The Banality of Islamic State

[CJCRANE]

How ISIS Corporatized Terror

Excerpt:

The group’s leaders portray themselves as akin to seventh century warriors thundering forth on horseback to expand their religious empire by sword. They call their car bombs “steeds” and their drivers the “death admirers, the knights of martyrdom.” But in many important ways they have much less in common with ­medieval warriors than they do with modern ­bureaucrats, and a successful attempt to defeat them may require understanding their logistics, their financing, and their management structure as much as their extreme theology.

It may sound bizarre for a group calling itself a caliphate, but the foundation of its management model, as identified by experts, is more akin to that of General Motors than it is to a ­religious dynasty from the Dark Ages. After decades, we may have arrived at the ultimate professionalization of terror.

LINK to full article in Bloomberg Businessweek