Yair Sharan – författare

This book assesses potential developments of terrorism and ways to prevent it—the growing threats as new technologies become available — and how the same new technologies may help trap those with potential mal-intent. The drumbeat of terror resonates from everywhere; how can we stop it? What are the tripping points along the road and how can we avoid them?

Increasingly more people have access to increasingly more information and increasingly more destructive technologies. In the meantime, increasingly advanced technologies help us create an increasingly safer and more harmonious world. Advantages and disadvantages are accelerating each other. While hybrid threats are intensifying, so are the opportunities to address them. But what are the compromises and how can we mitigate them?

This book also looks at the unexpected and often random success and failure of policies to counter the evolving terror threat. The various aspects ofthe terrorism phenomena are presented in a unique way using scenario vignettes, which give the reader a realistic perception of the threat. The combination of positive and negative implications of emerging technologies is describing what might well be one of the most important dimensions of our common future.

This edited compilation was written in the latter part of the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020, a watershed event in world history that illustrated wide-ranging systems and structural vulnerabilities worldwide. The book provides a framework for thinking about the environmental context of unconventional political conflict and intrinsic issues of continuity and change; it highlights significant potential terror threats, trajectories, and potential inflection points for consideration by policymakers, security experts, and counterterrorism practitioners.

The book focuses on unfolding threats that will affect our security worldwide, including the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, the continuously evolving condition of environmental degradation and global warming, the probability of increased “enhanced terrorism” use, future technologies like gene editing and “Crisper,” and more. The book frames empirical links between the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, terrorism, and other international system factors within the context of our contemporary globalized world, to scope out basic uncertainties, and the subtleties and nuances of complexity that pose challenges and opportunities for policymakers. It discusses looming challenges to decisionmakers who must attempt to counter terror and crime and their expected convergence in the coming era. The use of novel foresight tools in the context of anticipatory defense, science communication methodologies, knowledge sharing, its dissemination, and management to overcome threat potential is presented.

As one of the first books to delve into post-coronavirus consequences and to examine the linkages between these wide-ranging impacts, Issues of Terrorism in the Post-Coronavirus Era provides essential food for thought for decision-makers, policymakers, academics, global business leaders, students, and lay readers who are concerned about the future of humankind.