For relative newcomers to overseas terrorist spectaculars Islamic State has had terrifying success with the Paris attacks.
The outrage demonstrates a new intent and a terrifying proficiency in organising a co-ordinated series of rolling atrocities in a city that was already on high alert.
In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings, security in Paris had been visibly tightened and new laws had given security agencies new powers especially in domestic surveillance and intelligence gathering.
Despite that it seems Islamic State has been able to launch suicide bomb attacks outside the stadium where a national football game was happening with the French President in attendance in addition to multiple attacks on locations across the city.
It is self-evidently a failure of intelligence with profound implications for other countries also involved in the coalition bombing campaign against IS.
The big question: did the French drop the ball, miss warnings, and fail to pick up detectable intelligence ahead of the attack. Or have Islamic State found a way of carrying out complex acts of terror in a way that cannot be detected?
Until not so long ago, IS focused exclusively on building its caliphate, leaving attacks on western homelands to others like al Qaeda.
It is shifting strategy with devastating effect. It is doing so partly because its caliphate building project is being hampered by coalition forces and wishes to deter them.
But it also did this for ideological reasons. It is waging war on modernity.
IS didn’t target buildings but activities, simple ordinary activities enjoyed by hundreds of millions worldwide. Eating out, drinking in bars, listening to music, watching football.
For IS the Bataclan theatre was not hosting a rock concert for instance but a “profligate prostitution party” attended by “hundreds of pagan apostates”.
That makes the softest of targets fair game in the twisted, nihilistic logic of Islamic State, from bars to restaurants, football stadia to music venues.
If the attacks were more down to IS success rather than French failures, the implications are potentially worrying for Britain and anyone who enjoys eating out, watching football or going to gig.
It is far harder to smuggle bombs or bombmakers into the UK and acquire weapons. But it was meant to be far harder for anything like this to happen in France after the Charlie Hebdo massacres and IS has managed to succeed.
And if IS has innovated to avoid the mass surveillance introduced in France this year, it can use the same techniques in the UK.
* Courtesy Sky News
