( CNN ) It 's easy to be anxious about the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria . After all , this is a brutal organization that not only kills but seems to revel in doing so in ways designed to shock the world -- from the beheadings of journalists to burning a Jordanian pilot alive . Such moves are part of this murky group 's propaganda and its deliberate efforts to manipulate information . So what can and should we make of the organization ? I explore the issue in depth in a special airing Sunday night . And although it 's important to start with the caveat that ISIS is indeed trying to scare and confuse us , I took away some tentative lessons from speaking with the people who have traveled inside the minds of ISIS . First , ISIS is clearly about religion -- its version of radical Islam -- but it is also about power . There is increasing evidence that the military backbone of ISIS is made up not by a group of Islamic zealots , but rather high-ranking officers from Saddam Hussein 's army -- Baathists who were at least ostensibly secular . An internal ISIS report detailing its organizational structure was reported on last week in the German weekly Der Spiegel . That report describes a group that uses its religious ideology as a recruiting and governing philosophy , much like communism . But underneath it , much like communism , is simply a drive for control , a lust for power . Next , ISIS presents itself as a global organization , but it has thrived because of a local cause . The group has gained territory , cash and recruits primarily because of the rage and rebellion of the Sunnis of Iraq and Syria , who believe they must fight the Shiites to secure their own survival and strength . The reality is that that Sunni cause is going to endure for some time . The United States has been successful in its tactical battles against ISIS and has managed to push the group back from many of its gains in Iraq . But the Sunnis of the region will remain in rebellion and the Sunni-dominated areas will remain in turmoil -- chaos that ISIS will be able to capitalize on this chaos . In the long run , ISIS might very well find that its greatest foes lie within its so-called Caliphate . The few reports that are emerging from areas controlled by ISIS suggest that , unsurprisingly , people do not like living under a brutal , theocratic dictatorship . They live in fear , and even those who chose it as an alternative to Shiite rule are growing disenchanted . In this respect , ISIS is like other radical Islamic groups , such as the Taliban -- they have an allure in the abstract , but once they are actually governing in their medieval , barbarous manner , the allure fades and the disenchantment builds . The result is ever-increasing repression . Remember , no one has ever voted ISIS into power anywhere . The group simply slaughters its way to control . Of course , one of the big questions has been : Is ISIS a threat to the West ? The group 's leaders declare that it is . But their ambitions appear to be mostly centered on their Arab enemies , on building a caliphate in Iraq and Syria . They understand , of course , that to be Terror Group No . 1 , they must battle the country that is the world 's No . 1 power -- the United States . With that in mind , they seek such a confrontation and hope that the United States will come to the Middle East and fight them on their terms , on their terrain . Still , while they are opportunists , and they ask and hope that their followers act in America , their main focus is not to come here -- they want Americans to go there . Yet no matter how one rates the level of the threat ISIS poses , the group has changed the nature of terror . The leaders of ISIS have recognized that above all , they are a messaging machine , which in turn becomes a recruitment machine . This means that the key is not what happens on the ground , but on the airwaves and in the bits and bytes of the Internet . And ISIS does this better than anyone before them because while their gruesome videos would seem a repulsive turn-off -- and are to most -- they still work on the web . The shock and awe they produce makes them go viral , and thus are seen by tens of millions . That ensures that these videos attract those utterly alienated young men -- a few thousand among the world 's 1.6 billion Muslims -- who seek revenge , glory and gore . Unfortunately , as long as those young Muslim men , scattered across the globe , are attracted to ISIS and stream to its cause , the group presents the world with a danger that is impossible to fully assess but is one that grows by the month .
Fareed Zakaria : ISIS has thrived because of a local Sunni cause in Syria and Iraq . The U.S. is not going to be able to defeat the Islamic State without taking on its core ideology -- which is based on an extreme interpretation of Islam that justifies violence against non-Muslims as part of