This article was originally published in Dutch in 2017 and has been translated and updated in October 2026.
- The life expectancy of a terrorist leader has never been so short
- Organisations such as IS are evolving into small, scattered cells
- Criminals without bosses organise and fund themselves
- The terrorist weapons of the future are not bombs but computers
- Well-educated killers herald a new era of high-tech danger
The word terrorist conjures up images of bearded men with black flags. But the terrorists of the future are evolving. Although they may still unite under the banner of IS, and the bloodshed will no doubt intensify over time, acts of terror will increasingly take place in the context of cybercrime and high-tech, home-grown killers. In this article, we explain why and how this new type of terrorist is on the rise.
The life expectancy of a terrorist leader has never been so short
On 17 May 2016, Mullah Mohammad Ali, an Al Qaeda leader, was killed by a US military drone in southern Afghanistan. On 26 July of that year, Hafiz Saeed Khan, a senior IS leader in Pakistan and Afghanistan, died in a drone strike. And on 30 August, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the official spokesman of IS and its leader in the province of Aleppo, Syria, was killed in a Russian air strike, a major blow to the would-be terrorist state.
These were not chance events; they were part of an established pattern. The US and Russia were focusing on the masterminds behind the terror, and it was becoming ever harder for these leaders to survive in the upper ranks of terrorist organisations. That is good news. To survive, groups such as IS, Al Shabaab and Boko Haram depend on cunning, charismatic leadership. When the heads of these snakes are cut off, the whole organisation grinds to a halt. Without these high-ranking leaders, it is difficult to recruit fighters, plan killings and carry out attacks. Unfortunately, the terrorists of the future are already adapting to this new, deadly reality.
Organisations such as IS are evolving into small, scattered cells
Because these terrorists know that the major powers are able to track down and eliminate their leaders, they have started to apply a new organisational strategy. A system that depends on a single person or a small group of people can easily be shut down by removing the head. But when an organisation has a bottom-up structure, removing one person is not effective. Rather than snakes, these new terror cells are reminiscent of the heads of a hydra. Cut one off and two grow back: there is no way to kill the beast like that.
Criminals without bosses organise and fund themselves
The terrorists of the future have no boss and organise and fund themselves. And just as in business, the people in the lower ranks are the experts. They know everything that is going on. Terrorist leaders realise that the people at the top lack the operational detail, expertise and experience to plan and carry out attacks, especially in an environment of heightened vigilance. Just as agile companies have realised they can do without expensive middle and meta managers, terrorist organisations now understand this all too well.
In the eyes of these killers, small is the new big. They know that small groups are easy to fund and hard to detect. They know that the less these cells communicate, the less they know about each other, and the smaller the chance that uncovering one group will lead to the discovery of others. The terrorists of the future are not the stereotypical men with long beards and long robes. They are former criminals with links to cybercrime. The kind of people you are more likely to bump into in a nightclub on a Friday than in a mosque.
“Many of them lived like gangsters, had an epiphany and became religious. But their connections to crime are not meant to disappear.”
- Peter Neumann, King’s College London
IS adapts quickly. Al Qaeda still tries to recruit the devout with important connections, but IS targets street criminals, fraudsters and drug dealers. Think, for example, of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the leader of the 2015 Paris attacks, and Brahim Abdeslam, the suicide bomber in whose bar drugs were allegedly traded. These men were not known for their piety but for their criminality. They had recently been radicalised, yet were still involved in crime and in activities that jihadists generally steer clear of. Their criminal skills and connections made them much harder to stop.
A frightening new trend is emerging. The terrorists of the future are not trained in madrasas but at universities in Belgium and France. They are intelligent and home-grown. This new type of killer comes mainly from Europe’s disaffected youth, especially those with a minor criminal record and connections in the underworld. They are skilled at evading the authorities and know their way around the urban, Western world. We are no longer dealing with the long-bearded radicals of the past two decades, but with ‘cool’ gangsters. You would not pick them out on the street. They blend into the crowd, where they can use their high-tech skills for the purposes of terror.
The terrorist weapons of the future are not bombs but computers
This new type of terrorist does not use weapons of war. A terrorist organisation needs experts to make bombs. Bomb-making is a specialism and there are few places where it can be learned, so the death of a skilled specialist is a setback for the organisation he belongs to. Like a terror leader, a bomb expert is often a high-value target.
Unlike explosives, AK-47s and radioactive material, the weapons of the future can be found everywhere. Learning to use them is possible anywhere too, because a laptop is easy to buy and you can take a computer course anywhere. Technology and learning materials are relatively cheap. In fact, the world cannot function without hundreds of millions of IT students, computer scientists, programmers, developers and so on. Unlike bomb-makers, the smart terrorists of the future do not need to hide their knowledge. They do not need to smuggle or steal anything, yet they could still bring a whole city to a standstill. Their equipment can never be fully controlled or banned, so they can get hold of weapons easily and inconspicuously. The new IS recruit is not a foot soldier armed with an AK-47; he is a graduate of a technical college who can do untold damage with his skills.
Well-educated killers herald a new era of high-tech danger
Cybercrime is big business, and high-tech criminals use their advanced skills to steal (identity) data and make money. In 2015 there were 781 data breaches in the US, the second-highest annual total since 2005, when the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) began tracking breaches. And according to a survey published at the time, 54% of businesses in the United Kingdom had lost money as a result of malware attacks. These are coordinated, carefully planned criminal attacks, and the hackers of the future are already honing their skills.
Like criminal organisations, terrorist networks need financial resources. Even the small, individual cells of the future. They do not get this blood money from their increasingly reluctant state sponsors, but through theft and money laundering. They develop techniques to steal cars, clone credit cards and hack banks to fund their killings. And they have clever strategies to avoid being found. These skills make them attractive recruits.
Then there is identity theft, which everyone worries about. In 2015, for example, 32,000 people in the UK fell victim to identity theft. Most of these thefts are committed for criminal purposes, but the terrorists of the future use this information to prepare their plans to kill. With a false identity, they buy mobile phones, rent cars and travel freely as ‘innocent citizens’, which makes them far harder to find and stop.
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