...another new paper from the same source: Stealing Al-Qa'ida's Playbook

There's no ExecSum in this one, but I'll quote from the Foreward, which is by GEN (Ret) Wayne Downing:
As the Defense Science Board observed two years ago, an essential element of U.S. combating terrorism efforts must involve strategic communications composed of coordinated public diplomacy, public affairs, open military information operations (which include psychological operations), and classified operations.

The United States government reached a significant stage in the fight against jihadi inspired terrorism this past year when it decided to place a greater emphasis on fighting its ideological roots. Yet despite this appropriate course adjustment, the U.S. government and its Western allies generally do not know the main producers of this ideology and the significant issues that unite and divide the movement—information that is key to defeating it.

Our authors suggest ways to address this significant shortfall. Not only do they attempt to answer the who and what sort of questions in plain language; they also outline a highly original method for discerning the answers to these questions that has, up to now, been ignored or poorly used.

One of the best places to look for information regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the jihadi movement, Brachman and McCants argue, is in texts written by jihadi ideologues. Of course, a number of analysts inside and outside the U.S. government read texts like these for insight into al Qa`ida’s strategic thinking. But it has been my experience that many of the most useful texts have not received attention. And of those that do, there are often useful pieces of information that get overlooked. There are two reasons for this:

• First, there is an overabundance of texts. Since there is no metric yet for determining which works are important within the jihadi movement, text selection tends to be a very subjective process and minor thinkers sometimes receive more attention than they deserve. Moreover, the overabundance of texts and the paucity of analysts mean that the latter must often scan texts rapidly for important information, which is sometimes predetermined by their initial assumptions. Time and resources are not available for looking for information that challenges these assumptions.

• Second, useful pieces of information are overlooked because many analysts who are new to this literature do not know what to look for. As Brachman and McCants observe, jihadi leaders are remarkably open and blunt when discussing who their biggest competition is and what their PR vulnerabilities are. This is precisely the sort of information needed for crafting effective counterterrorism strategies. The authors of this article have given several concrete examples of what type of information to look for, making it easy for others to use their method.

If the jihadis are right in their assessment of geopolitics and the situation in the Middle East, overt U.S. military action or diplomacy can often be more harmful than helpful in the fight against jihadi inspired terrorism. Indeed, the jihadi ideologues surveyed in the article focus most of their attention on psychological operations to exploit our actions rather than on large scale, direct military action.

Understanding the vulnerabilities of the jihadi movement is the necessary prelude to defeating it. In this article, Brachman and McCants give us the tools and some recommendations to do just that.
Note that the authors are using similar methodology to that used by the author of the recent ICG paper I linked to in an earlier thread - that of exploiting the material openly published by the bad guys for insights that could potentially drive the development of effective operational measures against them.