Latest Intern Blog Posts

Throughout the course of my internship with the Global Terrorism Database, two news stories I reviewed really stuck with me: an incident in which Iraqi police deactivated a suicide vest worn by an 8-year-old under a Chelsea football jersey and an attack in which explosives detonated at the holy sites of Jonah’s Tomb and the Great Al-Nuri Mosque. While tragic videos like these affected me deeply, what best describes my internship with the GTD: Incident Location and Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) team are the times I spent desperately searching for the locations of villages like Peroni, Afghanistan, Ouelessebougou, Mali, and Gowasarey, India. Whether navigating Google Earth or translating location names in Wikimapia, little compares to the unique satisfaction of finally discovering the latitude and longitude of a remote village you’ve been trying to locate for 15 minutes.

Prior to interning at START, I was primarily interested in international relations and U.S. foreign… read entire post

As student interns at START, we employ a number of analytical tools to fulfill our mission of providing data-driven research to public-sector clients, as well as the general public. One tool the Advanced Research Interns worked with this semester was the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) methodology. The intelligence community uses ACH methodology when there are multiple potential explanations for adversary behavior or several possible outcomes from actions taken by an ally. It is particularly useful for controversial issues because it requires analysts to leave an “audit trail” of what they have considered and how they arrived at their hypothesis (or hypotheses), rather than jumping to a conclusion and finding support for it later.[1]  The end conclusion is rarely stated as definitive – analysts are often dealing with an uncertain future or opaque adversary decision making – but rather it is stated as which hypothesis or group of hypotheses are most supported and least… read entire post

It was May 28, 2008, and the weather was calm. I had just finished playing a baseball game at a park about 45 minutes from my house and my family decided to celebrate the victory with a trip to Damon’s Grill & Sports Bar. Following lunch, my mom opted to make the solo trek home while my brothers and I continued our day with a quick trip to the mall. The sky opened up and rain started falling but it felt like nothing out of the ordinary.

We were leaving Macy’s, my brothers with bags weighing their arms down, when my mom called. She explained calmly and matter-of-factly that a tree had fallen through our house. She said it fell through the entire house and we would likely be displaced for quite some time. My mom typically isn’t dramatic, but it was impossible for my brothers and me to understand the scope of the situation until we saw the damage for ourselves. There, we saw the house that raised us, the very foundation upon which I took my first steps, mumbled my first… read entire post

September 11 pushed the topic of terrorism to the front of minds and into the national discourse. Terrorism became something we worried about. Something we researched. Something we tried to solve. I know I’m not alone in wondering why seemingly normal or otherwise rational people might join violent causes. The wondering has motivated me to search for answers through research examining the causes of such radical beliefs and behaviors. In conducting research for the Narratives/Counter-Narratives project at START, I look at how al-Qaida and ISIS target their communication to individuals living in the United States. These narratives we review refer to not only the content of violent extremist messages, but the way in which they communicate and tailor these messages to a particular audience to convince people of the legitimacy of their beliefs and recruit them to their cause. The project goal is to create a public knowledge tool that can be used by policymakers and practitioners to… read entire post