Fredericksburg Firm Wins $100 Million Counterterrorism Contract

FREDERICKSBURG, VA — A Fredericksburg research and technology company won a nearly $100 million counterterrorism contract from the U.S. State Department. IST Research will help the State Department "survey and assist foreign target audiences" as part of the department's Rewards for Justice, a program that offers "prize money" in exchange for information that could help fight global terrorism.

Under the contract description, the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which oversees the Rewards for Justice program, requested an industry partner to "join broad and targeted social listening with tailored messaging, particularly to non-permissive environments and contested information spaces."

IST Research, headquartered in downtown Fredericksburg, will be required to survey, analyze and assess the Rewards for Justice program's worldwide foreign target audiences and "maximize the propagation of reward offers" among specific target audiences, including non-permissive and contested information environments.

The $99.7 million contract award, announced Jan. 22, is the largest federal contract IST Research has been awarded to date. The contract calls for IST Research to establish multi-platform tip lines to receive information from global target audiences and operate these tip lines in local languages, perform translation and analysis, and disseminate tips to Rewards for Justice partners. IST Research will need to provide an "all-in-one technological solution platform" that maintains and analyzes all Rewards for Justice tip data from around the world.

Founded in 2008, IST Research describes itself as an engineering company with an operational focus. "Our team is comprised of engineers and scientists that have executed research and development projects for some of the nations premier research agencies," the company says. "We have delivered innovation into some of the harshest conditions imaginable."

IST Resarch has developed a data collection tool called Pulse, which "combines social listening, content discovery across the surface, deep, and dark web, and direct population engagement with fragile and hard-to reach-populations — all on a single technology platform."

In 2018, the Department of Army awarded IST Research a five-year, $48.3 million contract for the department to purchase Pulse and for IST Research to provide support of the platform and future research, development and engineering associated with advancing the platform.

Other government agencies have contracted with IST Research to use Pulse to "investigate child soldier recruitment, Islamic extremist radicalization, and forced labor," according to IST Research.