Details

Description 1

Writing and effective communications are important. The paper should clearly address the range of topics discussed in the course such as manifesto, political objectives, tactics, organization, training, recruiting, financing, targets, and reconnaissance. Be sure to describe the size and geo-location of your terror group, where your principle targets are located and the timeframe you are assuming.
Effective integration of your components is the most important assessment criteria–the paper should make sense, and not be a mixed-bag collection of disjoint thoughts. I am looking for a degree of realism and operational plausibility in your presentation, but this is a secondary matter, so long as the overall message is coherent. Just be sure that the various topics in the presentation don’t contradict each other and are consistent with concepts addressed in our class.

Description 2:

In this exercise, groups of students will form an actual terror cell as a Red Team.
Objective: Learn about terrorist mindsets, goals and tactics by having teams of students play the Red Team. Form a terror cell based upon a current, historical or new philosophy of terrorists.  Terror cells based upon historical or current group must remain true to that group’s ideology, methods and tactics. Any “new” terror groups must be particularly well reasoned with a legitimate argument that such a group and philosophy could emerge. Students should imagine themselves as truly as possible to the actual terrorist group in order to gain a better understanding of how and why terrorists operate.

Each group must document its members, resources and methods. In addition, each group must have a plan for obtaining resources and skills. Each terror group should have a manifesto. In addition, each group should outline its objectives and completely plan an attack against a  target. Targets should be real. These documents must be consistent with the philosophy of type of terror group that you purport to be.

Grades will be based on the quality and completeness of your content.

All documentation should be in a Google Drive Folder but please make absolutely certain that the folder is not publicly available. You’re a terror group after all. Should you actually be identified by the law enforcement community, that will have a negative impact on your grade. If any of your materials are found to be publicly available on the Internet, your grade will be lowered significantly.

Grades will primarily be based upon the quality of your representation of the group. In other words, strong documentation that shows that you have researched a terror group and taken time explain its methods, tactics, resources will have the largest impact on your grade. Your manifesto should clearly outline the philosophy of your group.

Besides the quality of your work, other factors can result in your team gaining (or losing) points at the expense of another team. For example, if your group is identified by other students or faculty members, you will lose points on your grade, and the group identifying your team will gain points. Note that it is not sufficient to simply identify a few members of another group. You must identify all of them. In addition, it is also possible to steal points from another group by identifying their philosophy or obtaining any of their actual information or documentation. Recordings or photographs of other groups engaged in a meeting will also result in point changes. Any information from another group that compromises your group’s integrity or confidentiality in any way may result in point changes.  he more egregious the breach, the larger the point changes will be. For example, identifying members of a team will be a minor point change, but if one team obtained actual documentation from another team, that would result in major point changes. Of course, if a team provided me with incorrect information about another team, that would result in grade changes as well. If one team discovered another team’s materials publicly available on the Internet, the team finding the materials would have their grades go up, while the identified team would lose points on their grade.