Of staff. Were really very thrilled hes been able to carve time out of his busy schedule. And spend time with us today to talk about counterterrorism in an era of competing priorities. Russell will deliver opening remarks from the podium and well sit down for a little fireside chat. Ill take the moderators prerogative and ask the first few questions then ill open it up to all you here in attendance in person to ask some questions, and we welcome all of you who are watching via live stream or via cspan. Thank you for joining us today. Russell, the podium is yours. So, thanks very much, matt. Its a great pleasure to be here amongst a number of old friends to talk about counterterrorism in an era of competing resources. I happened to testify earlier this week with the leadership at the fbi and dhs and was talking to a friend of mine yesterday from dhs and said a colleague of hers had seen the testimony and that characterized my performance as that of a thoughtful nerd, so i am hoping to aspire to something more than nerddom here this afternoon. Kidding aside, the issue of competing priorities is extraordinarily important. We are now almost two decades past 9 11 and if we continue to succeed in protecting against largescale attacks against the homeland, i think this notion of competing priorities is going to do nothing but get more challenging as it should. Ever since mattis issued the National Defense strategy last year, theres been an ongoing, at least implicit discussion, about risk. How does the threat of terrorism stack up relative to threats posed by great powers . Or north korea or iran or syria or lots of other threats . The testimony earlier this week was with fbi and dhs leadership as i mentioned and along with terrorism, they laid out a dizzying array of different kib kib kinds of threats. Election security, counterintelligence, transNational Organized Crime which, frankly, kills far more americans than terrorism ever will. As i said at the hearing, it is completely understandable that terrorism may no longer be viewed as a numberone threat to the country. But i dont know what that means. And i think it begs a host of questions. I offered three. What does the National Risk equation look like . As the country con front confro complex International Security environment. Secondly, how do we optimize ct resources in the best interest of the country when departments and agencies may have somewhat differing priorities . And if were going to reduce efforts against terrorism, how do we do so in a manner that doesnt inadvertently reverse some of the gains of the past 18 years . So, what id like to do for the next 35 minutes or so is walk you through a bit of a roadmap for the issues that i think need to be considered as we address those questions. Im going to develop ten themes. In doing so, im going to start you with the geostrategic and work the way down to the electron level and then back up again. So theme number one, good news. Let me say at the outset, terrorism is not, never has been, an exponential threat to the country unless it changes who we are. It does, however, hold out the potential for killing a very large number of people, and as history has shown, it can occupy the countrys attention for a very long time and prevent other important things from getting done. Fortunately, we made a lot of progress on the terrorism front. The last significant al qaedadirected attack in the west was Charlie Hebdo five years ago. The last centrally directed isis attack in the west was the turkish nightclub three years ago. And before that, paris and brussels. Homeland violent extremist attacks are down. The u. S. Has had one this past year and roughly a half dozen in europe. Both numbers substantially lower than previous years. While capabilities ebb and flow, weve seen isis struggle to sustain success. For instance, in libra where the franchise is not doing very well. None of the success is by accident. Theres been tremendous military and intelligence efforts in iraq and syria to eliminate the socalled caliphate. Many skilled operatives have been captured and killed and that has had many secondorder effects. Theres less sophisticated messaging. Theres squabbling. There are morale issues. And its not just iraq and syria. We have removed leadership from around the globe. Dhs, fbi, and state, have pushed borders out and made the homeland much less hospitable to terrorists. Weve also seen global efforts to improve border security, particularly in the eu after paris and brussels. Weve seen a growing partnership with the private sector to make cyberspace less hospitable. And services around the globe are working together against terrorism unlike the efforts against any other National Security discipline. U. S. Continues to pass on Lessons Learned to interested foreign parties with a robust exercise program that addresses information sharing and interagency cooperation. And we are seeing Capacity Building in other countries. Improvements in interservice cooperation, enhancements in information sharing that can mitigate the impact of terrorist attacks. You compare the kenyan response to the shabaab attacks against the Westgate Mall in 2013 and the dusett hotel earl yeariier year. Dealt with far faster with far fewer casualties. Well never eliminate terrorism. A tremendous amount of good work has been done and actually allows for this conversation about comparative risk. That brings me to theme two which is a concern for the potential for complacency. We do need to be careful. When i started working counterterrorism after 9 11, we were overwhelmingly focused on al qaeda and a centrally directed threat emanating from one piece of real estate along the border. 18 years later, we see a diverse, defuse threat that spans the globe. The primary islamist threat in many of our countries has been homegrown violent extremism. Despite the elimination of the socalled caliphate, we have an active isis insurgency in iraq and syria and sufficient command structure such that it maintains cohesion over 20odd isis branches and networks. Some are very small. Many have pleejed allegiance to the new isis leader over the last week. We have al qaeda. It, too, has a command structure and a half dozen affiliates. We see growing connections and coordination between and among its affiliates. There are also a full range of shiarelated threats, surely hezbollah and the iranian kuds force and a concern for shia militant groups in iraq. The various strands of islamists extremism werent complicated enough, were also seeing a global threat of particularly extreme rightwingrelated terrorism. More on that later. Terrorists around the globe are proving very capable at exploiting technology. Theyre good at it. Theyre innovative. The use of encrypted communications for operational planning, social media to spread propaganda and transfer knowledge between and amongst individuals and networks. Drones for swarm attacks, explosive delivery means, and even assassination attempts. Highquality fraudulent travel documents that undermine name space screening and watch listing system and threaten border security. Cryptocurrencies to fund operations. And the potential terrorist use of chemical and biological weapons has moved from a low probability eventuality to something thats considered much more likely. In many cases, terrorists exple exploitation of technology outpaced the legal and policy framework to deal with the threat. Looking out five years, we are particularly concerned with the growing adverse impact encryption will have on our counterterrorism efforts. And this is a key point. We cant freeze our thinking in 2019. We always need to be looking to the future. Finally, both al qaeda and isis have shown themselves to be successful at radicalizing vulnerable populations around the globe. Sometimes they deploy emissaries to establish, organize a group. Sometimes an emissary is the ploy to support an existing group. Sometimes an emissary is already present with historic ties or personal connections. Sometimes its done remotely via social media or letters. And sometimes a group deploy to an emissary to an isis corps. They are innovative in bolstering their ranks and that brings me to theme three. Which is the need for focus on prevention. By any objective standard, there are far more radicalized people now than there were at 9 11. Some think tanks have suggested that were looking at four times the number of radicalized individuals and our own database of known and suspected terror t terrorists has grown by a factor of almost 20. So unless you believe this fervor will simply burn itself out, we will be faced with a growing radicalization problem around the globe. No single factor captures the complexity of the radicalization process among disaffected sunni youth worldwide. We believe a mix of personal, group, community, sociopolitical and ideological factors contribute to the radicalization of sunni youth. Their recruitment to extremist sunni organizations and their mobilization to violence. We are gradually, as a world, accumulating more empirical data. For instance, the United NationsDevelopment ProgramRegional Bureau for africa evaluated 718 active or former african extremists, mostly from al shabaab or boko haram. The reason theyre recruited. The most important factor cited was Human Rights Violations by the Government Security forces. But also poverty, the nature of religious education, stable families, and government corruption. But its just not about poverty and being downtrodden. As we saw in sri lanka, the individuals are well educated and relatively well off but radicalized by hate preachers. There is a great deal of Fertile Ground in countries and were facing growing radicalization in prisons and even amongst Young Children who are being targeted by extremist propaganda. There are various initiatives associated with messaging, deradicalization, defection programs, reintegration, offramping, as well as broader programs focused on good governance, economic development, and human rights. Available resources remains a significant global problem. If the numbers of radical size sizeized people around the globe keep growing, i do not like our odds of identifying the right people to capture, kill, keep out of the country. And there are second and thirdorder effects. As the situation gets worse in africa and Climate Change takes its toll, were seeing greater forced migration. Movement of migrants to europe in turn is exacerbating tensions. Giving further rise to rightwing violence to protest this migration. It is a vicious cycle. Brings me to theme four. The need to focus on identities. People of concern. Terrorist threats revolve around people and networks and while tracking identities is pretty arcane stuff, not as interesting as talking about the future of isis or the latest strike, it is incredibly important. Our terrorist identity work underpins most of the screening and vetting architecture that evaluates 3. 2 Million People a day. This is where we failed the country on 9 11. Two of the hijackers were allowed to get visas, live in the country and eventually get on airplanes because we were insufficiently stitched together. An enormous amount of effort has been expended over the past 18 years. We have effectively pushed borders out, creating a multilayered defense to identify individuals with terrorist connections at the earliest possible point. And we have continually improved building richer dossiers, making better use of technology, performing near realtime classified screening to support unclassified watch lists and where possible making use of biometrics. This will never be a riskfree proposition, but the system has, overall, performed extraordinarily well. Nctc working with our partners is responsible for compiling u. S. Government database of ksts, known or suspected terrorists and the data is used to support screening partners. There has been some confusion on this point and when we talk about ksts, precision is very important. Each day, approximately three individuals that meet the definition of a kst seek entry or permission to come to the country. This is not to say that they intend to conduct an attack, simply that there is sufficient derogatory information that warrants scrutiny. Upwards of another seven watch listed individuals per day may have connected to ksts, but we lack individual derogatory information required to consider them known or suspected terrorists. As you might imagine, when 3 Million People per day are screened, drawing conclusions about any one particular individual can be fraught with challenges. But over the course of 16 years, the system has stood the test of time. In some cases, refugees, for instance, extra levels of scrutiny are provided. We have no indication that foreign terrorist groups expl t exploited the Refugee Program and screening probably limit their ability to do so. Over the past two decades the past decade, there have only been two individuals who arrived as refugees and went on to conduct attacks in the homeland. Both radicalized after traveling to the United States. Our track record is pretty good. However, as effective as we are, we cant rest on our laurels. There are some warning signs. As we saw in the case of the paris and brussels attacks, many of the individuals were known to security services, but they had high quality Fake Passports and national i. D. Cards. Biographically based lists are on the wrong side of history. We saw this in Northern Syria where captured foreign fighters routinely gave fake names. Hence, fbi and the Defense Department focused on a biometrically enrolling as many people as they could. We also got everincreasing amounts of information. How do we process the volume of information and ensure high quality databases . Ill get into that in a few minutes. In my opinion, we should be treating this period much like we did that after 9 11. What are we trying to accomplish and how are we going to get there . We have a lot of peace parts and we need to ensure they are properly stitched together. The five, tenyear vision should be a near realtime biographic and biometric screening against all available u. S. Government information to determine if an individual is a known or suspected terrorist. This would involve greater focus on collection, integration and sharing of biometrics as well as business process and Information Technology improvements. The benefits would extend well beyond counterterrorism and support screening against other categories of threats. That brings me to theme five. The need for robust intelligence. None of this happens unless we maintain a robust, integrated, intelligence capability. There is no question that the counterterrorism enterprise is the best integrated part of the Intelligence Community. Weve been doing it as a community for a very long time, but as good as we are, and as well resourced, there will be significant challenges Going Forward. A globally dispersed and defuse terrorism threat that involves individuals and networks places great pressure on our intelligence services. We need to evaluate the terrorist threat at multiple levels and have sufficient insight to determine if and when they pose a growing threat. The first level is typified by the sri lanka problem. This was simply not a high priority before us before last easter. The most hardline islamist group, sldj, denounced isis in 2016. That spawned a much smaller entity, ntj, that was apparently responsible. It had been a bit of a fringe element primarily known for attacks on buddhist statues. Not obviously associated with isis, we didnt recognize the threat. One step up from that would be local indigenous islamic insurgencies around the globe to seek to affiliate themselves with isis. With that comes greater interest in attacking western interests. Consider the longstanding insurgency in northern mozambique where recently, they have affiliated with isis and are now focused on attacks on u. S. Energy interests. Extrapolate that to the 20odd current and budding isis affiliates around the world, you get some sense of the intelligence challenge. And then one level higher, we need to have sufficient insight into these indigenous insurgencies to assess if and when they may be expanding beyond a countrylocal threat to one that may threaten the homeland. This has been a challenge in the past. In 2009, we thought of aqap, al qaeda in the arabian peninsula, as a regional threat. On Christmas Day of 2009, umar farook abdul matallah threatened to blow up a flight over detroit. In 2010, we reviewed the Pakistani Taliban as a region regionally based south asia threat, yet, they trained Faisal Shazad who went on to attempt a bombing in new york citys times square. Think about the broad array of people and networks and their ability to exploit technology and we have more than a few challenges. At the macro level, as we adjust to priorities to other threats, there is no question that intelligence resources, collection and analytic, will be shifted away from terrorism to other priorities. Actions have consequences. What do we stop focusing on . What is the associated risk . And as we draw down military forces, we will have less human and Intelligence Surveillance reconnaissance assets capable in theater. There will be less liaison with ontheground partners. Those are simply facts. With those facts come a degree of risk and well need to determine how great that risk s is, whether it can be compensated for and so forth. Then at the national level, we need to ensure we have the right constellation of organizations and authorities. This is a very large enterprise. There is duplication. There will need to be rationalization Going Forward to ensure were using resources wisely. And that brings me to theme seven. The need to get the electrons right. If were going to get the intelligence right, we need to get the electrons right. Data is everything. Whether looking for strategic trends or tacticallevel analysis associated with individuals and networks, data is the lifeblood of the kou counterterrorism community. The data challenges woe fa s we extraordinarily complex. Particularly when dealing with information thats incomplete, generally ambiguous and often wrong. Ten years ago this month, a nigerian father walked into the embassy and said his son may be associated with extremists in yemen. That cable was available to every counterterrorism analyst in the government. It got no attention. A month later, he tried to blow up northwest flight 253 over detroit. Other data existed, but the relationships werent obvious and we did not connect the dots. I have spent my entire career working analytic issues and will say unequivocally that counterterrorism has the worst signal to noise with any discipline ive ever been associated. It i put you in the shoes of an ntct analyst whos been working counterterrorism since 9 11, he or she has seen a quarter of a million threats. Overwhelmingly, they were bogus. When they come in, how what aboutly do you know . To get a little more concrete, we average about 300 threats to our embassies and consulates abroad every year. Almost one a day. To get even a little more concrete, my opp Center Receives something in excess of 10,000 terrorismrelated intelligence reports a day through which they need to sift. And those 10,000 reports contain 16,000 names. Daily. All our services are challenged by the need to process everexpanding amounts of data in order to uncover potential terrorist threats. With the growth of captured media on the battlefield or explosion of social need yeah the magnitude of that problem only grows. Terrorists have to communicate nape have to move money. They have to travel. But strictly speaking, these data sets arent terrorism information so they can quickly implicate legal, policy determining which information is relevant and addressing the competing equities associated with the processing that data remains a work in progress. I will never have enough analysts to process the available information, so Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are not nice to have, they are absolute imperati imperatives. As such, i noted with interest earlier this week the National Security commission on Artificial Intelligence chaired by eric schmidt, former executive chairman of google, issued a report. Heres a quote. With respect to data, the government is well positioned to collect useful information from its Worldwide Network of sensors, but much of that data is unlabeled, hidden in various silos across disparate networks or inaccessible to the government. Even more data is simply expelled as, quote, exhaust, because it is not deemed to be immediately relevant. And the infrastructure is woefully inadequate to process this information. We have a very long ways to go to realize the benefits. In the case of terrorism, the problem is particularly difficult because soour da mucr data is unstructured and all unstructured in different ways. That makes it very difficult for machines to help our analysts. Hearken back to the evolving nature of the threat, its all about individuals and networks. As we have seen with homegrown violent extremists, it can be extraordinarily difficult to uncover these individuals. The haystack is continuing to grow, and the needles are increasingly subtle. We are seeing this problem across the western world where partners may be dealing with thousands or tens of thousands of radicalized individuals and subjects of interest. That brings me to theme seven. Its kind of a rhetorical question. Im going to take you on a bit of a side road here. What does america want us to do in the realm of discovery and uncovering individuals . Terrorism, like all transnational threats, poses unique challenges because it blurs concepts like foreign and domestic. As such, our efforts to ensure Public Safety can quickly bump up against issues of privacy. Part of the governments response after 9 11 was to provide nctc with very broad authorities to receive terrorism information. In my opinion, that was an extremely good move. And with that came extensive oversight and Compliance Regime and im actually extraordinarily proud of the centers record in this regard. And indeed, my experience has been that the entire community is very conscientious about these issues. But looking forward and given the pace of technological change, it seems to me the issues are going to become more difficult and the need for an informed transparent public discussion becomes greater. How do we square the circle . Keeping the country safe in a world of transnational threats that straddle the foreign and domestic divide, yet adequately balancing the protection of legitimate privacy rights. There is no consensus in the country about that balance. Notion of discovery, quote unquote, is a case in point that linking nonobvious relationships and finding unknown unknowns, some might call this dot connecting, how much can we, should we, do . The processing of inexplicable amounts of information is enormously complex and defies any simple solution. InterNational Cyber criminals, terrorists, proliferators, and transnational criminals have linkages into the United States. They may be u. S. Persons with foreign connections or they may travel here, call here, or use our financial institutions. They use our openness against us. Exploiting the attributions of globalization, they can easily hide in the daily Noise Associated with millions of people that cross our borders or the trillions of dollars that slosh around globally or the unimaginable amounts of telecommunication activity. In virtually all cases, the data associated with these nefarious actors is sitting side by side in data repositories that also hold information on completely innocent u. S. Persons. There are lots of complicated challenges that limit our ability to do discovery. In the case of the 12 25 underwear bomber, it was a function of dots being lost in the background noise and inability to discern nonobvious relationships between two apparently innocuous pieces of information. In other cases, relevant data may exist in various reapartment a department and agency repositories. Operational, law enforcement, or privacy reasons, the information is not broadly available. Retention and subsequent use issues are major limitations when it comes to comingling such information. And still other cases, for instance, in the case of financial data, the relevant information resides in entirely separate repositories that preclude any largescale cross stovepipe analysis. Defaulting to slogans like the need to balance privacy and security may sound superficially attractive, but it isnt really helpful. Which electrons should be accessible to which organizations for what purpose and when . Let me give youle some representative questions. First, what level and type of counterterrorism risk should we be willing to tolerate in order to preserve critical freedoms and liberties . And perhaps most importantly, how can the National SecurityCommunity Structure a dialogue with the American Public to constructively address the question . Second, how as a National Security community do we govern and approach the exploitation of the internet . Particularly, at a time when, a, technology is far outpacing legal and policy rulemaking, and b, were able to find information on the internet that is far more rich, valuable, and intrusive, than other types of collections subject to strict constitutional and statutory regulation. And third, what is the role of the private sector in National Security counterterrorism activities . Is there a point at which private sector and government are collaborating so closely, particularly in the area of data collection, that there is an intolerable privacy risk to individuals . I suspect these kinds of questions and the associated tradeoffs are going to be increasingly important as we look to the future. All right. Let me move away from electrons bake to the last three themes, broader National Security issues. Theme eight, the need for whole of government. Counterterrorism intelligence integration across all relevant departments and agencies, particularly in an era of constrained resources, will be critical and i suspect increasingly difficult. It will also be insufficient. As we found over the past two decades, we need whole of government integration. Thats always been a channlleng for us. As any practitioner will acknowledge, the reality of the way the government is configured limits interagency effectiveness. We are a government of departmental sovereignty, the way were designed. Way money is appropriated. We have hardwired silos of sectors across the government. Endless studies have been written about the interagency process. I think the 9 11 commission had it about right, quote, it is hard to break down stovepipes where there are so many stoves that are legally and politically entitled to have castiron pipes of their own, unquote. Not impossible. When very good example was the post9 11 watch list and screening architecture that brought together the entirety of the government. But even that has been under stress as departments and agencies. Ntccs director has a role in convening interagency to develop whole of government ct strategistrategy s. Arguably the enterprise is more coordinated than any other mission in part because of those efforts. That said, information efforts integrate efforts such as these will always struggle in a system of departmental sovereignty and in the absence of sufficient authorities to compel cooperation. Now, in theory, integration happens at the National Security council and that largely happened in the years after 9 11. Counterterrorism was a major focus at the most senior levels of the government because of the imminence of the threat. During a highthreat environment when we were routinely seeing major al qaeda plots, there were, in fact, multiple deputies in Principals Committee meetings every week. There are tremendous interagency commitment at all levels. In addition, theres been a degree of downsizing and deemphasizing nsc integration, a trend that goes back to the last administration. Theres been a sense that decisions could be put back to departments and agencies excuse me partly because of a perception of micromanagement and a zee didesire to wean depas and agencies off relying on the nsc. We need to watch this very carefully to determine how well it does or doesnt work. Theres no question, the nsc will continue to handle the highest priority issues, but what happens when lesser important questions arent recognized as important until they are . Remember, it was the very arcane subject of watchlisting and screening that failed the country leading up to 9 11. And it was the technical issue of classified Network Access that gave rise to wikileaks and eventually snowden. How do we ensure l lowervisibility issues that implicate multiple Department Agency equities get adequately addressed before they become strategic failures . Finally, one result of a decline in nsc engagement is the potential for loss of interagency muscle memory. This could be incredibly important in the event of the need for a Rapid Response during a crisis. Terrorism like any transnational threat necessitates a whole of government response. As we move forward, well need to ensure there are ample interagency mechanism to affect such coordination. And that brings me to theme nine. The need for whole of society. As we look to the future, we need to look well beyond whole of government. Terrorists use of the internet, for instance, will require a Robust Partnership between government and the Technology Industry to prevent the distribution of propaganda, communications with supporters, and the proliferation of information to support attacks. Over the past two years, there has been a marked increase in industry willingness to work with one another, u. S. Government and foreign partners to counterterrorism through the Global Internet forum to counterterrorism. Orange fally created by facebook, microsoft, twitter and youtube, giftc provides a vehicle for sharing and there has been substantial progress. Facebook, twitter and youtube publicly reported they detect over 90 of terrorist content through automated technology, meaning much of it is removed immediately after it is uploaded and never reaches the platform for public consumption. So far this year, youtube has suspended over 42,000 channels and removed over 163,000 videos for the promotion of terrorism. Facebook removed 6. 4 million pieces of terrorist con tertent the first three months of this year. Twitter suspended unique accounts in the second half of last year for the promotion of terrorism. The recent move to establish gifct as an independent ngo offers a more formalized opportunity to better leverage the respective strengths of the private sector and the government against this dynamic problem. The new construct looks to sustain and deepen Industry Collaboration and capacity while incorporating the advice of key Civil Society and government stakeholders. While it remains to be seen what role Government Entities will play within this construct, success against the future online terrorism threat will likely only be realized through Greater Transparency and information sharing across the Public Private divide in near real time. Current transparency reports pertaining to content takedown efforts provide Government Entities with a snapshot of the scope and scale of the problem, but typically, they lack sufficient detail on the methods and the type of material that is being purged. Government efforts to support Technology Companies could be better targeted with Greater Knowledge of the actual content being removed, the geolocation of its origin, and potential attributi attribution. From this information, Government Entities would be able to more effectively assess trends and terrorist assess trends and terrorist propaganda, identify new and emerging groups, key radicalizers and the credibility of potential plots. New insight could then be passed back to the companies to enhance their models and algorithms. None of this will be easy. Companies willingness to more robustly engage governments depends on a host of policy, legal and proprietary concerns, but if we can mutually work through the impediments, there is no question that transparency would pay dividends. Further, additional constructs might warrant consideration. I worked trarns National Organized Crime at the nsc and found Public Private partnerships like the National Cyber forensics and Training Alliance in pittsburgh to be a very useful platform. A 501 1501c3 brings together representatives for the purpose of information sharing in the cyber crime arena. Both government and the private sector have found that construct to work well. As the threat evolves, we need to evolve. And that brings me to my last theme. Ten. Getting our arms around the Global Dimensions of nonislamist terrorism. Nothing highlights the evolving nature of the terrorist threat more than the growth of what some call dt. Others, right wing or whitesupremacist terrorism. And still others, racially motivated violent extremism. Rmv for short. The fbi clearly has a lead on purely domestic terrorism. What i want to focus on here are the Global Dimensions and the potential for seeing a movement. The increasingly transnational nature of rmv facilitated by social media and Online Communications has resulted in an environment that features frequent communication between sympathizers and an open exchange of ideas. A large percentage of rmv attackers in recent years have either displayed outreach to likeminded individuals or groups or referenced early attackers as sources of inspiration. For instance, andres brevik, dylann roof, have gained International Reference and are serving as inspiration for many rmvs including those looking to plan or conduct attacks. Brevik has inspired or at least been praised or researched by at least five rmv attackers or plotters since 2014. Spanning from the u. S. To the uk, germany, and knnew zealand. Roof has inspired at least two attackers or plotters since his june 2015 attack against a historic plaque chur black church roof, and in south carolina. Tarrant, himself, inspired by brevik and praised roof and other attackers inspired at least three attackers since his attack in christchurch, new zealand. The connections go well beyond inspiration. We see overseas travel by White Supremacists to fight in conflict areas. Communicates against racially motivated violent extremists and provision of funds. Some of this involves connections to involves connections to nonviolent, or rightwing organizations. Some of this involves trerroris organizations from other countries and like minded individuals who might or might not some day move from exploring extreme ideology to mobilization and violence. We dont fully understand how attackers are influenced and or what constitutes meaningful relationships between extreme i was. Unlike islamist extremism that in reesence years has been led by relatively large hierarchal organizations like al qaeda or isis, remv does not feature authoritative ideology. Instead, it is dominated by lone actors and small cells who use the online space as a borderless safe haven. They are inspired by a number of perceived concerns including political, social, economic, legal, demographic and environmental and personal issues. Moving forward, weal ha will ha address a whole host of issues and there is islamist i. D. That could be applicable in the dt or mv space. The whole of government, improve information sharing and Facilitation Networks and work with the private sector and foreign partners and so forth said that, there are challenges unique to this problem set, the lack of the d. T. Statute and Material Support charges. The added complexity of constitutionally protected free speech and the associated difference between the United States and our partners and the fact that perpetrators are often lone actors substantially complicates the designations used in i. T. I would also highlight two far broader issues. First, for almost two decade, the United States has pointed abroad of extreme idealist ideology. We are being seen the exporters of white supremacist ideology. Thats a reality with which we are going to have to deal and secondly, as we grapple with how to deal with the global remv movement, we need to be very careful. In the case of the International Islamist terrorist threat we lost some control of the narrative amongst vulnerable sunni populations. Radical islamists, its effective and we need to guard against that in the remv space and we must disaggregate, and whilent supremacist activity will not be painted with too broad a brush and impinging on rightwing political activity and free speech. Keeping control of the narrative and creating the International Tool box for that particular desegregation will be tricky, but absolutely necessary so as not to make the problem worse than it already is. So in conclusion, let me tack you back to the questions i posed at the outset. What does the National Risk equation look like as the country confronts a very complex International Security environment. How do we optimize the c. T. Resources in the best interest of the country when departments have somewhat different priorities and if youre going to reduce efforts against terrorism how do we do so in a manner that doesnt inadvertently reduce the gains of the past 18 years . Reasonable people can answer those questions in very different ways and the answers are most assuredly not selfevident. They deserve informed conversation by thought leaders inside and outside the government. I do believe that the ten themes ive laid out that involve focusing on all aspect of the current future terrorist threat, addressing a host of mustdos and resolving a series of complicated issues will help us reform the government Risk Assessment as we move forward. Thanks very much. [ applause ] thank you, russell. That was a very tremendous presentation that really covered the waterfront. Im going to take the moderators prerogative and ask a series of three questions and i would ask for the ideological question and well open it up for questions and answers. So my first question is this and you mentioneded at one point that a military drawdown by definition leads to less humid and it leads to less liaison and we do what we can to make sure that we dont reverse our gains. Next week the outer Isis Coalition will hold a ministerial decision in chd. C. D theyve taken it off the table for the purpose of next week like dealing with the provinces and whether or not the coalitions and it should be expanded to specifically focus next week on syria and iraq given the turkish incursion and the u. S. Withdrawal or turkish withdrawal. From the Counter Terrorism perspective, what needs to be done to be able to make sure that the Current Events on the ground in northeast syria in particular dont lead to tremendous setbacks and intelligence collection and losing some of the progress that weve made. So from an intel perspective, weve been very pleased that the president and the secretary of defense have reiterated that the forces that do remain will still have an isis mission a counter isis mission. I think thats very important. From an intel perspective, the foreign fighter problem and the isis prisoners in that part of syria have been a source of much attention for us over the last couple of years and we have obviously been pushing very hard as a country to get our partners to repatriate foreign fighters and that has not gone well and there are tremendous issues associated with judicial systems as many of the european partner countries. As a result, as i mentioned weve gotten fatalistic about this. Weve been concerned that there is a growing likelihood that we can see many of these foreign fighters again when theyve broken out of prison and released from prison and by bionmetrically important, and im quite pleased with that. Similarly, the sdf have been fabulous partners over the years. Theyve borne tremendous cover thes in Northern Syria. In the way that they are focusing on prisons, though they drew down substantially when they were responding to the turkish incursion, and so for us probably the greatest midterm concern is a retention of those prisoners and not bolstering the isis ranks and not seeing a foreign fighter outflow from syria. Just a quick followon from that, do you have a level of confidence that biometrics have been done so that people that were detained so the reports of the hundred or so of the people that might have escaped are people that ive collected on already . We have a fog of war problem. We dont know who exactly these hundred people are as it was put back. There was a move from prisoners to different prisons and our expectation was and i think its proven to be the case and the knowledge of where specific individuals are and sort of the list keeping associated with that, will be increasingly problematic. I am quite confident that virtually all of the foreign fighter component, and probably less so in the case of iraqis and syrians who are certainly not as comprehensive and the expectation is that those individuals will be most likely to stay in theater. And lets stay away from sunni extremism and you mentioned early on concerns about iranian, hezbollah and another shia militia threats. Over the past few months weve seen a sharp uptick in iranian terrorist activity in the region and weve also seen an uptick in activity abroad including here in the United States. Just this week we got news that two iranians pled guilty in a plot which involved surveillance of nea and jewish sites in the United States. From the hezbollah side, we had one convicted in new york city and a third who has been indicted and awaiting trial. How does the Community Look at the issue of shia extremist terrorism and the context of this uptick of activity . So it is probably really hard in the United States and we do see the periodic arrests. I think, frankly, the uptick in activity in the region is of greater concern to us and the Pressure Campaign, and the response to the Pressure Campaign and the potential for hair triggers and the activity of the shia militia groups in iraq in particular, and the relationship with the kuds force and that will bear watching in the years ahead and thats kind of where we are, i think. And then finally before i open it up to questions and answers from the audience, i kind of mull together your thoughts about the rightwing or remv racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist and transnational activity on the one hand, and your points on social media because the growth of one is so dependent on the other. Do you think that government needs to play a greater role in regulating the social Media Private sector or do you think theyre doing a good enough job . I led a small group out to california a few months ago and we came back with the private sector on social media was really doing incredibly good and very forward leaning work, but then it wasnt consistent. So for some platforms, the issue of free speech and being able to say anything anywhere is taken much more strongly than others. Some will transform you, but for hate which is in some ways, even more forward leaning than government. The fact that its inconsistent is it a problem that the industry is selfregulating . I think the government has to be careful about getting involved and the transparencet and province is the individual platforms and as you say some are far more forward leaning and some are willing to engage with the government and as i said, weve been a big fan of ct and i think its fair to say that the platforms themselves are struggling with once you get outside the realm of an isis association or an al qaeda association. It makes it harder for them to train their algorithms and theres going to be, i hope, a growing conversation related to the rem v space and how do you do that . There is a lot about what constitutes excitement and how far you can go and many of these individuals like we see in the islamist case are pretty savvy about staying within the legal bounds of the First Amendment and so were in kind of new territory. I think the strategic picture here is that there has been a tremendous growth in the conversation between the social Media Companies and the government. They have been much more forward leaning over the last couple of years and that just needs to continue. Ill correlate that and ill open up is this, i was pleased to hear you acknowledge because i hear it every time i go abroad as a former Government Official that we, the United States, are being seen by many as a source of a particular type of extremism, and rightwing extremist ideology in the same way that we saw others in the context and a significant amount of anger and frustration with us saying we have legal restrictions and how we can deal with that. Leaving aside the bit that is clearly in the fbi and dojs realm is as you engage with partners, are there authorities of some type that you would like us to have so we can deal specifically with the transnational aspect of this. Do you find that when were following a transnational threat, remv or otherwise and it comes back to the United States in that we are hindered from pursuing that . This is a work in progress. The government was feeling its way forward and i was cautious about the nature of those connections and what they mean. There are some that want very much to designate overseas organizations in a way we do with ftos. Were going have to be really careful about that. Weve seen some examples here recently as of the battalion and ukraine that there are those who want to designate that entity and theyre parts of the Ukrainian National guard so the potential for unintended consequences and making it worse if theyre not careful are simply there and we have to go slowly and be deliberative and then go through the potential. Very good. Let me open it up to questions and answers now. Raise your hand to ask a question and wait for mike to identify yourself and well start here with my colleague charles. Thank you. Sir, you mentioned in one of your answers the fighters in northeastern syria and you mentioned the iraqis and the syrians were detained in northeastern syria, as well so my question is do you have any questions which has got a lot of attention. What is your assessment of the risk and the potential trends regarding the iraqis and the syrians knowing that in 2007 and 2009 in iraq, we saw the al qaeda affiliates going in the ground and reemerging years later. So there is a history of militant disappearing and reappearing. How do you assess the threat and what are the other possible scenarios to detainees from iraq and syria in the region . So six years or so ago. Issis mae be down to a thousand individuals in iraq and syria. The the bottom line number right now is 14,000 and some believe its mostly in iraq and syria and they recognize the end that was coming a couple of years ago and started moving toward an insurgent orientation, going underground, as you suggest, and our concern about that is given what they did six years ago, 14,000 people now, at least, potentially another 08 or 9,000 that are in prisons. Before his death, abu did a radio thing in which he called those priners to kill them and take people out. That number is going to do nothing, but grow. In terms of the activity on the ground there are nogo areas at night and we see isis flags and sharia where it is being implemented and the whole crop burning thing and everything else. So the insurgency is alive and kicking in northwest iraq for sure, and to a lesser degree, syria, and i dont see the forcing function for why that gets better and it will require a combination of both military pressure and dealing with the entire demand side of the equation and the reconstruction has gone far slower than any of us would have liked and so the potential for longterm sunni disenfranchisement with those countries is pretty significant. So in that regard, i think theres a let of work to do. Yes . Thank you very much. My name is zarat and i am a politician, and i would like to have your comment in two issues. One, how do you see this happening in sinai. Do you think this is a terrorist attacks or a kind of revenge . As a result of, lets say Security Strategy which is not working there. Although its only, the whole area is 50 kilometer, you know . Whereby, the army have been mobilizing, a lot of troop, the police and there is also such close cooperation with israel in the border so how do you see this . Is it kind of revenge for those young who are somehow feeling marginalized and not belonging anymore. This is number one. Number two, do you believe on running or having a kind of deal with those who are in prison, from jemaah islamiyah, and the islamic groups and especially the youngsters. Do you believe there is a real chance of convincing them or changing their beliefs so they can refrain from violence and they can be released and integrated again in society . Do you think this is a possibility or its a hopeless case since the environment outside is the same, poverty, same social economic problem and human rights abuse. So what chances, do you think . Thank you. On the first question, there is both an isis and al qaeda presence in sinai. I think to answer your question it is a little bit of both and its an underlying cause issue and we have seen an isis element in sinai has sworn allegiance to the new head of isis. So i think weve got an existing terrorist cells that are conducting attacks mostly in the northern part of sinai. On the second question, unfortunately, i think globally were seeing prisons be incubators for radicalization and terrorism. I dont think anyone has broken the code on how you deal with it. Weve had individuals that have gotten out or every bit as radical as they were as they went in. Our European Partners have this problem in spade and because of the link of the prison sentences were on the cusp of seeing hundreds to thousands of people come out that were very radicalized when they went in or got radicalized when they went in. So i certainly take your point that weve got a lot of work to do, but there have been sort of debates about whether you put these prisoners together or break them up and the European Partners have gone back and forth on some of this, and all of them have demonstrated challenges and there arent a lot of challenges with people coming out of prisons that were if not deradicalized, disengaged. Lee shelly. George mason university. One of the points that you made was the increasing intersection of transnational crime and terrorism, but in your strategies you can talk about ways that you can utilize these analyses or these interactions and do Network Analysis from one side that may be more vulnerable to infiltration than the other. So i mentioned i did a couple of years at the nsc and i went there with the avowed goal creating an nctc to do transnational crime and it seems to me that good things happen when you bring the government together, and it gives broad access to information to bring the Network Analysis and were moving a little bit in that direction right now, fortunately, i think, and there is a belief under something called nspm 7 that we want to do similar work in the transnational criminal databasing that we do in terrorist activities and that seems to me to be a very good idea that if we start cataloging people for the purposes of looking at intersections of terrorism as well as knowing if potential bad guys want to come to the country and sort of who theyre connected with, but there are still lots of issues because as desperate as terrorism was, transnational crime is spread further across the government and we have a long ways to go in terms of the consensus about how to consolidate those, forts a effo who does the effort. Right here . Hi. Thank you. Katie zimmerman from the American Enterprise institute. You opened up by starting a discussion about risk and the risk that were facing now as were drawing resources toward the Great Power Competition and we are folk using away trt terrorism threat and americans are feeling quite safe at home not having witnessed another 9 11 attack. The challenges that you lay out include a decline in interagency coordination and focus. The question of how we have a whole of government approach to Counter Terrorism, but what i wanted to ask is outside of the Counter Terrorism realm can you discuss the risk about relying about only a Counter Terrorism strategy and how the Counter Terrorism strategy might match up with the country or region wide strategy to counter the local groups themselves that are producing the threats that theyre working against. In my opinion, it is Counter Terrorism strategy that came out last year is a good example of how the government is still working together. A number of people in this room worked on it, back then and it is not just about capturing and killing. There is a lot of focus on the prevention issue. Working with locals and having it do this thing and its multiple national and its exactly the right thing to do. The question revepgz has i think been played a significant role in three out of the four terrorist strategies Counter Terrorism strategies that weve done since 9 11. The reality is we havent made a lot of progress for terrorism prevention. For a long time we didnt know what worked, and i think its fair to say that theres going to be a tremendous challenge in, as you suggest, some of these groups in africa and how does that relate to the Africa Strategy and what were going to do with the Foreign Development and so forth. And so thats going to continue to be a significant challenge, i think, for a. I. D. And so forth. Do you know any more today than this week about the new isis leader and are you surprised at all with the Propaganda Campaign that its beg beginning to show how different groups are supporting him. Secondly, where does the Counter Terrorism fill into the Counter Terrorism strategy and are you seeing great signs that great powers or regional powers were starting to manipulate or try to use terrorist groups as proxies if not to accomplish something from themselves if not make things more difficult from the u. S. . I think this is playing out largely as we expected. We saw the announcement of his death, and then we saw the new guy get named and weigh saw the call for retaliatory attacks and we saw some eulogies and we saw the branches and Networks Start to swear allegiance to the new caliph. This is like 2010 and there was a substantial period of time between the name that came out with Abu Akbar Baghdadi and trying to figure out who he was and as i mentioned on the hill that our sort of view was that Haji Abdullah would be a logical candidate for taking over, but were not at a point of having a confirmation of who it is. On the great power thing, this is an added dimension to the remv problem they didnt mention, but that well have to work our way through, that there is there are certainly examples of the russian state and exploiting issues to play to rightwing grievances and how do we deal with that . Its an interesting question for nctc in that my remit is count are terrorism. I get access to Counter Terrorism information and the russian state would not be something that would fall with my bailiwick and well have to work that out with the bureau in terms of Counter Terrorism. You would have the opportunity to work with the rugds when it comes to Counter Terrorism . What if you could question in syria and iraq. Not everybody in particular sees the islamic threat as we do. In a particular time when forces on the ground in countries like turkey, syria or rausch that have a different prioritization than we do, how does that affect our ability to work with them or other partners on the ground to deal with for us is one of the problems which is the islamic sit. I think the turks are a clear in Counter Terrorism, but it is primarily theyre concerned about far less and there havent been attacks in particulaturkey while and this is why i harken back to the prisons and who will take them over and how concerned the turks will be. They would not be interested in holding a ton of european foreign fighters. They would want to get them back to European Countries and how is that going to work if its going to work . And the sort of focus and emphasis weve had on our sdf partners for a very long time is going to thats going to be challenged with the turkish incursion. If the back . Hi. Thank you. Extremism from george washington. You touched on turkey and i want to push on that. They announced yesterday that theyll begin to send home foreign fighters in the next 24 hours possibly. What does that mean on the newspaper een partners, will the u. S. Step in . Some is there a plan . What are we doing . I dont know the answer to the question, and some concern here and they started stripping citizenship and how it will shake out. Yes, sir, in the back. Thank you very much. [ indiscernible ] for obvious reasons we are concentrating in the middle east we have a nice little feast in our own hemisphere with massive riots and what not, particularly in the south and there has been a wellestablished connection between the Iranian Affairs and argentina. Are we doing anything about that . Do you see any connection there or is that of any interest or are we going just wait and see what happens . Its been dealt more by Regional Bureaus and i really dont have anything to say. Right here in the back . Are you seeing evidence of outright Russian Support from some of these racially motivated violent extremists either in the u. S. Or through financial support, sponsorship and other types of activities . Not that ive seen. As i mentioned, the trying to work schisms and cause a Greater Movement in that direction influenced issues more than anything else. I think you mentioned finance makes me think that especially since one of my georgetown students from my class with the transnational threat, shes here and ill ask a question for her. Can you comment on on the continued efficacy of our terror finance tools. Theres been a lot out recently including from members of congress generally if sanctions continue to be effective and im not asking about sanctions in general, but how important do i see the counter finance tool kit in particular . It has demonstrated success in the past, to be sure. The history of terrorist attacks has been that it doesnt cost a lot of money when new zealand looked at what tarrant was doing and the small amounts of money that were donated and thats a challenge. Again, its back to the signal, and identifying that and this implicates additional issue that i talked about which is there are a lot of regulations that go along with being able to comingle data sets with money and that makes it difficult for the analyst, be it treasury or the bureau or the Intelligence Community at large to be able to track it. Corollary to that, when talking about remv attacks like tearant and other hv attacks in the Al Qaeda Isis world is the fact that, you know, when i think back to the way things were when i started my career in Counter Terrorism in the fbi and 1990s and the trip wires when we looked at then when it comes to these lone offenders are largely irrelevant which is to say travel, communications and financial transfers. So what are the greatest challenges just operationally in dealing with the hve threat given that reality and how do we accommodate . So i think pretty much every western Country Services are grappling with that precise problem and the uk is one of the highlights given the attacks of 16 and 17 and at the time they did a review after London Bridge and so forth and concluded that there were Something Like 30,000 subjects of interest that had been on the radar screen at one point and the conclusion was at any given time they could do 24 7 surveillance of a few maybe dozens. There would be open investigations of thousands and that there were going to be a lot more that were going to have to sort of sit fall low unless something came in that caused them to be higher on the priority. The question is how do you identify a dot thats down in the noise level and be able to bring it up so that you know you have to allocate resources and here again, this gets back to the issue of technology, i think, in the case of nctc, the approach that i have to take retrent, search against a problem and ill have it deal with it with the are after next and the reality is we have a workforce that comes and goes. This issue of Knowledge Management and effectively downloading a brain. I think technology can help with that. It better because there are never going to be enough investigative resources to be able to look at every individual who is radicalized out there. Rob . Thank you very much. I found this remarkably chilling and presentation. Rob is our executive director. Not because there isnt enormousing from rose of the amazing achievements that you and your colleagues are doing, but because of what i take away is at least the implied net conclusion which is that the situation is really bad out there. I just want to ask you, if there are 20 times more potential bad guys, are we 20 times better than we were before 9 11 or are we in a net way, even worse off than we were in september 10, 2001 . Its a perfectly fair question. The strategic concern i have is there are far more radicalized people than there were 18 years ago. I dont think anyone questions that. Are those individuals of primary concern in a local region area which should bottler us, but theyre not going to be perceived as threats to the homeland and you certainly dont have currently today the capability that you saw to reach out ask touch the homeland to the heyday of isis. We need to make sure we dont freeze our thinking in 2019 in some number of years, Going Forward if we start to pull back against the Counter Terrorism target. Were going have to deal with these organizations and have enough to know what is the nature of the threat to the homeland. Ink that will get to i think the threat will be harder for us and i think the threat will sort of stay local, but given history of the last 18 years i dont think we can count on that and then the technology issue, as im sure youve heard the director of the fbi talk a lot about this encryption problem. What does it mean to go dark . We are really good at technology, but its going to make it a much harder problem for us which probably means there will be far more and probably means we have to be there and how does that all net out . There is a tremendous amount of good news and we need to imbraes that, but we just need to recognize that this effort has to continue because there are some worrisome trends out there. Right here in the middle and bring it out here and jeff for the Public Integrity and one of the ways that you said things were looking darker is can you help us dig deep or that, and what weve seen so far in terms of any groups embracing or moving towards embracing that kind of technology and whats your prediction more concretely about the possibility of use and you said it changed from considered unlikely to consider it more probable and maybe you can give us a more granular estimate on that . Yeah. Sure. To a degree, it was normalized in iraq and siria, i think with what isis was able to do. We have seen how many weve seen numerous ricin plots interrupted around the globe over the last several years. There is a tremendous amount of concern of the ease with which poison gasses could be developed, and for my colleagues there is surprise that we havent seen that just given past history. So al qaeda flirted with the stuff 15 years ago and we never saw it operationalized and it looks like isis has gone an easier route in order to develop those capabilities and there are instructions that float around and so we cant be at all sanguine, i think, about the nature of that threat. Yes, over here, please. Hi. Kristen wilkinson, recent graduate from the university of new haven. You mentioned briefly in your opening remarks about the shifting tactic of continuing to focus on targeting children and bringing that out. I was wonder if you could speak a little bit out about how terrorist organization are going to respond to that as well as radicalization of those surrounded by ideology and countries like iraq and syria. This is getting a tremendous amount of attention from our European Partners who have this problem much worse than we do. Theres an awful lot of children were born in the caliphate, and their fathers may well have been killed and europeans are struggling with what do they do . Theres been some willingness to bring orphans back. Some countries are now after the turkish incursion talking about trying to bring women and children back, but the social Services Issue associated with how do you deal with these kids and just what kind of mental shape are they going to be in are the areas of concern. So weve learned a lot about the Islamic State over the years and some of that is still in the classified domain material that was seized in abu sayyaf raid or the al baghdadi raid and the isis files project is becoming is public and being used by researchers outside of government, as well. What do you think from the material that we know about isis can help us kind of be predictive towards where its going to what its going to come next and i ask you that because last time one of our colleagues went to nctc and he talked about the strategic surprise that caught us when with the sudden rise of isis with the ticket and it suddenly became something so much more, and here at washington, weve been giving some thought to kind of the way we think about these movements in between these mobilizations when it tends to get our attention and weve dealt with one mobilization and its counting down. Were doing well and people want to move resources elsewhere. What do you think we can learn from what weve collected and what weve learned as to what we might expect from them in the near future . I do think the next couple of years are probably likely to be very interesting. We discussed this amongst ourselves all the time when the caliphate was declared and they start theed walking terror. Isis is a learning organization and very bureaucratic. In my op mimind, i wonder if th avoid the kind of pressure that they absorbed from the coalition for the last couple of years, but nobody know, but the more we draw down and the more we siphon resources on to highpriority threats that it is going to be the dynamic moving forward and thats probably the biggest concern. Okay. One last question for charles. What is the impact of kind of the prioritization of the concept of terrorism that we see in different context and countries bh countries. What is the impact of this on your work . How do you affect the information and the kind of working relationship you will have with International Partners when they use the concept to call him to other National Interests . It gets into a real wonky answer, but things like the houthis . Is it an organization, or the beneficiary of state support . What we are finding within our community is the Counter Terrorism effort was pretty well stitched together for many years. Over time, some of these efforts associated with africa and houthi and others have moved from Counter Terrorism to Regional Bureaus and that complicates the effort across our departments and agencies. Theres a massive number of people in the Intelligence Community, making sure that you know all of the right people so that you can talk with them on a daily basis as the effort is more disparate across the departments and agencies and it does make that harder and it makes information sharing harder and when they beat us up after the 9 11 commission we were focused on ensuring that information got to the relevant analysts so they can do that kind of analysis. Information sharing comes with legal and privacy and policy security and operational restrictions and impediments. When its all when its hus banded into the Counter Terrorism, then we can do that. As we city move out with these other disciplines then it does make it harder and some of these entities are operating like terrorist organizations and so that can complicate the analytic discipline. I am very pleased that we were able to end with a question that brings out your inner thoughtful nerd. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in thanking Russell Travers for taking the time to be with us today. [ applause ] thank you for all you do. Keep us safe. Have a Great Holiday weekend, everybody. [inaudible conversations] the first open impeachment inquiry for president trump. Theyll hear from William Taylor and Deputy Assistant secretary of state george kent. Watch live wednesday morning starting at 10 00 eastern on cspan3, online at cspan. Org or listen live with the free cspan radio app. Follow the house impeachment inquiry and the response on cspan. 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