The ISIS Threat to Military Families

According to Catherine Herridge of Fox News, the U.S. Army issued a warning this week to military personnel and their families in response to a new threat by ISIS calling on its supporters to use the yellow pages and social media to find the addresses of military families and “show up [at their homes] and slaughter them.”

Herridge also reported that the Facebook pages of an Air Force service member and his son recently were “swarmed” by offensive messages after ISIS supporters targeted them online with what resembled a digital “flash mob” attack. This occurred after the Air Force service member posted pictures online from a flight over Iraq during a recent bombing campaign.

So how concerned should military families be about this new ISIS threat?

This type of threat has been made before against military families by al Qaeda and the Taliban. What’s new is the sophistication of ISIS’s PR and social media efforts. ISIS is building on prior al Qaeda and Taliban efforts to use the Internet and the news media to spread its message, terrorize the West, and recruit “home grown” or “lone wolf” terrorists to stage acts of terrorism in Western countries.

While the chances are small that ISIS’s call for attacks against U.S. military families will result in an actual attack, they are not zero. Al Qaeda has been successful since 2001 in instigating several dozen home grown terrorist plots in the United States. These include the 2009 Fort Hood shooting (which the Obama administration inexplicably still refers to as an act of workplace violence), a 2010 plot by a Portland man to blow up a Christmas tree lighting, a 2007 plot to attack soldiers at Fort Dix, and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

There are indications ISIS has successfully recruited followers using the press and social media. As many as 300 Americans may have traveled to the Middle East to fight for ISIS and will pose a serious terrorist risk to the U.S. homeland when they return to the United States.

ISIS also has been successful in promoting extreme acts of violence by home grown terrorists in the United States. The August murder of 19-year old Brendan Tevlin and three others by a man who said these killings were acts of “vengeance” for U.S. military action in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran were probably instigated by publicity of ISIS atrocities and its fanatical ideology. I believe there can be no doubt that the man who beheaded Colleen Hufford at an Oklahoma food processing plant last month while screaming Islamic verses was motivated by recent ISIS internet videos of beheadings. Unfortunately, the FBI is calling this vicious killing an act of workplace violence.

The U.S. military is taking the recent ISIS threat seriously and has advised military families to be vigilant and more security conscious. Aside from recommending military families take the usual precautions such as locking their doors, using peepholes before opening doors to strangers, making sure home entrances are well-lit and reporting suspicious persons, the Pentagon is advising them to take special precautions to protect their privacy online.

The Army Threat Integration Center (ARTIC) is urging military families to be careful when they post material online and not to trust social media privacy settings. ARTIC advises not posting home addresses, phone numbers, and military affiliations. Military personnel and their families also should not post details of their daily routines or allow internet applications to geolocate their locations.

Unstated in the ARTIC recommendations is the Pentagon’s preference that military personnel – especially personnel deployed overseas – not have Facebook and other social media accounts.

While the chance of an ISIS attack on the family of a U.S. serviceman or servicewoman is small, the best response is increased security awareness and not allowing ISIS to achieve its goal of undermining military morale with terrorist threats.