Since the start of the Iran war, ISD’s research teams have focused on how state and non-state actors have exploited the conflict to push their own agendas. Our work has analysed co-ordinated information operations involving Iran, Russia and their non-state proxies, including the use of manipulated media, AI-generated imagery, and co-ordinated amplification through overt and covert social media networks.

ISD has disseminated rapid response insights to a broad range of stakeholders including law enforcement and community partners, policymakers, mayors and national security journalists, resulting in a broad swathe of commentary and analysis  including the New York Times, the Associated Press, Fox News,  Agence France-Presse, the Washington Post, Politico and Tech Policy Press. Congressional offices from both parties in Washington have sought briefings from ISD’s experts.

The war’s ramifications extend well beyond the region. The US has faced four acts of terrorism in Texas, New York, Virginia and Michigan – two with a clear connection to the Islamic State (IS) – in the past two month. While only one appears connected to the ongoing war as of this Insight, the multidimensional nature of the threat landscape is something ISD research and threat assessment and detection teams are well attuned to addressing.

In this month’s newsletter, we focus on ISD’s information operations and counterterrorism work. This includes Iranian and Russian propaganda operations, the persistent online presence of the Islamic State (IS), the scourge of online youth radicalisation in the US, the targeting of holiday celebrations in terror plots and the surge in violent threats against public officials. 

None of this work would be possible without your support. Thank you for being part of it. 

Also in this newsletter.

• Axis of amplification: Regime media, proxies and Western supporters respond to Iranian protests
• Islamic State group activity in the US in 2025
• Coordinating Through Chaos: The State of the Islamic State Online in 2026
• ‘Tick tock traitor:’ The rise of violent rhetoric targeting US public officials
• Bondi Beach: The hallmarks of an Islamic State attack 
• ISD staff featured in across global media outlets including Politico, Fox News, CBS News, the Guardian, Euronews, and more.
  

The Munich Security Conference (MSC) remains one of the most closely scrutinized moments on the geopolitical calendar, serving as a bellwether for the strategic direction, resolve and priorities of Western democracies. Its 62nd edition, which convened under the theme “Under Destruction” from February 13–15, 2026, proved no exception. 

ISD was represented at this year’s MSC by CEO Sasha Havlicek and David Salvo, Managing Director for Transatlantic Policy and Programming, where they convened a high-level panel of government leaders to focus attention on one of the central challenges democracies face today: cognitive and hybrid warfare and how to raise the costs on authoritarian actors waging these wars. Titled “How We Win in the Hybrid and Cognitive Domains,” ISD’s panel featured Radek Sikorski, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland; Mihai Popșoi, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Moldova; Ambassador David Cvach, Permanent Representative of France to NATO and was moderated by Arndt Freytag von Loringhoven, former NATO Assistant Secretary General for Intelligence and ISD-Germany Advisory Board member. 

In this edition of Insights we examine how generative artificial intelligence (AI), while bringing exciting innovation, is contributing to new forms of harm. These include manipulated, non-consensual sexual imagery and abuse.

We spotlight the audience ISD CEO Sasha Havlicek and ISD UK board member Baroness Joanna Shields OBE had with Pope Leo XIV in Rome as part of a Vatican convening of experts on protecting children in the age of AI. In his address, the Pope warned that children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to manipulation through AI algorithms and called on governments to design and implement policies to protect them and ensure ethical AI development.

He also called for wider efforts in digital literacy. ISD will take this momentum forward with a major new line of AI research on companion chat bots and their particular risk to children, and through our established digital literacy and policy work.

Sasha also attended a variety of other conferences across November, including in Rome, Brussels and Montreal on topics including the future of democracy and tech governance.

Also in this newsletter:

• The proliferation and availability of tools used to create non-consensual sexual images,
• The renewed attacks on election integrity and repeated platform failures during the 2025 Irish presidential election,
• It’s impossible to miss the growing prevalence of Large Language Model (LLM) chatbots such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini in our daily lives. Hostile states and bad actors are now working double time to exploit this new technology. Our team tested more than 300 queries on these chatbots and found nearly a fifth cited sources linked to Russian state media or intelligence. These findings raise serious doubts about whether current LLM safeguards are adequate.

This edition of Insights looks at the Islamist extremist attack on Manchester’s synagogue, the UK’s first antisemitic murder in decades. The horrific tragedy reveals how antisemitism has become increasingly normalised online and was exploited by a wide range of extremist actors to spread conspiracy theories, justify violence and amplify both antisemitic anti-Muslim narratives.

Also in this newsletter:

• An analysis of sanctioned US neo-Nazi terrorist group The Base, which has established unique tactics including offering cryptocurrencies to prospective attackers.
• An ISD investigation found that Russian state media continues to slip through sanctions three years since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
• False flags spread faster than ever today, with conspiracy theories about shootings in the US and military action in the Middle East outpacing Community Notes on X.
• In the Sahel, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have formed an alliance of anti-Western, pro-Russian states. Influencers targeting these countries echo common Kremlin lines, often combining longstanding anti-French grievances with Soviet-era anti-colonial propaganda.

The online threat landscape in 2025 is more complex—and more dangerous—than ever. Extremist content continues to move fluidly from digital platforms into the real world, undermining democracy and human rights. At ISD, we’re tracking and exposing the tactics, trends, and technologies fueling these threats—from AI-generated deepfakes and the radicalization of youth, to foreign interference campaigns and domestic extremism.

In this month’s newsletter, we explore emerging challenges posed by threats such as nihilistic violence emerging from violent online communities, which has led to school shootings and attacks internationally. Although nihilistic violence resembles extremism in its impact and online aesthetics, its lack of coherent ideological motivations makes it challenging for existing counter-terror infrastructure to combat.

Also in this newsletter:

• The state of Islamist activity 20 years after the 7/7 bombings in London,
• The rising tide of anti-migrant violence from Northern Ireland to Canada,
• And the blurring lines between violent extremism and foreign interference.

The online threat landscape in 2025 is more complex—and more dangerous—than ever. Extremist content continues to move fluidly from digital platforms into the real world, undermining democracy and human rights. At ISD, we’re tracking and exposing the tactics, trends, and technologies fueling these threats—from AI-generated deepfakes and the radicalization of youth, to foreign interference campaigns and domestic extremism.

In this issue of Insights, we examined youth radicalization following Netflix’s hit series Adolescence. Our research delved into the 764 network which is behind a wave of extortion, violence and ideological manipulation of young men. We also examined the wide variety of gender-based violence, ranging from hoaxes about a “national rape day, sexual violence on TikTok and a surge in misogynistic content trivializing domestic violence and encouraging stalking.

Also in this newsletter:

• A spotlight on antisemitism and the concrete steps to combat it,
• How Islamic State (IS) group continues to thrive online,
• Russia’s use of deepfakes to target Ukrainian refugees,
• New research into the ways that TikTok’s recommender systems perpetuate harmful stereotypes,
• The use of Amharic language to bypass TikTok’s hate speech filters.

One year after the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October, misinformation and disinformation continue to distort the picture of what is happening in the Israel-Gaza conflict. Credible reporting from a range of news outlets has been regularly misrepresented to stir up hatred and demonise different groups. Now, the stakes are even higher with conflict spilling over the borders into Lebanon and Iran.

It is critical that social media platforms do more to help combat the spread of misinformation and disinformation. An important first step would be for them to set up dedicated teams and develop policies so that trusted flaggers – those with relevant expertise to judge harmful content – including journalists, can report content which misrepresents their work. This would allow content to be properly labelled and contextualised, limiting the effectiveness of attempts to divide and enrage communities and stoke the conflict.

ISD research continues to provide data-driven insights into this wide-reaching mis- and disinformation and conspiracy theory content swirling around the conflict. Read ISD’s latest analysis and recommendations here. This work was supported by the European Media and Information Fund.

Also in this newsletter:

• The Irish Channel: Investigating an Irish Misinformation Hub, Political Connections and AI Hallucinations
• Hurricane Helene brews up storm of online falsehoods and threats
• Lincoln Media’s effort to shape public opinion ahead of the US Elections
• Alleged Patriot Front offshoot may be front for neo-Nazi accelerationists
• Failed ‘Groyper War’ paves the way for other bad actors
• Neo-Nazi accelerationists seek refuge amid looming Telegram crackdown
• Content glorifying Hitler surges online amid growing historical revisionism
• Analysing the surge in anti-migrant harassment and violence in Ireland
• Event: CEO Sasha Havlicek and ISD experts return next week to the Eradicate Hate Summit
• Isabelle Frances-Wright and Ellen Jacobs join podcast to discuss platform preparedness for the upcoming US election
• ISD staff featured in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Huffington Post and more

TikTok, the short form video giant, has soared in popularity since 2018. Originally known for lip syncing and dancing teens, more than one in ten Americans now treat it as a news platform. However, TikTok also hosts egregious and harmful content. ISD’s groundbreaking 2021 study found hate going viral, including 2 million views for a video featuring anti-Asian hate fuelled by COVID-19.

Now, in an updated study analysing trends in hate speech and extremist content, ISD analysts have reviewed how TikTok moderates this material. Two newly published reports cover white supremacist content and anti-migrant & anti-refugee content on TikTok, and we found that extremist content is still not being removed effectively. Worse, our analysis found that some of this harmful content is receiving more views than it did in 2021.You can read more about the methodology of this work here.

Taking into account these findings, ISD analysts have developed a series of policy recommendations to help improve platform safety. These include improving moderator training and resources, more effectively stopping repeat offenders who create new accounts, and providing greater transparency through data access and data on moderation decisions.

Also in this newsletter:

• US Election Platform Preparedness: Comparative Analysis
• Platforms fail to label and remove AI-generated and manipulated election content
• A data-driven analysis of UK riot-related far-right Telegram networks
• From message boards to TikTok: al-Qaeda’s two decades of internet exploitation
• Analysing the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) campaign in Saxony and Thuringia
• Event: CEO Sasha Havlicek at the World Economic Forum
• ISD staff featured in the Irish Independent, Deutsche Welle, the New Republic and more

On 1 September 2024, elections in the eastern German states of Thuringia and Saxony reshaped the country’s political landscape. The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won Thuringia, capturing nearly a third of the vote, and came in a close second in Saxony.

ISD’s Dispatch explores the factors behind the AfD’s rise in these states, including their social media strategies, and analyses the performance of the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which has also adopted anti-immigration and Ukraine-sceptic views alongside traditional left-wing positions on socual security and the welfare state. The report also offers recommendations for safeguarding Germany’s democratic institutions against growing extremism.

In other news, the US Justice Department disrupted Doppelganger, a Russian influence campaign targeting the upcoming US election. ISD has extensively researched this campaign since 2022. We were among the first to report on Doppelganger and have continued investigating it, including linking a niche advertising company to these operations following US sanctions in early 2023. This highlights the increasing outsourcing of state-sponsored activities to third-party contractors. In a separate 2022 investigation, we found that despite an EU-wide ban, Russian state media outlet RT’s propaganda remained widely available, often reproduced verbatim on other sites. ISD’s Director of Research for Information Operations, Melanie Smith, provided commentary to NBC on the likely consequences of the US’ action.

Also in this newsletter:

• AfD Social Media Activity and the dilemma of coalition politics
• Understanding Terrorgram’s efforts to infiltrate the mainstream on Telegram
• Evidencing a rise in anti-Muslim and anti-migrant online hate following the Southport attack
• After Southport: Policy responses to far-right extremism
• Explainer: Gangstalking and targeted individuals
• Dr Cornelius Adebahr appointed Interim Executive Director, ISD Germany
• ISD staff featured in the Guardian, the New Republic, BNN Bloomberg, NBC News, Lawfare and more

In August, Austrian authorities arrested three teenagers suspected of planning a mass casualty attack on Taylor Swift’s Vienna concerts, inspired by Islamic State (IS). At least two of the suspects – aged 17 and 19 – were allegedly ‘self-radicalised’ online.

Director of Technology and Society for ISD US Isabelle Frances-Wright, Executive Director for Africa, the Middle East and Asia (AMEA) Moustafa Ayad and Digital Policy Manager for ISD US Ellen Jacobs found that terrorist content is easily accessible to minors using search terms referencing prominent terrorist ideologues.

Platform policies were highly inconsistent, and the inadequacies of their enforcement highlights the continued importance of regulation. Whereas the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) mandates greater transparency and data access – many others including the US are yet to enact strong enough safeguards for minors.

Also in this newsletter:

• Explainer: EU Digital Services Act (DSA)
• Online gendered abuse/disinformation during South Africa’s 2024 elections
• Ireland’s far-right using abortion activism to further ethnonationalism
• Research compilation on online antisemitism
• ISD analysts featured in Prospect, LBC, Christian Science Monitor, Politico and more.