Austrian authorities have released a few more details ... explaining the 15-year-old who was detained claims the 19-year-old asked him to secure an ignition device. Unclear if he did.
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00:00The Taylor Swift concert that was supposed to go down tonight in Vienna could have been an absolute cataclysmic event.
00:10We now know details of what was planned, and it wasn't just planned inside the arena, it was planned outside as well.
00:17Yeah, a very elaborate plan that would have resulted in hundreds, thousands of casualties
00:25if it went off as the three people who had been arrested had planned.
00:30And this plot was something that was thwarted, not only by local police there, but actually with authorities here in the U.S.
00:38Well, they're the ones that actually tipped off the local authorities in Vienna.
00:42By the way, we're talking about three people, all of whom are teenagers.
00:46A 19-year-old, a 17-year-old, and a 15-year-old.
00:50The 17-year-old, and this is what is so shocking, the 17-year-old got a job inside the venue working for a vendor.
01:00So the 17-year-old would have been inside that stadium.
01:04And now we're talking about explosives that were found at the 19-year-old's house.
01:10Right, at the 19-year-old's house, police raided his home and found him.
01:16This is a photo of that suspect.
01:18And by the way, you see him holding a machete and knives.
01:22Police believe that was part of the plan that was going to be enacted outside.
01:28But probably the first part of this, the more alarming part, was the materials to make a bomb that were found inside his home.
01:38And they believe that the plan was to set off a bomb, at least one, inside the stadium.
01:44And then at the same time, outside the stadium, there was going to be a vehicle that authorities believe would have been driven into the crowd to kill as many people as possible.
01:55And as a matter of fact, when they raided the 19-year-old's house, they found a blue light that you put at the top.
02:00A strobe light.
02:01A strobe light that you put at the top of a car to make it look like it's an authority car that would have more access to inside that venue.
02:09By the way, thousands and thousands of people are outside trying to just listen.
02:14Because at Taylor Swift concerts, there's obviously the packed stadium always.
02:18But then there are always hundreds, if not thousands, of people outside the stadium who couldn't get tickets.
02:24But they all gather outside and sing along to the songs.
02:28And they had a plan to actually attack those people as well.
02:32What's even more chilling here, Harvey and Charles, is that police are saying that the suspects wanted to blow themselves up.
02:42They would have gone there with vests laden with explosives.
02:46That's a telltale sign that they were radicalized via ISIS because that's what many of the original members of ISIS back years ago...
02:56That's why they would carry out a terrorist attack.
02:58Yeah, yeah.
02:59So now the big issue is, what happens going forward?
03:03They have canceled the three Vienna concerts, obviously.
03:06But now she's set to perform in London next.
03:09And London, England has had its share of problems.
03:13If you remember back to 2017, there was a bomb placed and that exploded at Ariana Grande's concert in Manchester, killing 22 people.
03:22So this is top of mind in England.
03:26And the tour is going to continue for several more months.
03:29So it's almost like the baton gets passed on to the next city.
03:34The pressure is going to be on.
03:36And there are no borders with terrorism like this.
03:39So now the question, what is going on?
03:42How widespread is this?
03:44What we heard today is that in Europe, almost all of these terrorist plots have been hatched by teenagers or young adults and mostly young males.
03:58And this has become a huge thing.
04:00By the way, the 19-year-old and the other two, they were radicalized in the last month.
04:07This is not something that kind of ruminated for two years.
04:11They became radicalized recently.
04:14How is it happening and happening at that speed is what we're going to talk to our guest about.
04:20So joining us now to talk about that is Rita Katz.
04:23She is an international terrorism analyst and author of several books.
04:28This one called Saints and Soldiers, Inside the Internet Age Terrorism, From Syria to the Capital Siege.
04:34So this certainly seems to be right up her alley.
04:38Rita, welcome to TMZ Live.
04:40Hi, nice to see you guys.
04:42Rita, we're going to talk about the scope of this problem.
04:45But the first thing I want to understand is there have been numerous reports that at least one and maybe all of these teenagers that were plotting in Vienna, that they were recruited in the last month.
05:02And I always thought of this as something that would take a long, long time, not just to get somebody to embrace ISIS, but then to act on it and plan something.
05:14And we're being told July is when this happened.
05:18That just seems unbelievable to me that it could it could go from nothing to planning an attack like this in a month or so.
05:27Yeah, that's not surprising at all.
05:29And that's one of the things that I really detail in my book, how quickly a young man, young person can be radicalized on the Internet.
05:37This is an issue that I have been dealing with for, I would say, more than a decade.
05:43When we saw the shift from moving from real terrorist entities on the ground where you need membership, you need to join the group to moving to the Internet.
05:54When we talk about the Internet, we're talking here not just the regular www.com, but we're talking here about applications.
06:04Most of this recruitment is done on application, application that sometimes you never heard of, for instance, things like Telegram or Riots.
06:13I will have almost no doubt that these individuals were recruited on Telegram, which is their main platform for ISIS and many other terrorist organizations.
06:23You're mentioning Telegram and I know about that app, but I'm wondering how these young people are when they go on Telegram.
06:32Are groups like ISIS or ISIS specifically seeking these people?
06:38And what are they looking for when they try to recruit someone to start looking at their material?
06:47Yes. So what happens is once you join Telegram, you will be able sooner or later to find ISIS messages.
06:55And one way is magazines that they publish.
06:58For instance, taking the most important ISIS group, which is ISIS Khurasan, many calls it ISIS-K.
07:05This group has English magazine that is widely disseminated in the English magazine.
07:14They publish their accounts online on various platforms.
07:19From there, all you need to do is to contact them.
07:22You contact them and they start the indoctrination.
07:25You probably at that stage already have some information about ISIS.
07:30You want to join the group and you will start the communication.
07:34That's an interesting point. You say by the time they join, they already want they already want to become part of it.
07:41So what is the profile of these people?
07:44I mean, you've got people, some of whom grow up in these middle class families.
07:49I mean, what is the draw that to ISIS that makes them want to go on Telegram,
07:55that then makes them a recruit and makes them give up their own lives for that cause?
08:01What is that draw that is creating this huge problem around the world?
08:07One of the reasons they join the groups is that they feel they don't belong anywhere else.
08:13And extremist communities like the incel neo-Nazis, accelerations, ISIS, they all open the doors for you.
08:21They make you feel important. You become part of the community.
08:25And this really this problem is growing as more as people rely on the Internet.
08:31People live on the Internet. Young generations.
08:33I mean, I have I had to kick out my kids from the Internet spending so many times.
08:38And I think many parents have the same problem.
08:40Taylor is supposed to perform in London and there are no borders when it comes to these terrorists.
08:48So what do you do going forward? What do authorities do to thwart it the way they thwarted Vienna?
08:57Or are we just praying that it doesn't happen again?
09:00So, first of all, the nice thing that you're saying in Vienna was the sharing of intelligence information between agencies because the Austrian received it.
09:09From another intelligence agencies. And we are seeing more and more of that happening all over the world.
09:15In addition to all of that, I mean, I think security companies and the government will need to be able to be able to try to do whatever in their power.
09:24But I think that knowing about the threat is already a huge, huge preparation.
09:31It will get you the right preparation to try to stop any any other attack.
09:36Knowing about it, fighting the problem is one of the most important elements.
09:41And sharing of the information. You said no borders as far as the terrorists concern and the people fighting them have to look at it the same way.
09:49Right. Rita, thank you so much for joining us.
09:52We really appreciate it on this very serious issue we all face now.
09:56Thank you, Rita. Thank you.
09:59It is frightening.