How Online Jihadists Radicalized an American Teen

How does a teenager from a nice family in Ohio end up charged with a third-degree felony for making terrorist threats?

That’s the question that Angela and Marcus Reed* found themselves asking after their house was raided by the FBI. Their son Caleb had been plotting attacks on religious sites and was radicalized by Jihadists through the messaging app Discord after converting to Islam.

As Caleb’s mom put it: “Terrorists broke into our home,” through their computer screen, in the middle of the night. They wanted “to destroy our family, destroy our son, and destroy our community,” she said.

Maya Sulkin set out to investigate how extremist groups are increasingly seeking out isolated and often autistic young men and trying to turn them into terrorists.

In our age of political violence—with presidential assassination attempts, lethal assaults on places of worship, an arson attack on a governor’s mansion, the murder of Charlie Kirk—the motives in these cases matter: Some are explained by hate-filled fringe ideologies, some by religious extremism, others by poisonous hyper-partisanship.

But often, these cases share a common feature and an increasingly recognizable mold of who gets indoctrinated online—and what happens after.

*Angela, Marcus, and Caleb Reed’s names have been changed.