“Here’s an offer. Make a Molotov cocktail, go to the forest, and practice working with it. Send a video. Let's start with this.”
“High-risk activities such as arson and assassination were paid at a rate of several hundred dollars, an extremely low figure given the nature of the work. Other, simpler gigs had been subcontracted for similar rates–placing coffins under the Eiffel Tower brought in €400 for each of the workers, while painting 250 Star of David graffiti in Paris was priced at $53 per person.”
There have been mercenaries for as long as groups have wanted to buy violence. Particularly if you got rich though trade but don’t have a lot of young men itching to smash something. Or you wanted to fight a war against some of your own people, mercenaries from far away would not have divided loyalties. In today’s professionalized world, we have tended to think of soldiers of fortune as people with skills - perhaps former soldiers who have decided to take their expertise for mayhem to the market.
Meanwhile we think of terrorists as ideologically driven deployers of political violence. Whether they were the IRA planting bombs in the 70s or Al-Qaeda flying planes into building in 2001, these were groups of people combined over a shared belief or goal and worked together to mess stuff up.
The internet has changed terrorism over the last 20 years. Some of this was an adaption of existing techniques. ISIS did use online channels to radicalize and recruit young people to fight for them in Syria and Iraq. But you don’t need to build actual relationships with like-minded people, parasocial relationships will do. You broadcast a call for violence out into the world and wait for someone sympathetic enough and unhinged enough to follow through on your ideas. Terror as Meme.
If Stochastic terrorism uses social media, then the next wave of terrorism uses marketplaces - democratizing mercenaries. If you want someone or something far away hurt, why bother going through the laborious process of finding someone local sympathetic to your cause? Why not just pay someone instead?
Australia has seen an outbreak of graffiti and arson attacks against Jewish-related property - synagogues, childcare centers, businesses, family homes. Last week, the Australian Federal Police recently announced that they “are looking into whether overseas actors or individuals have paid local criminals in Australia to carry out some of these crimes in our suburbs. We are looking at if – or how - they have been paid, for example in cryptocurrency, which can take longer to identify.” A caravan full of explosives was found on the outskirts of Sydney along with the names of “Jewish entities”.
The use of Marketplace Mercenaries / Airtasker Terrorists has been a Russian specialty. Those hired in Europe have committed arson attacks, vandalism, and train derailments (more details in the resources linked to at the end of this post). Some of this has been directly aimed at military infrastructure but some of it seems to just be about worsening existing conflicts and the enshittifcation of every day life (e.g. the anti-semitic graffiti).
Whether some of the anti-semitic attacks in Australia were of Russian origin is unknown.
Further Resources:
Understanding Russia’s Growing Campaign of Sabotage
Russian Sabotage in the Gig-Economy Era
