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NOVEMBER 2016 THE ATLANTIC
saturated with news of the latest ISIS vic-
tory or atrocity, helping to fuel a sense
of the Islamic State’s momentum. There
was no time to distinguish false stories
from real ones. Instead, each new post
contributed to the sense that northern
Iraq had simply collapsed in the face of
the ISIS onslaught.
And then it did. Terror engulfed
Mosul, a city of 1.8 million people.
The 25,000-strong Iraqi garrison may
have been equipped with an arsenal
of American-made Abrams tanks and
Black Hawk helicopters, but it was
disoriented by reports of the enemy’s
speed and ferocity. Already beset by low
morale and long-festering corruption, it
crumpled under the advance of a mere
1,500 ISIS fighters, equipped mostly with
small arms. The Islamic State was left
to occupy the city virtually uncontested,
seizing vast quantities of weapons and
supplies, including some 2,300 Humvees.
In the abrupt surrender of Mosul and
collapse of defending Iraqi forces, one
could find echoes of the similarly shock
-
ing fall of France to the 1940 German
blitzkrieg. The Germans relied upon the
close coordination of tanks and planes,
linked together by radio. Radio gave
their forces speed—and also the ability
to sow fear beyond the front lines.
ISIS spread a similar panic online.
Immaculately staged photos, filtered
through Instagram, transformed a rag
-
tag force riding in dusty pickup trucks
into something larger than life. Armies
of Twitter bots twisted small, one-sided
skirmishes into significant battlefield
victories. Hashtags were created and
pushed (and others hijacked) to shape
and hype the story. Through this fu
-
sion of activities, ISIS stumbled upon
something new. It became, in the words
of Jared Cohen, a former State Depart
-
ment staffer and now the director of Jig-
saw (Google’s internal think tank), “the
first terrorist group to hold both physical
and digital territory.”
But instead of promoting a new album
or a movie release, #AllEyesOnISIS
announced the 2014 invasion of north-
ern Iraq—a bloody takeover that still
haunts global politics two years later.
Revealing a military operation via
Twitter would seem a strange strategy,
but it should not be surprising given the
source. The self-styled Islamic State owes
its existence to what the internet has
become with the rise of social media—a
vast chamber of online sharing and con
-
versation and argumentation and indoc-
trination, echoing with billions of voices.
Social media has empowered ISIS
recruiting, helping the group draw at
least 30,000 foreign fighters, from
some 100 countries, to the battlefields
of Syria and Iraq. It has aided the seed
-
ing of new franchises in places ranging
from Libya and Afghanistan to Nigeria
and Bangladesh. It was the vehicle ISIS
used to declare war on the United States:
The execution of the American journal
-
ist James Foley was de
liberately choreo-
graphed for viral distribution. And it is
how the group has inspired acts of terror
on five continents.
So intertwined are the Islamic
State’s online propaganda and real-life
operations that one can hardly be sep
-
arated from the other. As ISIS invaders
swept across northern Iraq two years
ago, they spammed Twitter with tri
-
umphal announcements of freshly
conquered towns and horrific images
of what had happened to those who
fought back. A smartphone app that the
group had created allowed fans to fol
-
low along easily at home and link their
social-media accounts in solidarity,
permitting ISIS to post automatically on
their behalf. J. M. Berger, a fellow with
George Washington University’s Pro
-
gram on Extremism, counted as many
as 40,000 tweets originating from the
app in a single day as black-clad mili
-
tants bore down on the city of Mosul.
Media reports from the region were
It will not be the last. The fate of the
self-declared caliphate, now under the
assault of nearly two dozen national
militaries, is uncertain. Yet the group
has already proved something that
should concern any observer of war
and peace, law and anarchy. While the
Islamic State has shown savvy in its
use of social media, it is the technology
itself—not any unique genius on the part
of the jihadists—that lies at the heart of
the group’s disruptive power and outsize
success. Other groups will follow.
And not just terrorist groups. This is
only the beginning of a larger revolution,
one that is already starting to reshape the
operations of small-time gangs on one
end of the spectrum, and the political
and military strategies of heavily armed
superpowers on the other.
More than a year ago, we set out to
understand the use of social media as
both a tool in conflict and a shaper of it,
tracking how online chatter has begun
to intersect with real-life violence in
dozens of armed confrontations around
the globe. In doing so, we sought to un
-
tangle a seeming contradiction. The
internet has long been celebrated for its
power to bring people together. Yet as it
turns out, this same technology is easily
weaponized. Smartphones and social
apps have clearly altered the nuts and
bolts of violent conflict, from recruiting
to battlefield reporting. But the great
-
est effects may be more fundamental,
expanding the causes and possibly the
incidence of war, and extending its
reach. Social-media platforms reinforce
“us versus them” narratives, expose vul
-
nerable people to virulent ideologies,
and inflame even long-dormant hatreds.
They create massive groundswells of
popular opinion that are nearly im-
possible to predict or control.
Social media has already revolution
-
ized everything from dating to business
to politics. Now it is reshaping war itself.
“A BOND OF
PERPETUAL PEACE”
War, as the 19th-century military theo-
rist Carl von Clausewitz famously put it,
is simply the continuation of politics by
other means. Social media, by democ
-
ratizing the spread of information and
erasing the boundaries of time and dis
-
tance, has expanded the means, trans-
forming war to an extent not seen since
the advent of the telegraph.
LIKE MOST EVERYTHING
TODAY, THE CAMPAIGN
WAS LAUNCHED WITH A
HASHTAG.
