Stern Discusses ISIS Propaganda on Global Public Square
On December 21, 2025, Professor Jessica Stern appeared on the CNN podcast Fareed Zakaria GPS hosted by Fareed Zakaria. In the episode, Zakaria sought Stern’s take on ISIS in the context of the recent Bondi Beach attacks in Australia.
Stern, who is an expert on terror and trauma, explained that ISIS is a much larger and organized entity than Al-Qaeda, enabling its longevity and influence.
“ISIS was damaged severely with the attack in 2019 when the caliphate was defeated, but it persists, and it persists largely through its digital caliphate, which is very effective,” said Stern. “So I think that’s the main reason we’re seeing that they’re much more savvy than Al-Qaeda ever was in terms of their propaganda and how they try to appeal to alienated people actually in the west…. It wanted to establish the caliphate immediately, whereas Al-Qaeda had a longer term agenda. But the main reason it’s much more effective at radicalizing people in the West is how sophisticated it is through its digital appeal.”
According to the professor, people drawn to ISIS propaganda are often individuals who are likely to resonate with violent ideologies.
“When we’ve interviewed former terrorists, they often tell us, former Western, especially lone actors, they often tell us that their personal grievances, their emotional distress was at least as important as the ideals that a terrorist group claims to be promoting,” said Stern. “So, it’s important to realize that the vast majority of people who are mentally ill or suicidal or deeply distressed, of course do not become terrorists. But those people are quite overrepresented in our data.”
Stern also mentioned that several experts in the government have now switched over to working on cases related to immigration and migration instead of monitoring activities of ISIS.
“Our government is largely hollowed out,” she said. “We had a large number of people who are very sophisticated in their understanding of Western recruits to terrorist organizations. And many of them have left, and some are now working on other things. I don’t think we’re ready for this.”
To listen to the full podcast, click here.
Jessica Stern is a research professor at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies and a globally leading expert on perpetrator psychology. A 2024-2025 Harry Frank Guggenheim Distinguished Scholar, Stern has taught courses on counter-terrorism for 25 years – at Boston University, Harvard, and CIA University. She is the author of My War Criminal: Personal Encounters with an Architect of Genocide; Denial: A Memoir of Terror; and The Ultimate Terrorists.