Projects
Non-State Actors Trajectories Database (NSATD)
The Non-State Actors Trajectories Database (NSATD) is an open-source and free-to-use repository of historical and contemporary information about the relative strength of major armed rebel groups in the Syrian Civil War (including ISIS, Nusra Front/Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Ahrar al-Sham, Hurras al-Din). While the Syrian Civil War is one of the most important and closely studied conflicts, analysis of it has been limited by a lack of comprehensive comparative data about the combatants active in each major armed rebel group or coalition. Despite the need for this data, it is lacking from all of the existing databases surveyed, including the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), and the Stanford Mapping Militants Program (MMP). Combining data from local and international news-media, United Nations (UN) reports, and academic databases, the NSATD triangulates the available sources to track the relative strength of each major group in Syria from 2011-2022.. Where data for an existing group or coalition is unavailable the NSATD, uses adjacent information and historical context to provide an informed estimate. Data collection in conflict zones is perennially complicated and limited by the inherent challenges associated with data collection, but the NSATD attempts to mitigate these gaps in our knowledge by leverage all available information to provide comprehensive predicted values for years when documented numbers are missing. As with any estimates of combatant numbers, even from governmental sources, the NSATD data is approximate. Support from the research community in identifying new details or sources of data on combatant strength is welcomed and encouraged as the project grows. While hundreds of small groups were initially active in the conflict, many of these merged or were consolidated into the larger non-state groups and coalitions that NSATD focusses on. Additional, smaller groups and regions (including outside Syria) are expected to be added in the future. Graphs and charts are presented alongside the data to help researchers visualise the data and highlight emergent trends within the the conflict. For more information, please visit the NSATD website.
Countering National Security Security Threats
This project tracks and measures how extremist actors (including Jihadist-Salafist Groups and Far-Right / Accelerationist Groups) exploit new online platforms to recruit, organise, and spread propaganda which can result in offline harms. I am particularly interested in examining how these extremist groups increasingly use encrypted social media platforms (Rocket.Chat, Telegram, TamTam Messenger Signal) to communicate privately, and seeks to measure the response and regulatory policies of these technology firms. This research includes analysis of foreign fighters and civil conflicts from Afghanistan, to Syria, and Ukraine. Within North America, I focus on how Anti-Vaccine and Far-Right Extremist networks have exploited new technologies to amplify, organise, and coordinate their political activities, with particular interest in hybrid disinformation and offline organising. I also maintain the Accelerationist Research Database (ARD) a repository for documents (including images, videos, music, symbols, and web forums) related to the growing Accelerationism movement within Far Right networks. The rise of post-organisational extremism, particular among Far-Right actors, has prompted the need to understand secondary indicators of extremism and the ARB serves as a starting point for tracking and identifying trends within the movement. As such, this research begins to address the constantly evolving methods and loopholes employed by extremists to use evade detection and community standards on major social media platforms.
AI Safety & Online Harms
This early-stage project explores how commercially available targeted advertising technologies to counter national security threats from terrorism, extremism, CBRNe, hybrid warfare, foreign intelligence, and influence operations. In particular, it is focused on how to best identify individual users who are interested in extremist content or disinformation and offer them a different and more reliable source of information. To ensure click-through rates, the project seeks to develop carefully tailored content that addresses the core concerns of individuals who are vulnerable to extremism, rather than brushing these fears and concerns to the side. While click-through rates remain quite low when compared with commercial advertising, even low engagement can lead to less violent attacks. Future research is needed to understand the role of empathy, humour, and psychology in developing redirect tools that meet users where they are and engage them with social support networks beyond simply counter-messaging.The project primarily focusses on users who are only beginning to explore extremist content as opposed to long-term consumers of disinformation and extremist content.
Broderick James McDonald
Research Profile
Broderick McDonald is a social scientist at the University of Oxford, Kings College London, and The Alan Turing Institute whose work focuses on countering national security threats from terrorism, nihlistic violent extremism, anti-technology extremism, conflict, hybrid warfare and foreign intelligence operations. Over the past decade, Ive worked on these issues across government, tech, & civil society. My research & commentary have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and The National Interest amongst others. Alongside my research, I frequently provide expert analysis for a range of international news broadcasters, including ABC News, BBC News, CBC News, Good Morning America, BBC America, PBS News, The National, France24, and Al Jazeera News
Broderick McDonald is a Research Fellow at Kings College London's XCEPT Research Programme, and a Research Associate at the Oxford Emerging Threats Group. Outside of this, he is a Visiting Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute's Centre for Emerging Technology & Security (CETaS) where his work focusses on national security risks and countering high-severity adversarial threats from terrorism, extremism, and hybrid warfare. Prior to this, he served in a variety of government roles and lived in the Middle East. He was previously a researcher with Stanford's Mapping Militant Program and the All Party Parliamentary Group for Genocide Prevention & Other Crimes Against Humanity. He was a Fellow with the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and the Aspen Institute UK. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts. and an Associate Member of Chatham House.
He previously lived in the Middle East and has conducted extensive interviews with armed combatants and foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) and combatants from ISIS, Al Qaeda affiliates, HTS, YPJ and other armed groups. Broderick has previously done fieldwork across the Middle East and Central Asia, including Jordan, Syria Lebanon, Türkiye, Uzbekistan and organised both Large-N quantitative and qualitative research projects. His research has been funded by the University of Oxford, the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), UK International Development, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, CIBC, CCSF, Chenomics International, Kings College London, the American Center of Research (ACOR), the UK AI Safety Institute (AISI), Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) and the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
He currently serves on the Board of Advisors for American University's Repository for Open-Source Research & Analysis (AURORA) which provides advanced training on national security tradecraft and adheres to the Analytic Tradecraft Standards used by the U.S. Intelligence Community. Additionally, he serves on the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT)'s Independent Advisory Committee, an initiative by Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and other technology platforms to counter terrorist misuse of the internet. Outside of this, he serves on the GLOCA Board of Advisors, the EU VOX-Pol Network of Excellence leadership team, and the Aspen Institute UK's RLF Advisory Board. Alongside his research, Broderick has advised international prosecutors, law enforcement agencies, five-eyes intelligence agencies, senior politicians & civil servants, parliamentarians, NGOs. AI security Institutes (AISIs), frontier AI labs, and social media platforms on security threats and emerging technologies
