Finding likeminded people and are reaching online to find those recruiters and radicalize rsers. Guest something a little broader. Certain phase were a space where reality is for trade which is part of the tool used in the radicalization process. There is a misnomer that exists and people think a guy watches and isis video and automatically becomes a jihadist. Is more complicated. That is one element of a larger intellectual, psychological and emotional process. It takes a person from being one thing to something else. Love, hate, anger, fear. Complicated things. The social media aspect is important, but i think sometimes we go exaggerating and minimizing. Legal backandforth between the two. Host hasnt made recruiting for ice is easier . Isis easier . Guest yes. A allows isis to portray powerful image of itself they can be all things all people. You want to . You want religious . You want revenge . You went wacko ways of killing . You have that as well. And allows them to reject a complete package in a way that bypasses television, the regular media, the and it is accessible for all people. Ucis is using it in three ways. Grooming. English linesis which twitter accounts. What you find is you have a number of individuals interested about their faith. They are naive and have questions. You ar there are spotters online grooming them into the process. The answer in an innocuous way. Slowly the introduce the isis ideology. That is the first scope in terms of grooming. The other way to use the online environment is logistical support. I think back to a case of mohammed khan. A 19yearold kid goes to Ohare Airport with a 17yearold and 16yearold brother in syria sister. They will go to syria to join isis. They found numbers of people to call when they go across the border. How did a kid from chicago get numbers . He reached out on twitter. Its increasingly important this idea of what the fbi to other calls the devil on his shoulder. Individuals that are egging people on to do with a camera they are. Is getting increasingly harder to travel to syria and iraq. The messaging has changed in terms of joining the socalled caliphate. Do what you can read our, and you are having a constant shaming of individuals for not acting. Host is there a naivete on the individuals being sucked into this . Guest the first thing you always say is there is no one pattern. You get all kinds of different people. You have people who are more conservative, people who were shallow, gang bangers. You have converts. But given the fact there is a lot of individuality, a lot of difference, yes, you get a large group of people who are shallow. This is an ideology projected through social media that can be profound but also shallow. Its basically an ideology of a Bumper Sticker, or 140 characters. Almost like a label or sticker. They kind of empower people to do things or encourage people to undertake a path in life or type of violence in life. It does appeal to a kind of a certain naivete. Guest weve been looking at this for about 10 years. The oldschool guys have the knuckleheads. You also had big thinkers that wanted to read at 100 page treatise and understand how this stuff works. Part, theyr the most are not interested in that type of level of regularity. That is not to say there are not exceptions and people who are drawn into it. It is the Bumper Sticker idea. How do i tell my worldview to make sense for what they are telling us. Guest is the spirit of the age we live in. Where people age take the National Enquirer as news, for russia today oppressing tv, or something on the internet that they see. There is this appeal to jihadists. Its very modern. Its very postmodern. Is this hyperrealistic world we live in. We are constantly observing this barrage of symbolic, shallow images and thoughts. If the type of mobilization for dummies for the people of today. It is not medieval. I hate it when people use the term about isis. Is something very modern. Guest is very much a narrowcasting. Just like if you are on your facebook feed annually look at one newscast and then slowly goes down to only newscast about political bent. You look at isis recruitment online, the echo chamber. You only hear you want to hear. Youre listening to stories of things that reinforcer already held beliefs. You see that play out time and time again. Tosenting voices are pushed the side or blocked on twitter or kicked out on telegram. There is not a way to interject your way to the conversation. Are we talking specifically about isis or other groups . One of the big Lessons Learned that has happened as a result of the astonishing suspects success of the Islamic State in the social media space is how other jihadist groups have adapted and how they had changed. They really up to their game. They have adopted ways of doing media the way isis does media. They adopted certain visual styles. They have upped the production of what they are doing. The west has tried to learn and do a better job of counteracting this. Other bad guys have also learned lessons from isis. They have learned to improve the ways these media. Guest there are Lessons Learned terms of demographics. The average age of the recruiter is 26 and u. S. They are recruiting 21 years and younger. They grew up on social media and understand the platforms in ways that normal people that have not grown up with this wouldnt. They are able to learn those lessons and apply it to try to get their message out. You are dealing with essentially people and their beliefs. They will spend all their waking hours pushing this in a way that government is going to work 9 00 to 5 00. Its a difficult dynamic to counter. Host there is a high level of sophistication . Guest alberto knows this in terms of production and how they disseminate messaging. Is not one way to do it. There is the veneer of a news organization, of isis news organization. There is the narrowcasting of if you are interested in utopian society and the caliphate, this is the message you will look at. Different registered in showing isis is winning, this is the channel you go to check that out. You pick and choose what you need in order to fulfill any doubts you had. Their presence in social media is declining. It is going down. The numbers are decreasing. They had decreased in some ways by about two thirds. But, there are two problems. The initial footprint they eventually developed on social media a couple of years ago was huge. One third of what they had before is really big. Second of all the still have the ability despite all the talk about what the u. S. Government is doing, they have the ability to reject based on an event, based on incidents they want to maximize. Piggybacking and using the mainstream media, using the 24hour news cycle the way a parasite would use it. They are smaller than they were before but they are still darn big. Host what makes an effective video . Guest theres are ours . Host theirs. Guest it varies. I watch all of them. Im also not a muslim or jihadist. I am horrified and intrigued by what they do. It can be all things to all people. You see a video about then helping poor people and giving almost to the poor alms to the poor. The other is carnage and bloodlust. To have your action video, your fighting video. They have enough volume and variety you can pick and choose. If you dont like this one, you like the next one. If he didnt like hassan furious 7, maybe you will like fast and furious 8. Host parties accessible to anybody on the internet . Guest its become more difficult to see them it was a couple of years ago. Had free reign in social media. They had mature longterm presence that was not obstructed. One of the challenges i had was nobody was taking them down in 2014. Slowly that began to change. Its more difficult to see this stuff today. But its not impossible. Guest the evolution will be interesting. When the first advent of terrorists using the internet was about a dozen or so protected forms. You had to know somebody to get in. And you already bought into the ideology. That evolution over social media that allows you to expand out your message on twitter, to get the fence sitters and be able to predict a larger strength. Now with the removal of content on twitter, or these the forcing of terms of service in a more structured way, you see them move to telegram. Its an extra between the old and the new. Passwordprotected and the twitter social media. You can get on channels but you have to know what channels to go to. And what that means for recruitment and radicalization, the jury is still out. All or going to be as viable in terms of recruitment . We try to interview these individuals online. Its hard to figure out who is on twitter in who was on who is not. Naive ornot as trusting as they were before. If i had reached out to a nice his recruiter a year ago, im from the program and George Washington and interview you, i would likely get a response and we would have a backandforth. Now it is less so. They are less trusting. They think people are reaching out our Law Enforcement are journalists. They dont see the benefit of talking to individuals, which means it out to the benefit of talking to some guy in indiana reaches out and says i want to go join isis. They are less likely to trust that guy. To take a while for vetting. Guest it is changing. It used to be that twitter was the site. They moved to telegram. We documented it. They did this last week. They constantly encourage people to go back to twitter. Dont abandon twitter. They see twitter as pioneers. Other terrorist used terror twitter before. Twitter was the in medium. Host why is that . Guest because of it broad brush appeal, shall in broad. This is an interlocking network. It is easy to get a broad, diffuse ecosystem that they develop the their message out. They still long for the golden days of 2014 under unobstructed. They still long for the ability that twitter gave them to get a message out. They describe as a safe haven. Thank goodness that telegram doesnt throw us off completely. But not like twitter has done. They are always for the next usable platform. Another thing thats changing which is the nature of the Islamic State. Its a big question mark. What happens when the physical caliphate is destroyed . Isis is not going to disappear tomorrow or next year or two years from now, but you see trends on the ground of the heartland under distress. How is the message going to adapted deal with the followed most the fall of mosul . How that affect their presence in social media and affect their ability to join them . Had you move to a place you cant move to . Guest end the conversation about twitter is still very important. They also surge up after an attack. While they worked on twitter after attacking france, everybody jumps back on twitter and talks about it. There is also an understudy look at the resiliency built into the system. On twitter they have accounts, shout out accounts. When we were watching last summer, in individual that arrested for terrorism charges. He was lone wolf 7 on twitter. When he was kicked off, he was lone wolf 8. When he was arrested he was lone wolf 21. Every time he was kicked off there was a shout out account that announces new arrival. Everyone followed lone wolf 8. They will never have the same number of followers, but there is resiliency old into the system. There are dummy accounts in a trade accounts to make sure if alberto can get on and use this guys account, or vice versa. They are trying to adapt to the environment. Guest one of the fascinating things they do on telegram is at the bottom of it they list all the different places where you can find it. You have twitter, youtube. The ones you and i know. They have all these exotic, triple, quadruple places to put it. All kinds of different venues can be there so they can be propagated. Host what is telegram . Guest i will let alberto jump in. Its essentially an encryption site. Think of it like a text messaging application. The ability to do it in a group text way. All three of us would go on to a chat and i can punch out and you can all follow. Its a very permissive environment for isis supporters. They tend not to go down very much. They have back up accounts, back of accounts. Make sure you follow these back of accounts. Releases before a major before the get kicked off. They want to have redundancy in the system. Guest that is exactly what it is. Is a social Media Application who is often guy called the Mark Zuckerberg or russia. Supposedly it is based in berlin, germany. I have no reason to doubt that. I dont want to accuse germany until its been verified is actually there. It is european company. It has some of the features of the old passwordprotected sites. Some of the features of twitter, but not the easeofuse. You have to know what youre looking for. You dont have the ability of hashtags and finding things as easily as on twitter. We documented last year that basically in 2015 they were driven from twitter and they found safe havens on telegram. Another platform which they frequently use. You put pictures. You also put links to things as well. Usbasedes. Org, a internet archive based in california. Three of these entities there is a lot of terrorist material. Even there is become more difficult for isis and jihadists the navy a year ago. Thats a good thing. Its easy to beat up on social Media Companies, and we do frequently. There has been progress if you compare it to where we were a year ago or two years ago. Host we want to show some video and get your reaction. You will recognize this. [video clip] we cannot allow the internet to be used as a recruiting tool. And for other purposes by our enemy. We might shut down their access to this form of communication and we must do it immediately. Immediately. [applause] host shamus hughes. Guest i try to avoid politics. We look at these type of things. The redundancy in the system actually matters a great deal. A contactsay takedown is important. They clearly affects the network when twitter steps up to the plate and take down content. It is not the all and all. Ben it is much more how do you take down content . How do you push alternative messaging . Introduce seeds of doubt seek a given person interventions because we will never be a with a fully radicalize someone online. How do you put those things together . How do you get social Media Companies who had their very nature are libertarian . Is a free and open society online. They have essentially been forced into this position of takedown. When you get them another alternative in terms of how do you connect i think back to my old job in government. Pays to be the Community Engagement officer. I was in sacramento two years ago. I said what you want to do . I want to take a video of myself put it on youtube. Thats great. No one is going to watch it. It will be 45 minutes long. You will not know how to tag it and not hit your target audience. But as the role of government, you can play for convenience. I have the ability to call the guy on twitter and youtube and facebook and say i have a guy in sacramento really want to do something. s got a good message for no idea how to user platform can you help that out . Those type of things are not going to be the only solution when it comes to countering this stuff. You cant just pick one Silver Bullet. Guest one of the great myths in government, whether its a bipartisan myth is there is some kind of magic or Silver Bullet that will make the jihadist go away. There was a button you push and social media. It doesnt work that way. One, takingber stuff down, even if they come back is useful. It shrinks their footprint and makes life more difficult for them. There is a lot more we can do. One thing i did recently my testified before the senate is picked certain terms which isis and other groups use in their propaganda. Terms from islam they use. I put it in on youtube. What would be the first results that i would get back . In almost every case, the result was an extremist explaining. Leaf. Term like belief. Even get a liberal or tolerant guide talking about belief. No, you got an extremist. There are algorithms. Game the ways you can system to make life a little more difficult to them, but there are no quick fixes. Politicians love making these broad sweeping statements. This is both democrats and republicans. Its not that easy. If it was people wouldve done it years ago. Guest and there is the importance of the physical caliphate. Its not like it twitter and facebook one away tomorrow you wouldnt have 30,000 people traveling to syria and iraq. There is something drawing them. There is an allegation, and important dynamic we dont look at. We focus on this idea of social media as the endall beall. Theres an important dynamic there but other things are in way. Guest people like to beat up on the social Media Companies. These are vehicles reflecting reality. Maybe a skewed reality or isisactured reality, but doesnt get a power from twitter. Taking theulously secondlargest city in iraq and a huge part of iraq in syria like that. That is what gives it its power. The idea of the caliphate. And the history of it. Social media is a vehicle for that stuff. The content is not content unique to social media. Its content related to the real world. Host is there a factor in censoring these people . We are talking about censorship, about taking sites down. We are talking about twitter deciding what is appropriate what is not. Is there a hesitation about that . Guest there is a default position often in Silicon Valley and social Media Companies which is a libertarian world. That is the default mindset a lot of people have. Government and societies always decide certain things are beyond the pale. Whether the child pornography or other things or incitement to violence. Not every country is the same. You have countries in western europe that much stricter rules and we do. We of the First Amendment in a different way of looking at it. I dont think there is any problem in trying to make life more difficult for the extremists. Realizing we live in a Democratic Society and there will always be at risk. Be intolerantys people using social media. Tost a lot of this place its an easier solution. It is easier to take down content and ask for content to be taken down if you are a congressional official. Thats an easy solution. It is hard to counter messaging and alternative messaging. It is hard to craft a message. It takes the right resources, the right targeting. That takes time and effort and not a lot of return on investment. If you released or try to the trial and error online, some things work and some things dont. The things that dont work you have the political cover to be able to do that. Are people going to back your play. If you look at the last couple of years, maybe not. This is why i think the default to the idea of takedowns because the other stuff is really hard. What finally german, further effort would you like to see made by the federal government and congress to combat social media . Guest i think in the u. S. Context there is not enough done in terms of interventions face. The online persona is essentially a reflection of the offline life. These individuals are fervent in their beliefs offline. There is no offramp or intervention programs. If i am a parent of an 18yearold im worried about, i have no option. There is not a list of people to call. Not a hotline. There is nothing i can do other than watch a train wreck happened in slow motion, hope it is a phase, or what i loved one be arrested. Until we provide those kinds of different avenues you will continue to have these individuals and these parents who are essentially hopeless in the scenario. The best they have is unplugged the internet which is not an acceptable answer for this. Guest both on and off ramps. You need the ability to help people get off that path where they are leading and being led to violent extremism. You also need to ramp up the ability to utilize the reality of people. To stories, the testimony, personal life, the personal history, the broken lives of people. It is still underutilized. There are hundreds of people in the west returning from syria and the Islamic State. Only a small part of their testimony, their own personal history has been captured. A few organizations started last of recantorsrea and defectors. Host alberto fernandez, Vice President of the middle east research institute. W director of the Extremism Program at George WashingtonUniversity Center for cyber and homeland security. This is the cspan created by americas Cable Companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a Public Service by your local cable or atellite provider. President obama will give his seventh and final keynote address at the Congressional Black CaucusFoundation Dinner today. Hillary clinton will also receive the inaugural trail blazer award as the first woman president ial nominee of a major party in the u. S. Live coverage at 7 30 p. M. Astern here on cspan. Now the future of the Health Care Law and the cost of premiums in the near future. This is from todays washington journal. Washington journal continues. Host Louise Radnofsky is the Health Policy reporter for the wall street journal, here to tell us a theew