New warnings from U.S. officials and lawmakers over tactics used by Islamic State online are putting renewed focus on the terror network’s activities. FBI Director James Comey warned Thursday that ISIS is increasing their reliance on social media to spread their “poison” message.

“Welcome to ISIS Land” was in some ways a breakthrough for the U.S. government after years of futility in attempting to compete with the propaganda of al-Qaeda and its off-shoots. The video became a viral phenomenon — viewed more than 844,000 times on YouTube — and a cause of significant irritation to its target. But the minute-long recording also became a flash point in a much broader debate over how far the United States should go in engaging with a barbaric adversary online.

On April 16, Singapore kicked off its inaugural East Asia Summit Symposium on Religious Rehabilitation and Social Integration, a counterterrorism meeting designed to share best practices — including Singapore’s own comprehensive approach — with like-minded states.

Staff at France's TV5Monde have been filmed with passwords visible a day after the TV network suffered a huge cyber-attack. It comes after hackers claiming to represent jihadist group Islamic State (IS) took TV5Monde off air.

The examples of Iraq and Syria, not to mention NATO’s 2011 campaign in Libya, should be enough to make us stop and think. Bombardment alone cannot replace a political strategy, even if in Libya - a country with Sunni majority - ISIS cannot feed off the same sectarian claims that helped it in Iraq and Syria.

It is also perhaps a demonstration of Obama’s very challenging efforts to establish an “equilibrium” between Shia and Sunni forces throughout the Middle East region, especially in the Gulf. Obama explicitly made such equilibrium a strategic aim in the region in his famous interview with The New Yorker’s David Remnick 14 months ago.

The exceptional brutality of ISIS not only demands a Canadian military response, but also for its to flex its muscles of international persuasion, former prime minister Joe Clark says.