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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   584 thread views

Transnational Thursday for July 9, 2026

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"How the Terrorist Group Boko Haram Uses Frontier AI"

https://casp.ac/reports/ai-enabled-terrorism

I found the article a bit surreal where it talks about how ISIS sends people around to conduct AI training... How strange to think that so many white-collar office guys find it all tedious and dull but your average jihadist is like 'it's very helpful!' and they're warming to the technology. Also I wonder if these AIs really know that much, shouldn't the terrorists know how to make bombs and conduct attacks, that's their whole gig? On the other hand, one doesn't consider Boko Haram to be the sharpest minds in the Islamist world so even existing AI models are quite helpful.

It is based on interviews though and may be complete nonsense, the terrorists just lying to this researcher:

Because the sensitivity of the topic and the difficulty of accessing this population meant the accuracy of individual accounts could not always be independently verified, throughout this study I state broadly corroborated patterns as fact and attribute narrower claims explicitly to interviewees.

Some excerpts:

Struggling to operate some of the loot, ISWAP’s leader al-Barnawi stated in a letter to the Islamic State back in 2017: “I am reminded of a funny story when about a year ago, we seized Dragunov rifles as war spoils and we had to make them work so we could use them. We checked many handbooks and specialized videos on this technical issue, but we eventually dropped it in despair after all our attempts failed.” 88 This account contrasts with how these situations are handled and resolved today, where “we take all of the equipment back to the camp and the AI unit tells us how to use and shoot with it.” 89 According to a former JAS technical specialist: “When we managed to seize a sophisticated weapon, the leaders took it to a room where they typed in the number of the weapon. It [AI] then tells you what model it is, how it will be loaded, used, and serviced.” 90 In one recounted instance, when ISWAP fighters were handed out new guns and they did not know how to correctly use them, they approached their qaid, who passed on the message to a specialist, who in turn replied, “just ask Grok,” which they then did.

They argued about what to do with the bomb. Some fighters wanted to dig it out, others not. They touched it and it exploded. 40 people died. Now they have new rules. Everyone has to stay far away and only one person digs.

We saw in a movie how motorcycles can jump over bridges. We used AI to learn how to do this. We gave it information, like what motorcycles we use and the distance we need to jump and so on and it gave us steps on what we have to do. We practiced a lot and kept asking questions. We dug holes and filled them with broken glass and fire to practice. 18 of us died in the process. Eight of us managed to do it. The next time we attacked, we could jump.

I went to the qaid to type a question about different ways to manufacture bombs. He said he could only get the answer if he knew exactly what the problem was. I told him about how the wires were connected in a way that seemed to prevent the bomb from going off. ChatGPT gave some explanations but they were not very clear. He contacted some people about how to put the question, and then it gave us useful information on how exactly to connect the wires, and it worked. I don’t know what he typed that made it work. They call people in the network for this kind of help every day

There's also some interesting intra-terrorist discourse on 'poison' which is banned under Islam and can even get people killed if they want to use it, vs 'powders' which are apparently OK for senior commanders to use. Poison really means 'fouling a water source' which is obviously very bad in a desert context, so they analogize things to poison vs just normal chemical weapons which are more acceptable? But everything is discussed in these crazy immature, unsophisticated ways so it's bizarre, it's that they're grasping for concepts like collateral damage or selectivity but don't quite have the diction for them. I think a major region why terrorism isn't such a big issue is that most of the terrorists are basically retarded, they're drawing from a population of retards. Ultimately AI won't be able to help them as much as it can for a non-retarded population though.

Skip the academic babble and move straight onto the interviews I think, that's the fun part of the article.

I think a major region why terrorism isn't such a big issue is that most of the terrorists are basically retarded, they're drawing from a population of retards.

Aren’t Islamic terrorists generally an exception to that trend though? Bin Ladin and the other Al Qaeda leaders were pretty much all college graduates, and ISIS recruits tended to be more highly educated as well. That’s arguably why they were more successful than other terrorist groups.

True, they're smart to a certain extent, capable and determined and creative. The rank and file are pretty dumb though. In the paper they talk about how Boko Haram has to get technical support from 'the white guys', not quite sure whether they mean Arabs or Western converts.

If you really want to create a global caliphate though, what you need are large capable armies, airpower, missiles, H-bombs rather than cheap tricks with truck bombs and drones. Terrorists are forced into these unconventional strategies because they're the underdog, they lack the proper financing, industry, organization and materiel. And all of that is really a product of high intelligence.

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