The longest war. Mr. Bergen . Mr. Bergen thank you. My chance today is to outline the threat from the newest wave in domestic jihadism in the United States. We have identified 62 at individuals from public records have try to join isis or newsworthy al qaeda affiliates or trying to do so. They come from across the United States. We found cases in 19 states. James komi says that some of these are not public yet. They do not fit any public profile. They are bosnian americans this creates problems. Unlike in the case of alshabaab which attracted somali americans mainly from minnesota. That was a very focused group of who was going. This is across the United States. We found american females. These are a group this is a group of misogynistic individuals. Yet we found about 1 5 of the 62 females, a number of them are teenagers. This is a new phenomenon this is a relatively young group. There were teenagers as young as 15. The only profile that they share is act to on the social media. In some cases, directly communicating with members of isis this is a new development in the way that jobless terrorism jihadis terrorists are recruiting in the United States. A recruiter comes here and recruit somebody increase the sale great to cell. That is very rare. That did happen in lackawanna. You may remember the lackawanna six case, where there was an al qaeda recruiter who recruited six yemeni americans from buffalo to new york to go to a Training Camp in afghanistan. We also saw that also in minnesota, in 2007, when veterans of the somali war went to minneapolis to recruit americans physically and bring them to somalia. But that is were no longer seeing that model at all. In fact, of the 62 individuals we found none of them were physically recruited by a militant operative, cleric returning foreign fighter, or radicalized while in prison. Instead, they selfrecruited online, or were sometimes in touch by twitter with members of isis in syria. Why would americans abandon what is after all a usually very comfortable life . A lot of these come from, you know, come from comfortable backgrounds and are intelligent individuals. Why would they be attracted to isis . And i think there are sort of, perhaps, three reasons. First of all, of course, a terrible nature of assads brutal war against his own people is an attraction. Secondly, the claim that isis created the caliphate, which i think is a powerful attraction for idealistic fundamentalist muslims. Thirdly, isis is presenting itself as the vanguard of the muslim army that is signaling the end of times. And that it is basically the vanguard of a group that will usher in, you know, the perfect, true islam when the savior of islam returns. Now, you know, i was just this morning looking up the saw a very large number of americans Something Like 4 in 10, believe that we are in the end times. So, this is not such an uncommon view that were in the end times. So, isis is presenting itself as ushering in the end times, which is another powerful kind of attraction. It also presents itself as a real state with social services, and that claim is not completely false. Although it certainly is probably less true than they present it. And for some of the western recruits, this is an heroic and glamorous thing. We have seen people tweet on isis. We have seen isis fighters say it is like playing the call of duty, but in 3d. There is a heroic aspect of this. Finally, what is the true level of threat . I would say the true level of threat in the west is not as much as Something Like 80 of americans believe, that isis is a serious or fairly serious threat to the United States. Well, it may be a threat. It is clearly a big threat to american interests in the middle east, potentially. But so far, only one syrian foreign fighter carried out a successful attack in the west, which was the frenchman who attacked the Jewish Museum in brussels on may 24, 2014 killing four people. Of course, that doesnt mean the threat doesnt exist. It is worrisome, but not existential. And related to that point, of the 19 individuals we found who went to syria, or eight of them were killed over there. So, syria was proving as much of a graveyard as a launchpad for attacks. It is a very dangerous war, as you know. In fact, about half of the men who have gone over there have been killed in a larger sample of 600 foreign fighters that we examined, and 5 of the females. Even for the women, it is very dangerous. So, if the returning foreign fighters are not the issue, what is the issue . And the issue is really what we saw on sunday, which is people inspired by isis taking up on obviously easy to take up weapons in this country and doing something with them. Likely, sundays attack didnt mature in the way the attackers wanted to. But i think that is a harbinger of what well see in the future. So, the real issue is not syrian foreign fighters coming back to the United States. Law enforcement has done a good job of tracking these folks. They come back. There is only one case where Law Enforcement didnt recognize that a particular person had gone to syria, which is the floridian. But the returning problem is really, i think much less of an issue than the homegrown isisinspired that we saw on sunday. And there is very little as a practical matter we can prevent lone wolfs, who are truly lone wolves, from doing these kinds after tacks. Doing these kinds of attacks. The good news is there is a natural ceiling to what a lone wolf can do. For instance, in boston, the tsarnaev brothers were lone wolves. They killed four people. It was a tragedy, but it wasnt a national catastrophe, like 9 11 was. We have to frame the threat effectively, which is it is worrisome, but not existential and nothing on the scale of 9 11. Ron johnson our next witness is j. M. Berger. Mr. Berger is the nonresident fellow in the project on u. S. Relations with the islamic world of the Brookings Institute and the author of jihad joe americans who go to war in the name of islam and isis, the state of terror. Mr. Bergen. J. M. Berger thank you for having me. I think that i would like to start by talking about the lone wolf threat, because thats on everyones mind after the events of this weekend. Isis is in many ways appears to be the first Jihadist Group to kind of crack the lone wolf formula. The idea of leaderless resistance and attack goes back to the 1980s, the white supremacist movement. And people had been trying to make it work ever since. And the problem with lone wolves is that it is too easy to stay at home, generally. People are not going to get adequately motivated to carry out an attack without having social reinforcement. And that defeats the purpose of being a lone wolf, to escape detection by not talking to anyone. Isis has mixed up this formula and there are a couple of reasons for this. The first thing that they have done is they have become a populist movement. They have a very low threshold for entry. And theyre pretty undiscriminating about who they include in their group, relative to al qaeda. It was very difficult to join al qaeda. Al qaeda was a vanguard and an elitist movement. So, that affords them access to more people. Secondly, their propaganda is extremely violent. And it is also very focused on presenting the group as dynamic, and actionoriented. Relative, again, you look at comparison to al qaeda. Al qaedas propaganda, in recent years, especially tends more toward this course. Toward discourse. Were trying to convince people we have the right idea, that we reasonable people would agree with us, that this is the correct thing to do. And isis doesnt care about that so much. Theyre willing to just get people agitated and cut them loose. The third element of change is that isis has changed sort of fundamental underlying assumption that we see in the jihadist argument. Al qaeda preceded from an assumption of weakness. Its argument was based on the proposition that muslims are weak and that they are unable to stand up to apostate regimes in the region. As well as, the reason they couldnt stand up to them is because the west was behind them. The idea behind al qaeda and using terrorism as a tactic was that this is the tool of the weak. We have to degrade Popular Support in the United States for apostate regimes in the middle east. And the United States will withdraw its support, and then well be able to fight these guys directly. Isis has skipped ahead to fighting these guys directly. Their propaganda emphasizes this. Theyre taking the fight to the local regimes. Their message is theyre winners, and you should join us because were strong. All of this is part of a very complex set of problems. Were in a period of very broad social change. People have been talking about social media for a number of years, and often in very effusive terms about how its changing the world. This is the first manifestation of how that really is going to work. What were seeing is social media allows people to selfselect the beliefs and information that they receive. If you have an interest in jihadism, you can find other people interested in that very easily, very quickly. And you can establish relationships with them. This is very different from, say, the 1950s. If you are a radical jihadist in the 1950s living in peoria, you might go your whole life before you meet somebody who shares your views. Today, it takes 10 minutes to find someone who has your views. Today, it provides a social context. Its reinforcement, personal validation of your beliefs. If youre acting out as a lone wolf, theyre offering a degree of fame you wouldnt be able to achieve as a mass shooter, for instance. And its very reciprocal. Theres a sense of remote intimacy on social media that can be hard to appreciate, if you dont use it a lot. When you talk to people on a social media platform and talk to them every day, you feel like you know them. You feel like theyre somebody who is in your life. And so, somebody tweeting from syria who is a member of isis can develop a very emotionally powerful relationship with somebody who is sitting in the United States. And that is part of the reason that we have seen people are more willing to mobilize in the name of isis than they were in the name of al qaeda. Isis radicalization and Recruitment Practices take place over a spectrum. Theres no one thing that they do to try and recruit westerners or try and recruit locally. They attack this from every channel in every direction using a variety of styles and using a very large number of people, because isis is a large organization. It can afford to have 2,000 people who tweet 150 times every day. It can afford to have a ratio of two or three recruiters to every one potential recruit who may carry out a lone wolf attack. If theres an area in which we are trailing isis in this struggle, i think its probably a question of resources. Of course, the problem that we face with that is that nobody can really agree how to use those resources. Our efforts at encountering violent extremism have a lot of problems that are inherent to them. And we also have a problem from a Law Enforcement perspective. If youre monitoring 60 or 100 people, it takes 500 people to do that, to monitor those people even on a partial basis, let alone 24 hours a day. If these guys jump in a car and drive to texas, theres not a lot you can do. Ill save most of the rest of my thoughts for the q and a. I did want to talk about the prospect of an isis organizational terrorist attack. Isis has money and manpower to spare. We have not seen that they have an intent to carry out a 9 11style attack. Theres reason to think they might not be as skilled or competent in such an attempt as al qaeda was because of the training cycles they use. I think we should not assume that thats something that couldnt happen, though, that they couldnt make an attempt. And i think were much better prepared to prevent Something Like that today. I dont think isis is an existential threat, but i do think we need to have realistic expectations expectations of what they might do, so that when something happens, we dont overreact in fear. Thank you. Ron johnson thank you, mr. Berger. Our next witness is mubin shaikh, an expert on radicalization and terrorism and encountering violent extremism. Hes consulted on the topic of isis with the u. S. Special operations command, central command, nato, interpol, and other agencies. First of all, mr. Shaikh, i certainly appreciate and thank you for having a change of heart after 9 11. And for all the help and support youve given this government in terms of trying to counteract this and also trying to help other young people who might be inspired. Look forward to your testimony. Mubin shaikh in the greeting of jesus christ, peace be unto you. To the esteemed members of the senate committee, on september 11, 2001, i was driving to work when i first heard a plane struck the world trade center. Immediately, i said god is great. I asked myself, what if the Office Building i was working in was similarly struck by a plane . I would have perished along with everyone else, just as those innocent people perished on that day. For me, september 11, 2001 was for all intents and purposes the beginning of the end of the commitment to my extremist mindset. Allow me to explain. I was born and raised in toronto, canada to indian immigrants. I grew up attending a very conservative brand of koran school, boys separate from girls, sitting at wooden benches, rocking back and forth reciting the koran in arabic but not understanding a word of what was read. Contrast that with my daily life, attending public school, the complete opposite of the madrassa. Here, i could talk to girls and have a normal, functional relationship with them. When i left the koran school at age 12 and moved into middle school and high school, i wasnt discriminated against, bullied picked on, or anything of the like. I was actually one of the cool kids. But when i was 17, i had a house party which my hyperconservative uncle walked in on. My uncle and other family members were incensed that i would have brought nonmuslim friends to my home and spent the next few days berating me. Due to the guilt trip, hence the bornagain type seeking to right the wrongs of their past. I would then travel to india and pakistan, and in the latter, ended up in a place. The center of the group, as i walked around the area, i chanced upon 10 heavily armed men. Dressed in black turbans and sandals. One of them said to me, if you truly wish to bring about political change, it can only be done by using this. And he held aloft his ak47. I was completely enamored by them then, a consistent theme in jihadist literature. In the years following, i absorbed myself in claiming that jihad was the only way to change things. And when Osama Bin Laden gave his fatwa, i was on board. Then, 9 11 happened. Wait a second. I get attacking combatants, but this . Office buildings in which regular people work . I realized i needed to study the religion of islam properly. I sold my belongings and moved to syria in early 2002, when there was still some semblance of normality. I attended the class of a scholar who challenged me on my views on jihad, and subsequently spent a year and a half with him and studied the verses of the koran that the jihadists use to justify hate and destruction. I came to relinquish my views completely and returned to canada for a newfound appreciation for rights of muslims in the west. That year, individuals had been arrested in the u. K. With the london fertilizer bomb plot. One of those individuals was none other than my classmate at the madrassa. I thought this to be a mistake. I called to give a character reference to the family. It was too late for him. As for me, i was recruited by the service as an undercover operative because i felt this was my religious duty. I can say that i conducted several infiltration operations, both online and on the ground, involving religious extremists. One of those cases went on to become a criminal investigation. I went to the mounted Police Enforcement team in what came to be known as the toronto 18 terrorism prosecution. I gave witness testimony in five hearings over four years at the superior court, where 11 individuals were eventually convicted. Ive since worked with various mechanisms of the u. S. Government. As you noted, the National Counterterrorism center, the Security Office of civil rights and liberty, three main outfits engaged in the study and practice of countering violent extremism programming. In addition, i spent the last few years on twitter directly observing recruitment and propaganda by isis types online. And i reference appendix a here, that the members should have. Directly, ive engaged with many of them, male and female appendix b. As well as some of their victims that they have tried to recruit. My approach is to show how wrong they are and to criticize from the sources they misquote and mutilate. Thusly, the correct term to describe these attacks in islamic costumes. I personally intervened in cases of an American Girl these predators were trying to lure away by engaging her online, as someone who can show the real interpretation of islam. By this, i have a good understanding of what is happening in terms of recruitment. In terms of countermessaging as well. As the military side of psychological operations which i conveyed at a recent Conference Held in new york, in which the commanding general himself was present. Finally, there remains a massive gap in all the areas ive mentioned. And that a sustainable meaningful approach needs to be created. I submit to you, it is not as hard as some may suggest. That we already have the talent, but just need the direction and guidance in order to get it going. Just three quick points, some questions on terrorist recruitment on prisons. Number one, terrorist recruitment in prisons is happening all over the world not just in the u. S. As for the u. S. , the numbers are actually very low. In the western context, much of this recruiting remains unseen to the untrained eye. And also due to its covert nature and usually does not manifest openly in the prison institution, but afterwards when the individual has left the facility. Number three, greater vetting