"Enabled by 21st-century technology, extremists have optimized the use of Internet chat rooms, Web sites and e-mail chains to spread their virulent messages and reach a global audience of potential recruits," Garry Reid, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Combating Terrorism told the Senate Armed Services Committee this week.

"It is this highly evolved radicalization process that enabled al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to make contact with a wealthy Nigerian student living in London, recruit, train and equip him in the remote tribal regions of Yemen, position him in the Netherlands and ultimately dispatch him on a suicide mission to the United States, all within a period of weeks," Reid added., according to a thehill.com report.