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The so-called Islamic State recently released a new propaganda video featuring iconic images of Melbourne, interspersed with explosions and IS fighters brandishing firearms in urban combat. What to make of such developments? Should Australia be worried?

The first and most important thing to remember with any new video by IS or a similar group is that it’s pure propaganda, and propaganda is the lifeblood of terrorists. So we need to look beyond the propaganda and what IS wants us to see, to understand what they’re trying to do and why.

Naming or showing specific locations isn’t a new entry in the terrorist propaganda playbook. In 2011 Al Qaeda featured the Sydney Opera House on the cover of its Inspire magazine. In the September issue of the English-language version of its latest magazine, Rumiyah, IS featured a rather unusual ‘poem’ including an apparently random list of Australian place names beginning with the letter B, along with some iconic landmarks. The French, German and Bahasa Indonesian versions of the magazine included the same piece, but with local placenames. As all marketing professionals know, adding local culture and relevance is important to engage with your audience. IS hopes that this might inspire local sympathisers to carry out attacks in its name.

Australia has been named as a terrorist target before. Al-Qaeda looked at conducting an attack during the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and plots were uncovered to attack Holsworthy Barracks in Sydney and targets in Melbourne. The 10 Islamist terrorist plots disrupted by authorities in Australia in the past two years—including the 2016 ANZAC plot in Melbourne—show that the intent remains, but that authorities and businesses are alert to the threat and are working to safeguard against attacks.

We’ve experienced four terrorist attacks during this time, but all at a very low level. Authorities will take this latest threat seriously, but they’ll examine it in context, comparing it with other threat indicators and the intent and capability of local actors.

The latest IS video tells us two things. First, the terrorist group’s ability to direct attacks on these targets is limited, so it’s instead looking to ‘inspire’ others to undertake attacks it can claim. Australia has experienced four such attacks in two years, none of which were directed by IS, but all of which it celebrated as its own.

Second, the video demonstrates IS trying to distract both its supporters and the broader public from what’s really happening to its so-called caliphate and self-declared ‘holy war’. The physical caliphate is essentially no more, having been diminished to a series of safe havens and outposts, and IS has lost the conventional military battle seen since 2014. IS has lost most of its territory and is in retreat, with military defeat likely in the coming year.

The demise of IS as an ostensible ‘state’ highlights another important and interesting factor highlighted by the new video: IS is once again attempting to reinvent its image to compensate for its losses.

Two and a half years ago, Baghdadi infamously proclaimed his so-called state from Mosul’s Great Mosque. Then, and through much of 2015, IS propaganda was dominated by images of the promised land of the ‘caliphate’, showing a comfortable lifestyle, complete with luxury homes and professions. IS offered would-be recruits a migration destination, with its territory differentiating it from its competitors in Islamist extremism.

The latest video couldn’t be more different. The environment is dusty and hard, with IS members shown fighting in the desert and villages, and undertaking attacks. That’s IS attempting to change the narrative. It did that before, when the battle started to turn against it, proclaiming the forthcoming ‘end of days’ with a great battle. Now, as its territory disappears along with some of its supporters, the narrative is morphing a second time to show IS as a fairly standard small insurgency group focusing on attacks.

In this video IS is saying that it’s now focused just on doing what it can to mount small attacks, and it calls upon its supporters to do the same, wherever they are.

IS will continue to focus on inciting and, if it can, directing attacks outside the Middle East to shore up its support base. Australia will remain a target. Some attacks will likely succeed. That’s why it’s important to continue to focus our efforts on removing IS’ base in the Middle East and denying the opportunity that provides to build terrorist networks and skills.

Lone wolf attacks are nothing new, but they’ve become more common and increasingly harder to predict over the past 12 months. The threat picture is disparate; some plots show evidence of external direction and coordination, others of collaboration with contacts abroad, while some are one person attacks. For the authorities, a major concern is the low-level of sophistication needed to plan an attack that requires barely any funding, little knowledge of sites and venues, and only rudimentary weapons such as kitchen knives, home-made explosives or motor vehicles. These low barriers to entry have contributed towards copycat attacks.

The profiles of recent attackers and their connection to their purported organisation have called into question our understanding of lone actor terrorist attacks, and how they should be responded to. We need to better understand how these different types of attacks are triggered and how to identify key factors that can prevent similar attacks.

Lone wolf attackers are very different from those participating in organised or directed terrorist cells. Charlie Hebdo, Paris, Brussels, Istanbul and Ankara bombs can all be described as directed attacks. Man Haron Monis (Sydney), Omar Mateen (Florida), Thomas Mair (Yorkshire), Anders Breivik (Oslo), Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel (Nice), Ihsas Khan (Minto)—to name but a few—were all lone actors, and probably not part of a wider cell in their countries.

Directed attacks have been more lethal (PDF). The perpetrators appeared to be working together, demonstrating a strong network of committed radicals across the cities. Unlike lone actors, they possess relevant training, access to materials and in-depth knowledge of how to operate lethal weaponry. In the Paris and Brussels cases, the attackers were previously known to the authorities for various degrees of criminality. The fact that they weren’t considered priority cases raises concern over who the authorities are focused on, and perhaps warrants re-examination.

Clearly there’s no specific profile of a terrorist. Moreover, the degree to which an attacker is politically or ideologically motivated should be reflected in our response to the incident. All the lone actors named above appear to have been motivated by a mixture of political and personal grievances, sometimes combined with possible mental health issues. Some were fascinated with mass murder, some with the myths of jihadi heroism, and some fuelled by anger at Western foreign policies. So it’s difficult to draw a clear line between those using terrorism to air grievances and anger and those who are fully radicalised and committed to a particular ideology or cause. It’s just as important to unpack the motivations behind an attack as it is to respond to it, for this might help identify how to strengthen authorities’ approaches towards preventing future incidents.

For example, the appeal of ‘jihadi cool’ provides an incentive for an individual to morph into the hero figure portrayed in ISIS propaganda. That has enabled lonely, angry and volatile individuals to attach their grievances to a bigger cause, and then to seek retribution whilst attaining grandeur and status. Testimonies from friends, diary entries, internet search histories and galleries of selfies, suggest perpetrators closer to narcissistic adolescents than radical followers of a faith to which they pledge their souls.

Man Haron Monis is a clear example of an individual with a great propensity to showcase himself as being part of something bigger and greater than his reality. His actions prior to December 2014 exposed him as a relentless attention seeker who conflated his personal grievances with his view of the heavenly glow of Islam. The performative nature of his protests unfortunately culminated in the Lindt Café siege. Similarly, Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to Hezbollah during his 911 call, exhibiting not only his confusion about what he was doing, but also demonstrating the incoherent nature of these attacks. Lahouaiej Bouhlel was notoriously promiscuous, irreligious, and only recently interested in radical Islam. Jessica Stern’s research found that often the attacker starts out feeling humiliated and angry that they are viewed as second class. It validates their desire to take on a new identity, often on behalf of a purported spiritual cause; ‘the weak become strong…rage turns into conviction.’

Those individuals exhibit delusions of grandeur and elevated personal grievance, with a willingness to exploit others supported by a sense of entitlement. An ideology such as jihadism is one that lends itself to this narrative and becomes an enabler to justify the narcissist’s actions to the point of violent extremism. Narcissism becomes deadly when destructive impulses are transformed into noble, moral acts.

Rather than being ideologically committed to the cause, the current wave of lone actors is motivated by the ease with which they can attain a symbolic status, justifying an attack by attaching it to a wider cause. It works for both parties; not only does it give the attacker more perceived individual importance,  it also adds to the perceived influence of the organisation as more dangerous and more of a threat through racking up numbers of attacks.

Trying to thwart unpredictable attacks is complex and challenging for authorities. Distinguishing between lone attackers who are deeply committed to the ideology of their chosen organisation and those who are franchising the organisation to exorcise personal demons is important, so we don’t contribute to the propaganda being disseminated. Waiting for, and expecting, terrorist organisations to claim an event may unduly—and paradoxically—give a longer lease of life to both the organisation and the perpetrator.

There’s a debate going on in the US at the moment that isn’t attracting much commentary here. While it’s a touch arcane, it’s worthy of public discussion. The question is the organisational arrangement for America’s cyber security, cyber offence and signals intelligence capabilities.

The Pentagon and the US intelligence community are in the blue corner, urging President Obama to split military Cyber Command functions away from the intelligence gathering National Security Agency. Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is in the red corner, pledging to thwart any attempt to split the two bodies.

Not unusually, Senator McCain has a strong view. His opening statement at a hearing on national security encryption and cyber matters didn’t mince words:

‘Here we go again: another major policy matter has apparently been decided with no consultation whatsoever between the White House or the Department of Defense with this committee. I urge Secretary Carter to provide this committee and the Congress the details of this plan and his reasoning for supporting it. And I hope he will explain what has changed since the last time the administration rejected this idea in 2013…I would remind them that this committee does not take well to being stonewalled while their colleagues in the administration leak information to the press.’

Apart from the Washington beltway shenanigans on public display here, there are some substantive issues underpinning the spat. The organisation split was first discussed in public three years ago, in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks. The Director of the NSA (DIRNSA) wears two hats; as well as being in charge of the signals intelligence (‘sigint’) gathering function, he has command of the military computer network activities that fall under the Cyber Command.

That command function sits properly under military control because computer network attack can be used to deliver lethal force—in principle, if not to date in practice—through attacks on systems controlling infrastructure where physical harm could result. And, as I’ve argued previously, the military use of cyberattacks is useful as an adjunct to ‘kinetic’ activities in the physical world, by disrupting the ability of adversaries to work out what’s going on and respond in a timely way.

But there’s no requirement for sigint to be under military control. DIRNSA’s counterparts in the ‘five eyes’ intelligence community, including our own Australian Signals Directorate, are all civilians. That doesn’t seem to hinder those agencies from fulfilling their roles, including sigint support to the military. And it’s that military support role that provides an argument for a split. During the 2013 debate, the Director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council argued that there’s an inherent conflict of interest in having the same person oversee sigint support to the military and command its cyber forces:

‘Imagine if the commander of US Pacific Command were the leading source of information on the Chinese military threat, had the ear of Congress on China policy, ran covert military operations against China, and could decide what information on China was classified. This perverse concentration of power is similar to where the United States has found itself on cyber policy.’

That’d be a strong argument if supporting military cyber operations was all the NSA does. But there’s much more to its role, and I think the rest of its portfolio provides an even better rationale for a civilian Director.

Modern sigint intrudes into civil society through the monitoring of domestic communications, especially in support of counter-terrorism investigations. Those activities came to the fore with the Snowden leaks, which also revealed the (dis)function of the relevant civilian oversight mechanisms. There’s something disquieting about the military presiding over activities that impinge on the civil population and which have civilian oversight.

In 2013 the Obama administration decided against a split, arguing on the grounds of efficiency; ‘without the dual-hat arrangement, elaborate procedures would have to be put in place to ensure that effective coordination continued and avoid creating duplicative capabilities in each organisation’. That argument reflects the historical relationship between sigint and cyber.

The sigint agencies were pulled into cyberspace early on because of the convergence of communication and computer technologies, which saw communications travelling on computer networks as well as ‘traditional’ telecommunication channels. The lure of communications ‘data at rest’ (like emails sitting on computers), which removed the need for real time interception of signals, was too much to resist. The sigint folks started to develop the tools and techniques required to exploit cyberspace.

In that sense there’s a natural synergy between sigint and military cyber operations. Whatever the organisational structure, an exchange of skills and expertise between the two is almost inevitable, and colocation makes sense. But there’s no obvious reason for both functions to be headed by the same person. Making DIRNSA a civilian position would make for better governance, and Cyber Command could properly remain a military position. We’re not privy to why the Obama administration has changed its mind in the past three years, but I think they’ve got it right this time.

France’s presidential campaign is heating up, with terrorism constituting one of the key debate topics. In the past 18 months, four terrorist attacks have targeted French territories, from Paris to the small suburban city of Normandy. Fear is tangible amongst the whole population and candidates to the French Presidency must suggest solutions to this critical issue.

However, as the political debates intensify toward the election in April and May 2017, discussions on how to fight terrorism are taking a wrong turn. French public opinion is already exasperated by the strategies taken by politicians; to either scare people about the loss of their national identity or to blindly support the government’s anti-terrorist policies. So far none of the candidates’ declarations have aimed to answer people’s three main questions: how to tackle the roots of radicalisation, how judges should sentence terrorists and how France can efficiently manage the cost of the extended state of emergency.

Politicians have only recently included terrorism in their debates. Questioning France’s response to terrorist attacks was almost taboo before the 14 July Nice attack. In moments of grief, the French population has gathered in solidarity, strongly uniting behind state security policies. Similarly, politicians didn’t challenge the government’s response to the attacks. That consensus no longer stands.

Nicolas Sarkozy, President of the ring-wing party Les Républicains and an official candidate in the presidential election, started the criticism. Sarkozy argues that President François Hollande has underestimated the means required for effective antiterrorist policies. But the Répulicains party is divided between two election strategies regarding terrorism. Sarkozy unveiled his program in his book published on 26 August, Tout pour la France. He demands less immigration and a strict assertion of France’s identity against the minority of Muslims who challenge secularism. Sarkozy’s strategy is to toughen his program to bring back his former electorate, which has partly turned to the far-right. On the other hand, Alain Juppé, Sarkozy’s main opponent in the party, follows a traditional centre-right strategy. He too criticises Hollande’s antiterrorist policies, but argues that Sarkozy plays on people’s fear and threatens France’s impressive solidarity.

On the other hand, Hollande focuses his communication strategy on the improvement of the French economy. Growth has—slowly—returned and unemployment is starting to decrease. Hollande still believes that economic and social issues should be core topics of his presidential campaign, over terrorism. Ministers even assert that challenging current anti-terrorist policies threatens national security.

By refusing to challenge or justify the government’s anti-terrorist policies, socialist candidates, and more broadly all left-wing candidates including the far left and the Greens, risk leaving this critical issue in the hands of right and far-right candidates. Such electoral strategies have been unsuccessful because they don’t address people’s real concerns about terrorism. This is detrimental to France’s democracy.

No candidate has a clear counter-radicalisation strategy, especially for teenagers and prisoners. Last June the General Inspector of French jails published a very critical report on the ability of prisons to reduce the increasing problem of penitentiary radicalisation. Candidates should fully tackle this problem, which deeply concerns the French public. There’s a broader question of how the French judicial system can firmly deal with members of terrorist groups without threatening the rule of law during the state of emergency. In a speech on 8 September, François Hollande tried to explain how his anti-terrorist policies haven’t weakened the French constitution and civil rights, but he was vague and unconvincing.

The candidates’ strategies should also respond to the population’s questions about the economic and human costs of security policies during an extended state of emergency. The first duty of democratic States is to ensure the protection of their population, whatever the cost. However, the state of emergency is increasingly expensive. For instance, the deployment of only military troops in France’s main cities, the Opération Sentinelle, costs €1 million a day. France’s budget has easily managed these costs so far, but future voters need to be reassured about how the budget impact of an extension of the state of emergency until the presidential elections next May.

The human cost of the state of emergency is also worrying, with soldiers and policemen exhausted after months of relentless patrols across French territory. The public expects concrete explanations on how the state of emergency will be extended. Presidential candidates should respond to these concerns in their strategies.

The public also wants to know the financial impact of terrorism on the French economy, which is just starting to improve after years of crisis. Tourism is a crucial activity for the national economy, France being the world’s first tourist destination. The impact of terrorist attacks has been considerable, with 9.9% fewer tourists in Paris so far this year.

Polls repeatedly show that a large majority of the population don’t want Sarkozy or Hollande as candidates, but none of the candidates’ declarations seem to tackle terrorism the way French public opinion expects. Instead, the most vocal candidates are currently playing on people’s fear, for instance with the burkini ban. French communities have remained united so far, but unaddressed political divisions on security policies and national identity are actually playing into the terrorists’ game.

I was thrilled to see that ‘ASPI suggests’ recently made reference to Star Wars—the film series, not the missile defence system—by way of a September 2009 article from The Economist on the lack of counterinsurgency tactics in the original sci-fi blockbusters. The publication explained that the movie-going public ‘hate insurgency and counterinsurgency.’

This might have been true in the era of Star Wars’ cinematic release in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, and nuclear war with the Soviet Union still a prevalent concern. But it couldn’t be further from the truth in 2015. In fact, we’re fascinated by insurgency these days. Conceivably, that’s because we are bombarded with news about rebel groups all over the world every week, be they in Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Thailand, Kurdistan or further afield.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the popular science fiction of the day says a lot about the society in which it emerged. Without wading into the great depths of literature, I’ll offer a few print examples: HG Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) is a diatribe on industrial relations and socialism, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) emerged just after Europe had been torn apart by totalitarianism, and William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) was published just three years after IBM released its first personal computer and the internet was in its infancy. A review of recent popular films reveals the ongoing fascination with insurgency and terrorism.

Interestingly, in recent insurgency-themed science fiction, the protagonists are often the ones waging asymmetric war against the overbearing, centralised power. Recent examples include the Hunger Games, Divergent, Red Dawn (the remake)—even The Matrix. I would argue that insurgency fascinates us because of the morally ambiguous challenge it presents. The modern Middle East–North Africa theatre is a perfect example: the West provided support for insurgencies against Muammar Gaddafi and, in the early stages, against Bashar al-Assad. Nowadays, determining which Syrian rebel groups are ‘freedom fighters’ and which are ‘terrorists’ has worse odds than successfully navigating an asteroid field. We have made political choices between supporting status quo dictatorships or pro-democracy activists—just look at Egypt in 2011–13. During the Cold War, the West supported anti-Communist insurgencies, including the jihadist mujahedeen in the Soviet–Afghan War.

Star Wars is useful for analogies because of its pervasive cultural presence. Recent articles have used Star Wars to comment on cyber security, military strategy, religion and just war. It’s easy to turn it into a terrorism caricature, too: Luke Skywalker was ‘radicalised’ after the murder of his Aunt and Uncle by ‘foreign military’ forces and was subsequently responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of imperials (and probably civilians!) aboard the Death Star.

As an avid Star Wars fan, my immediate response to The Economist article was that insurgency/counterinsurgency discourse is more pervasive in more recent Star Wars-related media.  The TV series Star Wars Rebels, and the novel ‘Tarkin’ are examples of texts that engage with insurgency themes. But those are contemporary texts, as well. Even in the same ‘galaxy’ as it were, the themes have changed according to the interests of real-world geopolitics.

But if we’re going to be honest, the original Star Wars movies were about fighting fascist dictatorship and the many uses of laser swords. Painting the Rebels as terrorists is just ironic humour, because part of the premise of the film involves accepting that they were fighting for freedom from tyranny. At their best, the films present a canvas upon which to test our ideals for the real world.

For example, there’s a facetious debate over whether Alderaan was a military or civilian target when the planet was destroyed by the Death Star in the original film. Arguing over the merits of Imperial strategy is really a discussion about how far we might be willing to go to preserve our own global political system and the moral minefield that represents.

So when we analyse Star Wars as a counterterrorism text, we’re actually asking under what circumstances we’d support either the Empire or the Rebels. Under which circumstances is the rebel either a freedom fighter or a terrorist? There are no clear answers. We’re constantly debating the merits of security versus freedom, and contemporary terrorism challenges this anew. That’s what makes it such an interesting topic for film.

In Episode VII: The Force Awakens, more than 30 years will have passed since the death of the Emperor—both in the Star Wars galaxy and in our own. A new generation has emerged to continue the struggle between security and freedom; between tyranny and resistance. Where each side will draw the line will be interesting to see. But one thing we can safely assume is that 2015’s audiences will enjoy every minute of it.