I think we can go ahead and get started. I have a couple things to discuss before introduced our steam speaker. Forceful and introduce myself. My name is deanna lee. I am part of the Digital Communications team here at a nonprofit and nonpartisan Global Research organization that tackles the Worlds Toughest problems. I am very happy to welcome you all to todays policy on very important topics addressing violent extremism in the u. S. Our policy lab series is designed to give you an opportunity to hear directly from experts about the most important policy issues. Im really pleased to see so many folks have joined our zoom webinar. Additionally i want to welcome those of you are watching and listening on cspan radio and shes been 1. Both are testing to go live today. For those of you who have joined us on zoom i have a couple housekeeping items. We will have some time at the end of the presentation for a short q a session. If you do have questions please post those in the q a forum, not in the chat. You can check out the chat with some additional information. We have posted links there that are relevant in todays presentation. Closed captioning is available for this webinar. You can display the captions by selecting that option in the menu bar at the bottom of the zoom window. We are recording the session. We will make that recording Available Online at a later date. I think we are ready to get going. I will tell you a little bit more about our speakers ryan browne and todd home is. Ryan browne is a senior behavioral social science his work concerns the role of culture and social network in driving risktaking, violence, and other distracted and self destructive behavior. His current work focuses on the individual, social, and cultural drive of domestic extremism. He also conducts research the better the lives of rural and remote populations. With a focus on American Indians and alaskan native groups. Ryan holds a phd and an ma in anthropology from Emory University and received postdoctoral training in Population Health from the robert wood johnsons health and Society Scholars program at uc San Francisco and uc berkeley. Todd hellman is a senior Behavioral Scientist with the corporation. A nationally recognized expert on disinformation and violent extremism. He specializes in the use of data and evidencebased strategies to understand and counter disinformation and extremism. He has studied the disinformation threat by deep fakes, russian propaganda campaigns targeting u. S. And europe, and the use of social media by violent extremist groups. He is also led research on the effectiveness on online intervention to prevent radicalization. He has a phd in Clinical Psychology from wayne state university. Ryan and todd, take it away and i will be back in a bit for q a. All right. Thank you for joining us. It is an honor for ryan and i to be able to present to you the results of this study that we recently did. It is on an important issue affecting the nation. Ryan, did you want to show the slides . Great. Next slide. This study was, we were able to bring the study to you because of the generosity of the Epstein Family veterans policy institute. They conduct research to improve the lives of those who have served and support them. We also received a generous grant from the two wanting foundation to enable this work. So we are grateful to both places. Anyone who has followed brand those we have done a lot on the terrorism issue. We helped organize and run one of the central databases of terrorism events in the u. S. We no longer do that but we do a host of, conduct a host of policy Research Studies to address extremism. I myself have been doing work soon after 9 11 focused on al qaeda radicalization and recruitment. When Osama Bin Laden was killed , ices came on the scene and started doing work then. Iran has also done a lot of domestic extremism work. Ryan browne i did a violent extremism in america. We can talk about some of that work today. But has also done other work. Including racially motivated extremism and extremism of the military. This continues the long line of work both ryan and i, and more broadly rand has done over the years. Next slide. January 6th is what sparked americas interest in the issue of veterans. Soon after the riots, reports were suggesting 20 to 25 of those who are identified in the riots had military past. Most often a past and in some cases current military affiliations. I think we are all aware of ashley babbitt, the air force officer was shot and killed during the assault. Also the proud boys, their membership is heavily loaded with veterans. Three of the four veterans, three of the four members convicted of conspiracy work veterans. We are concerned about extremism. There is concern that veterans offer a lot to extremist groups. They have skills, capabilities , not only in military and Tactical Training skills, but leadership skills. That could potentially make these groups more violent and more deadly. I think more broadly, certainly since the time of the civil war , has really acknowledged the responsibility that American Society the veteran community. So we want to do anything we can for veterans to live safe and secure fulfilling lives. So addressing the threat is really important. I will say i forgot to mention the previous slide, those initial 20 to 30, 25 references of veterans being engaged and extremism has dropped considerably. So they went down depending on who is measuring it. George Washington University has a bit more structured criteria on how they include people. Whereas the university of Maryland Program has them at 18 . Still not the 20 to 25 but certainly nothing trivial. Next slide. The university of Maryland Center also suggests that the number of veterans arrested is increasing. At least over the last 12 to 15 years. Another issue to be concerned about. Next slide. The studies we have not seen what prompted us to do this study was that we dont know to what level veteran support terrorism, or the mystic extremism is in the u. S. Understanding the prevalence is important. A basic caveat that just supporting extremism does not make one a terrorist. Ryan will talk more about this at the conclusion of our brief. Its important to at least do this is a form of barometer so overall ideally we can track overtime to assess the degree which veterans are at risk. We do presume supporting extreme causes does lend one to be more at risk. There are factors into joining terrorist movements. But it is understood at least having an intellectual affinity with the terrorist movement oftentimes is considered condition. Next slide. We did the study and conducted a representative survey among veterans. It is not a trivial task. We were lucky that we were able to work with an existing rand study that was conducting a representative survey among veterans. We were able to have some questions that related to extremist causes. Here you see the topics we included. We ask our sample of nearly 1000 participants about white supremacist support. Black nationalist, proud boys as well as antigua. We also asked about three ideologies that we know they can drive extremist movements or actions. Political violence, support for Political Violence. The conspiracies. And finally the great replacement conspiracy. I will talk more about those in a minute. We were able to, we basically took the questions for this from existing surveys that were out there. We were able to identify how our numbers compare to what might be were presented of surveys of the general public. So we used the same questions. And the next slides when i show you the results you will see we do make some comparisons. Ryan will talk about this more in a little bit. But we make these comparisons with some degree of humility recognizing that we have different samples, Different Survey methodologies, and different demographic makeups among veterans compared to nonveterans. All that place in to how we want to interpret these results. Here are the key findings. One thing we noticed overall was among support for extremist groups like broadway seven whites premises groups, the veterans underperformed compared to the general surveys. White supremacists, only 0. 8 of the veterans that are sampled expressed support for the white supremacist movement, like the kk k or a neonazi organization in comparison to typically what we see at 7 in the general ovulation. Support black nationalist, we have no comparison for that that was at about 5 . For the proud boys that was at 4. 2 compared to the general population. For nt for we saw about half of the percentage among the veterans supported compared to the general population. This will be my last slide and then i will turn it over to brian. We asked about three ideologies. One is Political Violence. I guess the wording is important. For Political Violence when we asked the question was because things have gone so far off track true american patriots may resort to violence in order to save our country. The general population finds 18 of their respondents agree with that statement. We see a comparable percentage among the veteran population at about 17. 7 . Relatively comparable numbers. For qanon , and for those not familiar with this conspiracy theory, the government, media, and financial world is composed of satan worshiping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation. In the general population we see around 8 support that whereas our study is about 13 and half among the veterans. Finally there is a great replacement theory. A group of people are trying to replace nativeborn americans with immigrants and people of color who share their political views. At least in this case we see relatively comparable numbers. The general population of 34 in our bedroom population at about 29 . Fairly high on most of these marks. Ryan, you want to take it from here . Thank you so much and thank you to everyone for attending today. We also broke down the results by branch of service. Army, navy, air force, marine corps. What we found was the marine corps, veterans of the marine corps showed higher support for proud boys, antifa, and white nationalists. If you look up support for any of these groups veterans of the marine corps are twice as likely to show support for one or more than army, air force, or navy veterans. We also broke down branch of service for the specific ideologies and beliefs. We saw marine corps veteran showing higher support for Political Violence. True patriots may have to relate to violence to save our country. There is a conspiracy to replace nativeborn americans with the great replacement theory. Most marine koren air force veteran showed higher support for the qanon narrative. Logy. We can talk a little bit during. Q a about reasons for that. We also looked at overlap in support for specific groups and endorsement of Political Violence. The reason is particularly concerning to see a law of importance. The good news is the degree of overlap and supporting the need for taking up arms against the country to support specific groups was pretty mild. It is a couple ways of looking at it. The overlap was great for antifa and the proud boys. But if you take everything for supporters, only a little less than 20 of supporters also supported Political Violence. For proud boys, around 33 supported the proud boys and endorsed critical violence. You can look and say 18 of veterans supported the violence so how many supported proud boys . When you look at it that way, it is less than 10 . On the one hand, that is may be good news because you do not see a lot but also, it makes us wo on one hand maybe its good news. You dont see a lot of, there is importance in but also makes us wonder for those 18 , it is pretty high, are these folks ready to be radicalized by a cause . We do know the extremist threat is evolving more rapidly than it has been. Much less dependent upon specific group number should then it has been in previous decades. Todd, todd hinted at this. But the veteran population in the u. S. Is demographically very different than the rest of the u. S. Population. On the one hand the military has been a Great Innovator and represents broad crosssections of the u. S. Population. It it is still quite different. So veterans are, in the u. S. On average tend to be older, more likely to be men. In the military is predominantly male. That means we are comparing veterans and the overall u. S. Population. They are both representative samples meeting we are not power to support so we cannot ask a question like, the average 40yearold veteran mail more likely for extremism than the average 40yearold mail . That is a question that requires a Higher Powered survey. The specific characteristics for recruits. That is one major limitation. It is related to a pattern in findings recently that todd nodded to her described the beginning of the presentation. We have this study that took a specific sample of those who were involved in mass casualty plots for the tax. These are things that either occurred or were intercepted and there were arrests and prosecutions. We found Prior Military Service was the largest risk factor for participation in one of these plots or attacks. To kind of contradictory patterns in findings. We are showing there is lower support overall for these groups and ideologies. But there is this pattern of what seems to be greater involvement in extremist activity. So that had us wondering things like, maybe the pipeline is narrower. Overall members of, servicemembers who have separated from the military and are now veterans are less likely on average to support groups. But if they do they have a previous position of action. There are number of reasons this might be the case. There are selection factors for joining the military. You are also trained. These are all just guesses right now. But it really makes us wonder what is happening to drive these contradictory findings . I thought mentioned, even if the overall percentages are lower, the capabilities that one of those commitment actions may be very useful for transfers and make them as we know likely to try and target veterans in the recruitment attempts. Not only the acquisition skill but extremist groups can be impressionable because my status of veterans. What do we do with this . There are a few different directions. Right now we are conducting interviews with veterans over the phone to understand a little bit more about their experiences serving in the military, separating from the military, and civilian life related to extremism. This is an area of hypotheticals at the moment. We have a lot of anecdotes about how trauma can lead to hatred. How loss of moderate in these individuals, or extremist groups support that. So to replace that camaraderie and have veterans join. We have a lot of stories but we are still gathering data. And to that end to understand this issue more closely, including comparing like groups. That 41yearold male comparison. But we will also need more survey research. We are at the very beginning of understanding what might be driving, particularly the higher association, the higher involved in actual watts. What might be driving that and what we can do to better support veterans to protect them from recruitment into extremist groups. And just improve their lives. Just part of the veterans policy research. With that, i think we have a poll question that we wanted to give to the audience. You may have had ideas about this at the beginning. But now we want to assess with your, with the data we presented in the discussion, how concerned are you about veterans and extremism . You will see a poll question pop appear. Please go ahead and select an option. We will keep this open for probably another 30 seconds or so. We will take a look at the distribution of results after. If you have already voted please go and start putting questions and. We are happy, we will have enough time for q a on this. Okay. We see some results. About 10 are not concerned. The rest are very concerned or somewhat concerned. Okay. I think now i will turn it back over to deanna for q a. And i can stop sharing slides. Thank you, both. Very interesting. Just a reminder to everyone who has questions, go ahead and put them in the q a. We do have a few already. I will get started. Todd, ryan, fielded these at your discretion. You too can fight over the answers. First question, how does social media correlate with veterans joining or anticipating in the extremism activity . You want to start . I will take that. The short answer is i dont know specifically. But we know were broadly social media is a key radicalizing agent. Not because there is anything inherently bad about social media but it does connect people. It connects people to like ideals and like people. It provides often times the venue for individuals to engage in dialogue and debate and discussion, which is all great, but often times when you get into these sort of ideological bundles, where people become more extreme, politically extreme, then their social network of, it likewise becomes politically extreme. That can often times sort of ignite or facilitate further radicalization. Because people are online, sharing content, theyre getting reinforced for sharing that content. They are getting reinforced for even more extreme forms of ideas amongst their social network. And they feel emboldened because without the social media it would be hard to connect with these groups. But with social media it is easy to connect and it is easy to feel like you are not alone and that many other people also have these views. So social media is a key radicalizing agent. I dont know whether or not veterans are more or less likely to rely on this form. My guess is probably not. It is sort of an equal opportunity issue. Brian might have a better idea. I would say it is a common but not necessary path to what we have seen in foreign extremist more broadly. And in the conversations we have had with veterans. It is kind of an option. It is one of many pathways. The number of facetoface connections that seem to be supporting a lot of these beliefs or even kind of cohorts in groups similarly for the need of Political Violence. A lot of it seems to be, there are some very clear narratives were that was a primary radicalizing pathway. In later became and there are quite a lot of examples you can see where it is all faceto face. Especially with older veterans who may not be as likely to be tech savvy. There were extremely tech savvy older veterans as well. It is kind of all over the place. We just do not have an answer specifically. We have a couple questions here. About different types of extremism. Im just going to paraphrase. I know this work you talked about today, for right extremism. Islamic extremism or other types of extremism . Ryan, do you want to take a shot . I will start by saying for the veterans study we did not look specifically at islamic extremism. A lot of todds prior work is focused on that. In terms of the overall risk, i think we have seen a shift of the last decade or so toward, lets say, there is still a risk , but todd, do you want to kind of terrorism fluctuates and wanes. We know terrorism holds sway. They are fed by changing ideologies in the population. So that is why you see when in the 1970s leftwing extremism was the most problematic and common. There was a time where Animal Rights extremism was common. It might still be but, of course 9 11 was our extremism. It was al qaeda first and now isis seems to be the most prominent exotic actor. Of course during that time some military personnel did, im sure military people of converted, but we know there is a attack at fort hood back in 2008 or Something Like that. It killed a number of service personnel. That was emblematic of what we are seeing at the time. It seems to have gone away a little bit. I think, even in the middle east whereby rightwing, muslim extremism is on the ebb and rightwing is on the ops. These things just evolve. At some point rightwing extremism will fade away and we will see other ones. I will say among former extremist we have the ideology switching. There seem to be common drivers for some extremists, people that get swept up in these movements. The first joined white ring causes and then leftwing causes trying to fight the rights and wrongs for past actions. And potentially international extremist movements. So there is a lot of movement there. Our work shows that extremism, it suggests extremism is one of a number of the pathways, for some at least to self medicate that could otherwise have been joining a gang, were groups of extreme drug use. There is is a little bit of a right time and right place. Groups gain and lose sway in their resources and capabilities. One of the dangers is taking our eye off of what the emerging threat might be. Right now we are driven by the numbers and very focused on rightwing extremism. But that does not mean that that is going to be the Common Threat forever. Interesting to think about that the dod initially took this very seriously. Lloyd austin set some initial policies. They had the one day they basically had one take a day off and do a training on extremism. They implement a new policy on warning people who are leaving the service that they might be at risk of recruitment. They put in charge a gentleman name garrison who led a working group on the topic and issued emendations. It just so happens i think one of his recommendations that the community has been adopted. Since then the dod has largely backtracked on the extremist threat. Partly because it is receiving a lot of, extremism is an inherently political act. Because of that there are challenges due to addressing extreme is in. We saw this with confronting islamophobia and islamic extremists 15 years ago. And now they think they are being, the rightwing extremists think they are being singled out. I think the military takes a robust effort. We still do not know how or to what extent the military needs to adopt these policies. Most of the terrorism acts that people with military backgrounds have were done by veterans. Veteran seems to be the greater risk. You have a chain of command, a unit, have a social the people are attached to. Theyre working hard. They have social connections. There are protected factors and more oversight for mr. Terry personnel. You dont have those for veterans. That me make it a more challenging issue. Okay. Can you talk a little bit about the differences you saw i service branch. We had a question related to that. What is driving the greater support for the ideologies among the marine for . And also to a lesser extent air force. Many other branch differences. Right now we have guesses. There are few studies of a branch of Service Culture whether it is recent or empirical. Some of the thoughts we have gotten from, including from former marines or marine corps veterans are that there is this ethos of, every marine towards direct action. Being extremely expeditionary. So those characteristics that we talked about in terms of predisposition to actions commitment to mission, those may be particularly to come down from after leaving military service. It could be that. Really converting that ruled action and that sort of mindset to extremist causes. So that is still a guess. We dont know if that is really what is happening. Similarly with the air force, there are these anecdotal reports of sort of, you know, fundamentalist, christian, or, you know, tendencies in the air force academy, or air force. We dont know whether that, there is an overlap. Qanon has helped grow the ranks of its believers by drawing on some fake christian ideologies. This is just a guess though. We know as much as it pains me to say it, qanon is popular within the umbilical church. Not popular like everyone does it, but the rates are higher among evangelicals. The air force bringing in more evangelical personnel, they might be more at risk of that. Okay. This marital status, or broadly , other demographics like marital status have any potential impact on the risk of extremism . I dont update on that. Im not certain. I will say in our prior study we saw there were few cases of people getting converted by their lifestyles. Many more cases of people pulled into extremism and establishing a healthy relationship pulling in or than pulling out because of commitment to their family. And greater stability and other kinds of things, romantic partnerships, family relationships. My guess is in terms oh pathways out of extreme is him, there is a protective factor there. But we do not know how that plays out. Differently among veterans versus the overall population. Okay. I think i know the answer to this. Would you be looking at past cases of veteran extremism like Terry Nichols and timothy mcveigh, or the Militia Movement or Branch Davidians . Maybe get what insights to these specific cases offer. Are there any . . I think we did a review of some of those cases early on. Is a great question. Ive not done a review of those cases. I think its a great idea. I know other researchers, there have been others that do look at some of those. We know those guys are almost surely in a data set. There is quantitative picture of veterans. There is less sort of understanding the detail radicalization factories that they have. But i am not familiar with it. Im sure other studies have been done. If not they should be done. That would be a great idea. I think in terms of future direction, complementing that getting the case study Court Documents will be an interesting way of looking at this. The thing is interviews and studies of extremists were former extremists give us a lot of detail. So there was confirmation in studying just them. So that is why we turned to a survey of population where we are sampling on an overall demographic. Thats the kind of knowledge we hope to develop more on this offramp and protective factors as well as the unfortunate cases that resulted in attacks or convictions through investigation and introduction of land attacks. Deanna what concerns have you seen as far as active duty sharing grievances with extremist groups in western or Eastern Europe with potentially posing a threat to u. S. National security . Maybe some of your work on russian disinformation might speak to this . Todd its a great question. With potentially posing a threat to u. S. National security . Todd, i dont know if some of your work speaks to this at all. That is a really great question, one, i would urge the questioner to check out the report by Heather Williams on racially motivated extremism, they focused on europe. So, they do look at that issue and i think theres several concerns, one that they share grievances, and im sure they do, but also whether or not there is collaboration or coordination or joint Fundraising Initiatives between them. I think those are really important questions to get at, and we know the white supremacist, the movement in europe is relatively strong and it certainly affects some countries particularly like germany who have had some issues with extremism in the ranks. Even with the active duty ranks and to sort of remove those nd folks from their services. So, its a really important question. I dont know the exact answer to what level that coordination is happening. Im sure the grievances are somewhat similar and you also see that there is propaganda that can Cross National boundaries. A classic example is the attack at the christchurch in new zealand where the attacker went into the mosque and murdered tens or hundreds, tens of hundreds of muslim parishioners. And he livestreamed that attack and that livestream really galvanized the International White supremacist movement. Im sure those videos are Still Available for those who want to diligently look for them. Its sort of like pornography for extremist ideals. And you know, its not only radicalizing but worse, it is galvanizing and pushing people toward action. So, we certainly see that. Yeah, and we know that russian disinformation and propaganda targeting the u. S. Tries to exploit racial divisions so they will land support to anything that is racially dividing in the u. S. We know they did that during covid and r they continue to do that, and they also capitalize on a white identity, western supremacy, feelings of insecurity, so they ride a lot of these themes and we do know there is some travel from white supremacist to fight in the war, the russian war against ukraine. There is concerns with nazi sympathizers on both sides, so we worry about training in combat experience, too. I mentioned earlier about switching from right to left, there are individuals who joined the war in syria on both sides who are extremists. So that is a way of kind of continuing the thrill of being involved in a cause but also getting real experienced with smaller, Tactical Movement and with explosives and weapons and just getting further traumatized and further drawn into violence. We also know extremist groups will try to get individuals involved in street violence because getting in facetoface combat helps drive home some of those emotional patterns that further involves an extremism that you are being attacked and so forth. So i think that transnational peace, we are concerned about how that piece reinforces the opportunities for these types of experiences. Thanks. For those of you in the webinar, the report, the Heather Williams report that todd mentioned is linked in the chat if you wanted to check that out. Okay, have you looked at any potential connections between trauma and radicalization for extremism . No, not in any systematic way. I know they published something a number of years ago on that topic, but i think we hypothesize that there is a connection there, but i dont have hard evidence to support that. We see in the trajectories and the narratives we study for our work on former extremists, a lot have been mentioned, more than statistically expected in an overall population sample, of childhood trauma and sometimes in those extremist organizations. So, like todd said, we dont know what the precise causal role is, but it does seem like there is enough evidence to sayd that extremist groups are taking advantage of emotional and social vulnerabilities and they are transforming this to a kind of addiction to involvement in extremism as a ca temporary promotional patch. But, we dont we also have cases where there doesnt seem to be evidence of trauma that we can tell in the randomization trajectory. So its not like we see it in 100 of cases. One thing we did find in thet american study, i forget the number, it was like two thirds of those participants when they gave us their stories, their in depth stories, we can identify often times a link, some sort of life event, sometimes it was trauma or attempted suicide or major letdown that they had and consider it to be traumatic in a typical way, but it could be like a major letdown or a loss of a job. But, it caused them to rethink their life. In fact, if you look at conversion, religious conversion, often times it follows these major life events where something major happens in somebodys life and it we causes them to rethink everything. Like, what have i been doing nv with my life, i need to rethink everything and at that moment they are open to new ideas. And we saw that in that previous study, that one of those ideas was this sort of el involvement in neonazi organizations or al qaeda. But we did see that. And we saw this question earlier, it was about the risk of extremism from veterans in iraq and afghanistan, it was a very important question. And its one hour study was not able to answer, like brian said, our study cannot address whether or not a 40yearold veteran is more or less likely to become an extremist or support extremist ideals than a 40yearold nonveteran, we dont have the sample size for that and the statistical controls, we would want to do that study but we havent been able to do it yet, we basicallya need to recruit veterans and nonveterans together to conduct representative surveys. But, i think it is a key issue what role these folks have coming back from iraq and afghanistan combat experience, potential trauma and what role that might play. They could be at increased risk, that is a very important question to answer and unfortunately our research could not answer that. Is conducting a study like that feasible . Yeah, we just need to recruit a representative sample of surveys, a representative sample of veterans and nonveterans. And we need a large enough sample size, or probably oversample certain demographics like those who might have come back from iraq and afghanistan to make those comparisons. But, you need to do both studies at the same time and it requires complex statistical weighting, so that is what we need to do. We need to do both surveys at the same time. This next question has a little bit of an anecdote with it. I worked on a project with the world bank on preventing deadly violence as opposed to encountering violent extremism, these are only development interventions, what i remember is the countries having success and that it prevention into the fabric of governance, public life and also popular culture. The marginalization of violence was a whole society effort, do you see societies out there that most closely match the model of the u. S. . Thats an interesting question. You know, if this was 10 years ago, when our primary concern was islamic extremism, i would have said the u. S. Was that good example, compare to europe. Europe seemed to have a much worse radicalization problem than the u. S. And partly it had to do a lot with the ability of the u. S. To take in immigrants, and sort of a diversity approached mindset that made it more welcoming for muslims and limited the degree to which they radicalized. Europe, not as well. But, i dont know the answer for that on this new variety of extremism we are dealing with. And i have seen some presentations on programs in germany that seem to have, for example, one was in germany that had better cross sector integration, some of these preventative approaches. I do think the current level of political correlation, probably in europe but especially in the u. S. Make it difficult but, i cant say i have a specific country in mind that would provide a model for the u. S. To copy. I would say we just have a ton of work to do, and a lot of work, we have a massive country geographically but a lot of work to understand where the generation of the threat is happening. You know, especially because the terrorist threat is so distributed, increasingly distributed. Location of groups or Group Headquarters or former Group Membership is no longer a good measure of anything. So, especially in under resourced locations, many of which happen to be remote in the u. S. , go undetected for quite a while. And we just have anecdotal examples right now, we dont understand the spatial distributional and i think we have a long way to go for that cross sectoral preventative approach to be properly substantiated. The first those issues can be challenging but we also have to be careful about pushing back against that, because what we have seen online is the censorship, sometimes it works and sometimes it creates more dense pockets of radicalization elsewhere, too. And i think that kind of gives us a segue into what is p that essence of the next question, how do you go about sharing Accurate Information about this important topic with government decisionmakers and the public and maybe correcting misinformation or misperceptions that are out there about say, veterans involvement in extremism. Is there a formula to that or is it just about spreading the word as best as you can . Well, i will say, we do not make any categorical assertions about the risk for extremisms and veterans, this is a limited study where we assess support for violent involvement, we are seeing this as a positive study for veterans, theres a lot more research that has to be done but both ryan and i have been engaged with the Public Sector on this study, probably more than most, we have briefed staff in congress, we have briefed representatives from the white house, this is w probably our second or third webinar on this matter. So, we are getting this around but, i dont know, ryan, what would you say . Thats a great question. Its hard to correct miss impressions about who is mo responsible or at fault or who is at risk, because there is so much polarization and finger pointing in the Public Discourse at the moment, there are people who, including four extremists who are doing a lot of direct engagement with those they feel are at risk, and this happened with islamic extremism as well, there are people who are pursuing others and trying to perceive prosecutions against those who are recruiting veterans and others, but that sort of broader question of, can we stop having these miss impressions about, and is overly simplistic ideas about who is at risk and who is at fault, that is a Civil Society question that i wish i knew the answer to, but we are just hunting around in the dark for dissolutions so, as well as just trying to have civil conversations that are supported by data on an issue with ones friends and neighbors are great way to do it, and these larger forums are a great way to do it, but we have a long way to go. We need to do more research on this topic and i think some mist took the report to suggest we dont do research on this topic and that is not true, we know that extremist groups are trying hard to recruit veterans disproportionately. How can we stop them . We know some veterans have joined these movements, how do we disengage them from these movements, how can the Government Support them, how can we support veterans as they transition from active duty service where it is a hyper social supporting environment to one where you are sort of on your own and now we have to make do by yourself. That is really important. As well as just understanding the radicalization process for veterans, is that different from others . So, a lot of questions that have yet to be answered on this. Absolutely, and moving eloquently into the next question, is there somewhere veterans can sign up first feature for future surveys . For our studies, no. Because we work in the survey firm, but there are survey firms you can go out to, some might be related to veterans and some might not be. F you can see if you can sign up to be a part of the panel. And the National Research center. Great, i encourage folks to do that if they are interested. That is all we have time for today. I want to say thank you to everyone for their thoughtful questions and thanks to both of you who joined us via cspan. If you are on the webinar, we have a very short, one question paul that is going to pop up on your screen, please take a moment to give us your feedback, your answer will not be visible and finally i encourage everyone who is watching and listening today toe stay connected with rand, you can go to rand. Org and sign up for the mailing list, you will receive our weekly newsletter, and youll get invites to future events like this one. So, thank you again for coming today and we hope to see you again in the future. Thank you, all. 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