GNET Webinar - 2025 in Focus: Emerging Trends, Key Developments, and Outlooks for 2026
The Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET), with support from the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), invites you to attend our year-in-review webinar: 2025 in Focus: Emerging Trends, Key Developments, and Outlooks for 2026.
This webinar will feature three presentations on the nexus between violent extremist tactics and technologies. Specifically, the webinar will highlight the following topics:
- Understanding nihilistic and gender-based violent extremism (NVE/GVE): examining the dynamics of weaponised victimhood and emerging best practices for prevention and response.
- The global proliferation of 3D-printed firearms: mapping incident trends, geographic diffusion, and evolving security implications.
- Terrorist and violent extremist adoption of generative AI: assessing the current landscape, barriers to uptake, and anticipated future threat trajectories.
The presentations, followed by a Q&A, will highlight key considerations for P/CVE practitioners, researchers, and policymakers working to counter terrorist and violent extremist content online.
Where: Online via Zoom
When: Tuesday 16th December, 14:00 GMT/09:00 EST
What: Presentation and Q&A
Panellists:
Dr Allysa Czerwinsky (she/her) is a Research Fellow in AI Trust and Security at the University of Manchester. Her research sits the intersections of technology, extremism, and online harms, with a focus on understanding the role manosphere-affiliated communities play in (re)producing male supremacism and misogynist extremism in online environments. Her doctoral research traced the narratives present in the stories posted to several high-profile incel forums, with the aim of uncovering how these stories help legitimise instances of identity-based harm and provide additional knowledge about the pathways into and out of inceldom. She’s also interested in understanding how Generative AI can both create and exacerbate online harms, exploring how text- and image-based outputs (re)produce existing structural injustices underpinning hate-based victimisation.
Rueben Dass is an Associate Research Fellow with the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS). He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics and a Master of Science degree in Applied Mathematics from Imperial College London. In 2020, he graduated with a Master of Science degree in Strategic Studies with a Certificate in Terrorism Studies from RSIS, NTU. He specialises in terrorist use of new technologies; 3D-printed firearms; and Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) terrorism. He has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and other security outlets. His works have also been quoted by international media namely The Telegraph, Al-Jazeera, Le Monde, Bloomberg and The Guardian.
David Wells is a global security consultant currently working with a range of international and regional organisations – including UNOCT, the Council of Europe and OSCE – to better understand and respond to the PCVE challenges and opportunities offered by new technologies (particularly AI). He is an Honorary Research Associate at Swansea University’s Cyber Threats Research Centre and an Affiliate at the Middle East Institute, and was previously Head of Research and Analysis at UNCTED in New York.
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Relevant Insights
- “Degenerate” Queers and “Chadsexual” Sapphics: Anti-LGBTQ+ Rhetoric in the Incelosphere by Allysa Czerwinsky
- Gen-Zs and Ghost Guns: Trends, Threats and Implications by Rueben Dass
- Mapping Terrorist AI Use: Identifying Factors Behind a Relatively Slow Adoption Rate by David Wells