Ben Makuch Availability of manuals and instructions on less moderated apps and forums is making extremist content accessible. A spate of recent vigilante and extremist attacks in the US have highlighted how the booming availability of internet resources is a growing national security concern. Experts and world governments have been sounding the alarm on digital radicalization as accessibility to materials such as assassination manuals, files for 3D printed guns, or something as simple as ChatGPT grows. During the early days of the war on terror, obtaining literature and guidance on lone actor terrorist attacks from an organization like al-Qaida could require more obscure dark web access or specific tradecraft from harder to reach parts of the internet. But in 2025, on apps such as Telegram or Discord, which are downloadable and have limited barriers for entry, extremists and militant organizations of all political ideologies are regularly sharing PDFs or archives of military and insurgency skills primed for do-it-yourself terrorism. (…) Notably, while IS said it did not direct the terrorist attack in New Orleans, it did claim that their online propaganda and content had inspired the attacker. And these instructional terror guides are highly specific: everything from picking the target, to tailoring the best type of attack to that target, to the weapons and operational security to carry it out, are inside many of these digital resources. It’s not only IS and other jihadist terror groups spreading these kinds of manuals. At its inception, neo-Nazi terror group the Base hosted an entire digital trove of documents on guerrilla warfare, US Marine training, interrogation tactics, counter-surveillance techniques, bomb making and chemical weapons creation. More recently, Terrorgram, a proscribed white supremacist terrorist entity, seeded assassination lists across multiple platforms and frequently released guides outlining how to attack critical infrastructure, carry out mass shootings, bomb cell towers, derail trains and carry out broader hate crimes. “Damaging railroads, the veins of the beast system, is no casual affair and is time/labor intensive,” said one of the Terrorgram guides obtained by the Guardian. “It would likely require a decent chunk of explosives.” Cody Zoschak, a senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said he finds instructional manuals created by terrorist groups themselves the mos
via guardian: Rise in vigilante attacks in US highlight growing online DIY terrorism resources