The New Swatting Threat Landscape: A Briefing for Reporters

Swatting and hoax bomb threats against schools have exploded — and the people making them, and the reasons behind them, have changed. This page is a one‑stop briefing: the data, the groups, the state actors, and the human cost, with sources you can cite. For interviews, custom data pulls, or a district‑by‑district breakdown, contact us.

The scale

In the 2024–25 school year, TDR Technology Solutions’ School Threat Pipeline tracked bomb threats, shooting threats, swatting, and social‑media threats across more than 120,000 U.S. schools. The result: roughly 24.2 million student exposures, 437 congressional districts touched — nearly every one in the country, counting D.C. and Puerto Rico, and about $905 million in taxpayer cost in a single year — part of a $2.06 billion toll from 2021–2025. Explore it yourself: by state and by congressional district (both searchable).

The people behind the threats

The people making these threats are overwhelmingly young. In early 2025 the FBI adopted a term for the trend — “nihilistic violent extremism” — describing people who break the law out of a hatred of society itself and a desire to sow “indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability.” Much of it is organized inside a loose, Discord‑ and Telegram‑based underground the FBI and researchers call “The Com,” home to groups such as Kitty Mafia, 764, Purgatory, and the Order of Nine Angles (O9A). Independent analysts put the majority of members between the ages of 11 and 25, with most leaders under 25 — many under 18.

For these networks, swatting is both a business and a rite of passage. One 764 offshoot advertised swatting for as little as $20, claimed to have raised over $100,000, targeted more than 40 universities, and livestreamed the attacks. Others use the threat of swatting to groom, blackmail, and extort minors — which is why the FBI has issued repeated public warnings about 764 and now has hundreds of open investigations tied to the network.

“It was the worst stuff I’ve ever looked at in six years of working CSAM.”

— Captain Jeremy Lanier, Stephenville Police Department, on the 764 network (via WIRED)

From military tactic to political weapon

At the most sophisticated end, this is a tool of nation‑states. Using bomb threats and swatting to spread fear — instead of troops — is a recognized tactic of terror; it is why Russia sent threats to roughly 1,000 Ukrainian schools before it invaded, and why Russia is suspected in waves of bomb threats against schoolchildren across Europe. Investigators have documented something more chilling still: reporting by the Financial Times and warnings from Europol describe Russian services grooming vulnerable teenagers online — through gaming platforms, Telegram, and social media — and paying them to carry out sabotage and attacks on Russia’s enemies. Europol now calls the recruitment of minors one of the fastest‑growing security threats in Europe.

What began as a military tactic has found its way into our own local and national political landscape. More and more, individuals and organizations are abandoning debate and the other tools of a democracy to settle disagreements, reaching instead for intimidation and terror to force change. The same swatting playbook now targets elected officials at their homes, corporations a group disagrees with, and even polling and voting locations — on Election Day 2024, the FBI confirmed bomb threats to dozens of polling places across several states, many traced to overseas email domains. It reaches critical infrastructure, too: in March 2026, a group calling itself Kitty Mafia was suspected in a swatting bomb threat that shut down part of Kansas City International Airport for two hours. Same tactic. Same tools. A different target.

The two costs nobody counts

Most coverage of a school threat stops at the visible police response. Two of the largest costs go almost entirely unreported. The first is lost instructional time — every lockdown, evacuation, and disrupted day strips hours of learning from students; putting a defensible dollar figure on that loss is the subject of our founder’s published academic research. The second is the mental‑health toll, which our analysis finds is the single biggest driver of what a threat costs — and the least measured of all. Measured honestly, that human cost dwarfs the rest. If you are looking for the under‑told story, it is here: we can provide per‑student and statewide mental‑health and lost‑instruction cost figures on request.

Why prevention starts in schools

Swatting is a learned behavior. If we address it early — while it is still treated as a school prank — we can take it out of the toolkit before it becomes a weapon used to intimidate, suppress, or terrorize an individual, a business, an election, or a community. The technology, the consequences, and the education that stop a threat in a high school are the same things that keep it from ever reaching a ballot box or a boardroom. Prevention in schools is prevention everywhere.

TDR Technology Solutions is the maker of SAM (School Access Manager), technology built to prevent and prosecute swatting and school threats. Founder Don Beeler has worked with the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice on more than 5,000 swatting threats. For interviews or data, contact us.

Related reading: The Real Cost of School Swatting · The Cost of Hate: Putting a Number on Threats of Violence