Emerging Technologies and the Transformation of Terrorism: Challenges for International Security and Global Governance
Keywords:
Emerging Technologies, Terrorism, Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Terrorist Financing, Drones, Global GovernanceAbstract
Technology, especially in its current combination of artificial intelligence and cyber tools, drones, cryptocurrencies, encrypted platforms and algorithmically-managed social media, has made repeated adaptations to terrorism, all of which have led to a terrorist practice that is vastly different in scale, speed and anonymity, disrupting traditional models of countering terrorism. This article explores the implications of technological advances for terrorist activities by examining the extent to which current governance regimes are flexible enough to address technology-enabled terrorism. A pragmatic mixed-methods design, which uses systematic document analysis, descriptive quantification of patterns of technology use, and qualitative comparative case analysis, analyses 14 documented incidents and campaigns of terror between 2016– 2025. The data sources used were United Nations documents, FATF publications, the Global Terrorism Database, Europol and INTERPOL reports, government security assessments, and peer-reviewed scholarship. While the use of AI is in its early stages, generative systems already influence how propaganda is made, how falsehoods, deceit, and translations are produced, and who the target is. Governance frameworks have been scaled up, including via the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, the FATF virtual-asset standards, Europol and INTERPOL collaboration and coordination, as well as the regulation of online content and by means of initiatives for the governance of AI, but implementation has been partial and non-uniform across regions, and reactive. The article adds an integrated empirical-conceptual approach to understanding the technology of terror, treating it as a collection of individual tools.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Rabia Salim, Meena Gul, Fahad Khan (Author)
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