DA4601 Terrorist Financing

This course will examine how terrorists fund their activities and how they can be tracked and thwarted through their financial networks and footprints. It will cover sources and methods of terrorist financing, including the role of charities, legitimate businesses, and crime; the use of both formal banking systems and informal hawala systems to transfer funds; and money laundering. It will also cover national and international structures, regulations, tools, and efforts to identify, track, capture, and eliminate terrorists and their financial support through their financial transactions. Concepts will be illustrated with case studies of terrorist groups and regions where terrorism is present. Prerequisites: None.

Lecture Hours

Lab Hours

Course Learning Outcomes

Understand the financial domains of our adversaries and how they raise, move, store and spend funds.
Understand the range of those adversaries, from terrorists to peer state competitors.
Understand the financial context, to include, corruption, smuggling, ungoverned spaces.
Understand current and likely future trends that impact threat finance (e.g. emerging technologies of cryptocurrencies, resource scarcity, climate change).
Understand how instruments of national power can be brought against adversaries and their financial systems (geoeconomics and financial statecraft).
Develop writing (a 10-page campaign plan based on critical thinking and decision making under resource constraints) and presentation skills (45-minute case study).