Latest in Paris attacks
Three data-driven suggestions to move past the lone-wolf terrorist concept, with implications for how we design better concepts for understanding and preventing contemporary terrorism in the future.
BRUSSELS, Belgium—As the escalator rises out of the Molenbeek subway station, the first sounds you hear are children laughing and calling out to one another. With entrances to the metro at either end of a row of townhouses, you are left with the unlikely impression of a village square. Here young children ride bicycles and teach each other to balance on hover boards. Older men play cricket, some in button-down shirts, some wearing South Asian salwar kameez. A younger boy practices bowling (that’s “pitching” in cricket) as he watches them.
Dan Byman argues that the failure to integrate refugees will remain the largest issue in addressing concerns of terrorism in the future and that, though there is some risk in accepting refugees, they are a risk worth taking.
If you want to understand why the foreign policy debate in the 2016 presidential election sounds the way it does, take a look at the polls.
The attack in Brussels is another sobering indicator of the emergent European front in the fight against the Islamic State.
Legislators in France are eyeing the fight between Apple and the FBI in San Bernardino, but they aren't waiting on efforts to impose heavy penalties on technology companies that fail to cooperate in decrypting communications relating to terrorism investigations.
On Friday, February 19, the Constitutional Council upheld two articles of the state-of-emergency law—meeting bans and warrantless searches—as constitutional. Separately, the French Parliament extended the state of emergency through the end of May.
The National Assembly voted this week to adopt an amendment that would enshrine the state of emergency in the French Constitution and extend denaturalization to dual-nationals born in France who are convicted of terrorism.
Marc Hecker explains the need for a unified European response to the terrorism threat facing the continent.
Colin Geraghty of Georgetown argues that the French government's response to the Paris attacks is moving in the wrong direction, playing into the narrative of the Islamic State and making the terrorism problem worse in the long-run.