BRUSSELS — Twenty-five years after Al-Qaeda struck the United States, European security officials now confront a different kind of terror threat, one fueled by nihilistic young people radicalizing each other online.
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 reshaped global counterterrorism for a generation. Today, however, investigators track a diffuse, internet-native movement called “The COM” that celebrates violence for its own sake, with no ideological anchor.
During a June and July disruption campaign, police from nine European countries identified roughly 4,340 web addresses tied to the network. The true scale remains unknown.
“It’s violence for the sake of violence,” European Union Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Bartjan Wegter told The Associated Press.
Europol recorded 45 terrorist attacks across 10 EU countries last year. None qualified as mass-casualty events, yet six people died. Authorities arrested 486 terror suspects in 21 member states, and jihadist groups drove more than 70% of those arrests.
Meanwhile, a third of all detainees were under 18, mostly boys.
Europol doesn’t track nihilistic violent extremism separately, since definitions vary and cases blur into ordinary crime. But the pattern has grown unmistakable over the past two to three years.
In Finland this year, a 16-year-old stabbed three female classmates. He posted a manifesto on WhatsApp, livestreamed the assault on Snapchat, and asked social media followers to preserve the footage. His stated motivation: doing something “significant” and “exciting.” No politics involved.
Italy saw a similar case last year. A 15-year-old plotted a murder purely for online notoriety, storing videos of school shootings and other graphic violence on his phone.
“It’s very much a fascination with violence,” Wegter said. “It’s violence as a means of asserting oneself, as a means of gaining status in those online communities. There’s not a direct link with ideology.”
The challenge for law enforcement compounds daily. Attackers often lack criminal records. Their footprints exist only behind encrypted walls.
One prominent network, 764, started with an American teenager named Bradley Cadenhead, now serving 80 years for child pornography and sex offenses. Despite his imprisonment, the group persists. In Germany, a 20-year-old suspected leader faces 123 charges involving murder, rape, and child sexual abuse.
Wegter calls the internet “a petri dish for the connection between different threats.” Privacy advocates argue for unrestricted digital communication, yet Wegter counters that 85% of investigations now unfold online. Law enforcement, he insists, needs tools matching that reality.
As a result, European authorities increasingly coordinate across borders, watching how groups use foreign soil as rear bases. Artificial intelligence amplifies the danger further, with deepfakes, propaganda bots, and AI-assisted attack research now mainstream criminal tradecraft.
“The kind of violent content, propaganda, manuals, tactics, everything that is available, is very much amplified by AI,” Wegter said.
