David,
Thanks for sharing. In the era of big data though, I wonder how much of the challenges of searching for the 'lone wolf' can be minimized insofar as identifying and detecting a specific pattern of behavior that indicates a potential threat. Corporations have more or less mastered this as far as directed marketing campaigns (one amusing example being a father discovering his daughter's pregnancy through a retail corporation's mailed advertisements). If we know the causes of radicalization, we can in theory develop measures to identify and interdict individuals as they progress through the radicalization process.
The other problem is that law enforcement agencies are not intelligence agencies. Law enforcement is built around criminal conduct, mostly after the fact, and our civil rights and legal protections reflect this frame of thinking. Intelligence however is (mostly) in the business of predictive analysis, and this requires a very different kind of engagement within the operational area. The Threat Matrix by Garrett Graff has a chapter about the FBI's transformation from a criminal-procedural paradigm to a domain intelligence paradigm. Historically, the FBI trained its agents to investigate attacks after the fact, and the FBI by all accounts is very good at that. But intelligence requires casting a wide net, developing a sustained and engaged presence in the operational area, and a measure of risk-taking.
I think this goes back to process - despite the extensive academic research on this subject, the U.S. government does not have a systematic process to address this problem as a preventative effort. Instead, we wait for the next 'lone wolf' to attack and we sit around blaming each other for failure.
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