Buried amid all the headlines about the National Security Agency’s spy programs was this bit of good news: Our intelligence officials successfully hacked into Inspire — al Qaeda’s online, English-language magazine designed to bring the terror group’s message to aspiring jihadis.
The good guys hacked Inspire shortly after the Boston bombing. Within hours of going live, its May issue showed garbled language on one page, with blank pages spread throughout the rest of the edition.
We’re delighted America is hacking the bad guys for a change. But we would like to see a little more imagination — in the spirit of those British officers who hacked into Inspire and inserted a story called “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom” that turned out to be a recipe for cupcakes.
So instead of leaving just garble, maybe Uncle Sam’s officers could replace Inspire’s turgid radicalism with features that would take our message to al Qaeda: e.g., an interview with Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg on how women can make it in business; a profile of a Muslim-American enlisting in the Marine Corps to fight terrorists; or even, say, a feature on an interfaith service of Muslims, Christians and Jews.
Why should the Brits have all the fun?