Thanks to everyone for the great research leads. It’s amazing how behind I am on this stuff. I am just figured out how to use Microsoft Outlook. And then they spring all this new technology on me.

MCalvin, thanks for the note on Clickatell, it’s amazing I just start getting unsolicited advertising text messages on my phone last week and wondered how I ended up getting it. I guess that will be the new version of spam.

Ron Humphrey, you are exactly right. The planning and “how to” aspect will be a big one moving forward as I would imagine you can’t really train this very well right now. Another thing I am wondering about is how you stay ahead of the cycle in new media. The military fretted for years about how to get in front of the 24 hour news cycle, I can’t imagine the process for staying out in front of a 20 second information cycle.

David, thanks for those research links. I used to work with the founder of Jihadica and I am a big fan, I remember him telling me about his idea of creating it. He was the one that put me onto Small Wars Journal a couple years back and now these two locations are the only two things I read regularly. I think the days of academic journals with a 6-month turn around for publication are numbered.

Mike F, thanks for the Iraq article, Great stuff, it’s funny, it seems all media is moving to phones and laptops worldwide. And
Hacksaw, didn’t know they had an office but I’ll check it out.

I’m really interested in engaging small vulnerable audiences overseas. I brought this up a year ago in an article I wrote on Small Wars that breaking terrorist recruitment cycles requires local engagement inside of countries rather than nation wide engagement by State Department types meeting with official government folks at cocktail parties. Many thought this was impossible and told me this was a silly idea, but the more I learn about these new media platforms, the more I think local engagement could be possible. Still need to do some more research but the paper I’m publishing in the next two weeks ends my foreign fighter research for a while and I still think the number one issue is engaging audiences at the source of recruitment. Thanks for everyone’s help!