Terrorism Gone Viral The Attack in Garland, Texas, and Beyond

In Garland, Texas, Elton Simpson fired off a series of tweets declaring his loyalty to the Islamic State and urged others to do the same. Simpson included a hashtag "TexasAttack," previewing his decision to terrorize the Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest that Islamists on social media had singled out as a target. In his final tweet, just minutes before the attack, Simpson told his followers to follow Junaid Hussain or also known as al-Britani, a 20-year-old British foreign fighter embedded with ISIS in Syria, and one of the group's top recruiters who has been linked to the CENTCOM Twitter hack in January of this year. Hussain was quick to praise the Garland attack and issued a warning that same night stating, "The knives have been sharpened. Soon we will come to your streets with death and slaughter." This attack exemplifies a new era in which terrorism has gone viral. Extremists issued a call to arms to attack an event. A radicalized follower clearly heeded that call, and he took steps to make sure his act of violence would spread and motivate more. Social media networks have become an extension of the Islamist terror battlefield overseas, turning home-grown extremists into sleeper operatives and attackers.