Suna Rasmussen
Appearances
WSJ What’s News
Why Trump’s Tariffs Will Push Up U.S. Steel Prices
So if President Trump was hoping for an opening for further American influence, that has sort of been fairly closed off with this election.
WSJ What’s News
Why Trump’s Tariffs Will Push Up U.S. Steel Prices
Internationally, this can be seen as a setback for President Trump, I think is fair to say. The winning party is center-right, a moderate political party which favors independence, but a gradual approach to independence. What this means is that they want to strengthen Greenlandic economy and Greenlandic businesses before a secession from Denmark takes place.
WSJ What’s News
Why Trump’s Tariffs Will Push Up U.S. Steel Prices
So if President Trump was hoping for an opening for further American influence, that has sort of been fairly closed off with this election.
WSJ What’s News
Europe’s Dawning Terror Threat? Young Online Radicals
Yeah, that's right. A lot of these attacks are foiled and don't come to fruition, thankfully. But that does mean that they're not quite far advanced in planning.
WSJ What’s News
Europe’s Dawning Terror Threat? Young Online Radicals
So a lot of listeners might remember there were three Taylor Swift concerts that were cancelled last year in Vienna after three suspects that were aged between 17 and 19 were arrested for... The CIA called it a well-developed plot and said they could have killed hundreds of people if it hadn't been foiled. There's also sort of less publicly known examples.
WSJ What’s News
Europe’s Dawning Terror Threat? Young Online Radicals
There was a 14-year-old that was arrested in February for plotting to attack a train station in Austria. There was a 14-year-old girl from Montenegro that was arrested last year in Austria for plotting an attack on non-believers. And police found in her house an axe, a knife, and Islamic State propaganda items.
WSJ What’s News
Europe’s Dawning Terror Threat? Young Online Radicals
In the UK, at least, there's been a decline during the pandemic. There was a decline in terrorism-related arrests across all age groups, except for minors, where it increased significantly. But another factor that has also pushed these arrests up is the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel and the following war in Gaza, which has sort of become like a trigger for political awareness in Europe.
WSJ What’s News
Europe’s Dawning Terror Threat? Young Online Radicals
And that's also then sort of materialized in more radicalization movements. One way that a lot of people, a lot of young people radicalize is that they have personal trauma, a personal grievance that they then tie to a more sort of collective experience of being oppressed, of being unfairly treated. And if those two elements can sort of be connected, that can sometimes lead to radicalization.
WSJ What’s News
Europe’s Dawning Terror Threat? Young Online Radicals
And there's one researcher at King's College in London who tracked 60 arrests of Islamic extremists online. in the first eight months following the start of the Gaza war in October 2023. And out of those 60 arrests, two thirds were teenagers. And he said that that was sort of an unprecedented proportion of young people.
WSJ What’s News
Europe’s Dawning Terror Threat? Young Online Radicals
when people, mostly young men, young boys, sit at home and self-radicalize online. That makes them harder to find, and it also means that the process of radicalization has accelerated.
WSJ What’s News
Europe’s Dawning Terror Threat? Young Online Radicals
So one of the things that's happening now, experts and authorities across Europe say, is that because a lot of young people now are radicalized online, they're also harder to find. when people, mostly young men, young boys, sit at home and self-radicalize online. That makes them harder to find. And it also means that the process of radicalization has accelerated.
WSJ What’s News
Europe’s Dawning Terror Threat? Young Online Radicals
So one statistic said that around 20 years ago, it took on average 16 months for a young person to radicalize. 10 years later, that time had decreased by about 40%. Now it can take only a matter of weeks from the first exposure to radical material to a person who's ready to commit a violent attack.
WSJ What’s News
Europe’s Dawning Terror Threat? Young Online Radicals
What several security agencies told me is that because there's so much propaganda and so much vitriolic content online, it also makes it difficult to distinguish between pure hate speech and then the stuff that will indicate that someone is actually ready to go out and commit a violent crime in society. And this is something
WSJ What’s News
Europe’s Dawning Terror Threat? Young Online Radicals
I saw also in a trial I've witnessed recently in Belgium where the Fed said, with all of this material that you're using against my client, this young man who was accused of plotting a terrorist attack in Brussels, all this is performative. He was on these social media platforms where you know that people say stuff without actually meaning it.
WSJ What’s News
Europe’s Dawning Terror Threat? Young Online Radicals
And that's a huge challenge for European security agencies.