The Islamic State wants to establish a caliphate. It’s that simple. That’s why we picked ISIS – or ISIL as the United States refers to this threat, as the focus of our newest Op-Center book. ISIL poses such a multi-faceted threat that it is sometimes difficult to get our arms around the scope of this scourge.

As part of our extensive research for the book, we uncovered a wealth of great material, and some thoughtful pieces bubbled right to the top. We wanted to share some of those with you.

One of the best-of-the-best was a short piece in National Defense University’s Defense Horizons. The title, “A Time to Tweet, as Well as a Time to Kill: ISIS’s Projection of Power in Iraq and Syria,” all-but says it all. But here’s more:

ISIS and its caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, have learned lessons from past insurgents and leaders. In the implementation of its campaign, the group has used strategic tools to project military, economic, political, and informational power to the local, regional, and global community. From exploiting the sectarian divide to gain support, to manipulating political and social media to inflate its appearance of strength, to recruiting disaffected Sunnis and Muslim youth of the world through social media, ISIS has proved to be a new class of insurgency.

ISIS, however, has projected the most power and shown the most innovation with technology and media. It demonstrates a masterful understanding of effective propaganda and social media use, producing a multidimensional global campaign across multiple platforms. ISIS has used these platforms to exhibit intimidation, networking, recruitment, justice, and justification. It continues to spread its anti-Western, pro-jihadi messages to vulnerable populations using viral videos made to look like video games. Yet its skill is best displayed on Twitter where it has garnered tens of thousands of followers across dozens of accounts, eliciting feedback from average supporters.

Read more of this outstanding report here.

If you want to see how life imitates art, read more about our New York Times best-selling Tom Clancy’s Op-Center series and our just-released Scorched Earth here.