When terror walks in wearing a stethoscope or carrying a university ID, how do you even begin to see it coming?”The Delhi car blast has forced India to confront an unsettling new reality: white-collar extremism, where trained professionals—doctors, engineers, academics—operate far from the traditional profile of militancy. In this episode of The Morning Brief, host Anirban Chowdhury traces how a few posters on the outskirts of Srinagar opened a trail leading investigators into a covert network built to blend in, not stand out. To unpack this shift, we speak with ET’s Hakeem Irfan Rashid, who maps the origins of the case, and experts — Dr. Christine Fair and psychologist Dr. John Horgan, author of the acclaimed book The Psychology of Terrorism — who explain how modern extremism is becoming fluid, grievance-driven, and increasingly shaped by online radicalization. As internet-enabled lone-wolf actors rise and global conflict zones spill over into new geographies, the conversation asks a pressing question: are India’s institutions, intelligence frameworks, and even our basic assumptions about risk prepared for this next phase of threat?

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