The Maryland-based company Novavax has developed a protein-based coronavirus vaccine called NVX-CoV2373. The vaccine produced strikingly high levels of antibodies in early clinical trials. In September, the vaccine entered a Phase 3 clinical trial in the United Kingdom, and another one in the United States at the end of December. Those trials will show whether the vaccine is safe and effective.

Coronavirus Proteins

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is studded with proteins that it uses to enter human cells. These so-called spike proteins make a tempting target for potential vaccines and treatments.

The Novavax vaccine works by teaching the immune system to make antibodies to the spike protein.

Growing Spike Proteins

To create their vaccine, Novavax researchers started with a modified spike gene. They inserted the gene into a different virus, called a baculovirus, and allowed it to infect insect cells. The infected cells produced spike proteins that spontaneously joined together to form spikes, as they do on the surface of the coronavirus.

A similar method of growing and harvesting virus proteins is already used to make licensed vaccines for diseases including influenza and HPV.

Building Nanoparticles

The researchers harvested the spike proteins from the insect cells and assembled them into nanoparticles. While the nanoparticles mimicked the molecular structure of the coronavirus, they could not replicate or cause Covid-19.

Presenting the Spike

The vaccine is injected into the muscles of the arm. Each injection includes many spike nanoparticles, along with a compound extracted from the soapbark tree. The compound attracts immune cells to the site of the injection and causes them to respond more strongly to the nanoparticles.

Spotting the Intruder

Immune cells called antigen-presenting cells encounter the vaccine nanoparticles and take them up.

An antigen-presenting cell tears apart the spike proteins and displays some of their fragments on its surface. A so-called helper T cell may detect the fragments. If a fragment fits into one of its surface proteins, the T cell becomes activated. Now it can recruit other immune cells to respond to the vaccine.

Making Antibodies

Another type of immune cell, called a B cell, may also encounter the vaccine nanoparticles. B cells have surface proteins in a huge variety of shapes, and a few might have the right shape to latch onto a spike protein. If a B cell does latch on, it can pull the vaccine particle inside and present spike protein fragments on its surface.

If a helper T cell activated against the spike protein latches onto one of these fragments, it activates the B cell. Now the B cell proliferates and pours out antibodies that have the same shape as its surface proteins.

Stopping the Coronavirus

If vaccinated people are later exposed to the coronavirus, their antibodies can lock onto the spike proteins. The coronavirus cannot enter cells, and the infection is blocked.

Killing Infected Cells

The Novavax vaccine can also trigger another kind of protection by destroying infected cells. When a coronavirus invades, infected cells put fragments of its spike protein on their surface. Antigen-presenting cells can activate a type of immune cell called a killer T cell. It can recognize coronavirus-infected cells and destroy them before they have a chance to produce new viruses.

Remembering the Virus

Novavax’s vaccine would be easier to distribute and store than the vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. While those vaccines have to be kept frozen, NVX-CoV2373 can stay stable for up to three months in a refrigerator. But if the vaccine does turn out to be effective, scientists won’t know for sure how long it provides protection.

If it works like protein-based vaccines for other diseases, it may create a group of special cells called memory B cells and memory T cells. These cells will retain information about the coronavirus for years or even decades, enabling a quick counterattack in response to a new infection.

Vaccine Timeline

January, 2020 Novavax begins work on a coronavirus vaccine.

May Novavax launches clinical trials for their vaccine.

July The U.S. government awards Novavax $1.6 billion to support the vaccine’s clinical trials and manufacturing.

August Novavax launched a Phase 2 trial on 2,900 people in South Africa.

September Novavax launches a Phase 3 trial with up to 15,000 volunteers in the United Kingdom. The trial is expected to deliver results in early 2021.

Dec. 28 Novavax launches a Phase 3 trial with 30,000 people in the United States. The trial had been delayed because of problems with manufacturing the doses required for the study.

2021 If its clinical trials succeed, Novavax expects to deliver 100 million doses for use in the United States in 2021.

Sources: National Center for Biotechnology Information; Nature Reviews Immunology; Science; Maria Elena Bottazzi, Baylor College of Medicine.

Tracking the Coronavirus

The year began with the spread of the novel coronavirus in China’s Hubei province. In the months that followed, the virus swept around the world, disrupting life nearly everywhere, leaving sorrow in its wake.

As 2020 comes to a close, the pandemic has not abated, but mass vaccination campaigns now underway spell the early beginnings of an end now possible to foretell — more imminent for some countries than for others.

Major coronavirus news bookended the year. An onslaught of developments punctuated the intervening months, each event often eclipsing the one before it. Here is a look back at some of the key moments that held the world’s attention as the pandemic unfolded.

Security guards in Wuhan, China, on Jan. 11. (Noel Celis/AFP/Getty Images)

At the beginning of January, as the busy Lunar New Year travel season approached, concerns begin to percolate about a pneumonia-like virus thought to be linked to an animal market in Wuhan. The unidentified illness has afflicted dozens, according to health officials, but it’s not yet clear how it spreads, or how contagious it is. Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines announce plans to scan travelers for symptoms and set up quarantine zones.

A staff member in a temporary hospital in Wuhan on March 8. (AFP/Getty Images)

Cases in Wuhan, a city of more than 11 million, continue to climb. Officials scramble to contain and learn about the outbreak, which had taken the lives of at least nine people in all of China, by imposing quarantine measures and rules on travel from the city.

By the end of the month, Chinese authorities had imposed a strict lockdown affecting more than 30 million people. Holed-up Wuhan residents experience cabin fever, while the rest of the world looks on with trepidation, at early inklings of what the future might hold.

The virus has already traveled far.

A resident of Snohomish County, Wash., in his 30s returns from a trip to Hubei province on Jan. 15. After landing in Seattle he starts to feel ill. He is confirmed as the first known coronavirus case in the United States. Experts later determine that the virus was spreading undetected and uncontrolled early on.

A portrait of Li Wenliang, an eye doctor, at his hospital in Wuhan on Feb. 7. (Getty Images)

Li Wenliang, a Chinese doctor based in Wuhan who spoke out about the threat of the virus long before Chinese authorities were willing to acknowledge it, dies of the coronavirus on Feb. 6.

The 34-year-old ophthalmologist had been detained by Chinese officials on Jan. 1 for “rumor mongering.”

In death, he becomes a national icon, celebrated by Chinese social media users amid frustration over the government’s murky messaging.

A discarded mask in Washington on March 30. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

“If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with suspected #coronavirus infection,” the World Health Organization tweets on March 1, as the virus rages in Asia and begins to spread through Europe.

In the United States, health officials give similar advice.

“One of the things [people] shouldn’t be doing, the general public, is going out and buying masks,” said U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams. “It actually does not help, and it has not been proven to be effective in preventing the spread of coronavirus amongst the general public.”

The comments come as some countries, including the United States, face mask shortages for front-line workers. Health officials eventually backtrack and recommend fabric face coverings to block respiratory droplets in public. But the confusing advice sets the stage for masks to become a divisive issue in the United States.

Milan on March 10. (Antonio Calanni/AP)

As cases and deaths soar in northern Italy, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announces a lockdown affecting about 16 million people. The restrictions mark the toughest steps taken outside of China. Other countries in Europe, including Spain and France, follow with their own shutdowns.

In Italy, hospital beds fill with coronavirus patients. Doctors fall ill. Medical students matriculate early and health-care workers come out of retirement to fill staffing gaps. The world watches for lessons on what major outbreaks outside China might look like and how governments might respond.

For nearly two months, Italians are confined to their homes, raising questions about how far Western democracies can go in their restriction of civil liberties for public health purposes.

World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Geneva on March 11. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)

With more than 118,000 cases in 114 countries and 4,291 people dead, the WHO declares the coronavirus a pandemic.

“We are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction,” says WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Although the designation does not automatically trigger new funding or action, it serves as an indication that the virus runs rampant across continents.

People and pets in San Francisco on March 21. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

With the United States nearing 10,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, California becomes the first state to shut down, ordering its 40 million residents to stay home.

Some states follow suit, allowing residents to go outside only for essential activities such as grocery shopping, health care and exercise. Other states, citing economic concerns, avoid stay-at-home orders. They are to see some of the worst outbreaks.

The Coral Princess in Miami on April 4. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

With more than 300,000 cases confirmed worldwide, people are still packed into cruise ships. The Celebrity Eclipse and Coral Princess see devastating outbreaks almost two months after the Diamond Princess became one of the first vessels to experience one, off the coast of Japan.

South African forces patrol Johannesburg on March 30. (Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images)

With much of Europe, the United States and Asia living under virus-related restrictions, South Africa imposes a national lockdown after becoming the first African country to confirm more than 1,000 cases of the virus.

President Cyril Ramaphosa sends army personnel across the country of 57 million people to enforce the measure, which bans all movement apart from grocery shopping, walking alone, collecting welfare grants and seeking health care. The shutdown would come to span months, becoming one of Africa’s strictest.

While the virus’s spread sparks concerns on a continent with health infrastructures more fragile than China’s and Europe’s, which buckled under pressure, life continues to look much like normal in many parts of the continent.

A TV cameraman at 11 Downing Street on March 27. (Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images)

Appearing wan and disheveled, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweets a video confirming that he has tested positive for the virus. He recovers after becoming seriously ill, spending weeks out of commission and two days in intensive care.

His illness comes as Britain faces criticism for its handling of the pandemic. The country is plagued by testing shortages, and Johnson had taken a different approach to virus restrictions than some of his European neighbors, who were quick to impose harsh restrictions and shutdowns.

A street scene from Wuhan on March 30. (Roman Pilipey/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

In Wuhan, residents are just coming out of lockdown, with eyes unaccustomed to direct sunlight and legs unaccustomed to strolling. For 10 weeks, people had been confined largely to their apartments.

“I’ve been indoors for 70 days,” one woman who ventures to a shopping mall tells local television.

Life does not return to normal right away, but by summer, Wuhan is holding parties in packed water parks as the United States registers more than 40,000 new confirmed cases per day.

A woman passes a memorial on May 27 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The United States confirms it has lost 100,000 people to the virus. The landmark comes shortly after a holiday weekend that drew crowds of revelers to beaches and restaurants.

President Jair Bolsonaro in the Brazilian capital on July 22. (Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images)

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, 65, said he tested positive for the coronavirus. Brazil trails only the United States in confirmed cases.

The right-wing populist leader has mounted a controversial response to the pandemic, even compared to that of the United States, where denialism and movements against control measures find support in the White House.

Bolsonaro has called the virus a “little flu” and refuses to implement restrictions, appearing at packed rallies without a mask and attending floating barbecue parties as the virus ravaged his country.

Pilgrims circle the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on July 29. (AFP/Getty Images)

In a normal year, the annual Hajj pilgrimage to the Saudi cities of Mecca and Medina draws more than 2 million worshipers. This year, the pilgrimage is a sliver of the normal size, with the kingdom allowing only up to 1,000 Saudi residents to partake.

The Saudi government enforces health restrictions that make the pilgrimage all the more unusual: holy water is bottled instead of drawn from a communal well, stones to be symbolically hurled at the devil come pre-sanitized and worshipers wear masks as they walk around the Kaaba.

Across the world, the virus has forced the devout to adapt their practices — from virtual prayer services to sanitizing icons that are traditionally kissed.

A worker wears personal protective equipment. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg News)

Russia becomes the first country to claim victory in the global vaccine race with Sputnik V, its approved but untested coronavirus vaccine, which Russian President Vladimir Putin says has been administered to his own daughter.

Putin says the country plans to roll out mass vaccinations in early fall. International health experts warn of a lack of transparent research. Less than two weeks later, China begins administering its own experimental vaccine for public use.

Neither drug has been tested to the standards of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines eventually cleared in the West.

The Mall in Washington on Sept. 22. (Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post)

From the first death recorded in January in China to 1 million deaths recorded worldwide in September, the virus has changed daily life in many countries and unleashed suffering worldwide.

President Trump leaves the White House in Marine One on Oct. 2. (Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post)

In a late-night tweet, President Trump confirms reports that he has tested positive for the virus. Trump has routinely played down the virus’s threat, holding indoor rallies, refusing to wear a mask in public and touting unproven treatments for the illness. He is a patient at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center before hitting the campaign trail about two weeks later.

The president’s diagnosis precedes a wider outbreak in the White House and in Washington conservative circles that is traced back to a Sept. 26 Rose Garden ceremony marking the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court.

A pub closes in Cologne, Germany, on Oct. 31. (Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

After a summer of tourism and relatively low case numbers, countries in Europe begin to see cold-weather spikes in infections. Belgium, France, Germany and Italy are among those to see record caseloads as hospitals begin to fill up.

Hesitant to reimpose the economically punishing lockdowns of March, leaders implement piecemeal restrictions targeting hotspots. But as infections continue to soar, many countries return to lockdowns.

Times Square on Nov. 9. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)

In the bleakness of winter, a glimmer on the horizon: Pharmaceutical companies around the world have been working under unprecedented pressure, with unprecedented access to resources, to produce a vaccine candidate.

Those efforts see their first major payoff when Pfizer and BioNTech announce that their vaccine candidate is more than 90 percent effective in initial trials.

Health officials hail the news. “The results are really quite good, I mean extraordinary,” says Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Days later, Moderna releases similarly promising trial results.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, center, with British Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England Jonathan Van-Tam, left, and National Health Service chief Simon Stevens on Dec. 2. (John Sibley/AFP/Getty Images)

Britain announces it has approved for use the Pfizer vaccine, becoming the first country in the world to do so.

“We’ve been waiting and hoping for the day when the searchlights of science would pick out our invisible enemy and give us the power to stop that enemy from making us Ill. And now, the scientists have done it,” Johnson says.

Britain defends its swift approval processes even as the move draws some criticism from the United States and the European Union, who say their regulators are following more thorough processes.

The emergency department at St. Mary Medical Center in California on Dec. 14. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

As case numbers and hospitalizations spike, residents in parts of Southern California and the Bay Area prepare for a second stay-at-home order that bars dining out and gathering with people outside one’s household.

Although the pandemic is worse in the United States than it ever has been, other states and cities decline to do the same. Some implement rules on indoor dining or gatherings, but nothing matching the restrictions of the spring.

Margaret Keenan, 90, is the first person to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine at University Hospital in Coventry, England, on Dec. 8. (Jacob King/AFP/Getty Images)

Margaret Keenan, a 90-year-old British grandmother and retiree, makes history by becoming the first person to receive the Pfizer vaccine outside clinical trials. She’s followed by William Shakespeare, 81. The moment is seen as the beginning of the end of the coronavirus pandemic.

Less than a week later at a hospital in Queens, front-line nurse Sandra Lindsay is one of the first people in the United States to receive the vaccine.

But across the globe, other countries will be waiting, some for years, for their own vaccine supply. And that means the virus is not going anywhere for the foreseeable future.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The vulnerability of the telecommunications system in Nashville and beyond became clear Christmas Day when AT&T’s central office in downtown became the site of a bombing.

Mayor John Cooper called the blast on Second Avenue an attack on infrastructure. The effects of that attack are sure to ripple through the region for weeks, as the telecom giant scrambles to restore services while maintaining the integrity of an active investigation site teeming with federal agents.

State and local officials and experts say the fact that a multistate region could be brought to its knees by a single bombing is a “wake-up call,” exposing vulnerabilities many didn’t know existed and predicting it would lead to intense conversations about the future. 

The bombing and the damage to the AT&T office was a “single-point of failure,” said Douglas Schmidt, the Cornelius Vanderbilt professor of computer science at Vanderbilt University. 

“That’s the Achilles’ heel. The weak link,” he said. “When one thing goes wrong and everything comes crashing down.” 

Now, the Tennessee Emergency Communications Board has called a special meeting for next week to address the “impact to 911 operations as a result of the bombing in downtown Nashville,” according to a public notice of the meeting set for Monday.

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While still piecing together a motive, investigators Monday said suspected bomber Anthony Quinn Warner sought “more destruction than death.”

He parked an RV outside the nondescript windowless red-brick building on the historic district, which houses a facility that includes connection points for regional internet and wireless communications. 

Flames broke out in the building and 3 feet of water pooled in the basement. Temporary battery power kept services intact in the hours following the explosion, but fire and flooding damaged backup power generators to power those batteries.

The disruption brought communications in the region, from Georgia to Kentucky, to a halt, affecting 911 call centers, hospitals, the Nashville airport, government offices and individual mobile users. Issues with credit card devices hamstrung businesses big and small. 

TBI director:Nashville bomber Anthony Q. Warner’s motive appears linked to ‘more destruction than death’

AT&T reported Monday morning that the majority of services in Nashville had been restored through a combination of fixes, including generator repairs and a temporary network set up at Nissan Stadium.

“Having a critical facility in a major metropolitan area next to a street without any other protections than a thick wall is crazy,” Schmidt said.

“The silver lining here is nobody was killed,” he said. “But this is a wake up call that, if people treat it right, will help with future situations and be better prepared.” 

‘Our systems are not redundant enough’

When the situation settles down, state Sen. Paul Bailey, R-Sparta, who most recently served as chairman of the Senate commerce committee, hopes the Tennessee legislature can hear from AT&T representatives about what type of plan they’re implementing to prevent this type of outcome if another similar disaster occurs.

“They need to have better redundancies in place,” Bailey said, referring to AT&T’s backup systems to prevent widespread outages. “It’s just very concerning that we have 911 centers go down. Lots of emergency services losing communications. That’s really concerning to me.”

Nashville Metro Council member Freddie O’Connell, who represents the downtown area, said the city must also follow up on how to create more redundancy in critical communication systems in the aftermath of the bombing.

“How does a city as a whole function if we go through something like this again or a natural disaster?” he said. “We learned our systems are not redundant enough when one major provider goes offline.” 

Police officers on the scene Friday were issued burner phones, according to Metro police spokesperson Don Aaron. Nashville’s police department uses FirstNet network, a priority network for first responders to use on existing AT&T cell towers for voice and data.

Nashville’s 911 line remained operational but officials were without access to administrative phone lines through Friday evening, according to Stephen Martini, director of the Nashville Department of Emergency Communications. 

In the absence of non-emergency phone lines, residents were encouraged to request services through hubNashville online, which officials monitored for a three-day period. 

Martini said communications to emergency personnel via radio was never impacted over the weekend.

He declined to share details on how the department remained operational, citing sensitive public safety information, but said a redundancy plan, dubbed the PACE method (Primary, Alternate, Contingent, Emergency), was in place. 

Nashville’s director of information and technology services, Keith Durbin, said Verizon phones had to be driven to some staff on Christmas Day. 

“This was one of the worst case scenarios that happened,” Durbin said. “… To have (AT&T)completely taken out … was even broader impact than we thought.” 

Luckily, he said, none of the city’s “internal network backbone” was affected, with issues primarily coming from smaller Metro facilities. Some were continuing to experience issues Monday, including the Davidson County Clerk’s office. 

The city was able to switch from AT&T to a secondary internet carrier Friday. But the city doesn’t have a backup for phone services. It’s something officials have considered in recent years. 

Those talks, Durbin said, will be revived after the bombing. He said he’s confident it’ll now get wide support.

Bailey said he heard from 911 center directors in his district reporting outages nearly 100 miles away from Nashville. Residents in the area received reverse emergency calls to inform them not to dial 911, but instead to use another phone number to get in touch with dispatchers.

And then there were the retail stores, pharmacies, businesses and hospitals that were impacted, he said.

He credits AT&T for working quickly to restore service. But he said it’s concerning that one incident could wipe out so much of the region’s communications capability.

“This affected our entire Southeast region,” Bailey said. “There were multiple states that had issues because of this.”

But as for whether the Tennessee General Assembly wields much power to compel action from AT&T,  “the short answer is no, we don’t,” Bailey said.

The state’s Public Utility Commission, a five-member board consisting of political appointees, also has limited ability to regulate for-profit communications companies. Much of that would be a federal issue, Bailey noted.

State and hospitals face outages

The city wasn’t alone in experiencing communication outages. 

The Tennessee General Assembly, which has offices adjoining the Capitol downtown, also  had outages over the weekend. The email system was down for a portion of the day Saturday, and staff were told to work from home Monday after the building experienced phone outages until Sunday evening.

State government office buildings remained closed Monday due to safety hazards that the outages continued to pose, said Lola Potter, spokesperson for the Department of Finance and Administration.

Fire and safety alarm systems in state buildings in Nashville still weren’t fully functioning.

Other state services were impacted over the weekend, though state employees found workarounds and alerted authorities in some situations, such as with reporting child abuse.

“Obviously we were concerned about it, but we took precautions by reaching out to law enforcement,” said Jennifer Donnals, chief of staff for the Department of Children’s Services.

A state web form and app that field child abuse reports remained in service, Donnals said, and staff in different regions also alerted major children’s hospitals around the state to the hotline being down.

The timing of the disruptions occurring on a weekend – and a holiday weekend at that – meant the agency would likely have been receiving fewer complaints than on weekdays anyway.

Meanwhile, hospitals in the region have also had to work around outages since the weekend, mostly stemming from their landline phone systems going down and being unable to receiving incoming calls.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center reported it was back in service by late Monday afternoon, while TriStar Centennial Medical Center was experiencing some intermittent outages.

Both hospitals had to set up new, temporary phone numbers for people to call, according to spokespeople for both hospital systems

Health records and other IT infrastructure needed to care for patients were not affected at Vanderbilt, nor were employees’ ability to make internal calls within the hospital.

There were remaining limitations to flight corridors in and out of the Nashville International Airport on Monday, but it did not have a significant impact on flight departures and arrivals, according to Tom Jurkovich, vice president of communications and public affairs for the airport. 

Flights were grounded at Nashville Airport on Christmas afternoon due to telecommunication issues stemming from the explosion. Jurkovich estimated up to 45 of 116 flights scheduled for departure that day were delayed. 

Follow reporters Yihyun Jeong and Natalie Allison on Twitter: @yihyun_jeong, @natalie_allison

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The Christmas Day explosion in Nashville, Tennessee, is puzzling even for terrorism commentators and scholars. It employed many familiar features of terrorist attacks in modern history, but the particular combination was unprecedented, raising interesting questions about the motive of the perpetrator and the very definition of terrorism itself.

The facts of the case generate more questions than answers. The incident began when a bomb-laden recreational vehicle in downtown Nashville broadcast a loud message warning bystanders to evacuate the area. This warning and the fact that the bomb detonated at 6:30 a.m. spared countless lives. Anthony Quinn Warner, 63, is identified as the lone person responsible for the bombing. He died in the blast without leaving behind a manifesto or any other clear signpost of his motive.

This attack was weird for at least four reasons. While many attacks have employed one of these traits, it is odd to see all four in the same violent incident.

This bombing in comparison to other types of terrorism 

First, Warner clearly sought to minimize casualties, especially against civilians. His announcement attracted law enforcement to the vehicle but encouraged them to evacuate city dwellers, minimizing the human toll.

This is hardly a novel approach. Numerous empirical studies find that sparing civilians is strategic behavior that helps perpetrators to win over public opinion and pressure governments into making political concessions. Although some militant groups such as the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria in the 1990s and, more recently, the Islamic State, have sought to maximize bloodshed, many others throughout history have tried to limit the human costs by issuing warnings and detonating devices at off-peak hours — such as the Zionist group known as the Irgun, the Irish Republican Army, the Basque separatists of ETA, and the African National Congress that fought to overturn South African apartheid. 

In the United States, left-wing groups such as the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front have engaged in sabotage by restricting their targeting to property instead of humans.  

Second, the Nashville attack involved the suicide of the perpetrator. Although killing oneself to harm others may seem irrational, suicide attacks are strategic behavior if the goal is to maximize victims. Indeed, studies find that suicide terrorist attacks tend to kill more people because operatives can optimally position themselves at the precise moment and venue to maximize carnage. This advantage is one reason why jihadist groups like ISIS, al-Qaida, al-Shabab and Boko Haram continue to use this tactic to deadly effect around the world.

The tactic is uncommonly employed, however, by those like Warner who are trying to minimize human suffering. And presumably, he could have detonated the device remotely without taking his life in the attack. Warner might have killed himself not to increase the victims but to end his own life, as some prior scholarship has suggested of suicide attackers.   

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Third, the attack involved a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED), which is another tactic increasingly associated with jihadist groups. As with suicide tactics, this mode of attack tends to appeal to those intent on maximizing bloodshed against soft targets or penetrating a security perimeter, because vehicles can carry a larger explosive device than a backpack or a suicide vest.

Last December, for example, a truck laden with explosives detonated at a busy intersection in Mogadishu, Somalia, killing over 80 people. In August, ISIS assailants used a VBIED to breach the security checkpoint and storm a prison in eastern Afghanistan. VBIEDs can be an effective terrorist tactic under such circumstances, but it remains unclear why Warner would go this route if his intent was to contain the explosion.

Warner did not leave behind any reason for his bombing

Fourth, Warner has apparently not left behind any manifesto or other clear evidence of his motive. Scholars tend to understand terrorism as a communication strategy to amplify the grievances of the perpetrator. For this reason, manifestos are common, particularly from so-called lone wolf terrorists and mass shooters who do not have a larger organization with official channels to broadcast their grievances.

In 2010, Andrew Joseph Stack flew his small plane into an IRS office building in Austin, Texas, killing himself and one IRS employee in a suicide attack. Police investigated an online manifesto, signed “Joe Stack,” in which the writer took responsibility for the attack and offered insights into his anti-government motive. 

On the verge of his capture following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sketched out the reasons for his attack while hiding from police in a boat parked in a nearby yard.

If an attack is meant to convey a message, then the message must be clear. Warner’s message remains unclear, though, so authorities are looking at “any and all possible motives” for  the attack, including paranoia associated with 5G technology.

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Taken collectively, these attack traits are puzzling. The attack does not fit neatly into existing theories of terrorism. It is possible Warner was simply suffering from some sort of psychological impairment and operating outside the bounds of what might be considered “rational” extremism. Undoubtedly, more evidence will emerge in the coming weeks offering some answers, but for now many terrorism analysts are left scratching their heads.

Max Abrahms is a professor of public policy at Northeastern University. Joseph Mroszczyk is a contractor in the Wargaming Department at the Naval War College.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday hailed the country’s “courageous” spies as he visited the headquarters of the Foreign Intelligence Service to mark its 100th birthday.

Putin, who has spent most of the coronavirus epidemic at his residences outside the Russian capital and on the Black Sea, visited the SVR headquarters in southern Moscow amid the controversy surrounding the work of the country’s security services.

SVR, Russia’s external intelligence agency, which succeeded the First Chief Directorate of the KGB in 1991, marks its centenary on Sunday. But December 20 is also the day in Russia when the country fetes all members of the security services including those from the FSB domestic intelligence agency.

Speaking outside the SVR headquarters, Putin, himself a former KGB officer, thanked all those who protect Russia from “external and internal threats” and called them “reliable and courageous people.”

“Efficient work of security bodies, which is governed by law and national interests, always was and will be exceptionally important for Russia,” he said.

“It’s one of the most important guarantees of the sovereign, democratic and independent development of our multinational society,” Putin added.

The 68-year-old Kremlin chief praised the work of SVR which he said influenced the course of history of both Russia and the world.

He said he counted on the external intelligence to continue to counter “potential threats” against Russia but in a rare public rebuke also said the service should “increase the quality of its analytical papers.” 

Addressing members of the FSB domestic intelligence and other anti-terror services, Putin said they should continue to act “decisively”. 

“It’s also necessary to build on the current successes when it comes to work of counter-intelligence,” he added.

Putin praised Russian security agents after an investigative report claimed this week that members of the FSB intelligence were behind the poisoning of top opposition leader Alexei Navalny with Novichok, a Soviet-designed nerve agent.

Putin dismissed the joint report led by the investigative website Bellingcat, saying that if the Russian security services had wanted to poison Navalny, “they would have taken it to the end.”