EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — In 2021, a fifteen-year-old in a small Texas city began one thing from his bed room. He’d dropped out of college. He spent his days on-line, deep into violence and gore. He discovered others like him and constructed a community. He named it after his ZIP code: 764.
Inside two years, it had unfold to each continent. Members – plenty of them youngsters – had been discovering youngsters as younger as 9 on Minecraft and Roblox. They’d befriend them, earn their belief, then lure them. They pressured youngsters to harm themselves on digital camera. To harm animals. To do issues I’m not going to explain right here. That child from Texas is serving eighty years now. However 764 didn’t cease. It splintered and stored rising.
The FBI at present has over 300 energetic instances within the U.S. – investigations working in each single subject workplace throughout the nation. They’re greater than 350 folks tied to the community. Worldwide, authorities imagine there are literally thousands of victims. Arrests linked to teams like 764 jumped almost 500% in 2025 in comparison with 2024.
The FBI ranks 764 as a “tier one” risk. That’s the identical degree as ISIS. Final 12 months, Canada turned the primary nation to formally name 764 a terrorist group. Not a criminal offense ring. Not predators. Terrorists.
I ran the State Division’s packages in opposition to violent extremism. I’ve studied how terrorist teams discover and recruit folks for many of my profession. Canada obtained this one proper.
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What Canada Did
Calling one thing a terrorist group isn’t only a label. It adjustments what governments can do. In Canada, the designation signifies that anybody who helps 764 – with cash, with recruitment, with something – is now committing a criminal offense. Banks need to freeze belongings. Immigration can block folks on the border. Legislation enforcement will get entry to instruments they will’t use for normal crimes. It additionally sends a message. When a rustic places a bunch on the identical listing as Hezbollah and the Islamic State, it tells allies, tech firms, and the general public: that is severe. Concentrate.
Canada’s intelligence service says almost one in ten of their terrorism investigations now entails a minor. Take into consideration that. We’re not speaking about youngsters as victims – we’re speaking about youngsters as suspects in terrorism instances.
How They Discover Children
764 doesn’t stumble onto victims. They go searching for particular varieties of youngsters. Depressed youngsters. Lonely ones. Children who get picked on in school. Children who lower themselves or put up about desirous to disappear. They hunt for these indicators in Discord servers, on Roblox, in Minecraft – locations your child most likely hangs out.
Once they discover somebody, they’re affected person. They don’t ask for something. They only present up. They are saying “I get it” and “you’re not loopy” and “I’ve been there.” In case you’re a thirteen-year-old who feels invisible, having somebody really pay attention? That hits totally different.
Weeks go by. Perhaps months. They share darker stuff. Normalize it. Then they ask for a photograph – one thing the child wouldn’t need anybody to see. As soon as they’ve that, every little thing adjustments.
“Ship extra or we present everybody.”
Most blackmail is about cash. Not 764. They need content material. They make youngsters movie themselves getting harm. Humiliated. Some get pushed towards suicide makes an attempt—on digital camera, whereas the community watches.
One mom informed investigators her daughter carved a display identify into her arm with a razor blade. When she completed, the man on the opposite finish informed her he liked her.
Her daughter mentioned it again.
Victims Grow to be Recruiters
Right here’s what turns 764 from a bunch of predators into an precise community. Members earn standing by producing “content material.” The more serious the content material, the upper they climb. They maintain recordsdata on their victims – data of what they made them do—and commerce them like trophies. Children who began as victims turn out to be perpetrators as a result of that’s how you progress up.
In Connecticut, a former honor roll scholar obtained caught up in 764. She ended up making bomb threats in opposition to her personal college – threats phoned in by somebody abroad who she thought was her pal. When police searched her units, they discovered abuse photos, photographs of self-harm, and photos of her paying tribute to the community. Her mother informed ABC Information, that “It was very troublesome to course of, as a result of we didn’t increase her to have interaction in that type of exercise.” That’s the factor. No person raises their child for this. These youngsters get discovered, groomed, trapped, and turned. One researcher put it merely, “Probably the most horrendous half is it’s minors doing this to minors.”
This Is Terrorism
I do know – it sounds just like the worst type of predator ring. So why name it terrorism? As a result of it really works precisely just like the terrorist networks I’ve tracked for years. Discover somebody in ache. Give them a worldview that is smart of that ache. Then get them to behave on it.
764 finds damaged youngsters and tells them the world deserves to burn. That cruelty is honesty. That hurting folks is energy. The ideology beneath is easy: chaos for its personal sake. No political calls for. No territory. Simply destruction as the purpose.
Then they flip victims into recruiters – youngsters climb the ranks by trapping different youngsters. Those who obtained groomed turn out to be the groomers. And it doesn’t keep on-line.
Final July, a 764 member in Minnesota stabbed a girl twenty occasions. In Germany, authorities arrested somebody linked to the community on over 120 fees — together with homicide. In Finland, police are investigating whether or not two teen suicides are linked to 764. The community shares guides on plan real-world assaults. This isn’t abuse that generally results in terrorism. It’s a terrorism pipeline that makes use of baby abuse as its on-ramp.
Why the U.S. Hasn’t Moved
So Canada calls this terrorism. Why haven’t we? Our legal guidelines weren’t constructed for this. We’ve obtained instruments to go after overseas terrorist teams. We’ve obtained instruments to prosecute baby predators. However 764 began in Texas, unfold in every single place, and mixes exploitation with extremism in ways in which confuse the system.
Proper now, we’re going after these guys separately for the abuse. That places people in jail. Nevertheless it treats 764 like random criminals as an alternative of a community with a shared playbook and a physique rely that retains rising. The FBI calls it “some of the disturbing issues we’re seeing.” The Lawyer Basic calls it “some of the heinous on-line baby exploitation enterprises we now have ever encountered.” In the meantime, youngsters maintain getting trapped. The community retains rising. And we maintain treating every case prefer it exists in a vacuum.
Canada made a name. We should always make the identical one.
Cipher Temporary Skilled Dexter Ingram additionally publishes on Substack Code Title: Citizen
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