Online jihadists have already used YouTube and other social media, utilized now by many students, to propagate their poison. They now have a strategy for “invading Facebook.” “We have already had great success in raiding YouTube,” they say, and “American politicians have used Facebook to get votes, like the house slave Obama.”

But some observers, like George Washington University professor Marc Lynch, observe a hesitancy to use Web 2.0 tools like Facebook. “One of the biggest problems [for the virtual terrorist network] is that it needs to build connections between its members while protecting itself from its enemies. That’s a filtering problem: How do you get your people in, and keep intelligence agents out?” he asks.