Two teenagers, aged 19 and 17, were arrested for planning a terrorist attack at Taylor Swift’s concerts scheduled to take place in Vienna this weekend. Following this development, the three concerts of the American superstar in the Austrian capital were canceled, disappointing approximately 200,000 fans who were going to watch her perform live.

According to the police, the two detainees planned to use knives or homemade explosives to kill as many people as possible.

The 19-year-old suspect, who had posted a pledge of allegiance to the current leader of the Islamic State on an online account he maintained a few weeks earlier, confessed that he intended to “kill a large crowd at the concert either today or tomorrow, in a suicide attack,” said Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, head of the State Security and Intelligence Directorate.

The 19-year-old, reportedly of North Macedonian descent, wanted to use knives or homemade explosives outside the “Ernst Happel” stadium to kill many people and was “clearly radicalized towards the direction of the Islamic State, believing it right to kill infidels.”

The individual is considered the main suspect but is believed to have closely collaborated with a 17-year-old Austrian, said Franz Ruf, the Director General of Public Security, to the ORF broadcasting network.

Both young men have been arrested, and no other suspects are being sought, said Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner. A 15-year-old who had come into contact with the two suspects was also questioned by the police.

Taylor Swift’s Concerts in London Not Canceled

The British police announced that there is nothing to indicate that the planned attack at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna would have consequences for her concerts at Wembley Stadium in London next week.

“There is nothing to suggest that the issues being investigated by the Austrian authorities will impact upcoming events here in London,” said a spokesperson for the London Metropolitan Police.

The Concerning Pattern in Europe: Online Recruitment of Young People Starting with Innocent Conversations on Social Media

The details emerging about the alleged terrorist plot targeting Taylor Swift’s three concerts in Vienna are still limited, but they follow a pattern known to European counter-terrorism officials.

The Austrian police announced on Wednesday that a 19-year-old was arrested in Ternitz, about an hour from where Swift was scheduled to perform on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, in front of a total of 200,000 fans at the “Ernst Happel” stadium in the Austrian capital.

“Chemicals,” such as hydrogen peroxide, detonators, and detonator wires, possibly related to bomb-making, were discovered in a search of the suspect’s house with North Macedonian roots, said the police, adding that “specific preparations” had been made targeting the concerts.

The investigation around the 19-year-old Austrian’s home led to the evacuation of 60 households, local media reported. A second suspect was arrested in Vienna shortly after.

Both suspects had been radicalized online, the Austrian police said, highlighting the role of social media in both the radicalization of the suspects and the alleged planning of the attacks.

“The perpetrators’ communication usually occurs in encrypted form,” often concealing their conversations from regular counter-terrorism monitoring, said Franz Ruf, Director General of Public Security, to reporters.

From Online Chat to Action

The way teenage online conversations evolve into conspiracies has become alarmingly frequent in recent months. A study by terrorism expert Peter Neumann, reported by CNN last month, showed that teenagers accounted for almost two-thirds of ISIS-related arrests in Europe over the past nine months.

The study of 27 attacks linked to ISIS or disrupted plots since October last year revealed that out of 58 suspects, 38 were aged between 13 and 19, according to the professor of Security Studies at King’s College London. CNN verified most of Neumann’s data with European security officials.

Neumann noted that recent Europol figures showed that “the number of attacks and planned attacks has quadrupled” since 2022.

Among the cases, Neumann mentioned was another in Austria, where a 14-year-old girl from Montenegro was arrested in May in the southern Austrian city of Graz after buying a knife and an ax for an attack she allegedly planned. ISIS material was also found on her computer. Teenagers were also arrested during French security police raids ahead of the Paris Olympics.

German police have also disclosed two alleged terrorist plots involving teenagers in recent months.

Meanwhile, in Switzerland, police arrested a 15-year-old Swiss and a 16-year-old Italian in March for allegedly supporting ISIS and planning bomb attacks.

Neumann noted that teenagers are often recruited online. “Groups like ISIS-K specifically target teenagers. They may not be very useful. They may mess things up. They may change their minds,” he said, but “who would suspect a 13-year-old as a terrorist? One is enough to do the job.”

Teenagers are recruited through social media platforms like TikTok, drawn by algorithms into online “bubbles” where jihadist recruiters can reach them, Neumann said. ISIS-K is “by far the most ambitious and aggressive ISIS faction right now,” planning complex attacks and recruiting online, he added.

A TikTok spokesperson told CNN last month that “we stand firmly against violent extremism and remove 98% of the content found to violate our rules on promoting terrorism before it is reported to us.”

While the details of the attack plan for Taylor Swift’s concerts are few, European security sources are increasingly concerned that terrorist conspiracies are being organized and directed by a more experienced or better-resourced recruiter from afar.

A British security source told CNN that the so-called “directed terrorist threat” has become their biggest concern over the past 18 months, with ISIS-K being the most powerful group monitored, while threats are also emerging from regions of the former Soviet Union, including Russia’s North Caucasus region and Central Asian states like Tajikistan. Last month, Austrian counter-terrorism police said they had arrested eight men and one woman of Chechen descent for fundraising for ISIS.