Transcripts For CSPAN2 Washington Institute Discussion On Counterterrorism 20240713

By the acting director of the National Counterterrorism center , russell travers. Todays conversation has sparked institutes ongoing lecture series. Russell took office that nctc as acting director in august but its not his first, second or third time the building. Hes held many of other leadership position at nctc including Deputy Director consulate to the director acting director profits of Data Strategy innovation chief data officer among others. Hes held positions at the office of director of National Intelligence the National Security council the joint chiefs of staff so we are very thrilled that he has been able to carve time out of his busy schedule and spent some time with us today to talk about counterterrorism and an air of competing priorities. Russell will deliver opening remarks from the podium and then we will sit down for a little fireside chat and asks the first few questions and then open it up to you to ask questions and we welcome all of you who are watching via livestream or via cspan thank you for joining us today. Russell. Thanks very much matt. Its a great pleasure to be here amongst a number of old friends to talk about counterterrorism and resources. I happen to testify earlier this week for the leadership of the fbi and dhs and talk to a friend of mine yesterday from dhs. She said a colleague of hers characterized my performance is that the of a thoughtful nerd. Im hoping to aspire to something more than nerd him this afternoon. The issue of competing priorities six extraordinarily important. We are now almost at decade past 9 11 yet we continue to succeed and protect against largescale attacks on the homeland. We think this notion of competing priorities do nothing but get more challenging as it should. Ever since the former secretary mattis issued the Defense Strategy last year there has been an ongoing implicit discussion about risk. How does the threat of terrorism back up relative to threats by large powers north korea iran. Along with terrorism they laid out a dizzying array of different kinds of threats election security, counterintelligence, property theft National Organized Crime which kills far more americans than terrorism ever will produce that in hearing is completely understandable that terrorism may no longer be viewed as the number one threat in the country but i dont know what that means and they think it begs a host of questions. I offer three. What does the National Risk equation look like . The country confronts very complex interNational Security. Secondly how do we optimize save the resources in the best interest of the country went to prep and agencies may have different priorities and if we are going to review efforts how do we do so in a manner that doesnt inadvertently reverse some of the gains of the past 18 years. What we are going to do for the next 35 minutes or so is what a trip that of a roadmap on the issues i think we should consider as we address this question. Im going to develop 10 themes and doing some going to start with strategic and will work her way to the electron level and back up again. Number one, good news. We said at the outset terrorism is not and never has been an existential threat to the country unless it changes who we are. Does however pulled out the potential for killing a large number of people and as history has shown he can occupy the countrys attention for very long time and prevent other important things from getting done. Fortunately we have made a lot of truckers on the terrorism front. The last significant al qaeda directed attack in the west was Charlie Hebdo five years ago. Alas isis attack in the west was three years ago and before that pair is in brussels. Homeland violent extremist attacks are down and the u. S. Has had one this past year and roughly half a dozen in europe both numbers substantially lower than previous years. Capabilities ebb and flow. We have seen ice struggle to contain success for incidents in libya or the franchise is not doing very well. None of this happens by accident. There has been tremendous military and intelligence efforts in iraq and syria to eliminate the socalled caliphate. Many operatives have been captured and killed and that has had many secondorder effects. sophisticated messaging, theres swelling and morale issues. Its not just iraq and syria. We viewed leadership from around the globe. Dhs has pushed borders out and given the homeland much more to the terrace. It also seemed woeful reference to improve local security particularly after paris and brussels. We have seen a Great Partnership in the private sector to make cyberspace less hospitable and services around the globe are working together against terrorism unlike the efforts against any other National Security discipline. The u. S. Continues to pass on Lessons Learned to the adjusted foreign parties with a robust exercise program that addresses information sharing and cooperation. We are seeing Capacity Building of countries improvement in interservice cooperation enhancements in information sharing and mitigating the impact of terrorist attacks. Compare this can in response to the shaddat attacks against the west the mall and 2013 and the to set hotel earlier this year. We will never eliminate terrorism but a tremendous amount of good work has been done and that allows for conversation about comparative risk. Its a concern for the potential for complacency. We do need to be careful. When i started working counterterrorism after 9 11 we were overwhelmingly focused on al qaeda and simply drive to threat emanating from one piece of real estate along the border. 18 years later we see at the first diffuse threats that spans the globe. The primary islamist threat in many for countries has been homegrown violent extremism. Despite the elimination of the socalled caliphate we have an active isis insurgency in iraq and syria and command structure such that maintains cohesion over 20 odd isis networks. Some are very small. We have thousands of people. Nine of them have pledged allegiance to the isis leader for the past week. We have al qaeda that has received less attention over the past few years but it too retains command structure and a half dozen affiliates and we have seen port nation between capabilities. There also a full range of related threats and they are rainy and quds force and the growing concern for the shia militant groups in iraq. A the very strengths of islamist extremism were not competent enough we are seeing a roping global threat per to early extreme rightwing related terrorism. More on that later. Terrorists around the globe are proving capable act exploiting technology. They are good at it and use of encrypted communication for operational planning. Social media to spread propaganda and transfer knowledge between and amongst individuals and networks. Drones or swarm attacks and assassination attempts. Highquality fraudulent travel documents that undermine the system and threaten border security. Cryptocurrency to Fund Operations and the potential terrorists using chemical and biological weapons have moved from a low probability eventuality something is considered much more like way. In many cases terroristic exploitation of technology has outpaced the policy framework to deal with the threat. Looking outside the years we are particularly concerned with the growing adverse impact encryption will have our counterterrorism members and this is a key point. We cant freeze or thinking in 2019. We always need to be looking to the future. Finally qaeda an isis have shown themselves to be successful at radicalizing vulnerable populations around the globe. Sometimes they deploy emissaries to establish and organize a group. Sometimes an emissary supports an existing group. Sometimes an emissaries are to present. His star keizer personal connections. Sometimes social media or letters but sometimes a group deploys an emissary to isis core. They are innovative in ranks. The ranks me to three which is the need for focus on prevention by any objective standard there are far more radicalized people now than there were in 9 11 but something tanks of suggested we are looking at four times the number of individuals in our own databases of known and suspected terrorist terrorists has grown by a factor of almost 20. Unless you believe this fervor will burn itself out we will face a growing radicalization problem around the globe. No single factor captures the complexity of the radicalization process among disaffected youth worldwide. We believe it makes a personal Group Community social political and ideological factors contribute to the. Of recruitment to extremist organizations in the mobilization to violence. We are gradually as a world accumulating more Empirical Data for instance the United Nations development program. For africa guide rated 718 active reform for active extremist. Mostly from alshabaab or boko haram that identified the reason individuals are radicalized inner critic and to extremist organizations at the personal level. The most important factor cited was Human Rights Violations by the Government Security force. Poverty of the nature of religious education stable families and government correction. Its just not about poverty and being downtrodden. As we saw we saw in sri lanka individuals who are welleducated and relatively welloff are rather lies by hate features. Theres a great deal of Fertile Ground in countries where facing growing radicalization in prisons and even amongst Young Children who are being targeted by extremist propaganda. Their various initiatives associated with messaging deradicalization reintegration offramp thing as well as broader programs focused on Good Governance and Economic Development and human rights. Available resources remain a significant woeful problem. If the numbers are radicalized people around the world keeps growing by do not like their odds of identifying the right people to capture and kill and keep out of the country and there are second and Third Order Effects produced the situation gets worse in africa and Climate Change takes its toll we are seeing greater force migration. Movement of migrants to europe in turn is exacerbating tensions giving further right to a vicious cycle. The theme for the need to focus on identities, people of concern terrorist threats revolve around people and networks and by checking identities its pretty arcane and not as interesting as talking about the future of isis are the latest strike. Its incredibly important for their terrorist identities work underpins much of the u. S. Government screening and betting architecture as it evaluates 3. 2 Million People a day in. The super refill the country in 9 11. Two of the hijackers are alive to get visas within the country and eventually get on airplanes because we were insufficiently stitched together. An enormous amount of effort has been extended over the past 18 years. We have effectively pushed borders out creating a multilayered defense to identify individuals for terrorist connections at the earliest possible point. We have continually improved building Richard Dossey is making better use of technology performing near realtime classified screening to support unclassified watchlist and where possible making use of biometrics. This will never be a riskfree proposition that the system has overall performed extraordinarily well. Nctc working with the partners is responsible for compiling u. S. Government database of known and suspected terrorists. The date is used to support screening partners. There has been some confusion on this point if only talk about its precision is very important. Seven watchlist individuals may have connections. But we lack derogatory information requiring them to consider them suspected terrorists. As you might imagine, when is it too monday People Per Day are screened in drawing conclusions about anyone particular individual can be challenges. 3 million. Over the course of the 16 years of the system has stood the test of time. In some cases, refugees princess, esther levels of scrutiny are provided. We have no indication of foreign terrorist groups have attempted to exploit the refuge the Refugee Admissions Program and the screening and bedding have probably limited their ability to do so. Over the past two decades, the past decade, there is only been two individuals who arrived as refugees and went on to conduct attacks in the homeland. Both radicalize, after traveling to the United States. Our track record is pretty good. However, as effective as we are, we cant rest on this there are some warning signs. Click on the case of the paris and brussels the Tech Committee of the were known to security services. But that high quality as person nationally id cards. By graphically based lifts are wrong side of history. We saw this in Northern Syria captured fighters routinely had fake names and fbi and Defense Department focus on diametrically enrolling as monday people as they could. Voss of weve god ever increasing amounts of information. How do we process the volume of information to ensure highquality databases. Ill get into that in a few minutes. In my opinion, we should be treating this. Much like we did that after 911. What are you trying to accomplish, and how are we going to get there. We have a lot of peace arson we need to ensure they are properly stitched together. The five tenure visions should be, a mere real team, biographic and biometric screening against all available u. S. Government permission to determine if if an individual is the known or suspected terrorists. This would involve greater focus on collections, integrations, and sharing of biometrics as well as business process and Information Technology improvements. The benefits would extend well beyond counterterrorism. In support screening against brother categories of threats. That brings me to the five. The need for robust intelligence. None of this happened, unless we maintain a robust integrated intelligence capability. There is no question that the katter terrorism is the best integrated part of intelligence community. Weve been doing it as a community for a very long time. But is gives me hard, and is well resourced there will be significant challenges Going Forward. A globally dispersed and if used terrorism threats involved individuals and networks places great pressure on our intelligence services. We need to evaluate the terrorist threat at multiple levels and have sufficient insight to determine if and when they post a growing threat. The first typified by the spark of problem. This was simply not a high priority before us easter. The most hard line is only as denounced ices in 2016, and that spot in which smaller entity and dj was apparently responsible. An admitted benefit french element primarily known for attacks on buddhist statute. Not obviously associated with ices we didnt recognize start. One step up from that, would be local indigenous islamic insurgencies run the group missing to affiliate themselves with ices. That comes greater interest in attacking western interests. Consider the long circe in northern india. Recently they have affiliated with ices and are now focused on exxon u. S. Into energy interests. Extrapolate that to the 20 odd current and bedding ices affiliates around the world any substance of intelligence chat challenge. And when little higher, we need to have sufficient insight into the indigenous insurgencies to assess if and when it may be expanding beyond a country vocal threat to one that may present homeland. This is been a challenge in the past. In 2009, we thought of it a q. Week, is the regional threat. And Christmas Day of 2009, attempted to blow up like flight 253 over detroit. In 2010, we pakistani telemedicine regionally based south asia threat. And yet they train just weve god, who went on to attempt the bombing in new york citys times square. Say about the broad array of people and networks, and their ability to exploit technology and we have more than a few challenges. At the macro loophole as we adjusted priorities to brother threats or is no question and intelligence resources, collection and analytic will be shifted away from terrorism into brother priorities. Actions have consequences. When we stop focusing on. What is the associated risk. As we drive down military forces, we will have less human, and intelligent Surveillance Reconnaissance at people in theater. There will be less liaison with on the ground partners. Those are simply facts. With those facts, degree of risk and we determine how great that risk is and whether it can be compensated for, and so forth. And at the national loophole, we need to ensure that we have the right consolation of organizations and authorities. This is the very large into price. There is duplication. There will need to be rationalization rationalization were also Going Forward. And that brings me to theme seven. The need to get the electrodes right. If we are going to get the intelligence rights, we need to get the electrodes right. Data is everything. But we are looking for strategic trends, are conducting tactical loophole analysis associated with networks, data is the lifeblood of the community. The data challenges we face are extraordinarily can complex and particularly when we are dealing with information as it invariably a complete generally ambiguous, and often wrong. Ten years ago, this month the nigerian father walk into the embassy into bishop and said his son may be in yemen, that was available to reading the government pray to weve god militant no attention. And a month later, he tried blowup flight 253 over detroit. Brother data existed. The relationships that werent obvious and we did not connect the dots. I its been my entire career working in clinic issues and unequivocally, the counterterrorism doors signals noise ratios of any discipline. If i put you in the shoes of an analyst whos been working katter terrorism silent, he or she has seen a quarter of a million threats. Overwhelmingly they were bogus. But when they in, how exactly do you know. You get a little more concrete, we average about 300 threats during busy and consuls abroad every year. Almost oneaday. To get even a little more concrete, maps or receive something in excess of 10000 terrorism related intelligence scores a day through which the need to sift. Those 10000 reports contain 16000 names. Daily. All our services and are challenged by the need to process everexpanding amounts of data in order to cover uncover potential third terrace threats. With the growth of captured me on the battlefield nor the explosion of social media, the magnitude of the problem only grows. Terrace avenue to communicate and they have to move her name and they have to travel. Strictly speaking these data sets arent terrorism information. So i can quickly advocate legal and policy and privacy and equities that limited the sharing of processing such data. Determining which information is relevant and the competing equities with associating the dave it remains a work in progress. I will never have enough analyst to process the available information so Artificial Intelligence and machine error are not nice to have, they are absolute imperative. As such, i noted with interest earlier this week that the National Security commission on unofficial intelligence chaired by eric schmidt, former executive chairman issued its report. With respect to data, the government is wellpositioned to collect useful information from its Worldwide Network of centers. Much of the data is unlabeled and hinted in various silencing his just Different Networks for inaccessible to the government. Even more data is simply expelled as exhaust. Because its not deemed to be immediately relevant. In the infrastructure is woefully inadequate to process the information. We have a very long ways to go to realize the benefits that ai has. And in the case of terrorism, the problem is particularly difficult because so much of our data is unstructured. And its all in structured in different ways. And that makes it very difficult for the machine to help our analysts. Now back to what i said about the evolving nature of the threat. It is all about individuals and networks. As we have seen with homegrown exterior is, it could be extraordinary difficult to income of these individuals. They stack continues to grow in the needles are increasingly subtle. Loosing this problem across the western world and were partners may be dealing with thousands or tens of thousands of radicalized individuals and subjects of interest. The race me to theme seven adverse article question would take you a little bit on side right here. What does america want us to do in the realm of discovery and covering individuals. Terrorism like all transNational Threats, poses unique challenges because it orders concepts like foreign and domestic. As such our efforts to ensure Public Safety can quickly about against issues of privacy. Part of the government his response after 911, is to ride with very broad authorities to receive terrorism information. In my opinion, that was an extremely good move. With that, came extensive oversight and Compliance Regime and im actually extraordinary proud of the sinners record a deep regard and indeed, my experience has been that the entire community is very conscientious about these issues. But looking forward, and given the pace of change, seems to me the issues are going to become more difficult and the need for an informed transparent public discussion becomes greater. How do we square the circle. Keeping the country safe in the world of transNational Threats the struggle of the foreign and domestic divide, adequately balancing the protection of legitimate privacy rights. There is no consists of the country with the balance. Notion of discover equal is the case in. That nonobvious relationships and finding a new note none known spirit. Connecting. How much can wait and should we do. The processing of inexplicable amounts of information is an enormously complex and advise any simple solution. InterNational Cyber criminals and terrorists reparation and transitional criminals have linkages in the United States and then maybe u. S. Persons, with foreign connections the trouble here. Call here where he is our the user openness against us. Exploiting the attributes of globalization they can easily hide the daily noise of associated with millions of people across our borders, for the trillions dollars that run globally. For the unimaginable amounts of telecommunication activity. In virtually all cases, the data associated with these serious actors is sitting sidebyside in data repositories that also hold information and innocent use persons. There are lots of complicated challenges that live in our ability of discovery. In the case of the top 25 underwear brahma, it was a function of dots being lost in the background noise. An ability to discern nonobvious relationships between two apparently innocuous pieces of information. In brother cases, relevant data may exist in various departments and agencies suppositories. But for operational and Law Enforcement or privacy reasons, the information has brought broadly available. Retention and subsequent use issues are major limitations when it comes to co mingling information. And so another cases crisis in the case of financial data, irrelevant, information resides entirely separate suppositories that include in large. The dissolution like the need to balance privacy and security may sound superficially attractive. Managing is it really hopeful. Which electrons should be accessible to which organizations for what purpose and when. Ill give you some representative questions first, what loophole and dive boat counter to certain risk should be what you were wheeling to tolerate in order to preserve freedoms and liberties. And perhaps most importantly, how can the National Security Community Structure and dialogue with the American Public to constructively address the question. Second, how the National Security committee duly govern an approach of exultation of the internet. Particularly at a time when a, technology is far outpacing legal and illicit rulemaking and be, were able to find information on the internet that is far more rich valuable and intrusive and brother types of collections on strict constitutional and statutory regulation. And third, what is the role of a private sector and National Security guarantees him activities. Is there a point at which private sector and government are collaborating so closely particularly in the area of Data Collection that there is an intolerable privacy risk to individuals. I suspect these kinds of questions and the associated tradeoffs are going to be increasingly important as we look to the future. Alright let me move away from electrons back to the last three themes broader National Security issues. Any for whole government. Canada in terrorism integration across all relevant departments and agencies, particularly in an era in straight resources will be critical and i suspect increasingly difficult. It will also be insufficient. As we found over the past two decades, we need whole of government integration. Thats always been a challenge for us. As any practitioner will acknowledge the reality of the way the government is configured, limits interagency effectiveness. We are a Government Department told somebody the way we are designed in the her name is appropriated in the way it oversight works. We have hard wired across the government. Certainly thats not an issue and study in the studies have been written about the process. I say the 911 commission had about right quote it is hard to breakdowns suffice with there are so monday stoves that are legally and politically entitled to have cast iron pipes of their own. Not impossible, when very good examples of post 911 watch listing and screen architecture that brought together the entirety of the government. But even that has been on stress is the departments and agencies begin to adjust to evolving priorities. Nct is is director for Strategic Operational planning has a role in the interagency develop whole government ct strategies. Arguably the enterprise is more core negative than any brother mission, in part because of those efforts. That said, information efforts, integration efforts such as these will always struggle in a systems departmental sovereignty sovereignty and in the absence of sufficient authorities that went out our operation. In theory, integration happens at the National Security council. The largely happened in the years after 911. Terrorism was a major focus at the lemos senior levels of government because of the eminence of the threat. During a high threat environment when we were routinely seen as major hal qaeda plots. There were in fact multiple deputies and Principals Committee meetings every week. Mr. Minnis interagency attention at all levels. Understandably, as the perceived threats of decline, so the focus. In addition, the degree of downsizing deemphasizing at the integration of this administration. There is a benefit that the decisions could be put back to the departments and agencies partly because of the perception of micromanagement and partly born of the desire to win departments and agencies offered lying in the afc meeting to watch this very carefully to determine how work. There is no question that the nfc will continue to have the very highest priority issues. But what happens when lesser important questions are recognized as important until they are. Remember, it was a very hard king subject of processing its really that failed the country leading up to 911. And it was a technical issue of classified network six the right rise to the wiki wiki leaks and eventually started. Had a reinsurer, lower visibility issues that have the claim multiple Department Agency equities get adequately addressed before they become strategic failures. Finally, one result of the decline in Embassy Engagement as a potential for loss of interagency muscle memory. This could be incredibly important in the if it of the need Rapid Response are in crisis. Terrorism like any transnational threat maintenance since state the whole correct response and as we move forward, we need to ensure there are ample interagency mechanisms to affect such ordination. That brings me to theme nine. The need for whole society. As we look to the future, we need to look well beyond the whole government. Terrorist use of the internet for instance, will require a Robust Partnership between government and the Technology Industry to prevent the distribution of propaganda, communications with supporters, the proliferation of information to support attacks. Over the past two years, there is minute eight market increased in industry willingness to work with one another in u. S. Government and informed partners to Counter Terrorism through the Global Internet forum to Counter Terrorism. And originally created by facebook, microsoft and twitter and youtube, it provides a vehicle for discussion on potential information sharing and there has been substantial progress. Facebook twitter and youtube are public reap on it that they detect over 90 percent of terrorist content through automated technology. Much of it, is removed immediately after it is uploaded and never reaches the platform for public consumption. So this year, youtube has suspended over 42000 channels and removed over 1,603,000 videos for the promotion of terrorism. Facebook removed 6. 4 million pieces of terrorist content in the first a few months of this year and twitter suspended 1,606,000 unique accounts in the second half last year for promotion of terrorism. The recent move to establish as an independent ngo, offers a more formalized opportunity to better leverage respective strings of the private sector and the government against this dynamic problem. The new construct looks to sustain and deepen industry collaborative dave in incorporating the advice of key Civil Society stakeholders. So it remains to be seen what role Government Entities will play was in this construct is accessing at this future, online threat will likely only be realized through Greater Transparency and information sharing across the public and private divide in near realtime. Greater transparency reports provided by them members, pertain to content and takeout efforts provide Government Entities with a snapshot of the scope and scale of the problem. But typically they lack sufficient detail on the methods and the dive boat material it is being purged. Government efforts to support Technology Companies could be better targeted with Greater Knowledge of the actual content being removed and the location of its origin, and potential attribution. And from this information, Government Entities would be able to more effectively assess trends and terrorist of this since trends of propaganda and identifying new and emerging groups, he radicalize her his the credibility of potential pods. New insight could then be transfected the companies to enhance their models and algorithms. And none of this will be easy. Companies willingness to robustly engage governments depends on a host of policy legal and proprietary concerns. But if we can mutually work through the impediments there is no question that transparency will pay dividends. Further, additional constructs might warrant consideration. At what organized crime at the end of clec on the publicprivate partnerships like the National Cyber forensics and training allies to be a very useful platform. Mp3 brings together government and private sector for the purposes of information sharing in the cyber crime arena. Both government and the private sector have found that concert to work well. As of friday false, we need chewable. That frees to my last name ten. Getting arms around the Global Dimensions of non islamist terrorism. Nothing highlights the evolving nature of the terrorist threat more than the growth of what some call the t, others right wing or right premise terrorism and still others racially motivated violent extremism. The fbi clearly has laid on domestic terrorism but i want to focus on here, by the Global Dimensions and the potential for singing a movement. Increasingly transnational nature, facilitated by social media, and unlike communications have resulted in environment two features quite frequent communication between synthesizers and open exchange of ideas. A large percentage of the attackers in recent years, have either displayed rh likeminded individuals or groups or reference early attackers as sources of inspiration. For instance, roof, written tara have gained International Reference and surfing as inspiration from monday mds, including those looking to plan or conduct attacks. They remain inspired at least been praised our research, at least five attackers since 2014. Manning from the u. S. , to the uk, germany and new zealand, roof, as an inspired at least two attackers her father since his june 2015 attack against the Historic Black Church in charge and at south carolina. And terence, himself was inspired by bradley, and praise roof, and brother attackers has inspired at least three attackers since his march 2019 attacking christchurch new zealand. The connections go well beyond inspiration. We see travel by weiss his premises to fight couple in terrys, communications against racially motivation extremists and prohibitions of funds. Some of this involves connections to nonviolent but extreme right wing organizations. Some of this involves connections to active military groups are those who have been banned or designated as terrorist organization by brother countries. At some this involves connections between likeminded individuals who might or might not simply move from exploring a stream analogy to radicalization globalization to violence. We dont fully understand how attackers are influenced in or what constitutes medical relationships between extremists. Unlike islamic extremism has been led by a relatively large organizations, like hal qaeda, and isis, randy does not feature authoritative or structural organizations or ideology. Instead, it is dominated by some actors in small cells to use the online space is the borderless safe haven. They are inspired by a number of proceed concerns including political and social economic and legal graphic environmental and personal issues. Moving forward, we will have to address a whole host of issues. Fortunately there are Lessons Learned from the it that could be applicable in the dt robie space. Full government, improve information sharing, focus on individuals and networks and work with the private sector and foreign partners, and so forth. That said, there are some challenges unique to this problem set. The lack of a statue and associated Material Support charges. The added complexity to protected free speech and the associated difference between United States and our partners. And the fact that the perpetrators are often love actors. This substantially complicates the challenges in it. And far broader issues. First, for almost two decades, the United States as of the broad, countries who are exporters and extreme ideology. We are no mixing of the exporters of White Supremacy ideology. That is the reality of whom were going to have to deal with. As we grapple with how to deal with global movement, we need to be very careful. In the case of the international is the terrorist threat, lee lost some control over the narrative of month vulnerable populations radicalization has succeeded on the pretense of the west is conducting a war against islam. His false but its effective. When into guarding a set in the space. We must disaggregate the properly dealing with violent white supremacist activity will not be sprucing as painting a true broader brush and impinging on legitimate right wing political activity free speech. Giving control of the narrative, and creating the International Toolbox for that particular disaggregation is going to be tricky but absolutely necessary so as not to make the problem worse than it already is. So in conclusion, which take you back to the question i posed at the offset. What does the National Look like as a country has very complex interNational Security environment. How do we optimize rct resources in the best interest of the country. When informants and agencies may have somewhat different priorities. Ever going to reduce efforts against terrorism, how do we do so in a manner that is inadvertently reversed some of the games the past 18 years. Reasonable people can answered those questions in very different ways. And the answers are most assuredly not selfevident. They deserve the consideration by thought leaders inside and outside of the government. I do believe that that things that layout, the focusing on all aspects of the current future terrorist threats, addressing a host of must do his, and resolving a series of complicated and motivated issues will help us inform and develop a Good Government Risk Assessment moving forward. Thanks very much. [applause] thank you were also, that was really a tremendous presentation. It really covered the waterfronts. Moderators, prerogative and i have questions that will take us an ideological spectrum and one then we will open it up to for questions and answers. So my first question, you mentioned that at one point draw down the definition these two last less liaison and he talked about making sure we do what we can to make sure that we dont reverse the games. Next week, the kind of coalition will be holding a hearing here in dc, and i understand that theyve taken something soft the purpose of next week like dealing with robin steve and whether the coalition his true mission should be expanded to pacifically see and hard rock given the turkish incursion and the u. S. In partial withdrawal, that went out getting into the big policy issues just strictly for me counter perspective, what needs to be done to be able to make sure that the Current Events on the ground in northeast syria in particular, dont lead to tremendous impacts and intelligence collection and losing some of the progress that weve made. From an intel perspective weve been very pleased and the secretary of defense have reiterated the forces that dont remain will still have a nicest mission, kanner isis mission, thats really important. From an intel perspective, the foreign fighter problem, and the ices prisoners in that part of syria, have been a source of much of tension for us over the past couple of years with obviously, in pushing very hard as a country to get our partners to repatriate foreign fighters and that has not gone well. There are tremendous issues associated with judicial systems and every european partner countries. As a result, as i mentioned, we have gotten concern that there is a growing likelihood that eventually we could see monday of these foreign fighters again when theyre broken out of prison or released from prison, and so the focus on diametrically enrolling and making sure those individuals are the appropriate watches is the focus in the past couple of years. I am quite pleased with that. Similarly, the fdf have been fabulous partners over the years and they have board tremendous cost in syria. There is a willingness to provide information to us. They are still being, in the way that they are focusing on prisons, though they drew down substantially when they were coming to the turkish incursion. So for us, probably the greatest midterm concern is the retention of those prisoners not bolstering isis. Not seeing foreign fighters. To that, you have a loophole of confidence the biometrics, and the people who have detained so the reports of the hundred or so have any of your people are people that weve collected biometrics on. As to sodium cyber war probably dont know who exactly these hundred people are. There was some moving of prisoners two different prisons. Acceptation was and i say it is proven to be the case that the knowledge of where specific people are, and start a housekeeping that was associated with that, its going to be increasingly problematic. We are quite confident that we did get biometrics virtually all of the foreign fire after compartments, probably so in the case of iraqis and syrians were certainly not as comprehensive but the anticipation is that the individuals will be most likely to see in theater anyway. Us move away from extremism for moment talk for a minute about you mentioned early on, concerns about iranian and the threats over the past few months weve seen a sharp uptick in iranian to be the region, weve also seen an uptick in activity broad here in the United States just this week, two iranians but guilty in a plot which involved surveillance in jewish, targets in the United States. We had one visual convicted in convicted in new york city, one another but guilty is been indicted awaiting trial, heavily by the Community Look at the issue of extremist terrorism in the context of this uptick in community. So the bureau works very hard in the United States and what we do see these kind of periodic arrests. I say frankly the uptick in activity in the region is as of a greater concern to us, the pressure campaigner response to the pressure contain potential for hair triggers an activity of the admission groups in iraq in particular. That is going to bear really close watching in the years ahead. Instead of where we are a thing. And finally, by opening up to questions and answers from the audience. I want to meld together your thoughts about the right wing are the racially violent extremists activity on the one hand, and your points on social media. Because the growth of one is so dependent on the brother. Do you say that government needs to play a greater role in regulating the social media of private sector. Or do you say theyre doing enough job. I those small group out to california a few months ago and we came back feeling there are some things in which the private sector on social media was really doing an incredibly good, very forward leaning work but it wasnt consistent so for some platforms of the issue of free speech went everywhere from taken much more strongly than others and some platforms were not only deep platform you for kind of but for hate which is in some ways more than the government. The fact that it is inconsistent, is about problem that the industry is selfregulating do we need to get involved. Sverre i say the government has to be really careful about getting involved. His. About transparency. The terms of service, on the province of the individual platforms as you see some more armor forward leaning and some are more wheeling to engage with the government. As i said weve been a huge fan of ct, i say it is fair to see that the platforms themselves, are struggling with once you get outside of the realm of an isis association or an hal qaeda association, makes it harder for them to drink their algorithms. Theres going to be, i hope growing conversation related to the ramsey space and how you do that. There are lots of questions about whats constitutes excitement how far you can go ahead and monday of these individuals like we see in some of the cases are pretty savvy about staying within the legal bounds of the First Amendment and so we are in kind of new territory. I say the strategic pitcher here is that there has been a tremendous growth in the conversation between the social Media Companies in the government and they have been much more forward leaning over the past few years that just leads to gas. Well open it up. I say i hear you acknowledge it can be as i hear abroad as a former government official, that week the United States are being seen by monday as the source of a particular dive boat extreme ism. The same way we saw others responsible for that and brother contacts. And if in an amount of anger and frustration with us that the angle we have some legal restrictions and how we can deal with that. Clearly the fbi in the doj his, realm in keeping that in perspective as you gain engage with partners. Are there authorities of sometime that you like us to have her change domestically so we can deal specifically with the transnational aspect of this purdue find that when we are following a transnational threat, or otherwise, and then comes back to the United States in some way that we are hindered from pursuing that. This is the work in progress. The government is kind of feeling his way forward. On which cautious about the way i talked about the nature of those connections and what they mean. There is so want very much to designate overseas organizations in a way that we do it with a ptos. Were going to have to be really careful about that. We seen some examples here just recently about entities like the ukraine that there are those that would like to designate that entity. Parts of that entity are parts of the Ukrainian National card. And so the potential for unintended consequences and like his head making the situation worse and were not careful, i say our family there. Some are going to have to kind of go slowly year be deliberative both vendors and the problem and then go through the potential to go through that. Thank you. Going to open it up to questions and answers now. Raise your hand if you have a question and wait for mike to identify yourself and will start right here with my colleague. Thank you. So you mentioned the foreign fighters, and your information of the iraqis and assuring his will to detain in military as well. So my question would be, enough attention, why is your assessment is the potential trends regarding the iraqis knowing that in 2007, 2009, iraq he was so going in to the ground, and the emerging militaries and history of the militants, and then upbringing. Do you say that is a threat. Iraq and syria in the region. Six years or so, isis, down to a thousand individuals in iraqi and syria at the bottom line number right now is 14000 and some would say it was substantially higher than that. Mostly in iraq. They recognize the and couple of years ago and started moving towards an insurgent orientation going underground as you suggest. Our concern about that is given what they did, six years ago 14000 people now at least, potentially another eight or 9000 that are imprisoned before his death, he called for attacking those prisons and camps and breaking people out. So i say the expectation is that number is going to do nothing but grow. In terms of activity in the ground, there are already no go areas and night and we see isis plagues in small areas in which their being implemented, but the full crop burning pain, and everything, insurgency is alive and kicking in northwest iraq for sure. I dont see the forcing function for why that gets better. Its going to require a combination of both. Military pressure and dealing with the entire sort of demand side of the equation. That reconstruction is gone far slower than any of us would like as of the potential for longterm disenfranchisement and that part of this country his is pretty significant. So that regard, theres a lot of work to do. I come from egypt. , politician. I am here as a student. I like to have your comment on two issues. One, how do you see this terrorist attacks happening in cyber. Do you say text or a revenge. As a result of see, Security Issues not working. The whole area. [inaudible conversation] whereby, we have a lot of troops in the place, and there is also such is broke operations of the border. How do you see this, quite a revenge of this young benevolence, and who are somehow feeling marginalized not belonging anymore. This is number one. Number two, do you believe in running or having a kind of to deal with those who are in prison. Members of the islamic groups especially the younger ones. Do you believe that there is a real chance of convincing them or changing their beliefs so that they could befriend them from violence and be released and integrated again to society. Do you say this is the civility or sense the environment seem so socially economic problem. Human rights abuse. So what chances do you say. Thank you. So first question. There is both an isis and hal qaeda presence in sinai. To get to the text into question. Its a little bit of both. Certainly an underlying cause of issue. But we have seen the ices element in sinai and has allegiance to the new advices. So i say we got an existing terrorist cells that are conducting attacks mostly in the northern part of sinai. On the second question, unfortunately, i say globally we are staying prisons be incubators for a radicalization and terrorism. I dont say anyone is broken the code on how you deal with it. I say we had individually in the United States prisons of weve god now and they were every bit as radical as a woman they cut out is when they got in. And we are looking at because of the prison sentences that are lengthy, where the cost of saving hundreds to thousands of people come out that were very radicalized with a wooden or got radicalized when they went in. So i certainly take your. That we got a lot of work to do. But there have been sort of debates about what he put all of these prisoners together with he tried to break them up. Your parent partners are going back and forth on this, and all of them prepared to have demonstrated challenges but theres not a lot of Success Stories in terms of people coming out of prison that have been and if not a radicalized at least disengaged. In. George mason university. One of the points he made was the increasing intersection of transnational crime and terrorism. But in your strategy, you didnt talk about ways that you can utilize the analyses for these interactions and do Network Analysis from one side that may be more vulnerable infiltration than the brother. So mentioned i did a couple of years at the nfc. Working on organist crime. I actually went there with the bounty, goal of creating an life entity to do something with pride. It seems to me that good things happen we do bring the government together and you give young analysts very broad access information to do the kind of identity Network Analysis. We are moving a little bit in that direction right now fortunately i say, and there is the belief on something called in a pm seven we want to do similar work in the transactional criminal database staying that we do in the case of terrorist identities. This plans to be a very good idea. But if we start cataloguing these people for the purposes of both looking at intersections with terrorism as well as knowing if potential but guys want to come to the country and sort of who they are connected with. But there are still lots of issues because as desperate as terrorism wasnt back before 911, transactional crime has spread further across the government so we have a long ways of go in terms of the consensus about how you should consolidate the zephyrs initiative credited with work that the direction that we need to go. Are here. Hi thank you. Yup and by starting the discussion about risk. In the risk that we are facing now as we are drawing towards the Great Power Competition as we are refocusing across the government away from the terrorism threat in american terror feeling quite safe here at home not having witnessed another 911 attack. The challenge is that the layout to the counterterrorism efforts include decline in interagency and coordination and focus. In the question of how we have actually all of government approach to caret terrorism. Below what i want to ask is outside of the counter and tasman terrorism realm, can you discuss the list about relying on only catechism strategy against threats from hal qaeda in the Islamic State and how the counterterrorism strategy my matchup with a country or region wide strategy to counter the local groups themselves that are eventually producing the threats you are working against. In my opinion, the strategy they came out last year was really a very good exemplary of how the government is still working this problem together a number of people in this room work on the back then. And its not just about capturing and killing. Theres a lot of focus in their on the prevention issue. Working with locals and how to do the same kind of multinational, all of which is exactly the right thing i say to do it. The question is sort of now follow through. That the notion of terrorism prevention has i say played a significant role in three of the four tarrant strategy that we done since 911. The reality is we have a lot of private centers we didnt know what worked for a time. And i say it is fair to see if there is going to be a tremendous challenge as you suggested in some of these groups in africa and at is that relate to the african strategy and mobile going to do with Current Development and so forth and so thats going to continue to be a significant challenge i say for aib. Voice of america. Anymore today, the need it last week about the new isis later and are you surprised at all on the Propaganda Campaign for the state is in running the show how they are supporting him. Secondly, where does the counter chasm strategy and into the great power strategy in are you staying any great powers or starting to manipulate or trying to use terrorist groups as proxies if not to accomplish something for themselves just to make things more difficult for the u. S. Brother first, i actually say this is playing out largely as we expected. We saw the amount announcement, and then we saw the new guy named. We saw the call for attacks. Some eulogies, and we saw the branches and Networks Start to have allegiance to the new palace. This is very similar to what happened back in 2010 and there was actually substantial period of time between the name came out that daddy and a recognition figuring out who he actually was as a mention on the hill, arthur w was that he would be a logical candidate for taking over. But were not at the point of having confirmation sort of who it is. On the great power thing, this is an added dimension to the rigby problem that i didnt mention but they were going to have to work our way through that there is and certainly examples of the russian state sort of exploiting issues to play to white wing grievances and how do we deal with that. Its an interesting question for intake steve and my Counter Terrorism information. Access and issues associated with the russian state would not be something that would fall within so we are going to have to work that with the bureau in terms of how they handle it. Counter intelligence ways. You would have an opportunity work with the russians when it comes to counter and terrorism. But you, especially canadian events in syria and iraq. Now everybody, in the region in particular sees the islamic data as number one threat that we do. So in particular at a time when majority of forces on the ground, and even countries in turkey and syria maybe have a different priority is asian that we do. How does that affect our ability to work with them or maybe brother partners on the grounds to deal with. I say the turks are the clear example here. They will profess interest in Counter Terrorism but primarily theyre concerned about ices is the parlous. There hasnt been prices attacks in turkey in a while. And so coming back to the issue of prisons is whos going to take them over and have concerned the turkey is going to be i do say that they would not be interested in holding a ton of european foreign fighters they would want to get back to European Countries who exactly is that going to work and if its going to work and so this sort of focus and emphasis weve had our sdf, partners for a very long time. It is going to be challenged with a turkish incursion. Hi thank you. George washington. You got a touch on turkey a little bit. Then as yesterday but they will begin to send home foreign fighters and next 24 hours possibly. What is that mean just a bit on the year. Partners in their lack of taking people back. Is there a plan, what are we doing. I dont know the answered the question. What we have seen is from our European Partners, some concern here and he started stripping citizenship so they wont have to take them back. How this will shake out, im not sure. Thank you for we are concentrating on the middle east but we have right now, now massive riots and whatnot, and connection between Iranian Affairs and argentina. Are we doing anything about that. Dc connection there. Or as of that of interest or will we just wait and see what happens. Spink dealt with in the regional bureaus but i really dont have anything to see. Are you seeing any evidence of the russians part two some of these groups that you had mentioned that are racially motivated violent extremists are there in the u. S. Otherwise Financial Support and sponsorship brother types of activities. Not that ive seen. As mentioned, the schisms, and because it a Greater Movement in that direction. Sort of influence issues. Speak your mention of finance makes me say especially since one of my georgetown students for my class, they coteach with, National Threats and she has some questions. I am doing this for her. Can you comment on the continued efficacy of our counter finance tool. Its been a lot out recently including members of congress generally about whether sanctions continue to be effective. How effective and how important do you see this teachable finance in particular. As demonstrated past it success. The history of a lot of terrorist attacks has been that it really has it doesnt cost a lot of her name. And when the new zealand looked at what theyve actually been doing, what they found was small amounts of her name that were being donated to terrence and so forth. And then is the challenge again. Back again to the signaltonoise problem and you got trillions of dollars sloshing around identifying a particular her name going to a particular individual, and this implicates additional issue that i talked about which is that there are a lot of regulations that go along with being able to co mingle data sets with her name and that makes it difficult for analysts of people and treasury of the bureau to be able to track it. The brother attacks in the hal qaeda ices world is the fact that i say back to the way things were when i started my career, and fdi in the 90s, we looked at then, when it comes to these loan offenders, are largely irrelevant. Which is to see travel and communications and financial transfers. And with the attacks that they had in 16 and 17 they did a review and they concluded there was Something Like 30000 subjects of interest on the radar screen a one. And the conclusion was that at any given time they could do 24 7 surveillance of a few dozens with open investigations of thousands and a lot more than would have to sift out unless something came in to cause them to be higher on the priority. So the question is how do you identify a. At the noise level to bring it up to know to allocate investigative resources cracks this is the issue of technology with the approach that we are taking right now is the ability to do recurrent search against any particular individual on the screen but also that so many of these people resurface seven years later the reality is we have a workforce that comes and goes so the issue of Knowledge Management to effectively download a brain i think technology can help with that there will never be enough investigative resources to look at every individual that is radicalized. I found this remarkably chilling and scary. Not because there isnt enormous progress of the amazing achievements you and your colleagues are doing but particularly the implied net conclusion that the situation is really bad out there. So if there are 20 times more potential bad guys are we 20 times better than we were before 9 11 or at net are we worse than we were quick. Thats a fair question. The strategic concern that i have there are far more radicalized people now than there were 18 years ago. Nobody questions that but are those individuals a primary concern in a liberal region area but you certainly dont have that capability that we saw in the heyday of al qaeda to ensure that we dont freeze our thinking in 2019. What will this look like Going Forward if we start to pull back against the counterterrorism target we have to deal with these organizations and have enough intelligence of the threat to the homeland. That i think gets to be a harder problem for us. And maybe the threat will stay local. But given our history the last 18 years i dont think we can count on that im sure you heard the fbi talk about the encryption problem we get really good at technology but it makes it a harder problem for us which means we need to be there so there is a tremendous amount of good news and we need to embrace that but we need to recognize the effort has to continue. In the way that you said things are looking darker is the prospect of biological use can you help us dig deeper on that for what you have seen so far in terms of any group embracing that technology and what is your prediction more concrete if it changed and like lead to more palatable sure. To a degree it was normalized in iraq and syria with what isis was able to do, i dont know how many we have seen but numerous plots have been interrupted around the globe over the last several years with a tremendous amount of concern the ease with which poison gases could be developed and i think for many colleagues it is a surprise we have not already seen that just given past history. Al qaeda flirted with it 15 years ago we never saw that operationalized it looks like isis has gone an easier route and there are instructions. So we cannot be sanguine about the nature of the threat. A recent graduate but you mentioned briefly the shifting tackett to target children can you speak more how terrorist organizations are doing that and how we respond to that and the radicalization efforts that grow up with extreme ideology such as a rack and syria. This is getting a tremendous amount of attention from our European Partners who have this much worse than we do there is a lot of children born in the caliphate their fathers may have been killed and europeans are struggling with what do they do. There has been a willingness to bring the orphans back. Some countries are now talking about trying to bring women and children back but the social Services Issue associated with how you deal with these kids and what kind of mental shape they are in is an area of concern. We have learned a lot about the Islamic State over the years that sounds like extremism through the isis project that is used by government as well so what do you think from what we know about isis can be predictive of what it will become next last time we had the general here and he talked about the strategic surprise that caught us with the sudden rise devices and we were giving some thought to the way we think of these movements when we have dealt with mobilization what do you think we can learn or what we might expect in the future quick. I do think the next couple of years are likely to be very interesting. We discuss this amongst ourselves all the time. When the caliphate was declared they started to take over a large swath of territory they put a huge bullseye on their back. Isis is a learning organization. It is very bureaucratic in my own mind i wonder if they are content with conducting a prolonged insurgency and stay underground to avoid the pressure that they absorb from the coalition the last couple years. But nobody knows. But the more we draw down and put the other threats the greater the likelihood we will not understand that dynamic Going Forward and that is a concern. Okay. What is the impact that we have seen the different context of countries . How does it affect the information that you process with that working relationship when they use that concept with other National Interest quick. That gets into a wonky answer but it seems like the who the houthis it is a state support we are finding within our community that the counterterrorism effort was stitched together for many years over time some of these efforts have moved from counterterrorism to regional bureaus and that complicates the coordination and effort of departments and agencies to make sure you know all the right people to talk to them on a daily basis as the effort is more disparate it does make it harder. It also makes information sharing harder. And after the 9 11 commission we are focusing to make sure the relevant analyst to do that analysis comes with those operational restrictions and impediments when it is in the Counterterrorism Community as it moves to the other disciplines it makes it harder than that can complicate the analytic discipline. Im glad we could and with the question. Ladies and gentlemen please join me in thanking him today. Have a Great Holiday weekend. [inaudible conversations] good morning everyone. I am the director of policy programs i