Terrorism and Targeted Violence (T2V) in the United States: Plots Targeting U.S. Schools
Sheehan Kane
As students nationwide went back to school this past month, it is important to highlight the prevalence of school-based violence in the United States and to support the development of prevention programs in school spaces based on empirical evidence. According to the Terrorism and Targeted Violence (T2V) in the United States database, there were 700 premeditated school-based violence events from January 1, 2023, through March 31, 2026. 12.9% of these events resulted in victim casualties, resulting in 45 victim deaths and 210 victim injuries. This new research brief analyzes the rates of school-based violence in the U.S., the locations of these plots, the weapon types used by perpetrators of school-based violence, and the intentions and outcomes of these plots
Message Resonance Across Cultures: Toward Evidence-based Assessment
Steve S. Sin, Markus Binder, and Megan Rutter
Now available in the Fall 2026 issue (Vol. 12, No. 1) of PRISM: The Journal of Emerging Threats | Complex Statecraft, published by the Irregular Warfare Center (IWC). This article introduces the Influence Messaging Impact Model (IM2) and evaluates cross-cultural audience resonance using experimental survey data from over 6,000 respondents across Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Among the findings, messenger identity alone shifted a message's effectiveness by up to 15.2%, independent of content.
Limited-Time Early Adopter Offer: Secure your 2026 T2V seat license today!
The Terrorism and Targeted Violence (T2V) in the United States database provides a comprehensive record of failed, foiled, and successful violent events covering terrorism, premeditated hate crimes, school-based violence, workplace violence, and public mass violence equipping policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and journalists with the empirical data needed to address evolving threats.
2026 Early Adopter Rates:
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State/Local Govt & 501(c)(3) Nonprofits: $2,500 / seat
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Commercial Entities: $5,000 / seat
ICONS Wargaming
With support from the U.S. Department of Defense, ICONS has deepened and broadened its wargaming portfolio in recent years, officially launching ICONS Wargaming earlier this year. As part of this work, ICONS Director Robert D. Lamb recently had a chance to meet and confer with wargaming professionals at this year’s Connections US wargaming conference in Monterey, California. Connections conferences around the world provide wargaming practitioners an opportunity to share best practices and advance the field, and Bob was there to meet new colleagues and highlight ICONS’s newly expanded wargaming capabilities.
Learn more about ICONS Wargaming
Student Spotlight: Sydney Allen
This month’s Student Spotlight features Sydney Allen, a Criminology and Criminal Justice major and Global Terrorism Studies minor who serves as an undergraduate teaching assistant for “Innovations in Countering Violent Extremism.” Inspired by the program’s hands-on coursework and interdisciplinary approach, Sydney is building toward a career in terrorism threat assessment and risk management.
Help Support START Research and Education
The START Consortium is dedicated to generating knowledge of the human causes and consequences of terrorism. Applying rigorous standards to both research and education, START seeks to illuminate one of the most highly politicized and understudied phenomena in the social sciences for students, practitioners and policymakers. Funded primarily through research grants to date, START is seeking to generate an endowment that will provide the flexibility and autonomy to ensure that it can continue to serve as an objective source of data and empirically based analysis into the future.