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Department of Defense provides funding to UMD for data collection on asymmetric threats

The Department of Defense (DOD) has awarded the University of Maryland (UMD) nearly $4 million to support data collection efforts on projects related to terrorism and other asymmetric threats.

The DOD will fund data collection on several projects going forward, including START’s Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) dataset, the Bias Incidents and Actors Study (BIAS), the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) and a suite of datasets on non-state actor pursuit and use of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) capabilities building on earlier START datasets, in addition to a new project on global responses to asymmetric threats.

“We’re grateful to our partners at the Applied Research Lab for Intelligence and Security (ARLIS) for working with us to secure this important work,” START Director William Braniff said. “This will help inform national security decision-making for the DOD and the broader interagency.”

In December the DOD released its Report on Countering Extremist Activity Within the Department of Defense, which highlights ARLIS and START, including references to research on extremism within the military using the PIRUS and BIAS datasets.