They know what they're doing, they've been effectively evading authorities and misleading the public for years now, and they're organized all over the world and have a body count that speaks. Your opinion on their intelligence means nothing, their actions do.
Without being unpleasant toward your very rightful concern of these groups - I do think that you are overestimating their intelligence.
For those whom are groomed into joining the groups via Discord, they are simply instructed on moving to a more secure platform - whether that be Telegram, Signal, Wire or any other secure messaging service. It does not take much intelligence to either hear of secure means via media, or word of mouth and simply follow in that direction. In fact, it takes an even lesser degree of intelligence to not use any form of critical thinking to identify the fact you're merely being used as a pawn in someone else's agenda. We are hardly dealing with people here who are operating of their own carefully crafted PGP-esque systems. They are as you'd expect, chronically online people who operate and move exceptionally quickly in order to feed their next dopamine hit. It's a online club of "bad boys" who have nothing better to do other than sit online all day and trade the reality outside for one made up of fake-personas, self-validation and local degenerate reverence.
The only part that could possibly pertain to some kind of intelligence (and even this is a far stretch) would be the social engineering and "art of extortion" so many of them refer to. Even if this were to be a highlight, it's completely overshadowed by the fact that the majority of their victims are vulnerable people, a prime market for their kind of acts. In terms of low hanging fruit, these have already fallen off the tree.
In terms of public authority, considering the scale and difficulty in tracking even blatant online crimes - the resources which are available are simply not being put towards these matters. You can see the FBI showing up at someones door within 2 days of them posting something racy on social media. The inaction toward these otherwise blatant and opsec illiterate children is simply a consequence of a particular social agenda.
The doxxing is simply a tedious, and laborious game of connect the dots. I'm yet to see one COM drafted dox which has involved any sophisticated means - beyond a lucky IP grab, or slip of the tongue.
And no, they are not "organized" all over the world, there are simply enough people in the world. Purely a mathematical/ social issue. Where there is smoke, there is fire - and people will be attracted to it providing they feel the warmth of the fire. In this case, that warmth is a sense of status and community for those who otherwise have neither. Lets not forget here, the majority of these members are kids. They are naive, they are over confident, and think they are invisible - just like all of us at one point in time. The temporary mask of convenient anonymity will fall short eventually. Good OPSEC is being mindful that
absolutely nothing is secure - it's simply as secure as you can make it.
