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Letters & CommentsDavid Tucker
David Tucker is an associate professor in the Department of Defense Analysis and an instructor in the Homeland Security Master’s Degree Program, at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. Before coming to the Postgraduate School, he served in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict and as a Foreign Service officer in Africa and Europe. Dr. Tucker’s publications include “Terrorism, Networks, and Strategy: Why the Conventional Wisdom is Wrong” Homeland Security Affairs (June 2008); U.S. Special Operations Forces, with Christopher Lamb (Columbia University Press, August 2007); and Confronting the Unconventional: Innovation and Transformation in Military Affairs, (Letort Paper, U. S. Army War College, October 2006). He holds a PhD from the Claremont Graduate University.
Jihad Dramatically Transformed? Sageman on Jihad and the Internet
ABSTRACT:
In his book Leaderless Jihad, Marc Sageman claims, as the title indicates, that Jihad in the modern world is changing from a centrally organized and structured activity into a more dispersed, decentralized movement in which small groups self-organize to carry out attacks. In making this argument, Sageman claims that the internet “has dramatically transformed the structure and dynamic of the evolving threat of global Islamic terrorism by changing the nature of terrorists’ interactions.”This essay looks at the available research and questions Sageman’s claim that the internet is transforming how terrorists interact.
SUGGESTED CITATION:
Tucker, David. “Jihad Dramatically Transformed? Sageman on Jihad and the Internet.” Homeland Security Affairs VI, no. 1 (January 2010)http://www.hsaj.org/?article=6.1.3