You may be wondering why I'm so sceptical of the reporting coming out about terrorists exploiting #COVID19 for their terrorist agenda - if you are, this thread is for you. Stay with me for a moment while I walk you through it.

I did an interview talking about this on Monday, but I'll be damned if I can find a link, so we'll do this via tweet instead.

1) Terrorists of all ideological origins will seek to remain relevant and current by incorporating events into their recruitment schemes, hypothetical attack plans, and overall radicalization efforts. But talk does not equal capability.

2) A few of the more capable may seek to incorporate #COVID19 into their attack plans, including using an infected person to spread the disease. But the logistics of this are complicated: find an infected person, use them to spread the illness.

3) The other thing they want? RECOGNITION. How can we know that a "terrorist attack" using COVID19 is actually successful when people could be infected by literally anyone? This style of attack will prevent / greatly reduce that immediate "glory" that they are seeking.

4) Physical distancing measures make most terrorist tactics less effective anyway. Want to ram a vehicle into a crowd of people? Where are you finding this crowd? Want to stab people in line? They're all separated by 2m now. Want to bomb an event...? You get the idea.

5) I'm not saying that it's impossible, I'm just saying that it's harder than the terrorists are making it sound, and our physical distancing practices are going to make it even harder. This applies to both traditional and emerging terrorist tactics.

6) The last thing I want to say about this: we don't need to be listening to wannabe terrorists talk about #COVID19 . The virus gives us enough to worry about. Yes, law enforcement and security services are (and need to be) aware and alert to changing terrorist tactics.

7) But the media hype around terrorist exploitation of #COVID19 is pretty brutal and unnecessary. Maybe now is not the time to be sensationalizing terrorist chatter and propaganda. That's just my view, I guess.