Moonshot is proposing a two year research program designed to answer priority (I) of the terrorism and targeted violence research and evaluation notice of funding opportunity

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate awarded a $1,490,000 Project Grant to Moonshot CVE USA Inc. under the Homeland Security, Research, Testing, Evaluation, and Demonstration of Technologies (CFDA 97.108) program. This two-year research program is designed to enhance understanding of the trends, nature, causes, and correlates of terrorism and targeted violence in the United States.

The key products and services to be delivered include: 1) a comprehensive systematic review of existing sources to identify commonalities across documented threats, court papers, and interviews related to targeted violence; 2) analysis of 18 months of anonymized social media data to generate insights into online environments surrounding offline incidents of targeted violence; and 3) development of a "Safety by Design" practitioner's guide on the ethical and effective creation of programs to mitigate and reduce targeted violence. The findings will be disseminated through publications, conferences, and guidance materials for homeland security and defense stakeholders.

Within the nofo, DHS has a clearly articulated need to understand the nature of threats posed by targeted violence in the united states. Moonshot is well placed to respond to the specific call for greater understanding of the trends, nature, causes, and correlates in terrorism and targeted violence in the united states. Moonshot is proposing a program with new knowledge generation at its core. The program will create new evidence, insights and guidance pertaining to three key areas:common factors which motivate instances and trends of targeted violence in the united states.common vulnerabilities and characteristics of individuals radicalized to violence.common characteristics among instances of terrorism and targeted violence incidents in the united states. The program will achieve this knowledge generation through a series of core activities. The first will be a comprehensive systematic review of sources which offer insights into the three areas outlined above. This review will be conducted in partnership with university college london (UCL) and their team led by professor paul gill. Through this partnership, moonshot and UCL will undertake innovative new approaches to identifying trends across thousands of documented threats to public officials, hundreds of court papers and investigative files relating to instances of targeted violence, along with transcripts of interviews with terrorist recruiters. This program will conduct new protective and risk factor analysis, generating new knowledge of commonalities between instances of targeted violence across the united states. The evidence base produced will directly inform currently utilized threat risk assessment and management guidances, offering more up to date data to inform key sectoral frameworks. The findings will be converted into a series of published journal articles. Findings will be shared across a number of strategically targeted conferences, in order to maximize dissemination of findings. The second core activity will be the analysis of social media data. The data - collected through moonshots proprietary technology - will take the form of entirely anonymised sentiment and risk-coded text from multiple online platforms which regularly host content promoting targeted violence. Analysis will be conducted on 18 months worth of data sources from platforms such as GAB, telegram, 4CHAN, stormfront, gettr, mymilitia and 8KUN. Other, more mainstream platforms may also be investigated for the presence of violent content. The analysis will create new knowledge into the online environment surrounding instances of offline targeted violence in the united states. We will generate insights into trends in volumes of calls to violence across the united states. This will involve detailed case study analyses of the online impact of events such as the robb elementary school shooting, uvalde (may 2022), colorado springs nightclub shooting (november 2022), tennessee covenant school shooting (march 2023), and the buffalo shooting (november 2022). The findings will be converted into a practitioner S guide to the impacts of offline violence on online discourse. At least two academic articles will also be produced, allowing other researchers to interrogate the data and promote continuous knowledge generation. The final core activity will be the production of a safety by design practitioners guide to the ethical and effective creation of programs to mitigate and reduce targeted violence in the united states. The guide will draw on findings from the first two activities, and ensure that future work which builds on our findings is conducted in a safe and effective manner.