Transcripts For CSPAN Discussion Examines Lone Wolf Terrorism Threat 20170731

And its surrogates, and thats hard. Announcer we will leave the remaining few moments of the discussion and go live now to a conversation on lone wolf terrorism hosted by the Washington Institute for middle east policy. Just getting underway here on a spin. Cspan. On good afternoon everybody. Good afternoon and welcome to the Washington Institute for our east policy, and program on counterterrorism and intelligence lecture series. It is my pleasure to have on the podium today, a speaker from israel, bruce hoffman, from Georgetown University, and an adjunct scholar here at the Washington Institute, and i am matthew levitt, director of the concert Counterterrorism Program here at the density. Thank you, for joining us. Terrorist acts conducted by individuals acting on their own, inspired by others, completely alone, not so much alone, it is not a new phenomenon. But for the past few years, weve seen an alarming increase. And a number of what some would describe as lone wolf actors, or offenders. The isis has been proactive in using their Global Social Media Presence in particular, to constrict conscript individuals, some who have personal problems and some inspired by belonging to a higher cause, to commit acts in their name. Especially if they cannot be able to join the Islamic State, when it existed. Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, israel in particular, we are seeing a sharp rise as well, of individuals taking it upon himself to carry out the violence, without having being recruited by or trained by or armed or funded by an actual group. The question for todays session a looming this is threat, or a passing fad. So i am very pleased to have three good friends on the panel ganor is theoaz dean at the ict counterterrorism atter, and the law school the interdisciplinary center, university in israel. Bruce hoffman, is director of both the center for Security Studies and Security Studies program at Georgetown University s edwin bulls of service, and marlene is l is an adjunct scholar here on leave from her position as director of counterterrorism at the Israeli Ministry of justice. Friend, i sitood s the board for boys boaz board in israel, and i teach at georgetown to read this is really fun for me to read also as it happens i have some expertise in the matter. So i will start with boaz, then go to bruce, then marlene. The i will moderate from table, the q a sessions until we end at 2 p. M. Boaz, ganor, please. And i would add, please shut off your silence please fellas your cell phones. It is a pleasure to be here at the Washington Institute and this panel with you all. Minutes, andnly 10 it takes me more to stop might and jews, but i will try the impossible and try to squeeze in my thoughts into the 10 minutes. I would like to open with trying to allocate where the phenomenon of the wolf the lone wolf stems, so let me start by classification. I would start by classifying different perpetrators of terrorism. The first type is the one we are discussing today, i call it the personal initiative attack. It is more known under the title of the dickey lone wolf dickey wolf he lone radicalized, being an individual decides that he wants to do something about it. One option is to join a terrorist organization, maybe fly a plane to syria, or iraq, and the other option is to come a to become a homegrown terrorist. This is the lone wolf attacker. He has been inspired by a terrorist organization, and many scholars today, question the fact that he is alone a lone wolf altogether, because almost always there is a connection to terrorist organization, or at least inspiration which has been done by a terrorism organization. I would use the term lone wolf, because the lone wolf, being inspired doesnt have any operation with the organization to rid meaning that a terrorist organization is not necessarily involved in the initiation, landing, preparation and execution of the attack altogether. The second group of attackers is the independent network. Usually a bunch of lone wolf, a group of them. This group, usually, a small of 5,up a small group of 4, people together, usually friends or family members in some cases, for example the San Bernardino husband and wife an independent network. It is an inspiration effect, not without the involvement of the operational involvement of a terrorist organization. By the way, if you were to ask them before the attacks, they would refer to themselves as activists of crisis or al qaeda or whatever, and after the attack the terrorist organization would take responsibility for what they did, but since they do not have any operational ties with the organization, they were just inspired. Attacker, isup of what i call the organized terrorism. Isis, sleeper cells, infiltrated cells, a different ballgame altogether. Here, were talking about a includedit could even individual in some cases that has been recruited, trained, and the terrorist organization is involved in all of the operational that ground and activities which launched the attack the red have good news and bad news. And i compared the lone wolf attack to organizational terrorism, usually lone wolf attacks are not that different. Of course, there are exceptions such as nice. But in most cases, how many people can be heard in a lone wolf attacks . Most of them, the majority of the attacks use cold weapons, either a nice, guns, or running people down. In some cases the use light weapons, but seldom use explosive devices. But when talking about this phenomenon, it is limited to read the casualties are limited altogether, compared to organized terrorism. Organized cells, such as the but the clan attack the aclanine the bat attack in france, or the 9 11 attacks, those are different. The bad news, and it will explain in a minute why, we used to believe that intelligence is incapable of dealing with the phenomenon of the lone wolf. Why . Because traditional intelligence, human sources, and communications intelligence, is based on what . Based on the fact that there are some kind of discourse between at least two people who share the secret of the planning of the attack. Either an agent, telling you that, or the ability to wiretap these conversations. In the lone wolf, in most cases, there are no conversations. Everything starts and ends with the sick mind of one person. So, intelligence seems to be useless in this regard. Anotherng back to classification, the classification of the terrorist attack, i would suggest that i dont have enough time to going to it, but we have two scales in our lives when we are trying to classify them. One scale has to do with the level of the terrorist organization in the attacks, starting with no involvement whatsoever and ending with full, organized terrorist attacks by an organization. The other scale would be the level of independence of the attacker. Is heis it really really independent, or did he share a secret with a friend, or peer, or did he consult accomplice who gave him active support, that he conducted the attack with others, like an independent network, and so on and so forth. With these two scales, we can go back to the classification we had before and see how lone wolf terrorism, falls into that scale, and then we can judge which attacks, what type of attack was conducted. It is not just a theoretical discussion, of course, you need to behave differently, you need to have different operational counterterrorism activities in reference to lone Wolf Networks as opposed to terrorist organizations. When we are talking about the lone wolf attacks, usually they conduct hold weapon attacks, stoning, hills, running down, in israel, we had bulldozing, which is running down with a bulldozer. But also, as i said, shootings and bombings altogether. One exception, suicide attacks, were not conducted by lone wolves. Of course, we need to just define the term suicide attacks. The way that i describe them is that the type of person who was threatening themselves with a suicide belt, or carrying explosive devices, and pushing the button, those attacks are usually always organized terrorism. There is always an Organization Behind it planning that, and executing it. Usually one individual conduct the attack but this is organized terrorism. When youre talking about the rational behind that, the best answer that i can give you today, that waste on my experience and counterterrorism in which i have been in for 35 experience, on my terrorists are rational actors. What does this mean . It means that terrorists in general are calculating costs and benefits and choosing their alternative, which they believe is more beneficial than costly. That is what rational people do, that is what we do every day. But, they have a different costbenefit calculation than we have in the western society and other places. They have a subjective calculus of cost and benefit. A good counterterrorism expert missed understand, take out his own considerations, his own costbenefit calculations, and put on his head, that enemys calculations. The bad news is that there is practically no one generic calculation. Costbenefit calculation of isis is different than that of al qaedas, different than the one of hamas, or hezbollah. You can see that considerations of isis today, our different from the considerations that they had a year ago. The real values that they have is that when were talking about lone wolf, it is much more different to understand more difficult to understand their rationale. I want to show you for pictures that are been taken in israel, in which the common denominator are for lone wolf that have just been arrested, after stabbing people in the streets in jerusalem and other places altogether. Theyre are being handcuffed, and being escorted to the police car. Probably going to spend life in jail. That is a common denominator. But there is another common denominator which you will see immediately in the pictures. The other, denominator, is the smile on their faces. It is not a coincidence. Visited chinatown yesterday, in new york. And there was an arrest in front of my face, the nypd arrested a criminal there. He did not smile, he was walking to the police car, handcuffed without a smile. , i they are smiling, because would argue, this is a reflection of their calculus of costbenefit. What they believe, is that although they are going to pay a high price, spending life in prison, probably, they did something which is more beneficial at than costly from their point of view. So counterterrorism experts need to understand this calculus and then develop counter messages and so on and so forth. By the way, i used the term jihadi zombie in order to describe this concept. The first reason is that youngsters understand what zombies are. The second, the term on the, doesnt have any shred of honor. I want to take this concept of honor from them. You will see, and the other example, another jihadi zombie, next to my campus in israel, stabbing every person that is waiting in a public bus stop altogether. Jihadi zombie. It is not just in israel, this is another attack in london, rigby, killing lee in london, and not even running away. That preaching to everyone who was ready to take a video clip about the reasons behind his attack. In united case, here is a case of thompson in 2014, the afroamerican who converted to islam and went to wage jihad against the nypd officers. By the way, in a nutshell, one new from phenomena that we see is the threat of radicalized philip radicalized islamists who were converts. A guy from manchester was a convert, and we had other cases including in israel by the way, jews who have converted to isler him. It is much easier to radicalize a person, converted to islam. It is much easier to radicalize a convert. I said at the beginning, that we used to believe that intelligence was useless in reference to dealing with lone wolf attackers, because of the secret kept in their mind. Well, we were wrong. Instead of human sources, and communication sources of intelligence, we have found that we have the ability to understand, maybe even to predict what is going to happen, make based on open sources of intelligence. On the wall, on facebook, on instagram, you name it. Many of those attackers actually gave forewarning, because they like to brag about it. To believe that what they did was the honorable thing to do, therefore the share that over the social network. This is one example of a lone wolf in israel, who said in the name of all, today, i decided to become a motter, eight map a martyr. The attack in berlin, was an outcome of the understanding of the attacker, and the lesson dust the Lesson Learned from an attacker from an attack that happened before. Arer the attack, they becoming a model of imitation, and what we see practically is a vicious cycle. Starting with incitement, coming from the terrorist organization, moving on or being processed by the individual, then they decide to do something about it, planned the attack and before conducting the attacks, in many cases he published on a political platform, and after the attack he becomes a fertilizer for further incitement at the end of the day. It is becoming an epidemic phenomenon, and the good news, which i will end with, is that we can watch it and understand it, analyze it, and maybe even prevented. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you, matt, and the Washington Institute for this invitation to come and speak today. And to serve on this very distant west panel. Let me focus, and talk about isis, or that Islamic State, or eiffel. And start with a very broad observation. I see many people in the audience who i have known for decades in the counterterrorism world. Of stating the obvious, i think one of the mythologies of both the study of terrorism, and counterterrorism, is the collective amnesia, or a short memory. This is not that surprising, the inbox, the daily day luge of threats that one has to contend with, but one of the problems or challenges is that it often crowds out in historical perspective. So, in that respect, i would like to read you a quote, and think about who would have said this and when it wouldve been said. Trekking down, the americans and the jews is not impossible. Willng them with a single let or stab or device made up of a popular mix of explosives, or hitting them with an iron rod is not impossible. Property withhere a molotov cocktail is not difficult. Bemeans, small groups could a frightening horror for the americans and the jews. Any takers . Anybody want to guess . Zawahiri in al book released in 2001. The current leader of al qaeda today, was on the run from perhaps the greatest onslaught directed against the terrorist group in history, operation freedom. Nevertheless, he wrote this statement designed to redirect al qaeda and carry on the struggle. The only problem was that it fell on deaf ears. The phenomenon of lone wolf terrorism did not materialize until a decade later with the rise of isis. Then we have this statement of Mohammed Al Adnani from september 2014, the late deputy commander, senior official and operational planner, pagandist, our exelons par excellence of isis. He said if you are not able to find an ied or bullet, then single out a disbelieving american, french man or ally. Slaughter him with a rife slot him with a knife, run him over with your car, choke him, or poison him, it is precisely isiss innovative revolutionary use of social media that has transformed both the nature of terrorism in a remarkably short span of time, and in less than three years, it has become one of the most challenging threats that we face. I wouldof the most, argue, durable terrorist organizations. You do not have the ability to be innovative, and then fade from the scene because of the loss of a couple of cities. I would argue that isis is here to stay, at least, for the foreseeable future. And the main reason for that is their ability to harness and exploit social media, and harness this broad universe of attackers. There is another point in which isis has been the norm is the innovative, which will have many consequences for us for years to come. The 9 11 model of terrorism, the 9 11 attacks, involve professional terrorist trained overseas, deployed and operating under a very clear hierarchy, command and control structure with strict operational orders. It was the traditional model of terrorism. Of course, the lone wolf terrorism that boaz just described, challenged Law Enforcement. They have no logistical tail, no way to predict them. Fortunately, as he pointed out, their violence is limited. But nevertheless, there ability to overwhelm, preoccupy and distract Law Enforcement and intelligence and Security Services, is a norm is. And yet, what we see is that the most formidable terrorist organizations are the ones who are most innovative and dynamic to read unfortunately, like isis, which has now in recent months pioneered, a third barrier a third form of terrorism. Bottomup form of terrorism, the lone wolf, and now they have a hybrid. Which i would argue, presents a new and very serious challenge for Law Enforcement and intelligence. This is a new hybrid of enabling that takes advantage of individuals that have no prior connections to terrorist organizations, that may never have met a terrorist in their life, or left their own communities to go and be trained in overseas by terrorist organizations. But they are manipulated and exploded, ultimately inspired and animated to commit terrorist of terroristehalf organizations. The new twists now, is that the terrorist organizations are providing these individuals with very specific, often fairly very detailed intelligence and instructions. Thus empowering and making the lone wolf more of a threat than they have been today. This new emergence of the challenge was brought home last march, one isis released a hit list, a targeting list of some 8000 names of americans from around the country. When i attempted to print it pages, ran for about 25 and had names of individuals, their home and work addresses, people who lived in the metropolitan d. C. Area, will recognize some of the addresses. And emailer dresses, sometimes mobile phone numbers, and in other words, this was a hit list, a target list. Least, meant to stir some amount of psychological discord and anxiety, which is always be object of terrorism. But also enhance the power of the lone wolf. Consequently, isis has changed the nature of terrorism in a very short span of time. Will i think means that it not be disappearing or fading from the scene anytime soon. The fundamental challenges facing Law Enforcement, intelligence agencies and Security Services today, not just in the United States, but i would argue around the world, is not to be overwhelmed by the threat of the lone wolf. Not to be deluded into focusing exclusively on anyone threat, not to be distracted by the low hanging fruit of comparably es butessional lone wolv to focus on the entire spectrum of terrorist threats including those coming from more professional, better organized, planned traditional forms of terrorism. I would argue that this is precisely the trap that the french fell into in 2015. The intense focus on loan whom they that was had to monitor, and the abilities, of their because of the focus on one particular segment of the threat, let perhaps tragically to the lowering of their guard, and the simultaneous suicide attacks that we saw there. Therefore, ation a time of comparatively diminishing resources, at a half after a decade and a plus of terrorism, one political will has been reduced and when our collective governments and countries are tapped in this ongoing war, what we see is the multiplication of new and even more challenging threats that means we cannot let down our guard. Think you. [applause] hi, good afternoon, its a pleasure to be here today. As mattking today mentioned, i work in the ministry of justice and have the privilege of being on academic leave this summer. I am speaking today at my personal capacity and what im looking at is a small slice of this discussion we were having about the lone wolf and attacks in israel committed by youths. Recently, the eu came out with a terrorism report and it identified a recent trend. The trend number 10 is the youth are playing an increasingly independent operational role in committing terrorist attacks in countries. My contribution to todays panel is to preview some research that i started to work on in israel and continuing here at the institute. Its a very small issue. Studying fasted in did the leadershipt glorify theah terrorist acts of specific youth and if they did, did that play a role in encouraging further youth to engage in further violence . Issue came up in october of 2015. October alone, there were 59 terrorist attacks. 17 of those attacks were committed by use, nearly 1 3 and in october, there was a raging debate that erected in the media. What was causing this new wave of violent terror attacks by youth . It was very troubling. Some beautiful it as a statement onmahmoud abbas that he made september 16. He said we welcome every drop of blood spilled in jerusalem. This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to a law. H. Th on it alla his words were widely disseminated. Some credited these words for inspiring the violent stabbing attacks that began two weeks later in october. Others took a different view. They said no, these terrorists including the youths were lone wolves. They were angry at the occupation, frustrated at the that the peace talks broke down. Taken intinian poll september, 2015 said 57 of those polled supported the return [indiscernible] another expert said it was his was a conflict of both of these factors. What i was looking at and what sparked my interest was what was actually happening on the ground. How many youth were committing attacks . I started to study the specific attacks committed. What you can see here that we found troubling is there were 105 attacks that were committed by youth, their ages were between 1117. When we quantified the attacks, Violent Attacks and we took out the molotovon cocktails because we were trying to study the specific new phenomenon of stabbings. Percentage of the 105 of the overall attacks committed in the statistics that and ad is between 1 4 half of all the attacks committed. Clearly, there is a dramatic increase in the stabbing by use. The research has tried to answer three different questions number one, why . Were these palestinian youths engaging in violent stabbing terror attacks question mark number two, is there a connection between the fatah leadership glorifying the actions of the youths and encouraging more attacks. Number three, if we find a correlation exists, can any lessons emerge about radicalization . The data we found thus far is that we found there were four 11 and 12yearolds, 513yearolds, 59 1416yearolds, and 29th 17yearolds. You can see on the right pie chart the vast majority of the attacks were stabbing attacks using knives. The next question we were looking at was very specific. We were looking at glorification of the acts of the youth by the Palestinian Authority. We were looking for public source information. We looked at arabic, english, hebrew websites, all different types of information to identify wereer thepa and fatah taking action to glorify the youths. We took the names of all the youth and ran it through these databases to see what we could find. Were looking for access glorification. Its a specific study. , we did not include examples of general glorification. For example, there was a report issued a palestinian media watch during july of 2015 and they found that education institutions were teaching hate and praising terrorist including youth who kill civilians and depict them as heroes and martyrs. That might have a different kind of influence on their thinking as to the valuation. The other thing we did not include was general statements of praise of the youths. If there were general statements praising the action in general, those are not reflected in the data thus far. We just reflected specific actions on specific youth that committed the attacks. To give a fuller picture, there were statements made that repudiated terrorism. The study wants to focus on whether the actions were consistent with these statements. During this time, there was also significant Security Cooperation between the pa and israel which was important and helpful in porting terrorist attacks by youth. , there weretime many other factors of information that was released and available to the youth h byamas and isil and social media accounts. Different many websites. There were instructional videos that were issued by terrorist organizations about how to kill a jew using a knife. Are many aspects of information that could be influencing youth that were part of many other studies. We were looking at the very specific question of whether they were acts of the Palestinian Authority and fatah leadership on specific children. This is what we found, there were in fact acts of glorification by the psa pa. We found over 25 acts. Youth like giving the terrorists official funerals, official flyers to glorify the youths as martyrs. There we have two examples of what that looks like. This is a flyer of a 17yearold terrorist. The official symbol is on the left and right of his head. It says with pride and honor, the National Liberation movement of the palestinian people, eulogizes brave shahid. He was responsible for being involved in a stabbing attack that injured a soldier. Example of ar military funeral that was one of the case and we looked at where he was given a formal military funeral. On the bottom, you see a flyer. The statement on the bum reflects his name and also being praise through official channels. The next question we were looking at, is there a correlation . There were specific acts of glorification. That was troubling. Its not what you would want to see in this context. We were looking at whether there was a correlation between the numbers of attacks glorifying the acts of the specific children and the commission of attacks or additional attacks . The results were fascinating. You will see here on top, the acts of glorification and you can see next, the terrorist attacks by youth. What we can see so far and this is preliminary, there seems to be a correlation between statements of glorification and the number of terror attacks committed. There were many more attacks committed between october and march and it seems to be a sharp drop starting in april toward the end of september 2016. It was a dramatic drop in the glorification and the terrorist attacks committed by youths. At not sure what it means this stage. There could have been many environmental factors that had nothing to do with the correlation. Maybe there is no correlation. The data i was looking at did not show causation. You could not say there was a specific statement of glorification that caused a specific response by the youth. That would be more complex. That would involve interviewing. There was one example in the study, a 15yearold, when she sheerviewed, she was murdered a 38yearold mother of six. She said she was influenced in general by the Palestinian Television which had an influence. That was not an example of direct causation, one individual who they thought was influenced by what they saw on television. We interview different expert showing them the chart. We asked if there was a correlation. Some views ive heard so far that i thought it would share. Some experts were of the view that it was the upcoming report of the middle east quartet that was going to address the issue of incitement and that led to a decrease understanding that the report would be released. Others were of the view that Palestinian Society and individuals were upset that the youths were engaging in Violent Attacks and numerous measures including the reduction of glorification in order to actively discourage the use from these attacks. Was theerts thought it israeli counterterrorism actions. People who understand the issue said it was a combination of all of the above. In terms interesting of two factors if you could quantify what the relevant input or influence of one form of glorification or incitement that might be helpful to counterterrorism study efforts. Also important to look at the cumulative impact on a particular youth of all the different areas of incitement or influence that might be encouraging youth to act. If you could find out what was encouraging them, you can find out how to discourage them, stop the attacks, and that might be equally helpful to the counterterrorism effort. [applause] excellent, thank you all very much. So thatlike to go last when all the good stuff is taken, i can come up with a few short nuggets and open up two q and a. There are many of you who have sat in these chairs before and heard me speak at this podium before and im sure there is one or two of you who are keen to hear what i will say about the nature of lone wolf attacks him and that ive stood here in the past and said that the lone wolf idea is really largely a misnomer. I think when i said that at this podium, including once at an event with bruce back in november, when i wrote this in two different Foreign Policy pieces in september and march of last or come i dont think i was wrong. Counterterrorism is not static. State was still remaining and expanding, to use its own terminology, and may be it was on its back heels and really sought to actively send returning foreign fighters back home to europe or elsewhere to direct and where it couldnt just enable terrorist attacks that might be carried out by a loneindividual, may be a attack are a lone offender but not really a lone wolf. Not really someone operating on his or her own. The counterterrorism report raises concerns about the increase not only in the number the numberover all, of inspired attacks overall but in particular, the number of attacks involving women is one of these new trends. At the we can look back speech in september, 2014 and may, 2016. Ly, the speech called on people that if you cannot come here, do things where you are as examples of the way in which the Islamic State proactively tried to play atthe situations in which risk individuals, mostly youth, found themselves but then to provide people with some kind of capability. Time, i felt that the era of the lone wolf was largely over because what we were seeing at the time k was morenown wolves, peoplee who are on the radar of Law Enforcement one way or another. They were not completely unknown and they were having some type of connective tissue to an organized group even if they werent originally recruited by that group or armed by the group , maybe the only way you could draw the line is through further radicalization and, in some cases, the provision of some intelligence to be able to carry out the attack. Timewe are seeing now at a when the caliphate is not just on its back heels but is about to be destroyed, is something different. On theseeing a desire part of the Islamic State to be able to perpetuate itself as an idea beyond the existence of its caliphate as a state as such. Were also seeing several other phenomenon. On the one hand, the caliphate is about to end as such but the genie is out of the bottle. For those people wherever they are in the west, lets say, who have grievances and are reading the online propaganda, their memory will be shortlived. One of the radicalization messages that we are sure to start seeing if its not out there already that there was a caliphate, it was not perfect, we made mistakes, but there was a caliphate and all we really wanted to do was to be left compliantive sharia lives in the west would not have was, therefore it destroyed. If we were allowed to progress, we would have become less brutal, more normal. The idea that there was recently a caliphate recently, a caliphate that did exist, whether or not it was rejected by the vast majority of muslims who do not see this as a caliphate will be irrelevant to these individuals will be drawn to this message. They will be drawn by a medium that still exists, social media is able to penetrate every border into the basement of every home. People who have problems will still be drawn to these issues and i would argue that the grievances that have led people to be attracted to and have the cognitive opening for radical messages is in fact, if anything, on the rise. Manyeans have let in refugees and migrants but they have not done a particularly tod job of enabling them assimilate into society. There are many ways in which this set of grievances is likely to expand. Months,ook the past few you can see groups trying to propagandaew kind of specifically about the lone wolfs. I should stress that the ideas not new. Known was listening at that time to over time, people started listen. There was an ebook how to survive in the west. You may recall that the bomber in new york and new jersey appears to have been inspired not by the Islamic State that alaki who was as radical in death as in life. Over the past few months, the Islamic State ebook was released to home school lone wolfs, as they put it. The lone wolf handbook written in turkish disseminated on , in june. There was a video noting attacks in melbourne, etc. , calling for attacks in australia, america, canada, europe, and russia. Of course, there was the rumia released in may with this large terror called just tactics and hostagetaking with on how to carry out acts of violence and how to acquire firearms and what might be the ideal types of targets for these attacks and how to execute people. If you dont have a firearm, how to lure a target posted on online site that you have an apartment to rent and then lure people to the apartment and then kill them. I should note that much like the who wasrahimi radicalized, we need to be aware the same phenomenon might not have caught on and had momentum when it was claimed shortly after 9 11. It certainly is now. There is a competition between the rains the remains of the Islamic State and al qaeda which is causing al qaeda to pick up its game. Al qaeda is very much on the rise. Justashington Institute Led a research and produced a volume edited by my colleague. Al qaeda has survived the arab spring and al qaeda has the begun to reintroduce magazine inspire, a shorter very specifically on people who carry out attacks and how you can do the same. I think we need to not be so caught up in one part of the threat that we dont see the others. The al qaeda threat is very serious. Its helpful to look at a report that talks about the spectrum of inspired, enabled, and directed plots. When it comes to those who are inspired and loan offenders, they write that these are individual attackers possibly but not necessarily being helped by family and friends as accomplices. They are inspired by jihadist propaganda messaging but not necessarily instructions from any particular group. Recognize need to that even as we have success on the battlefield against the Islamic State, radicalization process is not linear. You can have someone was radicalized, maybe gets deradicalized or disengages from radicalism but then events andhappen in that person when you have social media available, messages can change and updated. People can be radicalized. I am of the opinion that so long is allstrategy in syria and only about the Islamic State and we are not paying particular attention to al qaeda or paying any attention to a guy named sad, that foreign fighters will still be there. More if westill be did dismantle the Islamic State. I am drawn to a recent study on u. S. Ikelihood that homegrown violent extremism will experience recidivism. They mention many cases in the report and we need to take this to heart. There will be recidivism in terms of the people who return to radicalization. That means the likelihood of still more individuals acting on their own. Im still not in love with the term loan wolves. It sort of makes them out to be big and powerful and maybe even honorable. They are not really wolves at all. If they are truly lone wolves, they have broken from the pack and have no connective tissue which i would argue would have to include inspiration and that definitely exists. Or problem of loan offenders loan attackers is very real. While the israelis have done some really interesting and Effective Work in being able to mine social media postings, not everyone is posting on the social media. Even they are, we are not always able especially in a country the size of the United States compared to israel, able to mine that data in a timely matter and the biggest concern is not just the issue of encryption when you get to the inability to follow the messages that still exist between people who are part of a group, the problem is also that people can be radicalized, people are radicalized today so quickly. Career in the my fbi in the 1990s, there was a lead time. The flash to bank, the. Of time from radicalization to mobilization can be very quick now. Days or even hours. That does not leave Law Enforcement or intelligence a whole lot of leeway or much of a on to to be able to catch what could happen very quickly. When youre talking about doing something as simple as picking up a knife or getting in a car or in this country, its not difficult to get your hands on a handgun, then we are talking about the very strong likelihood that as we move forward, as the Islamic State continues to crumble, what i said last year will no longer be true. It will not only be true. It will still be the case that we will have enabled and even directed plots in the near term. Those are likely to increase as the Islamic State collapses. The report specifically says that there is Data Intelligence and concern of the Islamic State trying to infiltrate trained operatives to be able to do things right now as they are collapsing at home. Moving beyond that or parallel to that at the same time, the likelihood that individuals will try to carry things out on their own, i think increases. That means the nature of the threat will be more than just isis or al qaeda. Organized. Only be it will also be Something Else and that will be much more difficult for us to tackle even attacksou heard, the they may be successfully carrying out are likely to be much less lethal. If you People Killed or wounded, a bunch of People Killed and wounded, is horrible and the terrifying effect, the terroristic effect it will have on society and the economy would be significant. Thank you very much. [applause] this leaves us plenty of time for q a so i will take you in the order i will see you. Well start right here in the blue shirt, please. I will pingpong across the room so we get everybody. You, i am retired u. S. Foreign service. I want to follow up on some of the remarks about what happens in israel. Its a possible inspiration of payments to families of prisoners or families who are killed. Number one, how much do you think its an inspiration those payments account for. Number two, what is the likelihood that some governments either in the u. S. Or the European Union have suggested they make a linkage between those statements and the reduction of support for the Palestinian Authority. If indeed those types of payments were reduced or cut, what would be the likelihood of the effect of that . Its a good question. Its been in the media lately. Information with regards to its budget. I was looking at the information this week in the context of the study to look at the proportion of the budget and what was happening in this context. The numbers are almost 200,000 in payments for martyr families. It would be the families of these children. It was a 9 increase from last year. I did not check the data with these names yet. I would like to do that but that would include paying the families of terrorists even if the terrorists attempted even if they did not succeed. As a parent of children and what influences children, i think children want to have want to be able to be relevant. Could influence a child that he knows if he commits a terrorist act that his family then gets paid money as a result of his heroic act, thats what he sees. I would imagine that could have a detrimental effect on a child. Its one of the things i was looking in the study. As it relates to youth, most parents know that child that children do not do well with mixed messages. Wantucational institutions to be consistent, they want to be consistent in the messages they are giving. You would hope the Education System would give a message that terrorism is wrong and not say praise ofhat is someone who committed a terrorist attack particular for children because you want to protect them and you would not want to see payment going to the families. The usual message is that this is a criminal act and criminal acts should be abhorred. There is no positive effect from committing a crime. That would be the kind of messaging consistent with trying to discourage volunteer terrorism. Right appear in the front. High, im from the philadelphia inquirer. Anyone wants to answer this, two things id like to ask is there a worry that individual attackers can develop techniques that would lead to larger numbers of casualties question markthe nice attack was one way and we have seen other attacks that had serious numbers. You can think of drones. You could think of things that an individual could concoct or might see on the internet. Thats one thing i wanted to ask. Let me stop there. I wont be able to go to sleep tonight. That loanews is offenders tend not to have great capabilities. For most of the things that are to largeread casualties, you really need at least a little bit of training. Explosives with chemical precursors, is not impossible and its not like there are not people who have training capability. But in general, you will see people who try to make explosives when they are just following directions off the sometimess being successful. Look at the Boston Marathon bombing. There are other things that are possible. Im concerned in this country that you cannot only get a handgun but a fully automatic weapon. Shootings, in school you can certainly see it and in a tourists scenario, look at the weaponry that was found in San Bernardino. That could have been worse. The vehicular attack is something of concern. And other central bulletins at the time. There is a lot of attention again years once after 9 11, different ways to protect infrastructure. There is now a concern especially recently with drones. We have seen the Islamic State weaponize drones in the battlefield. One of the concerns we have in general is that when somebody sees something succeeding, they can do it too. For the loan offender in general. Why might someone be more likely to be mobilized to violence today under certain circumstances than before . Othersve seen that have done it and been lauded you to buy the Islamic State or Something Else. When people have seen weaponize drones in iraq and syria, they might be thinking they can do that here and they can use any kind of drones. There are lots of concerns about this thing. The good news is that Law Enforcement is reanimated on the subject. Do you want to jump in on that . Optimistic am less than matt. I would say that we need to understand terrorism as a phenomenon. Its an evolving phenomenon. Its all the time changing and we cannot lay back and say what we know is what there is. On the other side, there are terrorists and there all the time looking for new methods and techniques, different targets and so forth. Its a cat and mouse chase. Counterterrorist cannot lay back and say we are fine with that. Having this in mind, i would not i would sayails that i believe this is a growing phenomenon. Its not going to disappear. Its not going to change traditional terrorism. I definitely share with bruce. Nd matt the concern with organized terrorism and big attacks, the level of 9 11, we should not exclude that. On top of that, we are having the growing phenomenon that will challenge us in different ways all the time. I believe and hope that there are those people which carry the responsibility to prevent the terrorist attack and they are thinking about what will be the next more effective tactic that the lone wolf might use. I have no doubt in my mind that those who are incited we heard about the incitement as a precursor of that activity. Those who incite them and those who would teach them and give them the guidelines would try to be more effective and innovative in their thinking in this regard. I want to be more pessimistic. Mcveigh was not an archetypal lone wolf. Nonetheless, he had no direct organizational connection. He was not carrying that out on behalf of an organization. The key variable was he was able to get the information freely available which was 1995. It was infantile compared to the exchange of information now. My emphasis is always on the threat from organization and maybe not another 9 11 but certainly mumbai style or paris attacks. Worrisome you have now a mess of people that can access the information more easily. You also have a large number of foreign fighters. 40,000 over several countries and not all of them will be killed off despite optimistic hopes they will. Some will come back and be part of an organized campaign but some may be the lone wolves of tomorrow. They may have the same military expertise that Timothy Mcveigh had. Of terrorism is possibly evolving and changing. Never in a good way. When i began my professional career as a terrorism analyst in 1991, he worked on the stare for the American Intelligence Community that maps the attributes of groups during the 1960s and 70s and the two most common vocations were teachers and medical doctors. Teachers was often philosophy professors. You who have been at university, if youre not a philosophy professor, you may have a limited technological capability. Thick of whats happening today, more and more engineers and scientists are being drawn into terrorism. There is an excellent book about the engineers of jihad and that proves there is an alarmingly high proportion of individuals in jihadi groups that have engineering backgrounds. Sheikh mohammed, the World Trade Center attack was engineered. As more engineers, to terrorism, its the potential for more lone wolfs. I focus on the organizations that there is the potential for lone wolves to be more dangerous and consequential and thats growing. The microphone is coming around and your answer makes me think that we are focusing largely on the Islamic State and al qaeda and islamist inspired but there is an equally important need to Pay Attention to the rise of terrorism and potential homegrown terrorism from the leftwing and rightwing weather tends to be militaryo have expertise of the type that could make things more dangerous. Much for thisery terrific presentation. , you praise the internet as a tool for understanding and from there we can develop counter messaging. As the terrorism researcher, i guess you would support unimpeded access to this content online. Have you thought about to what extent you would support taking this material down . What sort of material would you say would be ok to do to take down from the internet . Its a great question. Maybe i would have. Its always calculating between the ability to monitor over the internet, what they do and say in what they plan and trying to prevent the radicalization process and maybe even communication through the internet. This is au and me, lost war. We cannot prevent them. To, if we would have wanted we cannot kill the internet or control the misuse of the internet. Its always an effort. I would say what can be done and should be done is to identify those negative and dangerous used to and then tracks. A new the need to develop type of big data capability that will monitor all the discourse over the internet, over the social networks, it can be done and is being done today but it should be much more sophisticated in order to identify the early stages of radicalization, not just with keywords but also with sentiment over the internet and much more developed systems and there is a need to develop a doctrine of how to work with this new data because it was mentioned that even if you know that somebody said that, what do you do with that now . Preparationlonger the guy could save something over the internet and grab a knife and be waging jihad in his view. There is a lot to do here that can be done and needs to be done in this respect. The beginning of it is the cooperation of the internet services, facebook, google telegram and others that need to. E more cooperative they are more quite of them they used to be much more cooperative because they bear a lot of responsibility. If they do not do it on a volunteer basis, i would definitely beat them in their pockets meaning if they do not cooperate in preventing and closing those insightful messages, i would encourage the victims of terrorism and the families to sue them for not doing that. Over here on the right. Excuse me, a failed academic philosopher. [laughter] you spoke about the need to monitor the internet to try to identify in a more sophisticated. Ay there has been a lot of discussion about the need to develop effective countermeasures but no one has really elaborated on where that stands. I wonder if any of the members of the panel could tell us where you think we are not in identifying terrorism using the internet but in developing counter messaging, whatever terminology you want to use. Is that really an effective countermeasure in your judgment, . Thank you lets jump into say area where wen did not have a lot of movement and suddenly we do. I would point to the google efforts and on youtube. To redirect people when they do certain searches to certain counter messaging. Not just a decision to redirect its a pretty big deal for them to make this determination. Redirect them towards an google has done pretty cuttingedge research recently on what messages work, sending people to interview people captured from isis are people who defected from isis. Sending people to work and interview people working committees in europe to see whats working and interviewing jewels etc. And some temp do some tangible work and coming up with pretty effective counter messaging tools. One things they are grappling , this is nonstatic. The situation of the islamic is changing. Of the genie is out of the bottle and only the west would leave us alone, it would have gotten better. It would lead to the poor tion of refugees or the responsibility of the west that will continue to happen in syria and maybe even in iraq. We need to think how that message is changing. You need to assume its not. There is a lot of work being done there. You are talking about countermeasures. I would say that i believe were still far understanding the narrative that we can develop the counter narrative there is lots to be done to understand the narrative. I was hinting in my presentation one way of thinking. I definitely believe in that. We do some research trying to understand that much more and have evidencebased information on that. Of theve the concept honorable thing to do is the narrative. Way, the flip side is he really is. If you analyze the propaganda of these organizations all over the world, the common denominator starts with al qaeda, moving on find in mostwill cases, the concept that thats what you need to do because this is the honorable thing to do or you need to be vengeful for this or for that. It always has to do with honor and humiliation. This ister narrative to the honorable thing to do. Who can do that . Theonly one who can counter narrative of the honorable thing is the muslims themselves. We need to make it clear to them that they are not doing any favors to us by conveying this message, that this is not the honorable thing to do, this is not what your religion expect you to do. Come from the Muslim Community and it does not come from there, i we are all i dont want to use the term, we are all in big trouble. In the back, please. From the university of maryland. Its typical for these conversations to adhere to a path that we are talking about individuals. There are psychological angles to this. There is no evidence that idiosyncratic objectives become strongly aligned with the objective of terrorist organizations. I wonder if you would comment on how important you think it is to understand the it is missing credit dimension the idiosyncratic dimension. I did not plant that question. Opportunity to say that yes, we recently did a bipartisan study in extremism focused in the United States. The first one we have done focused in the United States but others internationally. Bipartisanbison just findings was its important to thata Public Health model will think about this in a much broader way, not to the exclusion of Law Enforcement. In connection with Law Enforcement because there is such a personal psychological piece of this that is driving people. There were either grievances or ideology and there could be a different, nation. We lack understanding enough. We are beginning to have understanding in the most important is that every single case will be different. We can find the things we can expect to see them figure out the proportions of each for each particular case. Will be verypeople confused people, this is someone in terms of the islamist orientation, he describes but notas Islamic State understanding the differences between different groups in there literally fighting each other tooth and nail. That was not the issue. Are all groups that would be able to do something honorable and remove humiliation. Therefore, its critically important to be able to address political andal the psychological. The localnmental and global issue and grievance as well. Any approach that would be effective has to address all of those. Do model would have us things at a societal level that would make Society Strong and when you find a place that is susceptible like a neighborhood or school, you do extra things there. When you find people affected by the message, you go in and start doing things specifically for that individual. We go into it in detail. I think its critically important not because public publicis now instead of terrorism or a set of Law Enforcement intelligence but its in tandem. The best example is the one you gave, omar mateen. Law enforcement will tell you how frustrating it is to investigate him in many other cases including four big ones in the United States were things happened and run those investigations into the ground and realize there is nothing to hold these people honor convict thatof, strange, and noxious speech is protected in this country and should be and yet there was no one to hand this person off to, no local person to say this clearly has disturbing attributes going on. Became arrest or nothing in the option. Publicse who think the health model is weak on you have a counterterrorism problem, you invite Law Enforcement and its Law Enforcement will help because there will not always be a lawenforcement solution. I want to jump in in order to pave the way for bruce to answer the question. First of all, i think your question is a very important question. Sentact that this is being this propaganda is being sent to summary people but some a looted to the messages is proof that you are right, the psychological aspect is true. A student myself as of bruce but i dont want to take his time. To understand how important this fact is so i handed over to bruce. Quote another to of our colleagues, brian jenkins, who says when we look into the soul of a person whether he can become a terrorist or not, thats one of the main challenges. I dont think there is any profile. Its even more challenging because of social media introducing different types. Theres some who could be spotted others who are not. Thats the case that marlene was looking at. Since you are too humble, i will plug the latest addition of inside terrorism. You will not take it out of libra, just buy it and then read it. Can we have a microphone over here please . I am with americans for decent tolerance. Im interested in the and he gritty of the distribution of messaging especially in reference to the marlene study. Im curious whether you had any of then your study mechanisms of distribution. Wereentioned there proflyers instate funerals and incentives. Did you find that there are certain locations that have different concentrations of each type of encouragement . Find there are certain Population Centers are certain geological features that contribute to where the different types of messaging go and perhaps how many or what type of people they affect . Its an interesting question because i was just thinking about that angle of distribution this week. Its as it relates to suicides. I was interviewing a next bird in washington and they were i was trying to understand what official glorification would be more egregious than other glorification and they were explaining that when their acts like a suicide, they create a Suicide Prevention program and theyre trying to prevent any official ceremonies, official acts. In the studies i was reading, when theyre trying to do as to how many circles and people then get influenced. In the funerals its simple. You can see they are attended by thousands of people. Clear that the information is why the understanding of the youth, from an instinctive basis, you go to a funeral with friends and its an official funeral with all the bells and whistles, every kind of honor that can be given that reaches thousands. Its what you can do with the process of peace. You want a culture to educate children on both sides of the conflict for peace. Its an inconsistent message. The question over here. Raise your hand. Thank you very much for this interesting presentation. Writer. Unterterrorism Jessica Stern at harvard once said that terrorists are trying to reinvent themselves. There is another dimension and i would like to get your take on another aspect. You talked a little bit about dealing with the internet encounter messaging. The effort to reach out to local communities. There are a verys programs with the english on the dutch. Research resource issues and dhs is cut back on her local grants. Beenunding efforts have sitting on the seventh floor waiting to be approved. Do you have any evaluation so far . Do you think we will have much chance of success. The can say one thing about its a little harsh a position i would say. Will just there was a lot ledffort being done on cbe by the Obama Administration in the United States and with the europeans. Is crucial. At cbe to bring theed vast majority of muslims around the world who do not support countert activists to the narrative in an effective manner. Those efforts in most cases were very apologetic. Cautious with a very fear to deal with the problem itself. I think it should be done differently. When you reach out to the Muslim Community, the message should begotten or bid, we have nothing against islam or any other religion whatsoever. There is no problem with islam but there is a big problem in islam right now which represents a small minority but a very dangerous minority. Imam talking with a muslim and he said to a european crowd, islam is a religion of peace and jihad is doing this atrocity. You from the bottom my heart that you shared this important messages with us. Why do you spend your valuable time on us . You should preach this every day to your believers, your people in the sudan, iraqi, afghanistan, telling those people beheading innocent civilians under the name of islam that what they do is against islamic concept. But ina favor to us order to defend what you believe. I think thats the message that needs to be given to the Muslim Community. States,in the united its critically important that our cve efforts be as granular as possible and community let as possible. The communities need to work at likeost granular level librarians are schoolteachers or what have you. Its the strategy to build Strong Communities and protect the u. S. Homeland. I will not lie to you, this is a bipartisan study so that was a heavily negotiated title. Especially as there is ongoing debate and discussion about how and at what level the federal government should be involved in this space, we have these debates under the Obama Administration with concerns about legal issues precluding federal government for getting involved. And currently we have ongoing debates with the trump as to how its going to be with dealing with different types of violent extremism. Its all the more important for this to be something that is state and local driven. There is some excellent examples in los angeles, a different model in boston. In minneapolis. I think thats the last lesson is that we should not be looking for one model that will work the same way in all parts of United States but rather state and local authorities should decide what works best for them. In massachusetts, the state office of Homeland Security is very involved with the state health and human services. That is not the way its working today in los angeles with the Mayors Office which is working closely with the local representative of the federal department of Homeland Security. Its an entirely different model in minneapolis and many other places. When you have that model working, you need to have religious leaders involved. The need to have that message because as youve heard from many of us, those of us in the context of radical islamist stream is him, those of us were not muslims are not credible messengers on this issue. We have a mic up your for sarah . This will be our last question. Much, this iso really excellent from all of you. All of you is for but particularly, in light of what you said, boaz, its extremely important that we encourage the moderate voices within islam not only moderate but these are performers within islam. I have gotten to know a lot of them very personally, people n keoni darwis who calls me his george mother. It is really frightening for them here they are all in high them. They are all in hiding. How do we encourage them when there are fox was against all of them . I have a slightly different view. As uneven the progress that is being made, we are facing the challenge. Amic state is now saying and is challenging to frame the message to the people who have answered on more ideological bases. Youre talking about the visceral motion unto man. Retaliation. How do youge is frame it message that has more to do with catharsis of violence, empowerment of violence, the fact that violence is good it feels good, how do we counter the message . Voices will be enormously important to we have to