"exercise normal precautions" is the State Department advisory. They, a group of white people, cycled with thousands of dollars worth in gear through an impoverished state known to have a terrorist presence, while I also believe documenting their journey publicly on social media.

I take more precautions travelling basically anywhere, as you can't really get more conspicuous than what they seem to have done. I know this is a massive over generalisation with a sprinkling of paranoia, but I never flaunt such expensive stuff when travelling through most of Asia, as I wouldn't if I ever went anywhere in the middle east. I'm not saying the people there are intrinsically bad, but these people were riding along on multi-thousand dollar bikes, with their thousand dollar phones and likely thousands of dollars worth in cameras on display for everyone to see. Any one of those items is worth more than what most of those people make in years, so it wouldn't really be much of a surprise if something happened to them.

Even ignoring the high potential for a theft-motivated attack, documenting their trip publicly while they were there painted a massive target on them too - on top of the potential terrorists who they basically spoon-fed some free attention to, there are anti-west/anti-foreigner groups and individuals in a lot of places in east Asia which could've been riled up like this, especially in a place like Tajikistan where the public sentiment may not really be in their favour due to US involvement in that region.

Sad that it happened, but their actions were stupid anyway I look at it assuming what we know of the incident is true.