The Crime-Terror Nexus: Technology as Impact Factor

The Crime-Terror Nexus: Technology as Impact Factor

By Clara Broekaert and Colin P. Clarke

The crime-terror nexus refers to the various ways in which criminality and terrorism intersect, including how terrorist groups and criminal entities interact, whether through cooperation, fusion, or imitation. The term thus, at once, refers to Hezbollah’s cooperation with criminal networks to funnel drug-tracking profits to its war chest, Abu Sayyaf Group’s transformation into a criminal entity engaged in kidnapping for ransom schemes, the adoption of terrorist tactics by Mexican cartels, and the history of petty criminality of many European foreign fighters that joined Islamic State.

While the role of technology in the crime-terror nexus has been explored, it has only been on a somewhat limited basis. Fragmented and scarce data on the empirical reality and scope of the crime-terror nexus have led to limited engagement with the topic of how emerging technologies may impact the incentive structures of groups to cooperate or hybridise. Hybridisation occurs, for example, when terrorist groups adopt or “do-it-yourself” (DIY) criminal practices to make a profit in pursuit of their ideological objectives.

The third wave of globalisation and open technological innovation has granted non-state actors unprecedented access to disruptive technologies developed by private companies, rather than state-controlled research and development (R&D) labs. Simultaneously, online platforms have enabled rapid cross-border knowledge transfer. Globalised commercial markets and digital infrastructures have further lowered the barriers to entry for both lone actors and terrorist groups looking to acquire and master disruptive, and in some cases highly lethal, technologies. These conditions facilitated new forms of quid pro quo interactions and hybridisation among illicit actors, making such terrorists and criminals more dynamic, networked, and adaptable. Technologies in this constellation can thus be tools obtained through the crime-terror nexus (3-D printed firearms, UAVs) or facilitators more broadly (privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, overlay networks enabling anonymous communications).

The accessibility of emerging technologies that terrorist and criminal actors can weaponise affects four key variables underlying the incentive structures of crime-terror cooperation: utility, risk, autonomy, and leverage. The respective weight of these variables is context-dependent and must take into account the strength of the state and its security forces. For example, a less secure terrorist group operating in a capable state that exerts significant counterterrorism pressure may prioritise autonomy and leverage less than a group operating in a failed state or ungoverned space. This would lead to a greater incentive to collaborate with criminal organisations.

UAVs and cryptocurrencies (blockchain technology) are two technologies that are known to have been adopted to various degrees by terrorist and criminal actors and can be assessed for their impact on the incentives of cooperation between terrorist and criminal actors, notwithstanding the persistent issue of scarce data for robust hypothesis testing.

Commercially available UAVs have become cheaper and more accessible, enabling terrorist groups and criminal organisations to repurpose them for propaganda, surveillance, and kinetic attacks. Surveillance of the acquisition of UAVs, however, has led some terrorist groups to evade normal, everyday commercial purchases. In 2024 and 2025, for example, a major police operation across Europe uncovered a clandestine logistics network used by Hezbollah to acquire components for drones capable of carrying explosives. Through the use of front companies, forgery, and concealment in cargo containers, operatives with ties to Hezbollah acquired the dual-use components necessary for the group’s drone arsenal. While this case exemplifies hybridisation, cooperation may still occur under conditions that complicate the undetected acquisition of UAVs, such as surveillance. In May 2025, a 28-year-old man with links to the Danish gang Loyal to Familia was arrested for purchasing three drones intended for Hamas’ use in an attack in 2023. The Danish intelligence services highlighted that this arrest was a manifestation of a broader trend in Denmark in which parts of the gang environment are facilitating terrorist attacks.

The widespread commercial availability of drones, coupled with easily accessible online instructions for modifying them to carry weapons, has lowered the barrier for terrorist and criminal groups to acquire this capability independently. For example, within the vast network of official and unofficial Islamic State (IS) forums online, detailed DIY guides for procuring and weaponising commercial drones have been widely disseminated. Such guides and tactics can also naturally be accessed by criminal organisations seeking to expand their drone capabilities. Surveillance and counterterrorism pressure should also be considered, given the above vignettes of drone procurement by Hamas and Hezbollah. The acquisition of drones and specific dual-use components by individuals tied to terrorist organisations is under scrutiny from law enforcement, potentially leading to groups outsourcing their procurement to willing criminals or setting up complicated front structures to acquire them without external help.

Cryptocurrencies, built on blockchain technology -  a decentralised, distributed database structured in cryptographically linked blocks and validated by consensus across a distributed network -  have become increasingly attractive for terrorist financing due to their pseudo-anonymity and fragmented global oversight. This has also been the rationale behind its adoption in the criminal milieu. Since the emergence of the Silk Road marketplace in 2011, the first modern darknet market, cryptocurrencies have become the standard method of payment for acquiring illicit goods and services.

The impact of cryptocurrencies on the crime-terror nexus is two-fold. In the first scenario, these digital currencies facilitate transactions without the need for physical movement of funds, allowing groups to collaborate within illicit marketplaces, share infrastructure, or exchange services. Notably, vendors on the dark web offering weapons, hacking tools, or forged documents almost exclusively demand payment in cryptocurrency, contributing to an ecosystem that underpins the crime-terror nexus. For instance, weapons used in various terrorist attacks in Paris, France, in 2015 and in Munich, Germany, in 2016, were allegedly purchased on darknet markets. While reports on the acquisition of these weapons do not explicitly state that the payment was executed in cryptocurrency, it is assumed. One official speaking to the Wall Street Journal about the 2016 Munich shooting, which was partly motivated by far-right extremism, for example, mentioned that dark web marketplaces, combined with cryptocurrencies as Bitcoin, “put guns within reach of people with no connection to criminals, and who otherwise would struggle to buy illicit weapons.”

In the second scenario, cryptocurrencies enable operational independence of both terrorist and criminal groups. Privacy-enhancing technologies, such as crypto mixers, obfuscate transaction origins by blending funds from multiple users and redistributing them, allowing terrorist actors to launder money without relying on traditional criminal networks or elaborate laundering schemes. This reduces their dependence on criminal intermediaries. Groups such as Hamas and the Islamic State have directly solicited cryptocurrency donations via propaganda platforms, bypassing conventional financial systems altogether. These two use cases show that cryptocurrencies can serve as a bridge for cooperation between criminal and terrorist actors, but also as a path for hybridisation.

While these technologies are but two examples, creative forecasting can help assess how emerging technologies are used by terrorist and criminal actors, and what this may mean for the nexus going forward.