Lawfare Daily: “I’m angry that I exist”: Nihilistic Violent Extremism with Seamus Hughes and Jacob Ware
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2026
⏱️ 45 minutes
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Summary
Seamus Hughes, a senior research faculty member at the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center and a contributing editor at Lawfare, and Jacob Ware, the author of “God, Guns, and Sedition” and a recent Lawfare foreign policy essay on nihilistic violent extremism (NVE), join Lawfare Associate Editor Peter Beck to discuss the FBI’s new NVE classification, the online terror group 764, challenges counterterrorism professionals face with a younger set of aspiring terrorists, and more.
Content Warning: This episode contains discussions of sexual violence and acts of violent extremism, including against children. Listener discretion is advised.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Electronic Communications Privacy Act turns 40 this year, and it's showing its age. |
| 0:06.0 | On Friday, March 6th, Lawfare and Georgetown Law are bringing together leading scholars, |
| 0:11.1 | practitioners, and former government officials for installing updates to ECPA, a half-day event |
| 0:16.6 | on what's broken with the statute and how to fix it. The event is free and open to the public, in person and online. |
| 0:23.2 | Visit lawfaremedia.org slash ECPA event. |
| 0:26.4 | That's lawfaremedia.org slash ECPA event for details and to register. |
| 0:35.2 | So they will trace the kind of ideological or radicalization pathways of an individual. |
| 0:42.3 | They'll meticulously study their tactics, targeting their acts of violence, and then they'll seek to copy them. |
| 0:48.8 | Or, you know, in the kind of crude online pilots, they'll seek to beat their high score or beat their kill count. |
| 0:55.8 | It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Peter Beck, Associate Editor at Lawfare, |
| 1:00.8 | with Lawfare contributing editor and senior research faculty member at the University of Nebraska |
| 1:05.5 | Omaha's National Counterterrorism, Innovation Technology and Education Center, |
| 1:10.5 | Seamus Hughes, and Jacob Ware, the co-author of God, Guns, and Sedition. |
| 1:16.1 | The ideology is almost a simple one, which is nothing matters on this because the world is |
| 1:21.8 | absolutely jacked up and we can do whatever we want because it doesn't matter anymore. |
| 1:26.9 | Nothing's going to change unless we do something. And if we do something, if it changes all the better, want because it doesn't matter anymore. Nothing's going to change unless we do something. |
| 1:29.2 | And if we do something, if it changes all the better, but if it doesn't, who cares? |
| 1:33.3 | Today we're talking about the rise of cases classified by the FBI as nihilistic violent extremism, or NBE, in the online terror group, 764. |
| 1:44.0 | So, Jacob, why don't we start with you? Could you tell us a little |
| 1:47.2 | bit about where this term nihilistic violent extremism is coming from and how the FBI came up with it? |
| 1:54.8 | The term nihilistic violent extremism first appeared in court documents about a year ago, March 2025, |
| 2:03.9 | with regards to a case involving an individual by the name of Nikita Kassup, who had murdered |
... |
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