Terrorism-as-a-Service: State-Sponsored Terrorism in the Digital Age

Since around 2022, Europe has witnessed a wave of terrorist attacks that blur the boundaries between lone-actor and state-sponsored terrorism. Although many incidents initially appeared to be the work of isolated individuals, subsequent investigations attributed them to hostile states, especially Russia and Iran. Yet these operations differ from traditional forms of state-sponsored terrorism, which have typically relied on trusted operatives or long-standing proxy organizations. This article conceptualizes them as terrorism-as-a-service: an adaptation of the principal–proxy relationship to the digital age. Drawing on the literatures on crime-as-a-service, state sponsorship, proxy warfare, and “remote guidance,” it develops a framework centered on three dynamics: outsourcing, opportunistic recruitment, and remote guidance. Six case studies of Russian and Iranian operations in Europe between 2022 and 2026 show how state sponsors increasingly construct multi-tiered networks of intermediaries and “disposable” proxies recruited and managed online, often with little ideological affinity or knowledge of the principal’s objectives. The article argues that digital technologies are enabling a thinner, more transactional form of state sponsorship, with important implications for counter-terrorism, counter-intelligence, and the study of terrorism as an instrument of geopolitical competition.