The Islamic State group is desperately looking for a social media mastermind since a U.S. drone dropped a bomb on its star pupil's head in August.
Attempts to leverage social media to gain new ISIS recruits have lagged since the death of 21-year-old British national Junaid Hussain, NBC News reported Thursday. Prior to his Aug. 27 death in Raqqa, Syria, a source told the Wall Street Journal Hussain was described in internal ISIS communications as a "secret weapon."
Hussain, who grew up in Birmingham, England, originally made a name for himself after being jailed for stealing digital information from an assistant to former Prime Minister Tony Blair. He ultimately ended up in Syria and adopted the identity Abu Hussain al-Britaini in 2013.
Intelligence officials told NBC they welcome the decline in "chatter" since the terrorist's death, but admit it is "too early" to draw many conclusions from the social media lull.
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Hussain published a "kill list" of U.S. military personnel March 20 and was killed less than six months later in a U.S. airstrike that also claimed two of his bodyguards at a gas station. He was also a key player in the Sunni radical group's efforts to recruit westerners for attacks on American soil.
"If you don’t have anybody who is kind of fluent in computer operations, you’ve got a problem," said Michael Sulmeyer, a former cyber-policy expert for the Pentagon, the Wall Street Journal reported Aug. 27.