities who promise social recognition, hierarchy, and purpose, which are often framed through traditionally masculine principles. Additionally, these groups are aware of these social factors that lead to an individual being vulnerable to terrorist recruitment, and they are skilled in capitalizing on these vulnerabilities. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “‘targeted advertising’ is the tracking of online behaviour of Internet users, in which a group can identify those vulnerable to its propaganda and tailor the narrative to suit its target audience”. Thus, in the stages of identity formation, where young men are already vulnerable, extremist groups are preying on adolescent weakness in order to advance their agenda.

Grievance-Based Masculinity

Modern extremist movements have begun to adopt a narrative of “grievance-based masculinity,” which is the belief that men, but particularly young men, are being systematically disrespected and emasculated by social change. These narratives are taking place in what has become known as the “manosphere,” which is “a loose network of communities that claim to address men’s struggles – dating, fitness or fatherhood, for example – but often promote harmful advice and attitudes”. There are two major prongs of grievance-based masculinity, which are injustice and victimhood.

Injustice: This prong is a “dynamic state of identity threat in which men perceive themselves as falling short of idealized masculine norms”. When this happens, the perspective is shifted from feelings of inadequacy to feelings of injustice from social structures. It is a feeling of being morally entitled to reclaim something that has been lost. In this case, it is status, masculinity, and identity.

Victimhood: The other important piece of grievance-based masculinity is the belief that men as a whole are being treated unfairly and are being misrepresented across society. This perspective of victimhood frames male suffering as a product of a systemically biased society, therefore categorizing them as “victims of the system.” Men who are indoctrinated by this ideology feel that they have been wronged by society, prompting revenge and retaliation.

Grievance-based masculinity is one of the main drivers for young men to join extremist organizations, as they feel they provide outlets and tools for them to combat the perceived ills of society. Additionally, rather than encouraging self-reflection and analysis, extremist narratives redirect frustration to external causes, utilizing scapegoats and creating collective enemies. Their members become victims no longer, but they are framed as misunderstood individuals seeking the real truth that others are too weak and naive to face. The narratives that stem from grievance-based masculinity turn insecurity into superiority, which, in the long run, makes disengaging from these groups extremely difficult.

Promise of Purpose

 Another pillar of extremist groups’ propaganda is the promise of finding purpose within the group. This targets young men in society seeking to find belonging, mentorship, and community, that they may be struggling to find in offline forums. Groups emphasize discipline, sacrifice, and strength, while diminishing “weak” or “feminized” characteristics of society. Jessica Mueller, from Alliant International Symposium, stated that terror groups begin “when individuals are facing personal turmoil or experiencing feelings of discrimination or alienation. Such factors make them more receptive to new ideas”. As such, extremist organizations are well versed in seeking out these individuals who may be susceptible to recruitment.

The Islamic State, or ISIS/ISIL, actually recruits members directly on social media. Through analyzing the content they engage with, the online forums or groups they are members of, and the content of their actual posts, extremist groups are able to identify potential recruits to contact. This demonstrates how well-adapted these groups are in utilizing digital forums and evaluating key profile indicators to advance their cause.

Algorithmic Pipelines

Online platforms are not without blame, either. These forums themselves actually play a major role in amplifying the ideology of grievance-based masculinity. Recommendation algorithms are designed to maximize engagement, and they often favor emotionally charged content. Many say that it is a “slippery slope” for young men to fall into online radicalization. They could be searching for fitness content or discussions about masculinity, and then, they could be exposed to radical material through algorithmic escalation.

This process is gradual, and oftentimes, it does not begin with outward extremism. It begins with content that is depicted as “self-help” or “truth-telling,” which is a method for gaining traction with the viewers and establishing a sense of credibility with them. Then, these narratives begin to incorporate larger and more intense grievance-based themes, like misogyny, racial disparities, or conspiracy theories. This is known as the “radicalization pipeline,” where users are not thrown in the deep end, so to speak, of extremist content, but rather, they are gradually exposed to it.

In addition to this algorithmic pipeline, there is an extra layer of privacy and encryption on certain platforms, such as Discord and Telegram. Once inside these “closed” communities, ideologies are essentially policed. Members are rewarded for conformity with group ideologies, and dissent is portrayed as weakness and betrayal to the group. This is where “echo chambers” develop, which are environments where a person only interacts with opinions or ideas that are the same as their own, and dissent is not common. These types of environments create social incentives to remain not only engaged, but ideologically in line with the group.

Case Study: Christchurch

The 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks in New Zealand is one of the clearest examples of online radicalization translating into real world violence. Brenton Tarrant, the perpetrator, was radicalized not through traditional extremist networks, but through transnational online extremist forums, which shows how digital spaces have become pipelines for radicalization. Tarrant belonged to many online white supremacist forums, which included image boards and memes, which blend extremist ideology with humor and irony. These forums frame issues of racism and violence as expressions of strength and masculinity. Environments such as this normalize extremist beliefs and present them as “truths” that mainstream society is too blind to see.

Tarrant’s digital footprint was plagued with grievance-based masculinity. His manifestos were shaped around themes of humiliation and displacement, particularly due to immigration and demographic change. He did not see himself as marginalized, but as a “warrior-defender” which was an identity centered around turning insecurity into purpose. This is a prime example of how extremist organizations reframe personal anxieties into a call to action. Additionally, Christchurch emphasizes how online extremist communities reward ideological escalation. The forums of which Tarrant was a member encouraged performative extremism, including violence, as a way to gain credibility within the group. Following the attack, Tarrant was praised in these online spaces and his persona was turned into memes and other coded language, showing others the social gratification they too would receive if they did something similar. This phenomenon is called “networked lone-actor terrorism” where an individual may carry out an attack alone, but they are deeply embedded in online extremist networks.

Christchurch demonstrates how modern extremist violence can emerge without centralized control, and instead, rely on digital narratives surrounding masculinity and grievance as a call to action. It highlights the shortcomings, including Tarrant’s prolonged online exposure and clear warning signs that did not go challenged on digital forums. Ultimately, it underscores a key shift in contemporary terrorist acts, as radicalization no longer requires physical proximity to a group or formal membership. Today, radicalization can occur through amplification of algorithms and online communities, and these mechanisms are sufficient enough to turn grievance into violence.

How do we counter this?

It is important for us to note that online radicalization is not the moral failure of one individual, but it is a social process that is shaped by networks, narratives, and environments that are cultivated on the digital platforms we use everyday. Young men are often drawn into these extremist spaces because of feelings of uncertainty, isolation, and loss of direction. Extremist groups offer emotional explanations for these experiences, even though many of these explanations are harmful and false. They externalize blame and simplify social dynamics in order to provide a sense of clarity for prospective members. It is critical to understand the process of radicalization in order to know how to disrupt it.

Countering radicalization requires a holistic approach. It is critical that young men are exposed to alternative communities where they can find purpose and belonging that are not harmful, but uplifting. In these communities, positive male mentorship and digital literacy programs can interrupt these pathways towards extremism and shift to positive identity building for young men.

In addition to countering online radicalization, it is also critical that masculinity is addressed. Masculinity must be framed as a piece of one’s identity that can be expressed in healthier ways. However, direct counter-messaging, which is a focus on debunking extremist claims often backfires and causes increased defensiveness and less openness to a change in perspective. A more effective approach is to adopt alternative models of masculinity that place value on responsibility, resilience, and community engagement without relying on exclusion or male domination.

Additionally, it is equally important to advocate to major digital platforms for increased transparency around algorithm systems, stronger moderation systems for hate-based communities, and more support and amplification of positive content. While grassroots work is important in addressing the root causes of radicalization, digital platforms also need to invest in anti-extremism efforts.

The exploitation of young men through online radicalization is not an accident, but a deliberate strategy by extremist organizations to advance their cause. Thus, it is a critical time to shift focus to positive identity development for young men. Addressing the challenge requires a deeper understanding of the constructs of masculinity and how it is contested and exploited in digital forums. By engaging in these underlying dynamics, communities can reduce the appeal of extremist movements and develop healthy pathways for young men to navigate identity formation in a digital age.

By Mildred Miranda – Rise to Peace Fellow

The assassination of Charlie Kirk by Tyler James Robinson on September 10, 2025, serves as a reminder that violent acts often arise from complex personal, social, and emotional dynamics rather than ideology alone. The case of Robinson shows that personal grievances, identity stress, social isolation, and emotional frustration played a far more central role than political or ideological beliefs. The role of ideology is often limited to providing a narrative frame that explains behavior after the fact, rather than being a primary cause of violence.

The patterns observed in lone-actor cases indicate that monitoring the development of grievances, interpersonal conflicts, and emotional strain allows families, schools, and communities, to intervene before violence occurs. The implementation of early intervention can reduce risk before personal frustrations escalate into violent action. The evidence from lone-actor cases demonstrates that addressing relational and emotional stressors, rather than symbolic or ideological narratives, improves the effectiveness of intervention strategies.  The understanding of these processes equips communities to provide support, strengthen resilience, and reduce the likelihood of violent acts.

Lone Actor Violence and Ideology

The trajectory of lone actors often begins with personal frustration, isolation, or perceived injustice with ideology emerging later to legitimize pre-existing emotional motivations. The actions of Robinson appear to have been influenced more by moral anger and personal grievances than by political beliefs.

The patterns observed in other high-profile cases of lone-actor violence show similar dynamics. The case of Dylann Roof, who killed nine people at the Emanuel AME Church, combined social isolation, identity insecurity, and a white supremacist ideology. The attacks carried out by Anders Breivik in 2011 fused personal grievances with anti-immigrant ideology, framing his violent actions as a moral mission.  The 2015 San Bernardino attack reflects a comparable trajectory, in which individual frustrations intersected with extremist narratives to motivate violent behavior.

The evidence from these cases demonstrates that ideology alone rarely explains lone actor violence. The exclusive focus on ideology can obscure emotional, relational, and identity-related pressures that contribute to violent behavior. The understanding of how personal grievance and ideological framing interact is critical for effective prevention. The implementation of programs emphasizing emotional regulation, social connection, and family support is often more effective than efforts that attempt to counter ideology alone.

Family Conflict as a Catalyst

The role of family dynamics is a major factor in shaping vulnerability to violent behavior. The presence of persistent conflict, rejection, or lack of support increases stress and can amplify existing grievances. The disagreements Robinson had with his conservative family regarding politics and personal relationships, including his partnership with a transgender individual, highlight these dynamics. The resulting tensions are likely to increase feelings of isolation and resentment.

The recurrence of family tension is evident in many lone actor cases. The experiences of Roof demonstrate how family conflict and social isolation contributed to feelings of alienation. The reports from Breivik indicate that distant and conflicted relationships with parents and peers, which may have intensified his sense of marginalization. The personal frustration and family estrangement of Timothy McVeigh, who carried out the Oklahoma City bombing, also played a role in shaping his worldview and willingness to act violently.

The use of family-centered interventions can help reduce these risks. The provision of counseling, mediation, and culturally competent support allows families to address relational stress before grievances escalate.  The involvement of families as active partners in prevention, rather than context for risk, is essential. The guidance on recognizing warning signs, communicating effectively, and engaging in conflict resolution, combined with strong family cohesion, open dialogue, and consistent emotional support, can prevent personal frustration from escalating into violent intent.

Identity Strain and Moral Stress

The experience of identity strain occurs when personal experiences, beliefs, or roles conflict with family or social expectations. The resulting stress can become a key driver of grievance and moral outrage. The conflicts Robinson faced regarding relationships, politics, and gender dynamics likely contributed to his perception of moral threat. The analysis of many hybrids lone-actor cases shows that identity stress often forms the emotional foundation onto which ideology attaches.  

The case of Dylan Roof shows how racial anxieties and social insecurities heightened his sense of threat, later framed by ideology as a moral mission. The experiences of Anders Breivik reflect social marginalization combined with identity stress, which he used to justify his attacks. The San Bernardino attackers similarly fused personal frustration with extremist ideology, creating moral certainty that encouraged violence.

The recognition of identity strain as an early warning sign is critical. The observation by schools, families, and communities of conflicts between personal identity and societal expectations allows for guidance, counseling, and mentoring. The provision of structured support for self-esteem, social skills, and healthy identity expression can prevent emotional pressure from escalating into grievance. The mitigation of identity strain at an early stage can reduce the risk of radicalization.

Community and Peer Networks

The absence of strong family support often leads individuals to seek belonging and validation through peers or online communities. The formation of these chosen families can provide emotional support while also reinforcing grievances and moral certainty. The networks associated with Robinson reportedly strengthened his negative worldviews and moral justification for violent action.

The dual dynamic of emotional support and grievance reinforcement is common across cases of lone-actor violence. The online networks of the Christchurch shooter amplified extremist beliefs and facilitated planning. The Boston Marathon bombers were influenced by peer groups and online content that validated personal and political grievances. The presence of small, insular peer circles in other cases reinforced a sense of moral mission and deepened isolation from moderating social influences.

The prevention of these risks can be achieved by offering non-ideological social networks. The availability of mentoring programs, youth groups, and community counseling allow individuals to experience belonging without reinforcing hostile narratives. The engagement in activities such as sports, arts, volunteering, and peer-led discussion groups provide alternative social connections that reduce grievance escalation. The cultivation of inclusive and connected communities increases resilience against radicalization and lone-actor violence.

Digital Radicalization and Emotional Escalation

The digital environment has become central to the lives of many individuals experiencing isolation or identity strain. The structure of online platforms can intensify anger, amplify grievances, and create echo chambers in which moral certainty grows unchecked. The online activity attributed to Robinson reportedly reinforced his sense of moral certainty and limited exposure to moderating perspectives.

The examination of other cases highlights the power of online reinforcement. The Christchurch attacker used online forums and live streaming to validate and publicize his actions. The San Bernardino perpetrators were influenced by extremist online content that reinforced their motivations. The acceleration of emotional escalation through these platforms can normalize extreme behavior.

The prevention of violence must address both the emotional and informational dimensions of online engagement. The implementation of digital literacy programs, emotional regulation training, and online mentoring can reduce the impact of harmful content. The encouragement of critical thinking, empathy, and exposure to diverse perspectives online allows individuals to manage strong emotions without escalating grievances into violence. The integration of digital awareness into broader prevention frameworks strengthens resilience against radicalization.

From Grievance to Action

The progression toward violent action typically follows a recognizable pattern. The accumulation of personal grievances, combined with social and online feedback, amplifies emotions while moral framing transforms frustration into perceived justification for action. The trajectory of Robinson followed this sequence, as family conflict, identity stress, and online reinforcement converged to produce moral clarity around perceived threats.

The ability to understand these stages is critical for effective intervention. The capacity of families, schools, and practitioners to identify the progression from grievance to action allows for earlier intervention. The emotional and relational pressures can be mitigated before they escalate into violence. The focus on a process-oriented approach prioritizes prevention and helps lower the likelihood of violent escalation.

Recurrent Patterns in High-Profile Lone-Actor

The examination of several high-profile cases of hybrid lone-actor violence reveals a recurring pattern in which perpetrators experience social isolation, family conflict, and identity strain before ideology enters their narrative. The actions of Dylann Roof were shaped by personal alienation and racial insecurity, with white supremacist ideology serving more as moral justification than as the initial catalyst. The case of Anders Breivik similarly reflects the fusion of personal grievance and anti-immigrant beliefs during the planning of violence. The San Bernardino attackers demonstrate how marital, social, and emotional stress intersected with extremist narratives to construct a perceived moral mission. The resentment and estrangement Timothy McVeigh experienced within his family environment contributed to his willingness to commit violence, while ideology provided contextual framing. The Christchurch shooting demonstrates how online networks and echo chambers can strengthen moral certainty and support operational planning for individuals who are already isolated. The consistency across these cases indicates that personal grievance, identity stress, family conflict, and social reinforcement often precede and shape how ideology frames lone-actor violence.

Systemic Gaps in Prevention

The Robinson case highlights systemic gaps in prevention and response. The families involved noticed changes but often lacked clear guidance or referral pathways. The schools, mental health services, and community organizations continue to operate in isolation. The online platforms may detect concerning behavior but frequently face legal and privacy constraints.

The implementation of effective prevention requires coordinated approaches. The use of multi-agency threat assessment models integrate families, schools, healthcare, community groups, and digital platforms. The sharing of information allows early identification of warning signs and proactive intervention. The combination of individual-level support with systemic coordination addresses relational, emotional, and digital dimensions simultaneously.

Prevention and Intervention in Practice

The implementation of practical strategies can reduce lone actor risk. The role of families includes maintaining open communication, monitoring changes in behavior, and seeking counseling when necessary. The training of school staff to recognize identity strain, social withdrawal, and emotional stress is essential. The development of peer mentoring programs, inclusive youth groups, and safe spaces allows communities to support healthy engagement discussion.

The role of digital interventions is crucial in prevention. The focus on online literacy, emotional regulation, and responsible social media use can help curb the amplification of grievances in echo chambers. The guidance of mentors and counselors can support individuals in managing online interactions and regulating emotional responses.

The training of law enforcement and mental health professionals to understand the interplay of family conflict, identity strain, social networks, and online influence ensures more effective threat assessment. The most effective prevention combines family, community, and digital support, rather than relying on ideological monitoring.

Policy Implications

The focus of policies should be on emotional and relational warning signs rather than ideology alone. The key recommendations include funding family and community support such as counseling and mediation, strengthening peer support and mentorship programs, and offering digital literacy and emotional regulation training. The coordination of threat assessment should span families, schools, healthcare, and online platforms, while peacebuilding efforts should aim to increase social cohesion and reduce polarization. The addressing of emotional, relational, and social factors, policies can help lower the risk of hybrid lone‑actor violence and build stronger, more resilient communities.

The explanation offered by forensic psychiatrist Dr. Hans Watson emphasizes that mass violence is rarely the result of sudden mental illness. The acts are typically planned and calculated, and most perpetrators do not meet the criteria for severe mental disorders. The radicalization pathway he describes begins with early confusion around authority, identity, and social roles, followed by limited exposure to adversity that impedes the development of healthy coping skills, accountability, and self-reflection.

The resulting breakdown in self-reflection encourages externalization of blame, leading individuals to construct imagined narratives of victimhood and persecution. The failure to recognize personal limitations, discomfort, or relational challenges leads individuals to reinterpret internal distress as evidence of hostile actions, by external forces. The escalation of this narrative requires increasing detachment from reality, reinforcing a worldview build on perceived attacks rather than lived evidence.

The convergence of these dynamics can culminate in what Dr. Watson identifies as narcissistic rage, in which personalized grievances, sometimes shaped by political or ideological identities, become morally justified and emotionally charged. The presence of intervention at any stage of this process can disrupt the trajectory toward radicalization and reduce the likelihood of violence.

The White House reports that President Trump views radical left-wing organizations as responsible for the attack. The administration has announced plans for a strong response, with Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller overseeing the creation and rollout of the strategy. The administration plans to focus public attention on what it characterizes as an organized campaign culminating in the assassination, according to senior officials.  The Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security are expected to utilize all available resources to identify, interrupt, and neutralize these networks. The measures are emphasized by officials intended to protect public safety and uphold the rule of law.

The assessment by a DOJ domestic terrorism expert confirms that the attack meets criteria for domestic terrorism. The absence of a specific federal domestic terrorism statute may limit federal prosecutorial options, with state authorities expected to lead the case and the FBI providing supplementary support. The assessment offered by Robert Pape positions the assassination of Charlie Kirk as part of a broader national pattern of political violence rather than an isolated event. The portrayal of the shooter as motivated in some analyses as driven by liberal ideology advances claims that broad networks of left-leaning groups are encouraging terrorism in ways often compared to ISIS.

The analysis by Robert Pape, a leading authority on political violence with more than 30 years of research on groups like Al-Qaeda, emphasizes that terms like ‘disrupt’ and ‘dismantle’  are typically used to describe actions against organized terrorist networks and their operational hubs. The concern he raises is that labeling domestic political figures in this manner could generate unnecessary public anxiety, particularly among the estimated 75-80 million Americans who identify as Democrats. The year prior saw the United States experience two assassination attempts targeting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The current political landscape is described by Pape as an era of violent populism defined by increased in political violence across ideological spectrum.

The Charlie Kirk case shows that violence is frequently rooted in personal grievance, relational breakdown, identity strain, and online reinforcement, with ideology playing a secondary, framing role. The capacity to prevent lone-actor violence rests on early warning detection, relational and emotional support, and continued community engagement. The focus on relationships and processes, rather than symbolic or ideological markers, helps individuals regulate emotions, strengthen social bonds, and address grievances before they escalate into harm.

By Alex Fitzgerald – Rise to Peace Fellow


While the massive arctic storm swept across the entire continent over the weekend of the 25^th to the 27^th of January, it was not enough to douse the fire that is burning in Minneapolis. While the protests that increased drastically following an ICE involved killing were occurring, the national attention was elsewhere due to the issues of larger protests against the Iranian regime, Donald Trump’s veiled threats on European countries in his attempt to control Greenland, and the wake of the apprehension of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. But, after two and a half weeks of non-stop protesting across the twin cities area following the death of Renee Good, attention was turned back to the mid-west. Not only due to the ending of the aforementioned events, but also because the winter storm that was incoming forced everyone to stay home during the weekend. Therefore, when another death in an ICE involved shooting occurred in broad daylight in front of onlookers, the whole nation saw. The shooting was recorded by multiple witnesses and was even more central in its location of what became the coldest city in America over the weekend. VA nurse Alex Pretti was shot ten times after being taken down by ICE agents, most of which were fired while he already lay motionless. Per the New York Times:

“At this moment, Mr. Pretti has both hands clearly visible. One is holding his phone, while he holds the other up to protect himself from pepper spray. He moves to help one of the protesters who was sprayed, as other agents approach and pull him from behind. Several agents tussle with Mr. Pretti before bringing him to his knees. He appears to resist as the agents grab his legs, push down on his back and strike him repeatedly. The footage shows an agent approaching with empty hands and grabbing Mr. Pretti as the others hold him down. About eight seconds after he is pinned, agents yell that he has a gun, indicating that they may not have known he was armed until he was on the ground. The same agent who approached with empty hands pulls a gun from among the group that appears to match the profile of a firearm DHS said belonged to Mr. Pretti. The agents appear to have him under their control, with his arms pinned near his head. As the gun emerges from the melee, another agent aims his own firearm at Mr. Pretti’s back and appears to fire one shot at close range. He then appears to continue firing at Mr. Pretti, who collapses. A third agent unholsters a weapon. Both agents appear to fire additional shots into Mr. Pretti as he lies motionless. In total, at least 10 shots appear to have been fired within five seconds.”[1]

 While this video itself was shocking and calls into question the supposed “absolute immunity” that Kristie Noem’s DHS has touted, what followed as a reaction to the shooting was just as alarming but also odd. There were multiple claims by the Trump administration in official capacities and on social media that Alex Pretti was attempting to draw his weapon on the ICE agents, but the video clearly shows different. The gun, a Sig Sauer 9mm handgun with a tactical configuration, nothing out of the ordinary in the open carry state of Minnesota, became the central focus point of every analysis of the shooting; that is, the only gun that did not go off. Therein began a discourse on social media, morning news networks, and even within Capitol Hill that would make the staunchest conservative from the Obama era scratch their heads.

As the argument about the second amendment was unleashed upon the American populace once again, something strange happened: the roles became reversed. Prominent politicians from the right side of the aisle such as U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli claimed, “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.” Other right-wing influencers on X and other platforms questioned why Pretti was at a protest with a firearm. FBI director Kash Patel stated unprompted in a press conference that “you cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to a protest,” and conservative news host Megyn Kelly quipped on her radio show, “I know I’m supposed to feel sorry for Alex Pretti, but I don’t. You know why I wasn’t shot by Border Patrol this weekend? Because I kept my ass inside and out of their operations.” [2]

 There were many technical analyses around the second amendment that went back and forth over the internet. Users online and Minneapolis officials were quick to refute Donald Trump’s statement about how Pretti approached ICE agents while brandishing, but the ones that stayed originally silent were of the most interest. It took several days for prominent influencers, gun-rights groups and other advocates, who had previously gained their following in their pursuit of preserving the right to bear arms, to actually speak out about the narrative coming from Republican officials. Meanwhile, Democrat lawmakers and scholars began to take the pro-gun side, such as legal scholar Mark Neily. Finally, the NRA sent out an X post that criticized Bill Essayli’s previously mentioned post and defended American’s rights to openly carry when legally allowed to do so. Along with the NRA, another prominent name appeared in defense of Pretti and against the administration’s pushback: Kyle Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse, who was tried and found not guilty for the murder of two men after he crossed state lines with an assault rifle in 2020 to assist paramedics during the Kenosha riots, sent out a simple post on X which read “Carry Everywhere. It is your right. #Shallnotbeinfringed.”[3]

Through all of the chaos in the streets of Minneapolis, the gun argument that was exacerbated by the right seemed to take up all of the conversation around the shooting of Alex Pretti. In the days following the killing of Alex Pretti, the administration’s response to Minneapolis reflected a broader pattern that has characterized its approach to domestic unrest, immigration enforcement, and political dissent. Rather than focusing on de-escalation, transparency, or independent investigation, federal action centered on reinforcing law enforcement authority, controlling the narrative surrounding the protests, and expanding the operational footprint of federal agencies in the city. Minneapolis became less a site of mourning or accountability and more a symbolic battleground in the administration’s broader effort to project strength on issues of immigration, public order, and internal security.[4]

Within days of the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security announced an expansion of federal personnel operating in the Twin Cities under the justification of protecting federal property and personnel. This included increased ICE and Border Patrol presence, as well as coordination with other federal law enforcement units. While framed as a temporary security measure, the deployment had the practical effect of intensifying tensions on the ground. Protests continued, but they increasingly resembled confrontations between demonstrators and heavily armed federal officers rather than public assemblies aimed at political expression. The administration consistently described these deployments as necessary responses to “lawlessness,” avoiding direct engagement with questions surrounding Pretti’s death.[5]

At the same time, the administration resisted calls for an independent investigation into the shooting. Requests from Minnesota officials, civil rights organizations, and members of Congress for a special prosecutor or external review were either deflected or folded into internal DHS review mechanisms. Public statements emphasized that agents had acted “within protocol” pending investigation, reinforcing a presumption of justification before any findings were released. This stance deepened skepticism among protesters and community leaders, who viewed the process as inherently conflicted. Messaging from the White House and allied media outlets further shaped the administration’s approach. Minneapolis was repeatedly referenced as an example of what happens when “weak governance” meets immigration enforcement resistance. The protests were framed not as responses to a specific killing, but as part of a broader pattern of disorder allegedly encouraged by political opponents. This rhetorical strategy allowed the administration to sidestep the specifics of Pretti’s case while situating Minneapolis within a national narrative about security, borders, and authority.[6]

Legislatively, the administration leveraged the unrest to renew calls for expanded protections for federal agents and harsher penalties for interference with immigration operations. Draft proposals emphasized criminal liability for protest related obstruction and expanded definitions of threats against federal officers. While these measures were justified as responses to Minneapolis, they were national in scope and reflected long standing priorities rather than targeted solutions. Perhaps most notably, the administration made little effort to engage directly with Minneapolis residents affected by the prolonged unrest. There were no high-level visits aimed at reconciliation, no federal community forums, and no public outreach beyond statements emphasizing enforcement. The city instead became a warning, cited in speeches and posts as evidence of why forceful federal action was necessary. In this way, Minneapolis was not treated as a community in crisis, but as a proving ground. The administration’s actions following the shooting signaled that its priority was not resolution or trust building, but control, deterrence, and narrative dominance, even as tensions on the ground continued to simmer.[7]

The gun argument that took up the majority of attention by right-wing media, and even conventional news outlets, therefore may have been intentional. The prospect of drawing attention away from a shooting resulting in the death of a protestor in Minneapolis would be ideal for a Trump administration which was failing to get a single city under control. Even if energy were directed away from ICE agents nationally, if not in Minneapolis, for a few days, it would have given the agency time to cover their tracks and make sure all ends were tied up with the shooting. Nevertheless, the administration’s immediate reaction to a federally involved shooting is worrying to say the least. Instead of noting on the tragedy of a life lost, the Trump administration resorted, once again, immediately to character slander and claims of domestic terrorism, which has become a key term in countering national pushback against ICE actions.[8] It is safe to say now that there is a broader issue within the training and doctrine of ICE agents in the US, not just in the way they deal with immigration, but in the way they deal with obstruction. Instead of attempts to remedy these problems by the DHS, however, they have leaned into the issues. In a bizarre play by the Trump administration, it was announced that ICE agents would serve as security for the American athletes in the upcoming Olympic Games. Only time will tell if the situation in Minneapolis will further unravel, or if ICE will unravel first. Unfortunately, the latter may lead to more issues like the shooting on January 24^th.[9]

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[1] Devon Lum and Haley Willis, “Videos Show Moments in Which Agents Killed a Man in Minneapolis,” New York Times, January 27, 2026.

[2] Megyn Kelly (@MegynKellyShow), X (formerly Twitter), January 26^, 2026.

Zach Schonfeld, “Friction Emerges as Gun Rights Groups Clash with Trump Officials Over Minnesota Shooting,” The Hill, January 26, 2026.

[3] Kyle Rittenhouse (@rittenhouse2a), X (formally Twitter), January 26, 2026.

Abene Clayton, “Why the Minneapolis Killings have Driven a Wedge between Trump and Pro-Gun Groups,” The Guardian, January 29, 2026.

[4] Matthew Choi and Dan Merica, “Minneapolis Shooting Prompts Bipartisan Blowback,” The Washington Post, January 26, 2026.

Michelle L. Price, “Trump, Unbowed by Backlash to Minneapolis Shooting, Blames Democrats for ‘Chaos’,” ABC News, January 25, 2026.

[5] Associated Press, “Homeland Security plans 2,000 Officers in Minnesota for its ‘Largest Immigration Operation Ever,’” Times Union, January 6, 2026.

City of Minneapolis, “MN Attorney General, Minneapolis and Saint Paul Sue to Halt ICE Surge into Minnesota,” January 12, 2026.

[6] Hugo Lowell, “Two Agents who Shot Alex Pretti put on Leave as Trump Tries to Quell Backlash,” The Guardian, January 28, 2026.

Myah Ward and Dasha Burns, “’It’s Starting to Turn Against Us’: White House Reckons with Minnesota Fallout,” Politico, January 26, 2026.

Anthony Zurcher, “Trump Abandons Attack Mode as Minneapolis Shooting Backlash Grows,” BBC, January 26, 2026.

[7] MPR Staff, “Bovino Defends Immigration Surge Tactics, Deflects Questions of Abuse,” MPR, January 20, 2026.

[8] Chad de Guzman, “Trump Labels Man Killed by Federal Agents an ‘Agitator’ and ‘Perhaps, Insurrectionist’,” Time, January 30, 2026.

[9] Shannon Heffernan and Tom Meagher, “How ICE and Border Patrol Keep Injuring and Killing People,” The Marshall Project, January 26, 2026.

Giselda Vagnoni, “Italy’s Winter Olympics Security Plan Keeps ICE in Advisory Role,” Reuters, January 27, 2026.

Alexander Smith, Claudio Lavanga, and Matteo Moschella, “ICE Role at the Winter Olympics Prompts Fury in Italy,” NBC News, January 27^, 2026.

San Noor Haq, Barbie Latza Nadeau, Antonia Mortensen, and Karina Tsui, “Italians Furious Over Deployment of ICE Agents to Bolster US Security at Winter Olympics,” CNN, January 29, 2026.

January 2026

By Etienne Darcas – Rise to Peace

The scenes in Minneapolis this month would have seemed impossible to most Americans a year ago. Federal immigration agents firing into civilian vehicles. A registered nurse shot dead while filming a protest. Thousands flooding the streets in cities from Los Angeles to New York to Boston. A near general strike in Minneapolis; the first of its kind in many decades. The images seen carry an unmistakable resonance, from the armoured vehicles, the militarised postures and the casual violence against civilians, that speaks to something deeper than a dispute over mere immigration policy.

Perhaps this is not an isolated domestic crisis but something more dangerous altogether as a manifestation of a broader pattern now revealing itself across American foreign and domestic policy simultaneously. The Trump administration’s aggressive posture toward European allies over Greenland, its apparent willingness to abandon Ukraine to Russian territorial ambitions, and the deployment of military-style enforcement tactics against American communities all share a common thread. That thread is best understood through what scholars have termed the “imperial boomerang” – the theory that techniques of coercion developed for use abroad eventually return home to be deployed against domestic populations.

The current moment demands we examine these developments not as discrete policy choices but as interconnected elements of a fundamental transformation in American governance which holds profound implications for transatlantic relations, international security architecture, and the character of American democracy itself.

The Greenland Crisis and the End of Allied Assumptions

President Trump’s campaign to acquire Greenland has rattled European capitals in ways that reveal how fundamentally the transatlantic relationship has deteriorated. The threat of 10-25% tariffs against Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland—all NATO allies of course—represented the weaponisation of American economic power against the very nations whose partnership has underpinned Western security for eight decades.

While Trump stepped back from immediate tariff implementation following talks with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at Davos, announcing what he termed a “framework of a future deal,” the damage has been done. European leaders now understand something that many had hoped to avoid confronting: the United States under Trump views its alliances in purely transactional terms. The strategic partnership, shared values, and collective security that characterised the post-war order have been replaced by a calculus of immediate benefit, of a misguided attempt at Realpolitik, but decidedly without the grace and finesse required for it. In its stead, what emerged is a United States that is diplomatically leaner and meaner, hungry for easy wins.

Trump has tied his Greenland ambitions to national security, arguing that Denmark cannot adequately protect the island’s vast mineral-rich territory from China and Russia, and that only the United States can secure the Arctic against rival militaries. Yet as Matthias Matthijs of the Council on Foreign Relations has observed, this reasoning fundamentally contradicts the logic of alliances themselves. The 1951 treaty between the United States and Denmark already grants Washington extensive basing rights in Greenland, including the critical Thule Air Base. Cooperation on mineral rights and rare earths remains entirely achievable within existing frameworks.

What Trump appears to want is not security, which he already has, but ownership. As Matthijs notes, Trump made clear in his Davos remarks that “you can only really defend something if you own it,” a statement that calls into question the entire foundation of American alliance commitments from Japan to NATO. The real estate developer’s instinct has become foreign policy doctrine.

The European response reveals how profoundly this crisis has shaken allied confidence. Most European analysts now accept that the kind of close, value-based transatlantic partnership that characterised the post-World War II era is unlikely to return, regardless of who occupies the White House next. Even a Democratic successor or a traditional Republican in the mould of Reagan or the Bushes would face domestic pressure to maintain a more transactional approach to alliances. The era of American leadership premised on enlightened self-interest appears to be ending.

Ukraine: Europe as the Emerging Loser

If the Greenland crisis has damaged European confidence in American partnership, the trajectory of Ukraine peace negotiations threatens to leave Europe as the clear loser in the reshaping of European security; increasingly a reshaping that sees Europe itself as denied of much agency in determining a potentially favourable outcome.

The January 2026 Paris summit of the “Coalition of the Willing” produced what officials called “significant progress” on security guarantees for Ukraine, with France and the United Kingdom signing a declaration of intent to deploy “military hubs” across Ukrainian territory following any ceasefire. The summit represented European efforts to fill the vacuum left by American ambivalence as an attempt to demonstrate that Europe can provide the security guarantees Ukraine needs.

Yet the fundamental problem remains. Europe lacks the military capacity to deter Russia without American backing. The Coalition’s framework depends on a US-led ceasefire monitoring mechanism and continued American commitment to Ukrainian security. Both remain uncertain at best. Trump has ruled out deploying American forces to Ukraine, and his envoys have made clear they are not taking sides between Kyiv and Moscow but rather are seeking a deal.

For European allies, this shift is stark. The Americans have made it clear they were present to facilitate negotiations in Paris, not to champion Ukrainian sovereignty. Russia, meanwhile, has shown no willingness to compromise on its fundamental demands, continuing to insist on territorial concessions and the exclusion of NATO troops from Ukrainian soil.

The emerging shape of any settlement looks increasingly unfavourable to European interests. Russia appears likely to retain significant Ukrainian territory, while Europe will bear the primary burden of post-war security guarantees. Such guarantees, which, with its lack of common foreign policy and military policy, it may lack the capacity to enforce without American support. Moscow has achieved its long-standing strategic objective of driving a wedge between Washington and its European partners, and is positioned to emerge from negotiations with both territorial gains and a weakened Western alliance.

Putin’s representatives have watched the Greenland drama with what Matthijs describes as “a fair dose of glee.” The spectacle of the United States threatening its own NATO allies while simultaneously distancing itself from Ukrainian defence has vindicated Moscow’s long-standing analysis of Western division. If the outcome of negotiations reflects this moment of allied discord, Europe will have lost not merely in Ukraine but in its broader ability to shape the continental security environment.

The Domestic Front: Minneapolis and the Imperial Boomerang

While transatlantic relations deteriorate and European security calculus shifts, the American homeland has become the site of a parallel crisis that illuminates the deeper transformations underway in American governance.

Since Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, federal immigration agents have been involved in violent incidents across the country, resulting in a number of fatalities of not just those targeted for arrest and deportation, but innocent bystanders too. The Wall Street Journal has documented at least thirteen instances of immigration officers firing at or into civilian vehicles since July 2025 alone. At least five of those shot have been American citizens.

The Minneapolis killings of Renee Good on January 7th and Alex Pretti on January 24th have catalysed nationwide protests on a scale not seen since the George Floyd demonstrations of 2020. Both victims were American citizens. Good, a mother of three, was shot three times—in the chest and head—by an ICE officer while sitting in her vehicle. Video evidence from bystanders and the agents themselves contradicts official claims that she was using her vehicle as a weapon. Pretti, a VA ICU nurse, was shot while filming agents who had pushed protesters to the ground. Bystander video shows him holding a phone, not the gun the administration later claimed to recover.

The Department of Homeland Security has declared all sixteen shootings since July justified before completing investigations, indicating a pattern or propensity for reflexive institutional defence of its agents tactics. The tactics themselves echo counterinsurgency operations: vehicle pursuits, aggressive crowd control, the deployment of armed agents into civilian communities, the treatment of entire populations as potentially hostile.

This is where the concept of the “imperial boomerang” becomes analytically essential. First articulated by Aimé Césaire in his 1950 Discourse on Colonialism, the boomerang effect describes how techniques of repression developed to control colonial populations inevitably return to the imperial centre. Hannah Arendt elaborated on this framework in The Origins of Totalitarianism, arguing that the methods of racial domination and territorial expansion inherent to imperialism laid the foundations for European fascism.

The contemporary application, however, is both sobering and explanatory. Sociologist Julian Go, in his 2023 study Policing Empires, has documented how the militarised tactics now deployed on American streets, including mobile strike squads, surveillance methods, tear gas and crowd control techniques were “developed and perfected” in American and British colonies before being imported back to the metropole. The personnel transfer is equally direct: many domestic law enforcement agencies have been led by veterans of foreign conflicts who acted as what Go terms “imperial importers,” domesticating colonial tactics for use against racialised populations at home.

The Minneapolis operations bear the hallmarks of this lineage. The deployment of thousands of federal agents from multiple agencies, the disregard for local civilian authority, the aggressive vehicle tactics, the immediate official justification regardless of evidence, all mirror patterns documented in colonial counterinsurgency. That these tactics are being deployed in a city with deep memories of George Floyd’s murder adds a bitter historical resonance.

The Connection: Imperial Logic at Home and Abroad

The analytical power of the imperial boomerang framework lies in its ability to reveal connections that otherwise appear coincidental. The Greenland crisis, the Ukraine negotiations, and the Minneapolis killings are not separate phenomena but are rather expressions of a common logic. This logic is one in which relationships of domination replace relationships of cooperation, and force becomes the primary instrument of policy.

Multiple parallels emerge in this analysis. In Greenland, the administration threatens economic warfare against allies who refuse to cede sovereign territory. In Ukraine, it positions itself as a neutral broker between aggressor and victim, willing to sanction Russian territorial gains in pursuit of “a deal.” In Minneapolis, federal agents treat American communities as occupied territory, firing into civilian vehicles with impunity while the administration defends every use of force before investigation.

The common thread is the collapse of constraints, be they legal, normative,  or institutional, that previously bounded the exercise of American power, great as it is. Abroad, this manifests as willingness to coerce allies and abandon partners. At home, it manifests as the deployment of military-style tactics against civilian populations and the pre-emptive justification of lethal force.

Césaire warned that colonisation degrades the coloniser as surely as the colonised. A nation which colonises is a civilisation which justifies colonisation—and therefore force— and is already a sick civilisation; morally diseased. It can only rule then by the principle that might makes right. The imperial boomerang is not merely a transfer of tactics but a transfer of mentalities then, enforcing the habit of seeing other populations as subjects to be controlled rather than citizens to be served, highlighting the assumption that force is the natural language of governance.

What Minneapolis reveals is that this mentality, having been cultivated abroad for generations, has now fully arrived at home. The same administration that threatens NATO allies over Greenland and treats Ukrainian sovereignty as negotiable also treats American citizens as acceptable casualties in enforcement operations. The same officials who justify territorial ambitions on grounds of national security justify shooting American nurses on grounds of officer safety. The logic is consistent; it is the logic of imperial governance applied without geographical distinction.

Implications for European Security

European policymakers would be wise to study the Minneapolis crisis with care, because it reveals something essential about the partner that they now face. An administration willing to deploy such tactics against its own citizens is unlikely to be constrained by traditional norms of allied behaviour. The Greenland threats were not an aberration but an expression of the same governance philosophy now manifesting domestically.

This has concrete implications for European security planning. The Coalition of the Willing’s security guarantees for Ukraine depend ultimately on American commitment. An administration that treats its own population as potential enemies and its oldest allies as targets for economic coercion cannot be relied upon to honour commitments to a country most Americans cannot locate on a map.

European leaders must now plan for scenarios they had hoped to avoid: a post-NATO security architecture, reduced American engagement in continental defence, and the need to deter Russian aggression largely through limited European resources, amidst a domestic European political climate of festering discontent and economic malaise. The UK and France have begun this work with their commitment to Ukrainian military hubs, but the gap between European capacity and European need remains vast.

The transition will be difficult and dangerous. Russia will probe every weakness in European resolve. China will watch for opportunities to advance its own interests. The international rules-based order that has provided relative stability since 1945 will continue to erode. Europeans hoping for a return to normalcy after Trump should note Matthijs’s assessment: “I don’t think there is a going back.”

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Rise to Peace.

By Kie Jacobson – Rise to Peace Fellow

Since the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian operations have consistently blurred the distinction between military and civilian targets, where the civilian population is frequently under threat. The lack of differentiation between military and civilians has been a recurring feature throughout hostilities. However, closer examination indicates a broader strategy aimed at weakening the resilience of the nation.

The treatment of Ukrainian cultural and historical institutions reveal the additional levels at which the war is being waged, detailing the long-term nature of Russian strategy. Not only have cultural sites with no inherent military function been damaged or destroyed, institutions have been extensively looted by Russian forces. From museums to archaeological sites, Ukrainian cultural property has come under threat, with concerning implications.  

A Pattern, Not an Accident: Russia’s Record in Ukraine

Indicative of a pattern rather than isolated incidents, damage to Ukrainian cultural heritage has occurred across multiple regions and phases of the war. Even away from the front line, sites such as Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, a UNESCO World Heritage site, have been damaged by Russian strikes. As territorial control has shifted, a more direct approach toward cultural heritage has been displayed during occupation. In major cities, cultural institutions and sites have been systematically looted, with Mariupol, Melitopol, and Kherson as prominent examples. 

In occupied urban areas, the extensive removal of artworks and artifacts by Russian forces displays an intentionality, with concerning implications for Ukrainian cultural sovereignty. The Melitopol Museum of Local History was stripped of historical weapons it held along with gold and silver artifacts, such as Scythian gold items dating from the 4th century BCE. In Mariupol, reports indicate that during the removal of the Kuindzhi Museum’s collection, soldiers specifically sought out works by the artist Arkhip Kuindzhi, whose identity as Ukrainian or Russian has been heavily contested. Instead of being an opportunistic endeavor, the gutting of museum collections seems to have been organized. During Melitopol operations, troops were reportedly accompanied by a man guiding the selection of items to take. At the Kherson Local History Museum, employees from museums in occupied Crimea were alleged to have assisted in the selection, documentation, and packing of items for transport. Compounding the theft of the items themselves, Russian forces have taken museum collection records with them, making it difficult to even identify the full extent of what has been taken.

Beyond their material worth, the artifacts reflect a historical continuity into modern-day Ukraine and affirm a Ukrainian cultural identity as autonomous from Russia. It is the symbolism that makes these items so significant and acts of destruction or looting so harmful. With the exhumation and transport of figures like Prince Potemkin’s remains to Russia, there is a clear message that historical markers and symbols that could be used to legitimize a state are Russian. Yet theft is only one component to the assault on Ukrainian heritage, occupied territory has been subjected to further reforms aimed at the erosion of Ukrainian identity and culture.

Destruction Under Occupation

The measures employed by Russian authorities in occupied Ukrainian territory are not new. These policies draw upon the precedent set by imperial Russian and Soviet authorities, with the suppression of Ukrainian language and Ukrainian cultural organizations. Under first the imperial regime then the Stalinist government, expressions of Ukrainian identity were treated as subversive or criminal. The guiding belief being that Ukrainians were a branch of Russian people and the language merely a Russian dialect. It is this logic that shapes contemporary efforts to erase Ukrainian cultural presence in occupied areas, where such measures are framed as a restoration of historical and cultural unity. 

Children have emerged as one of the primary targets of these efforts, with the implementation of a Russified education curricula as well as deportation to Russia in extreme cases. This has involved the destruction of Ukrainian-language educational materials, where use of the language is not explicitly forbidden but is essentially taboo. In addition, teachers and school administrators in occupied territory have been either coerced into implementing the new curricula or replaced. Alongside this, the deportation of Ukrainian children represents the most severe extension of the strategy of re-education, where children are forcibly transported into Russia and have been adopted out into new families. Framed by Russian authorities as rehabilitation and integration, this is intended to ensure linguistic and historical assimilation via isolation and indoctrination. The reality is that these practices target Ukrainian cultural identity at the root. If children are displaced and assimilated, it undermines the formation of Ukrainian identity both in the current generation and the subsequent generation. 

In its entirety, the approach to education and children in occupied territory displays additional dimensions of Russian efforts to erase Ukrainian identity. It is vital to recognize that cultural destruction extends far beyond physical damage to property or artifacts, and involves efforts to destroy formative aspects like language and community. In the context of Ukraine, this is intended to pave the way for a broader reconfiguration of historical narratives and public space under occupation, aligned with Russia.

Cultural Genocide

Recognizing the deep connection between culture and society has led to greater awareness of how attacks on culture can be linked to more insidious objectives, such as genocide. The idea of cultural genocide originated with Raphael Lemkin, the legal scholar who articulated the concept of genocide following the Second World War. For Lemkin, genocide was not necessarily just physical harm to a community, but included efforts aimed at destroying its distinctiveness, language, and oftentimes religion. 

Taken altogether, Russia’s actions in Ukraine point to a broader strategy that goes beyond battlefield objectives. The destruction of cultural heritage, suppression of Ukrainian language, rewriting of historical narratives, and targeting of children through education policy and deportation do not serve a military purpose. Instead, these practices work as a way to forcibly align the Ukrainian people with Russian wartime narratives. It is difficult to ignore the parallels between characteristics Lemkin identified as associated with cultural genocide and the reality unfolding in Ukraine. The suppression of language, re-education campaigns, destruction of cultural heritage, and looting of artifacts mirror methods Lemkin describes as central in destroying social and cultural foundations. While the term cultural genocide remains debated legally and academically, the concept of the term resonates in the case of Ukraine because it captures  the cumulative and deliberate nature of Russian actions, and provides insight into the intent behind them.

Understanding what has been lost

Even though the most obvious markers in the destruction of cultural heritage are damaged buildings or looted collections, the true consequences of the losses are less visible and harder to solve. The value of cultural heritage lies in its relationship to historic memory, the community, and sense of place. To use a specific example,  the destruction of monuments commemorating victims of the Holodomor undermines the public remembrance of a man-made famine central to Ukrainian collective memory and national identity. In addition, the Holodomor itself has been contested between Ukrainian and Russian historical narratives. While Ukraine recognizes the famine as a deliberate, man-made atrocity and a foundational trauma in its history, Russian narratives have tended to minimize or deny its intentionality. As is the case with example of Holodomor memorials, the damage is not just the physical loss that occurs, but the ability of a community to authentically remember and communicate its history not just in the present day but to future generations.

Beyond the impact on Ukrainian society, the destruction of cultural sites and items have also been a loss to broader humanity. The archaeological and scientific significance of the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore’s collection demonstrates this very clearly. Russian attacks destroyed natural history collections that not only were a unique repository of knowledge, but are impossible to restore because of the impact climate change has had on animals and plants in the last century. In terms of other items lost, artifacts from Neolithic and Bronze Age burials including those from the Mariupol Neolithic Burial Site, internationally valued for their insight into early human societies in the region, are among those missing. The loss of these materials is a blow to the greater archaeological and scientific community. 

These forms of loss also pose serious challenges for postwar justice and restitution. The destruction or removal of artifacts complicates efforts to document crimes and pursue accountability. Even where reconstruction is possible, it cannot necessarily restore what has been lost in substance or meaning. Rebuilt churches, museums, or libraries can replicate the physical, but they cannot replace or restore the original materials, historical continuity, or the trust embedded in intact cultural institutions. In terms of looted objects, there is concern that the items will wind up at auction, leading them to be absorbed into private collections and further complicating restitution efforts. However, other stolen pieces are being placed on display in Russian state institutions or being incorporated into its respective collections, while the destruction or removal of inventory catalogs during looting make it difficult to even fully identify what has been lost. 

Looking Forward

The destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage is not a casualty of war. It reflects a broader effort intended to forcibly reshape history, identity, and belonging. From the targeting of museums and monuments to the deportation and re-education of children, culture represents a strategic domain in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Looking ahead, the question is not just how Ukraine can recover, but also how to prevent further loss. Museums and other cultural institutions have concentrated on developing emergency responses to protect their collections. In the early stages of the full-scale invasion, this was often done under conditions where there were shortages of supplies, staff, and protective equipment, not to mention the threat of Russian forces. Documentation, emergency preservation, and international support for cultural workers are essential. The challenges facing personnel in the cultural heritage sector are immense, especially given the fragility or size of certain items. However, it is important to consider prevention as much as restitution and accountability, since items become increasingly difficult to track let alone recover once stolen. Beyond immediate protection, it is critical to consider the greater logic at play in Russia’s focus on cultural heritage. The intent is to weaken, if not erase, Ukrainian identity.  However, the damage is not just to Ukraine. The collections destroyed and looted include centuries of artistic and historical contributions that are a part of wider human heritage. The protection of what remains and restitution of stolen objects is not necessary to support the legitimate Ukrainian identity but for the global community as well.

By Etienne Darcas – Rise to Peace

The massacre at Bondi Beach on 14 December 2025 marked a grim turning point in Australian security history. As families gathered to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah at the iconic beachfront, two gunmen, later to be identified as father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram, opened fire on the crowd, killing fifteen people and wounding over forty others. The attack, which Australian authorities swiftly declared an ISIS-inspired terrorist act targeting the Jewish community, represents the deadliest terrorist incident on Australian soil and the first fatal attack specifically directed at Jewish Australians.

This horrific attack arrived at the culmination of a deeply troubling trend in Australia’s domestic security landscape; one characterized by an escalating pattern of ideologically motivated violence against state institutions and public officials that has accelerated markedly since the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding the Bondi attack requires situating it within this broader landscape of extremist violence, one that has seen sovereign citizens and anti-government ideologues wage deadly assaults on police officers in rural Australia, fundamentalist Christian terrorists execute law enforcement personnel, and now Islamic State-inspired actors perpetrate mass casualty attacks on religious minorities.

The Attack and Its Immediate Aftermath

The Bondi massacre unfolded with terrifying efficiency that highlighted its premeditated nature. According to court documents released by New South Wales authorities, the Akrams had conducted reconnaissance of the attack site two days prior, walking the footbridge from which they would later fire upon the Hanukkah celebration. On the day of the attack, they drove to the beach, affixed homemade ISIS flags to their vehicle, and at approximately 6:47 pm, began their assault.

The perpetrators also deployed four improvised explosive devices – three aluminium pipe bombs and a tennis ball bomb containing explosive material, gunpowder, and steel ball bearings. Mercifully, none detonated, though police described them as viable weapons. Video evidence recovered from Naveed Akram’s phone showed the pair conducting firearms training in the weeks preceding the attack, and a manifesto-style recording captured them “condemning the acts of Zionists” while displaying allegiance to Islamic State ideology.

Among the fifteen dead were a Holocaust survivor, a ten-year-old girl, and Rabbi Eli Schlanger, a correctional services chaplain. Two police officers were wounded in the response. Sajid Akram, 50, was killed by police at the scene. His son Naveed, 24, an Australian-born citizen, survived with critical injuries and has since been charged with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder and one count of committing a terrorist act.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared the attack had deliberately targeted at the Jewish community on the first day of Chanukah. Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett confirmed that “early indications point to a terrorist attack inspired by Islamic State,” with motivations rooted in antisemitism and jihadist ideology.

Institutional Failures and the Question of Prevention

The political and security fallout from Bondi has been severe. Investigative reporting by The Nightly revealed that the Australian Federal Police’s specialist counter-terrorism surveillance team—established under the Commonwealth High Risk Terrorist Offender regime—had been quietly disbanded just weeks before the massacre due to budgetary constraints. Internal correspondence indicated that funding shortfalls had “limited our ability to fill vacancies,” and the decision was made to dissolve the Canberra-based unit and return its funding to the AFP’s Counter Terrorism and Special Investigations Command.

This revelation proved particularly damaging given that ASIO had previously investigated Naveed Akram in 2019 for six months over alleged extremist associations, determining at the time that he posed no threat. The disbanding of specialist surveillance capabilities mere weeks before the worst terrorist attack in Australian history has raised profound questions about resource allocation and threat prioritization within the national security apparatus.

The AFP Association had, in fact, warned the Albanese Government in November 2025 that the force was suffering “chronic and worsening shortages” of counter-terrorism officers. Their warning proved prescient in the most tragic possible terms.

In response to mounting pressure, particularly from Opposition Leader Sussan Ley and a coalition of teal independent MPs including Monique Ryan, Kate Chaney, Sophie Scamps, and Zali Steggall, Albanese eventually announced a royal commission into the attack and the broader rise of antisemitism in Australia. Former High Court justice Virginia Bell, who previously led the Robodebt royal commission, will oversee the inquiry, which is mandated to deliver its final report by 14 December 2026, exactly one year after the massacre.

The commission’s terms of reference are expansive, encompassing the nature and prevalence of antisemitism in Australia, its key drivers including religiously motivated extremism, the effectiveness of current responses by law enforcement and security agencies, and recommendations to improve social cohesion. It represents a significant governmental concession following weeks of resistance to calls for such an inquiry.

A Pattern of Escalating Violence: From Wieambilla to Porepunkah

While the Bondi attack was distinguished by its Islamic State inspiration and its specific targeting of the Jewish community, it must be understood as part of a broader pattern of ideologically motivated violence that has plagued Australia in recent years;  especially violence that has disproportionately targeted government workers and law enforcement in remote areas.

That the nature of this violence has usually been in remote areas and regional Australia is in of itself not exceptional, for Australia is a country with ample land and wilderness, and with that comes the ability for those who are distrustful of the government and institutions to strike up on the frontier of old and establish semi-autonomous homesteads and communities. Such groupings of properties and collectives usually consist of homesteaders who seek to have a closer relationship with the land and the food that they grow, or who seek to get away from the highly urbanised reality of Australian life, but so too do cults and other, more insidious groups, form.

The Wieambilla shootings of December 2022 perhaps best illustrates this dynamic. On 12 December of that year, four Queensland Police constables arrived at a rural property northwest of Brisbane to conduct a welfare check. Without warning, the property’s three residents—brothers Gareth and Nathaniel Train, and Gareth’s wife Stacey—ambushed the officers with high-powered rifles. Constables Matthew Arnold, 26, and Rachel McCrow, 29, were killed; a third officer, Randall Kirk, was shot in the hip but managed to escape; a fourth, Keely Brough, hid in grass for hours while the perpetrators searched for her and lit fires to flush her out.

A neighbour, Alan Dare, 58, was also killed when he came to investigate the commotion. The six-hour standoff ended when tactical police killed all three perpetrators.

Queensland Police subsequently classified the Wieambilla shootings as Australia’s first fundamentalist Christian terrorist attack. The Trains were religious extremists who subscribed to premillennialism, an apocalyptic Christian belief system, and were deeply embedded in the sovereign citizen movement and online conspiracy communities which have risen to prominence in the wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Australia. Gareth Train had claimed the Port Arthur massacre was a false flag operation and that Princess Diana was killed in a “blood sacrifice.” His anti-government views had radicalized significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which he opposed vaccines, lockdowns, and mask mandates.

The parallels with the Porepunkah police shootings of August 2025 are striking. On 26 August, ten Victoria Police officers arrived at a property near the regional town of Porepunkah to execute a warrant against Dezi Freeman, a self-proclaimed sovereign citizen known to authorities. When officers attempted to enter his converted bus dwelling, Freeman opened fire with a homemade shotgun, killing Detective Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson, 59, who was days away from retirement, and Senior Constable Vadim De Waart-Hottart, 35. A third officer was shot in the leg. Freeman attempted to kill a fourth officer, but his weapon misfired.

What followed was the largest manhunt in Australian history. Freeman fled into the dense bushland of Mount Buffalo National Park, an area he had hiked since age 16 and knew intimately. Nearly 500 officers were deployed initially, with tactical teams from every Australian state and territory, as well as New Zealand, participating in what became the largest tactical police operation in the nation’s history. A $1 million reward, the largest ever offered in Victoria, was announced for information leading to his arrest. Freeman had ‘gone bush’, retreating into the vast hinterlands of the Victorian Alps in a way starkly reminiscent of the Bushrangers of old.

As of this writing, Dezi Freeman remains at large after 147 days, having vanished into the snowy Victorian High Country under winter conditions that many experts initially believed would prove fatal. Whether he perished in the wilderness or remains in hiding—potentially assisted by sympathizers—is unknown. His brother has publicly speculated that Freeman died on a mountain near his residence. Cadaver dogs from Queensland were brought in to search the national park, but no body has been recovered.

Like the Trains, Freeman’s radicalization appears to have accelerated during COVID-19. Sources described his views as having become more extreme during the pandemic; he protested vaccines and lockdowns, refused to wear masks, and rejected the validity of any state authority. He had written online that “the only good cop is a dead cop” and that police “all need to be exterminated.” His firearms licence had been cancelled in 2020. He believed the end times were approaching.

Understanding the Post-COVID Radicalization Pattern

The common thread linking Wieambilla, Porepunkah, and to a lesser extent Bondi is the acceleration of radicalization during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic served as a catalyst for extremist ideologies across the political and religious spectrum, providing grievances around government overreach, public health mandates, and perceived threats to individual liberty that extremist movements were well-positioned to exploit.

For sovereign citizens and Christian fundamentalists like the Trains and Freeman, pandemic restrictions confirmed their existing beliefs about government tyranny. Online conspiracy communities flourished as lockdowns drove people into digital spaces where algorithmic amplification and echo chambers intensified radical worldviews. The physical isolation of rural properties—like those in Wieambilla and Porepunkah—created zones where extremist beliefs could be practiced without challenge or intervention.

The Bondi attackers represent a different ideological strand but one that similarly benefited from the global upheavals of recent years. The Islamic State, though territorially defeated in the Middle East, has continued to inspire attacks worldwide through its sophisticated online propaganda apparatus. The Israel-Gaza conflict that erupted in October 2023 provided further radicalizing content and grievances for actors motivated by antisemitic ideologies. The lack of significant diplomatic or humanitarian action to curb the worst excesses of Israel’s Netanyahu government in Gaza in no small way amplified this burgeoning undercurrent of radicalisation taking place.

Australian authorities investigated the Akrams’ nearly month-long stay in Davao City in the southern Philippines, a region with long historical connections to ISIS-affiliated insurgent groups, but concluded that there was “no evidence to suggest they received training or underwent logistical preparation” during the trip. The pair apparently rarely left their hotel room. This suggests that their radicalization and operational planning occurred domestically, within Australia, making the failure to interdict them all the more concerning.

The Security Response and Its Limitations

The response to these attacks has exposed significant gaps in the Australian security architecture. At Bondi, first responders were armed with Glock pistols that lacked the lethal range of the attackers’ rifles and shotguns; a mismatch that contributed to officer injuries and may have cost lives. New South Wales Premier Chris Minns has acknowledged that the responsive ability of police forces needs to change, while stopping short of endorsing full police militarization.

At Porepunkah, a prior risk assessment had concluded that the Victoria Police Special Operations Group would not be required to arrest Freeman. This was a decision that proved catastrophically wrong. The officers who arrived were ambushed before they could respond effectively.

The Wieambilla inquest, which concluded in August 2024 after a marathon five weeks of hearings, examined how four young constables were sent to conduct a routine welfare check at what turned out to be a fortified extremist compound. The coroner is expected to make recommendations on intelligence sharing, risk assessment protocols, and the protection of officers in rural areas.

What emerges from these incidents is a pattern of underestimation, and in particular, of the threat posed by individuals who appear on the radar but are assessed as non-threatening, of the tactical capabilities of extremists who operate from rural properties, and of the organizational challenges in maintaining specialist counter-terrorism capabilities during periods of budgetary pressure.

Legislative and Policy Responses

The Albanese Government has moved on multiple fronts in response to Bondi. Federal Parliament was recalled in January 2026 to pass legislation targeting hate preachers and extremist organizations. New South Wales has passed significantly strengthened gun control measures, and Australia’s states and territories have committed to implementing a National Firearms Register—a reform first promised after Port Arthur in 1996 but never fully realized until now.

Australia and the Philippines have also announced enhanced counter-terrorism cooperation, though Filipino authorities have pushed back strongly against characterizations of their country as an ISIS training ground, noting that insurgent groups in the south are fragmented with poor leadership.

The royal commission announced by Albanese represents the most comprehensive response, with broad powers to compel evidence and testimony. Its examination of antisemitism will necessarily extend beyond the security domain into questions of social cohesion, online radicalization, and the adequacy of hate speech laws.

A Society Under Strain

Australia in early 2026 confronts a security landscape that would have been unrecognizable a decade ago. The nation that pioneered comprehensive gun control after Port Arthur—and which prided itself on having avoided the mass shooting epidemic plaguing the United States—has now experienced its deadliest terrorist attack and its most extensive manhunt for a suspected cop-killer, with police officers gunned down in rural ambushes by citizens who had openly declared their intention to kill.

The ideological diversity of these threats compounds the challenge. Jihadist violence inspired by ISIS, Christian fundamentalist terrorism rooted in apocalyptic belief, and sovereign citizen extremism fuelled by pandemic-era conspiracy theories each require distinct analytical frameworks and intervention strategies. What they share is a willingness to use lethal violence against representatives of the state and against vulnerable communities.

For the Jewish community of Australia, the Bondi massacre has been an unprecedented tragedy. For law enforcement, Wieambilla and Porepunkah have demonstrated that routine duties in rural areas can become death traps. For policymakers, the disbanding of specialist counter-terrorism capabilities weeks before the nation’s worst terrorist attack stands as a cautionary tale about the dangers of short-term budgetary thinking in an era of evolving threats.

The royal commission will provide an opportunity for rigorous examination of what went wrong and what must change. But commissions alone cannot repair the fractures in Australian society that these attacks have exposed; fractures along lines of religion, ideology, and relationship to state authority that have widened dramatically in the post-COVID era.

Australia’s response to Bondi will be judged not only by the prosecutions it secures or the inquiries it conducts, but by its success in addressing the deeper currents of radicalization that have made such violence possible. The challenge is immense. The stakes could not be higher.

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Rise to Peace is a counterterrorism and peacebuilding organization dedicated to research, education, and policy advocacy on violent extremism. This analysis represents the organization’s independent assessment based on publicly available sources.

By Alex Fitzgerald – Rise to Peace Fellow

The United States is in a confusing period, as is the rest of the world. So much is occurring in the first two weeks of 2026 and so quickly that it proves difficult to stop and analyze an event before the next one grabs our attention. From Venezuela, to Greenland, to the Trump administration’s plans for the military budget and conflicts with the federal reserve, some things slip under the radar of the national news cycle. The shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis was national news for at least two days, but the media has seemingly turned their attention elsewhere and are avoiding reporting on what led up to the shooting in the context of the city of Minneapolis, and what is happening there now.

Over the past month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement have increased the number of raids and personnel in the Twin Cities Area. The news surrounding the new year that was coming out of Minneapolis was concerning the possibility of fraud in the day care centers within the mostly Somali neighborhoods, made popular by right-wing influencer Nick Shirley. However, even after the Department of Health and Human Services cut off much of the childcare funding for the state of Minnesota and the FBI surged investigations into the issue, it seemed that Shirley was working off of potentially flawed information. The investigation into childcare fraud had merits, however the main perpetrators of the fraud case were arrested and convicted in March of 2025. When the FBI had investigated the centers that were shown in Nick Shirley’s video, they were found to be operating as normal.[1]

The surge in ICE personnel, however, began before the video by Nick Shirley was filmed, and had nothing to do with the alleged fraud that was highlighted. The surge is part of the Trump administrations aptly named “Operation Metro Surge,” part of the broader plan to crack down on illegal immigration in 2026 much heavier than it already has in 2025. The plan intends to begin with mass raids in both New Orleans, accompanied by National Guard troops, and in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area of Minnesota.[2] Why these two cities have been targeted first is one that can only be speculated on; however, the answers may be political. New Orleans is an overwhelmingly blue city and the largest city in the state of Louisiana which is overwhelmingly red. Therefore, the city which holds much of the power in the state has conflicted much with the Baton Rouge based state government of Jeff Landry. Landry, Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, has been a staunch ally of the president’s administration since coming into office in 2024. Minnesota seems just as political. Donald Trump and the state of Minnesota have sparred during the past year of his presidency. Representative Ilhan Omar, whose district encompasses most of Minneapolis, has been a staunch opposer of the Trump presidency. Trump has responded in turn with accusations of corruption, insults against her Somali nationality and her Muslim religion. Trump supporters online have also targeted Omar with accusations of fraud on her citizenship forms. Minnesota’s governor Tim Walz, who was the running mate of Kamala Harris in 2024, also has been staunchly opposed to actions of the Trump administration.

Safe to say, there is no love lost between Donald Trump and the state of Minnesota. Therefore, the surge in ICE personnel can be explained as being a political stunt, or a more sinister retribution against a state which continues to be a thorn in the side of the current administration. The surge was met with fierce backlash combined with harsh Minnesota winter conditions, combined with the fact that the IIHF World Juniors hockey tournament was occurring through the new year, bringing in fans, family, and players from all over the world into the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Multiple protests against ICE’s presence were occurring simultaneously throughout the area and ICE’s efforts were being frustrated by a lack of guidance on where raids were to occur.[3] Pressure was being built up in the cold Twin Cities area and with every party involved on edge, it would be easy to have the situation boil over.

On the 7^th of January, Renee Good’s car was blocking multiple ICE vehicles en route to a raid. Agents swarmed her car and as she pulled forward and her car came into contact with agent Jonathan Ross, he drew his weapon and fired three shots into Good’s side window. The shooting was contentious and while the Trump administration and politically aligned users online were quick to defend Ross, claiming Good attempted to run him over, the shooting was ill-received by the people, and government, of Minneapolis.[4] To make matters worse for the image of ICE, the shooting was captured by Good’s wife who was filming from the curb, and circulated online. Adding insult to injury, another ICE agent’s body cam footage of Good, moments before the shooting, displays a calm and collected woman, not a protester, bringing into question if Renee Good acted with hostile intent. Trump and allies online dug deep into Renee Good and her wife’s background, attempting to label her as a violent protester, drawing the ire of members from both sides of the aisle, who view the shooting correctly as a tragedy.[5] Protests began erupting all over Minnesota as well as throughout the United States. A vigil was held later that day which was attended by the Mayor, Jacob Frey, city council members, and thousands of citizens. The next day, schools were closed due to the extent of the protests.[6]

In the days since the shooting, protests have only accelerated. After another ICE involved shooting in Portland, demonstrations have started to take hold all across the country. The entire city of Minneapolis is seemingly united against the ICE raids currently taking place in their city, from Jacob Frey to Tim Walz and Ilhan Omar, the protests are widespread and the reaction from the Right is getting more forceful.[7] The Trump administration has been pushing back hard against the Minnesota protests specifically, ordering more ICE agents from the Department of Homeland Security into the city in order to extend the operational remit of Operation Metro Surge.[8] Donald Trump specifically has ordered investigations into the widow of Renee Good in order to smear her image in his effort to show Good as a violent protester/instigator. Because of this effort, and a decision by the FBI and DHS to not investigate the shooting, multiple government officials have tendered their resignations. Four leaders of the civil rights division of the DOJ quit on the morning of Monday the 12^th, and four federal prosecutors resigned over ICE’s widow investigation push. In the wake of the protests, which are still ongoing at the time of this article’s writing, dozens of protesters have been arrested, tense scenes of ICE agents with guns drawn at protestors have been showcased on social media, and tear gas has been used on crowds by ICE agents who have been attempting to continue the raids that began in December.[9] Finally most recently, state officials have begun official proceedings to sue the federal government on account of the violence currently taking place in their capitol.[10]

With all the escalation in Minneapolis, there does not seem to be a hint of restraint shown by federal forces. Despite Donald Trumps efforts to show the world that protests will not stop the raids in Minnesota, citing a biblical day of reckoning, ICE is also quietly issuing “refreshers” on the constitutional rights of citizens when the two confront each other.[11] As the federal agents and the citizens of the twin cities are at each other’s throats, this could indicate a cooling of tensions. On the other hand, as protests continue to erupt throughout the country, where injuries keep occurring when the two opposing sides clash, this seems unlikely.[12] Escalations have continued, as on January 13^th, thousands of ICE agent’s identities were leaked online, prompting many to fear that the shooting of Renee Good was a watershed moment in Donald Trump’s immigration crusade.[13]

So, as to the question of ‘why Minneapolis?’ is asked on morning television and national news networks, the answer is potentially shattering. The truth is Minneapolis is different. While anti-ICE protests in the past year have done little to stifle the apparent overreach of the DHS, Minneapolis seems different, because it is working. ICE raids are being thwarted, and the protests are forcing agents to resort to the type of violence that tarnishes its already murky image. This is not the non-violent protests the country has seen over the past year like the “no kings” protests. Instead, this is the sort of protest that unfolded under Donald Trumps first term as president, during the summer of 2020. Protests like the ones in Portland, Philadelphia, Kenosha, and indeed Minneapolis. It would be foolish to forget that this is not the first time Minneapolis has been at the epicenter of national movements. In May of 2020, the event that sparked the race protests that lasted for months was the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. While the answer to why Minneapolis is being targeted by the Trump administration is political speculation, the answer to why Minneapolis was primed to react in this way may lie in its recent history. It has seen the kind of community movement that is happening now, unfold before and, while less destructive, the kind of perceived threat to the city in the form of ICE was never going to be received well. Whether the Trump administration was ignorant to this fact is also always going to have a speculative answer, but if operation Metro Surge has done anything, it has been to unite the community of the twin cities against an already hostile federal government.

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[1] Phil Helsel and Julia Ainsley, “Minnesota Department Finds Child Care Centers Targeted in Viral Video Operating Normally,” NBC News, January 2, 2026.

[2] Suzanne Gamboa, Julia Ainsley and Priscilla Thompson, “Federal Agents Begin Immigration Operations in New Orleans and Minneapolis,” NBC News, December 3, 2025.

[3] Gabe Gutierrez and Susan Kroll, “ICE Operation Shows the Difficulty of Immigration Arrests Amid Pushback in Frigid Minnesota,” NBC News, December 11, 2025.

[4] Ray Sanchez, “Whistles, then Gunfire: How the Deadly ICE Shooting Unfolded in Minneapolis,” CNN, January 10, 2026.

[5] Maria Sacchetti, “ICE Officer in Minneapolis Shooting Was Dragged by a Driver Months Earlier,” Washington Post, January 8, 2026.

[6] Trevor Mitchell, “Minneapolis Vigil draws Thousands as City Reels Following ICE Shooting,” Minn Post, January 7, 2026.

Rebecca Santana and Associated Press, “Protests Against ICE Spread Across U.S. After Shootings in Minneapolis and Portland,” PBS News, January 10, 2026.

[7] Mark Vancleave and Tim Sullivan, “Minnesota Protesters, Agents Repeatedly Square Off while Prosecutors Quit after Renee Good’s Death,” Associated Press, January 14, 2026.

[8] Maria Dunbar, “Noem Says Homeland Security is Sending ‘Hundreds More’ Agents to Minneapolis as Protests Erupt in US,” The Guardian, January 11, 2026.

[9] Ana Faguy, “Thousands March and Dozens Arrested in Minneapolis Protests against ICE,” BBC, January 11, 2026.

Michael Dorgan, “Fireworks-Wielding Agitators Clash with Federal Agents outside Minneapolis Federal Building,” FOX News, January 13, 2026.

[10] David Nakamura, Brianna Tucker, and Ben Brasch, “Minnesota Sues DHS, ICE over Immigration Enforcement,” Washington Post, January 12, 2026.

[11] Ken Klippenstein, “Immigration Agents Terrified of ICE Backlash After Shooting,” Ken Klippenstein, January 13, 2026.

[12] “Anti-ICE Protester Blinded by Federal Agent During Demonstration, Family Says,” Yahoo News, January 2026.

[13] Mike Bedigan, “Personal Information of 4,500 ICE and Border Patrol Agents Leaked Online,” The Independent, January 14, 2026.

By Caroline Thomas – Rise to Peace Fellow

            The Islamic Republic of Iran is currently experiencing one of the most significant periods of civil unrest in decades. Beginning in late December 2025 with protests over declining economic conditions, the turmoil has evolved into a nationwide challenge to Iranian political order, and protestors have demanded systemic change. The uprisings have drawn international attention, increasing diplomatic tensions and threats of external intervention. This report examines the components of the unrest, analyzes its further security implications, and situates it among concurrent global crises, including recent developments in Venezuela and the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

            The current wave of protests began on December 28, 2025, and was initially driven by widespread economic hardship, including rapidly rising inflation, food and fuel prices, and the collapse of currency values [1]. Demonstrations began in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar [2], an urban hub that is the economic epicenter of Iran, housing the world’s largest covered market. As the focus of the demonstrations have evolved, protests have now broadened across all 31 Iranian provinces and spread to diverse social groups, including students, workers, and professionals. This marks one of the broadest demonstrations since the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement [3] that followed the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022.

            Iranian authorities have responded to the unrest by deploying police, Basij militia, and Revolutionary Guard units to attempt to suppress demonstrations. These forces have been authorized to use lethal force against protestors, including live ammunition, causing the death toll to rise to over 500 deaths [4] and more than 10,000 arrests, as of the writing of this piece. Iranian authorities challenge these figures, and frame the unrest as violent “riots” in an attempt to justify the use of force. However, exact casualty figures are difficult to confirm due to the nationwide internet and communications blackout imposed by the Iranian regime. The Iranian foreign minister claims the chaos has “come under total control,” [5] but as the demonstrations enter the 16th day and very few videos from Iran emerge on social media, it is difficult to say whether or not the authorities’ response has actually had an effect on stunting the momentum of the movement.

Analysis

            Domestic Drivers: The core driving factor of the protests are deeply-rooted economic grievances, including inflation, poverty, unemployment, and the collapse of the national currency (the rial). The sentiment among protesters is that these ongoing economic hardships are symptoms of broader political dysfunction and systemic corruption in the Iranian regime as a whole [6]. As a result, current demonstrations are aimed more at targeting the theocratic structure rather than single policies or individual Iranian officials, rendering them leaderless and decentralized. The discontent is broadly based and spread among a wide group of societal members, including professionals, ethnic minorities, urban youth, and workers.

            Regime Legitimacy and Narrative: The Iranian leadership has responded with a reframing of the ongoing narrative, with officials claiming that the unrest is actually a foreign-backed plot [7] by the United States and Israel to further incite instability and justify external intervention. This framing of the ongoing crisis demonstrates the long-standing regime discourse that internal dissent is a part of a broader war waged by countries against Iran.

            Security Implications: The rapid spread of the intense protests in Iran poses direct and significant risks to domestic stability and security in the country. The scale of participation across wide social groups suggests a lack of consensus around the Iranian regime’s legitimacy. Additionally, the use of lethal force, arrests and detentions, and threats of harsh punishments could further radicalize demonstrators and deepen social grievances against the Iranian regime, which could create conditions for prolonged unrest.

            International Security: Foreign governments are monitoring Iran closely. The United States, under President Trump, has announced that it is weighing “very strong options” in response to the uprising in Iran, including military strikes, cyber operations, increased sanctions, or support for communication networks moving into Iran [8]. This raises the concern for a direct US-Iranian confrontation, as Iran has warned that any external military intervention will result in retaliation strikes against US and Israeli bases and targets. Unintended escalation between major powers significantly affects international order and stability.

            Humanitarian Concern: The nationwide internet and phone blackout in Iran severely limits both information and resource flow, and inhibits independent verification of events, including death tolls and arrest logs. International monitoring is hampered, which often results in populations struggling to organize, seek assistance from international bodies, or share evidence of abuses and ongoing activities within the country.

Global Context: Venezuela

            The unrest in Iran is unfolding almost parallel to the US intervention in Venezuela, where President Maduro was captured in the early days of 2026. Both strategically and perceptually, this event has major implications for the leadership in Tehran. Over the past decade, Iran and Venezuela have strengthened their relationship, uniting over shared status as a major oil producer, falling under Western sanctions, and mutual opposition to US foreign policy. Tehran has begun using Caracas as a means to bolster influence in the Western hemisphere, as proxy groups, like Hezbollah, have established presence there [9]. Venezuelan operations aided in the transfer of Iranian drones, revenue streams, and criminal financial activity linked to Hezbollah. These gold trading, narco networks, and other illicit flows both fund Iranian militant activity and expand influence outside of the region.

            Maduro’s capture sends a strong message to Iranian leadership in Tehran. First, it removed a strategic Iranian ally, as Venezuela bolstered Iran, particularly in the Western hemisphere. However, more importantly, the capture signals to Tehran’s leadership that the US is willing and able to take action against hostile regimes even during periods of internal instability. While Iranian officials have condemned the US capture of Maduro as a “dangerous law-breaking,” [10] it is evident that Iran could fall to the same fate as Venezuela.

            This threat of US involvement reinforces a security narrative of external encirclement for Iran. Within Tehran, there are fears that the same logic used by the Trump administration will be applied to Iran should the stability conditions further deteriorate. Thus, this helps to explain Iran’s increasingly aggressive approach towards the US, including warnings of retaliation in the case of American forces intervening in the country [8]. These threats of retaliation both deter external action and reinforce regime legitimacy domestically by framing the discontent as part of a broader geopolitical conflict.

            Beyond posturing, the loss of the Venezuelan alliance undermines a tangible, strategic partnership that gave Iran economic and political benefits. The disruption of this weakens Tehran’s ability to project its influence in the Western hemisphere and constrains the proxy network of Hezbollah. US officials, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, stated that the dismantling of Iranian presence in Venezuela is a matter of hemispheric security. This emphasizes the important notion that Iran’s activities in Venezuela have major implications for criminal networks and ideological projection beyond the Middle East region.

Regional Context: Gaza and the Middle East

            While Iran’s inner turmoil is different from the conflict in Gaza, the ongoing instability in the Israel-Gaza context remains a critical backdrop that reflects regional security dynamics. The late 2025 ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, although seemingly promising at the time, has since rendered unstable due to repeated violations of the agreement. Targeted strikes continue, which can be seen in recent drone attacks that demonstrate the persistence of violence and conflict in the Gaza Strip [11].

            Iran’s support for the Palestinian cause and militant groups, like Hamas and Hezbollah, have historically been pillars of Iranian regional strategy, framing it as part of a broader resistance against Israel and Western influence. Tehran, despite the formal ceasefires, has continued to assert backing for Palestinian actors and allied militias, further underscoring competition with Israel. The persistence of instability in Gaza connects, in several ways, with the unrest in Iran.

            Iran’s Narrative: Tehran frequently utilizes the Gaza conflict as a means of justification for its regional policies and mobilization of national sentiment. Iran often presents itself as a “defender” of the Palestinian cause, seeking to cultivate external legitimacy [12]. The inconsistency of the ceasefire complicates this, by showing that regardless of Iran’s proxy support, there has not been a resilient resolution to the violence in Gaza.

            Regional Insecurity: The Gaza crisis contributes to broader Middle East insecurity and the overall volatile environment that is plagued with inconsistent alliances, non-sustainable ceasefire agreements, and ongoing conflict between state and non-state actors. The entire Middle East environment is vulnerable to different conflict spillover and intersection [13]. Although the Gaza ceasefire did reduce the scale of hostilities that were occurring, violence persists in the form of retaliatory strikes and militant violence, demonstrating the constant potential for escalation within the entire Middle East region.

            Allocation of Resources: Iran has allocated both financial and logistical resources to Gaza as a means of Palestinian support [14]. However, as internal Iranian unrest intensifies, these resources are strained. The lack of resources available for external allocation could force Tehran to reduce support in Gaza and shift their emphasis internally.

            Proxy Networks: Militant groups in Gaza and Lebanon continue to operate within an environment where power vacuums, leadership transitions, and competing authorities shape regional dynamics [15]. Iran has significant influence in these networks, but their role remains vulnerable due to shifts in regional alignments and geopolitical pressures. Conflicts in Gaza directly affect Iran’s strategic outlook, as new leaders and allies seek external negotiations that may not fully align with Iranian objectives.

            Ultimately, the Gaza conflict and the collapse of the ceasefire are a part of a broader environment of insecurity in the Middle East that directly intersects with Iran’s ongoing internal crisis. While not a direct cause and effect between the events, they both contribute to the regional dynamic that plays a major role in influencing Iran’s foreign policy.

Global Geopolitical Risk Outlook

            The Iranian crisis is not the only ongoing global disruption. This event sits among US interventions, Middle East conflict, and alliance shifts which are all contributing to the fracturing of the global security environment. The overlap between these crises complicates international response and amplifies risk perceptions. There are significant implications, both for Iran and the larger international community, of the ongoing internal crisis in Iran.

            Iranian Implications: For Iranian policy and governance, the current outlook based on ongoing events is one of vulnerability and continued instability. First, intensified repression of protestors may work for the short term goal of curbing the momentum of the movement, but it will likely deepen societal grievances against Iranian leadership and therefore prolong instability. Further, economic conditions are likely to worsen as discontent persists, further exacerbating the domestic issue. Lastly, fractures within Iranian security and elite circles may form, making control increasingly difficult, ultimately leading to prolonged conflict.

            Regional Implications: As other countries, like the US and Israel, weigh in on the Iranian conflict, there may be escalation leading to a broader conflict. Iran’s continued Palestinian support and now Israel’s condemnation [16] of the Iranian authorities is balancing on the edge of deepening the already ongoing regional conflict in the Middle East. Now, due to the strain of Iranian resources, authorities in Tehran may shift their regional strategy and reduce regional engagements to focus on internal stability. However, they may also shift to externalize conflict and mobilize internal nationalist sentiments.

            Global Implications: External powers are going to have difficult decisions to make, as Iran threatens retaliation on any external intervention, especially by the US. However, it is important for external nations to monitor the Iranian crisis for humanitarian rights issues and democratic collapse. International pressures on Iran will likely begin with humanitarian channels and sanctions policies, in an effort to avoid escalation while still addressing the human cost.

            Humanitarian Implications: Due to the information and communication blackout in Iran, humanitarian response is significantly hindered. International organizations are challenged in terms of verifying abuses, documenting violations, and most importantly, delivering aid. Because of this, it is plausible that the death toll may increase as the conflict persists and aid is stalled.

            The ongoing protests in Iran represent an important era of political unrest, economic despair, and mobilization of society. While it began as an expression of discontent over economic conditions, the crisis has now evolved into a nationwide discontent with the Iranian political order. The Iranian response, including the harsh crackdown on demonstrators, suppression of information via the blackout, and crediting of the unrest to foreign adversaries has drawn both domestic and international tensions. As the crisis continues to unfold, the implications extend beyond Iranian borders. Middle East stability, US-Iranian relations, and global geopolitical balances are at risk. The situation in Iran highlights the interconnected nature of modern political crises, where an internal issue can draw international attention.

            Managing the Iranian crisis is going to require international diplomacy, focus on human rights, and efforts to address economic discontent. Without engagement, the repression and resistance may lead to prolonged instability and ultimately, will lead to international consequences.

Sources

[1] “Iran’s currency slides to new low, dollar at 1.47 million rials.” 2026. Iran International.

[2] Shamim, Sarah. 2026. “What we know about the protests sweeping Iran.” Al Jazeera.

[3] Bazafkan, Homa. n.d. ““Women, Life, Freedom” a new revolutionary era in Iran.” VIDC.

[4] Hafezi, Parisa, Rami Ayyub, and Maayan Lubell. 2026. “Deaths from Iran protests reach more than 500, rights group says.” Reuters.

[5] Christou, William, and Deepa Parent. 2026. “Iran foreign minister claims protest unrest has ‘come under total control.’” The Guardian.

[6] Rashid, Inzamam. 2026. “Is the Iranian regime on the verge of collapse?” Monocle.

[7] Kelliher, Fiona, and Edna Mohamed. 2026. “Iran protests live: Unrest ‘stoked and fueled’ by foreign elements – Tehran.” Al Jazeera.

[8] Torbati, Yeganeh, Niha Masih, and Abbie Cheeseman. 2026. “Iran says it’s ready for ‘war’ or dialogue as Trump weighs response to protests.” The Washington Post.

[9] Pelayo, Joze, Kirsten Fontenrose, and Ellie Sennett. 2026. “The Venezuela-Iran connection and what Maduro’s capture means for Tehran, explained.” Atlantic Council.

[10] Mortazavi, Mahsa. 2026. “Iran International.” Iran strongly condemns US attack on Venezuela.

[11] Al-Mughrabibi, Nidal. 2026. “Israeli-backed group kills a senior Hamas police officer in Gaza, threatens more attacks.” Reuters.

[12] Nweiran, Razan, Ahmed Adel, and Sayed Ghoneim. 2025. “Missiles and Meaning: Iran’s Strategic Use of Religious Rhetoric.” IGSDA.

[13] “The Danger of Regional War in the Middle East.” 2024. The International Crisis Group.

[14] “Captured Documents Show Iranian Support for Hamas in the Gaza Strip.” 2024. The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.

[15] Fadel, Leila. 2025. “Gaza power vacuum adds new hurdles to Israel-Hamas ceasefire.” NPR.

[16] Lidman, Melanie. 2026. “Iranian protests are growing. Israel is watching closely.” AP News.

Etienne Darcas | Rise to Peace | January 2026

The diagram appears rather innocuous at first glance. A series of boxes laid out and connected by arrows, the kind of systems architecture one might find in any corporate strategy deck. Yet this particular schematic, that which the Pentagon calls an OV-1 diagram, traces the operational logic of how artificial intelligence transforms raw surveillance data into targeting decisions. Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, Reconnaissance. ISTAR. The bureaucratic acronym belies the machinery it describes, for it is a technological apparatus that harvests human data, processes it through algorithmic systems, and outputs coordinates for kinetic action. In plain terms, what is called a ‘kill chain’.

What demands our attention now is not merely the existence of such systems, for their deployment in theatres from Gaza to Ukraine has been extensively documented, but rather their accelerating migration from foreign battlefields and into domestic contexts. The surveillance architectures that enabled what Amnesty International described as “live-streamed genocide” in Gaza are not confined to distant conflict zones. Rather, they are being integrated into American law enforcement infrastructure with remarkable speed and minimal democratic oversight. Understanding this trajectory requires us to examine how contemporary warfare has fundamentally mutated, and with it, the relationship between the state, the individual, and the technological mediation of violence.

The Architecture of Fifth Generation Warfare

Traditional military doctrine conceived of warfare as the clash of organised forces across defined battlefields. Even as theorists acknowledged war’s political character – Clausewitz’s famous dictum that war is politics continued by other means – they understood it as fundamentally about the physical control of territory and the destruction of enemy forces. This conception has become dangerously inadequate in our current moment.

What military strategists now term Fifth Generation Warfare (5GW) represents a categorical shift in how conflict is waged. As Professor Armin Krishnan argues in his examination of the doctrine, 5GW “bypasses the battlefield and targets society as a whole, rather than its military forces.” The objective is no longer territorial conquest but the manipulation of perception, the colonisation of what defence planners call the “cognitive domain.” Violence becomes dispersed, often covert, designed to produce psychological and social effects rather than purely military outcomes.

The ISTAR systems at the heart of this transformation serve a dual function. Kinetically, they enable precision targeting through the drone strikes and guided munitions that have become the signature of contemporary conflict. Their more significant role, however, lies in the construction of what the military terms a “common operating picture”: a unified view across all fighting domains, be it land, air, maritime, space, cyber, and cognitive, that enables coordinated action across multiple vectors simultaneously. Social media monitoring, influence operations, economic pressure, and conventional military force become integrated components of a single strategic apparatus.

The French philosopher Paul Virilio, writing decades before the current technological moment and AI boom, identified the essential logic at work. In his concept of “dromology”, the study of speed as the determining factor in warfare and politics, Virilio recognised that modern conflict would increasingly be fought at the speed of information rather than the speed of armies. “The state of emergency, the age of intensiveness, is linked to the primacy of speed,” he observed. This prescient warning, now, seems to have been realised in how we observe warfare conducted at algorithmic velocity, where targeting decisions that once required human deliberation are compressed into milliseconds of machine processing.

From Gaza to Denver: The Domestic Migration of Military Surveillance

The technologies developed for foreign conflict zones do not remain abroad. This is not conspiracy but institutional logic. Defence contractors, as a rule, seek new markets and ever high returns on their investments; law enforcement agencies seek new capabilities; and the political barriers between military and domestic application have proven remarkably porous, much to the detriment of individual rights to privacy and the well-being of civil society.

We can observe the trajectory of drone surveillance as a case study here. The same platforms that provide persistent aerial observation over conflict zones, be they tracking individuals, mapping social networks or identifying patterns of life, are now being deployed over American cities. Denver, Los Angeles, Chicago. The Flock and Skydio systems being integrated into municipal police departments operate on fundamentally similar principles to military ISR platforms: the collection of vast quantities of surveillance data, its algorithmic processing, and its transformation into actionable intelligence. The difference is one of degree rather than kind. In fact, we can see a remarkably, if not disturbing, similarity in the language of the foreign battlefield transposed onto a domestic application when reading about these programs. Skydio markets its drone surveillance products as “a force multiplier for your agency” and lists it military capabilities and use-cases directly adjacent to its law enforcement section, highlighting the intended symbiosis of the domestic, policing application and the military one.

The implications, though, extend beyond aerial platforms. Palantir Technologies, whose software has been central to military and intelligence operations, also provides the analytical backbone for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The company’s Gotham platform enables the integration of disparate data streams from financial records, travel histories, social media activity and biometric data into unified surveillance profiles. What began as legitimate and warranted counterterrorism capabilities has been repurposed for immigration enforcement, predictive policing, and domestic security operations.

All this follows a certain logic of simulation, or rather, these simulations and abstractions of threats in real space: systems designed for one context become abstracted, detached from their original purpose, and deployed according to their own internal logic rather than any external referent. The question is no longer whether a particular target poses a genuine threat but whether they match the algorithmic pattern of threat. The model potentially becomes more real than the reality it ostensibly represents. We run the risk of not looking at the risk profile of a situation and making our own human assessments in favour of an automatically calibrated algorithmic assessment, which is culturally reinforced as being infallible. But data comes from humans and the human experience, and so is almost certainly always fallible as humans are as a reflection of our own biases, desires and contradictory inputs.

Hybrid Operations and the Weaponisation of Information

The ISTAR apparatus does not merely enable kinetic strikes. Its more insidious application lies in what military doctrine terms “hybrid operations” in the integration of conventional military action with information warfare, economic coercion, and covert influence campaigns. When the internet becomes a battlefield, the distinction between combatant and civilian, between wartime and peacetime, begins to dissolve.

The cognitive domain of public opinion, social media, influence and reputation becomes a legitimate target for manipulation. As digital warfare scholars P.W. Singer and Emerson Brooking observe, “Power on this battlefield is thus measured not by physical strength or high-tech hardware, but by the command of attention.” A tweet can determine a drone strike target. A coordinated disinformation campaign can destabilise a government. The boundaries between military action and information operation become increasingly indistinct.

This has profound implications for how we understand emerging threats. Traditional counter-terrorism frameworks focus on identifiable organisations, hierarchical structures, ideological coherence. But these are increasingly outdated conceptual frameworks regarding terrorism, applicable increasingly only for the terrorism of previous decades, rather than the liminal and asynchronous nature of terror today.  5GW operates through ambiguity, through activities that are difficult to perceive as war precisely because they do not conform to our inherited categories. The operation remains covert not through secrecy but through categorical confusion, for all such actions could be criminal, could be political, could be military, but nonetheless resist definitive classification.

What this means practically is that the surveillance apparatus constructed for “foreign” adversaries inevitably turns inward. The same systems that monitor Telegram channels for extremist content monitor domestic social media. The same analytical tools that map insurgent networks map protest movements. The institutional logic of maximum surveillance, once established, does not recognise jurisdictional boundaries.

The Narrative Apparatus

Hybrid warfare requires not only the surveillance and targeting capabilities of ISTAR but also control of the narrative environment. The kinetic action is often less significant than its mediation in how it is presented, interpreted, and integrated into public consciousness.

This explains the outsized role of media institutions in contemporary conflict, such as  The New York Times preferencing of Palantir executives for scoops rather than whistleblowers, allowing Palantir to effectively sculpt the mediation of truth in tandem with one of the most prestigious papers of record in America. Both claim to be systems of record, to arbitrate fact from fiction. Both exercise enormous power in determining which narratives circulate and which are suppressed. When legacy media platforms editorial decisions about which conflicts to cover, which sources to cite, which framings to adopt, they become willing participants in hybrid warfare operations domestically and abroad.

The concentration of such narrative power in a small number of institutional actors creates dangerous vulnerabilities. When major media outlets fail to challenge the premises of military and intelligence operations, they become functionally complicit in their legitimisation. One striking instantiation of this recently was the news that the New York Times and Washington Post both knew of the upcoming illegal strikes on Venezuela and plan to capture its president, Maduro, in an act that drew widespread condemnation, and yet chose not to report on it.  The same institutional gatekeeping that once provided some check on state power can become an instrument of it, laundering official narratives through the credibility of journalistic independence.

This is not to suggest conspiratorial coordination. The dynamic is more structural than intentional. Access journalism creates dependencies. Source relationships generate obligations. The competitive pressure for scoops incentivises deference to official sources or higher-ranking sources. The result is a media ecosystem that, whatever the intentions of individual journalists, tends to reproduce rather than challenge the narratives of institutional power.

Implications for Counter-Terrorism and Policy

For those of us working in counter-terrorism and security research, these developments demand a fundamental reassessment of our analytical frameworks.

First, we must recognise that the technologies of surveillance and targeting cannot be neatly confined to legitimate counter-terrorism applications. The same capabilities that enable the disruption of genuine terrorist networks can be and are being repurposed for political surveillance, immigration enforcement, and the suppression of dissent. Technical capability tends toward maximal application absent robust institutional constraints and the dual-use of technologies or programs that may have had a more strictly counter-terrorism purpose originally for other domestic applications should be cause for concern.

Second, the concept of “terrorism” itself is being instrumentalised within hybrid warfare contexts. When the same analytical tools and targeting logics are applied to protest movements, immigrant communities, and political opposition as to genuine security threats, the category becomes a vector for repression rather than a meaningful analytical distinction. The expansion of FBI domestic terrorism designations to include categories defined more by political orientation than operational capability represents precisely this danger.

Third, the cognitive domain requires sustained analytical attention. The information environment through which publics understand conflict, threat, and security is itself a contested space. Disinformation, influence operations, and narrative manipulation are not peripheral to security concerns – they are central to how contemporary conflict is waged. Counter-terrorism research that ignores this dimension misses a fundamental aspect of the threat landscape.

Finally, we must attend to the question of democratic accountability. The speed at which ISTAR systems operate, the opacity of algorithmic decision-making, and the classified nature of their deployment create profound challenges for democratic oversight. When targeting decisions are made at machine speed, when surveillance operates through proprietary algorithms, when the categories of threat are determined by systems that resist public scrutiny, the possibility of meaningful accountability becomes increasingly remote.

Toward Resistance

The trajectory traced here is not inevitable. We must remember that technologies are social products, shaped by institutional choices, regulatory frameworks, and political struggle. The domestication of military surveillance capabilities is a policy choice, not a natural law.

What resistance looks like in this context remains contested. Some advocate for technical solutions like encryption, digital security practices and platform alternatives that resist centralised surveillance. Others focus on regulatory intervention in the form of legislation that constrains algorithmic decision-making, mandates transparency, establishes meaningful oversight mechanisms. Still others emphasise the need for broader political mobilisation against the national security state and its technological infrastructure.

None of these approaches is sufficient in isolation. The challenge is structural, embedded in the institutional arrangements that govern technology development, deployment, and oversight. Meaningful response requires simultaneous action across multiple domains: technical countermeasures, regulatory reform, political organising, and the patient work of public education about the systems that increasingly govern our lives.

What cannot be sustained is ignorance. The kill chains being constructed in our name, the surveillance apparatus expanding under the banner of security, the erosion of the boundaries between military and civilian, foreign and domestic; all these developments demand our attention and our response. The alternative, otherwise, is a world in which the cognitive domain itself becomes occupied territory.

Etienne Darcas is Program Lead for Rise to Peace. His research focuses on digital radicalization, hybrid threats, and algorithmic amplification of violent content.