Tweet from Gov. Whitmer's Deputy Digital Director.

[gristy]

18. wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_(terrorism)#Stochastic_terrorism

Stochastic terrorism

The first mention of the term "stochastic terrorism" appears to be in a 2002 article written by Gordon Woo entitled "Quantitative Terrorism Risk Assessment" in the Journal of Risk Finance.[30] The term is used to suggest that a quantifiable relationship may exist between seemingly random acts of terror and their intended goal of "perpetuating a reign of fear" via a manipulation of mass media and its capacity for "instant global news communication". For example, careful timing and placement of just a few moderately explosive devices could have the same intended effect as numerous random attacks or the use of more powerful explosives if they were shrewdly devised to elicit the maximum response from media organizations. Thus, it was theorized by Dr Woo that "the absolute number of attacks within a year, i.e. the rhythm of terror, might ultimately be determined as much by publicity goals and the political anniversary calendar as by the size of the terrorist ranks".

A derivation of Dr Woo's stochastic terrorism model was proffered by an anonymous blogger posting on Daily Kos in 2011 to describe public speech that can be expected to incite terrorism without a direct organizational link between the inciter and the perpetrator.[31][32] The term "stochastic" is used in this instance to describe the random, probabilistic nature of its effect: whether or not an attack actually takes place. And, although the actual perpetrator of a planned attack and its timing is not under the control of the stochastic terrorist, their actions nevertheless serve to increase the probability that a terrorist attack will occur.[33] The stochastic terrorist in this context does not direct the actions of any particular individual or members of a group. Rather, the stochastic terrorist gives voice to a specific ideology via mass media with the aim of optimizing its dissemination.[33]

It is by dint of this ideology that the stochastic terrorist is alleged to randomly incite individuals predisposed to acts of violence. And it is because the stochastic terrorist does not target and incite individual perpetrators of terror with their message that the perpetrator may be labeled a lone wolf by law enforcement while the inciter avoids legal culpability.[33][34] The term has mostly been applied to domestic American incidents of violence.[citation needed]

In their 2017 book Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism,[33] criminologist Mark S. Hamm and sociologist Ramón Spaaij discuss stochastic terrorism as a form of "indirect enabling" of terrorists. They write that "stochastic terrorism is the method of international recruitment used by ISIS", and they refer to Anwar al-Awlaki and Alex Jones as stochastic terrorists.[33]:157

Hamm and Spaaij discuss two instances of violence. In the 2010 Oakland freeway shootout, Byron Williams was said to be en route to offices of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Tides Foundation, planning to commit mass murder, "indirectly enabled by the conspiracy theories" of Glenn Beck and Alex Jones. As a left-wing example, they cite the 2012 shooting incident at the headquarters of the Family Research Council.[33]

The stochastic terrorism model is a stochastic process, a random, model of those terror attacks intended by the random nature of their timing and targets to excite a generalized fear.[35] Nonetheless, lone wolf terrorists are "indirectly enabled by the conspiracy theories"[33] circulated in the mass media, especially by high status political or religious leaders.