My Life as an Islamic State Honeypot

What I Learned from the Cyber Caliphate

My Journey to Jihad

My first job. Day one. I’m nervous, excited and very confused.

“You want me to do what?”

I’d found my way to this small strategy shop by way of a college thesis — I studied public policy and cognitive neuroscience, focusing on the subconscious drivers of political beliefs. I’d signed on to this firm because I knew they’d been tapped by the White House to fight ISIS recruitment in the West; it sounded like a dream job.

But now here I was, freshly purchased button-down, being told to go take pictures of men’s wardrobes.

“Obama wants pictures of closets? Is ISIS using closets to, like — hide something? Bombs?”

No. ISIS had nothing to do with it. We were working for Bonobos, a menswear startup, mapping out a customer journey: from A to B, how urban millennials found themselves with Bonobos pants in their closets. Step one was interviews with current shoppers, in their own homes. I felt deeply unprepared for this.

The first session went… poorly. My questions were all over the map. Our subject visibly squirmed, perched on his own bed while we riffled through his laundry. By the third session, I complained:

“I hate fashion, these guys all hate fashion, this sucks, I wanna go fight terrorists already.”

But that was it; that whining insight came to shape our whole campaign. Men like me hate shopping — we can work with that. Bonobos gives each customer a beer, brings them only clothes that fit and guarantees a hassle-free experience. A few years later Walmart bought them for $310 million.

And that same basic brand strategy model — open-ended qual interviews, a classic customer journey and a single sharp insight — that’s how we tackled the ISIS problem.

A Cyber Caliphate

ISIS didn’t have closets — at least not ones we could photograph. Instead, we found them on Twitter. A customer journey has to start somewhere; for a jihadist recruit it most often began out in the open, introduced by way of viral gore set to catchy music.

It took a few weeks of hunting, but after setting up enough sock puppet accounts and retweeting more than my fair share of beheading videos we got our first bite: a real-life ISIS recruiter, eager and informative, ready to radicalize my online avatar.

From there we started replicating the bait, piecing together distinct stages along a recruitment pipeline: the common signals for top-of-funnel outreach, unique trigger moments for introduction to new content and crucial tipping points or tests of faith.

All told, I got radicalized on the internet 40+ times. And damn, was it effective.

From Public Aggression to Personal Affection

All cult recruitment follows the same formula: an early hook, a friendly and knowledgeable shepherd, a redpill moment and a series of escalating but achievable tests of faith.

Even Scientology casts this net: Curious?

For ISIS, the hook was the gore.

A viral beheading video filled the top of a recruitment funnel, the entry point into a highly tuned radicalization journey. Millions watched and reacted across social media: among these, a fraction of a percent whose post history fit certain criteria — lonely, under-employed, sexually frustrated, isolated from their faith community — were met with friendly replies, inviting a conversation:

“I felt the same way when I first saw these videos. But then I learned what Israel does to Palestinian children and what happened at Abu Ghraib. Let me know if you ever have any questions, I’d be happy to try and explain. God be with you.”

Who could resist? “You’re a scumbag, a satanic psychopath, a monster. How could you defend these murderers??” In the course of our research we found that virtually ANY reply invited further discussion, opening the door for more insidious information, delivered with a warm smile.

In alt-right communities, this kind of poisonous propaganda is called a “redpill.” For the ISIS recruiter’s target, it was all the opening necessary to fill a susceptible mind with hate — and dreams of heroism.

But for the formula to work, it must be fed the right input: a susceptible recruit.

Tatooine & the Hero’s Journey

Put yourself in the shoes of the Empire, and Star Wars echoes this formula.

Luke Skywalker, a frustrated and isolated young man with no prospects, feels he was always destined for something more. Right when he feels most lost, a wise, friendly figure arrives to tell him what he suspected all along is true, is in fact a fundamental truth echoing through the eons. Dark, evil forces are at the root of all his frustrations: he alone is called, chosen, to become the champion, to play the decisive role in their defeat. By the time he’s on board the Falcon, he’s in Syria: the stormtroopers are looking for him, and it’s too late to do anything but fight alongside the rebels.

The formula resonates because it is in fact the greatest story ever told, what Joseph Campbell called the “Monomyth.” From Lion King to The Matrix, this story has moved the hearts of young men for millennia.

And this is the story ISIS told. They told it well: yes, you are just as powerful and important as you always knew deep down. Yes, the frustrations of your life are bigger than you. If you are stranded, it is because an evil Western empire has robbed you and your people of their hope, their home. And you — yes, you, you Luke Skywalker — can make a difference. In fact, you must make a difference. Only you can.

The medium might be Twitter or a chat app, but the message has remained constant for millennia.

The Media Mujahideen

The crucial, game-changing advantage for ISIS came in the form of a loose, self-perpetuating core of lukewarm or passive propagandists: thousands on thousands of people around the world not willing to murder or die for the cause, but happy to spread its message to those who might.

For some, shock value alone justified the spreading of hateful content. Others loosely agreed with pieces some of what ISIS stood for, or at least shared common perceived enemies and grievances. Helping organize, guide and fuel both of these groups were the true believers, the “media mujahideen” (holy fighters) who ISIS instructed to stay at home in the west, keep a low profile IRL and play their part by connecting susceptible loners to their full-time, highly sophisticated soldier recruiters in Syria.

The radicalization pipeline worked in two directions: videos, pamphlets, instructions and even money for gifts like valentine’s day chocolate flowed from middle eastern battlefields through content farms to the media mujahideen. In return, thousands of would-be fighters made their way across the globe, through the desert to meet their suicidal ends.

But none of this would have been possible without the curious content consumers, the passive supporters and the loosely aligned digital tribes who fueled ISIS’ viral spread across the globe.

To Syria and Beyond

We ultimately presented our findings to an interagency DHS/DoS working group — part of a White House initiative for countering violent extremism online. Mapping the ISIS recruitment journey using techniques & tactics we borrowed from the world of corporate branding helped senior officials see the benefits of engaging with local Imams, and helped end the State Department’s disastrous “Think Again, Turn Away” campaign.

But given the sophistication I saw as a honeypot strategist, I knew it was only a matter of time before another group adopted its tactics — and today, that increasingly looks to be the white nationalist shooters radicalized on 8Chan.

I ultimately left the strategy shop looking for more hands-on, on-the-ground exposure to digital threats — but in the years since my first day with men’s closets all I’ve seen is the threat of online radicalization grow stronger.