Astounding number, there are over 200,000 isis tweets per day. How can we possibly get a handle over this . The chatter is so high and the volume is so loud that its difficult to get a handle. This isnt terror as usual. This is terror gone viral. I come mebd the fbi, Homeland Security and state and locals for their disrupting of these many plots. But as we saw in chattanooga, we cannot stop all of them. In this age of peer to peer terrorism, authorities are searching for suspects who use secure aps we call dark space, to communicate and crowd source their calls for attack, inspiring operatives who never have crossed into the borders of syria, but cross over borders through the internet to conduct acts of terror. Isis cyber commanders now regularly send out internet directives and missives to their followers, as we saw in garland, texas. Sometimes our first indication of a hatched plot is an internet hash tag. We need to have a frank conversation in america about the challenges posed by
You know, i think we can all agree that trying to monitor cyber space is futile, lawfully or unlaw fly. Given that this is a war of ideology, is there any plan on the table for policy to try to exploit that ideology in that seems to be what the crux of this is. Recruits will be replenished as long as they can be reached out to, so, do we have a way to counter this ideology, understand it, use it against them . Its a great question. Again, i think when i go to my what i was proposing in terms of a ground force, its got to be under American Leadership with our guys imbedded, but its time for the sunni arab nations to provide that ground force. They tell me they will, if there was a strategy. I met with world leaders. They will do that if theres a strategy and assad is part of the equation. When the infidel sets foot, you know, the last resort, either we try to do this or we do 100,000 u. S. Combat troops. You know, thats kind of the choices that we have. That is an option that should be
Agents and analysts and what other agencies were doing so they could Work Together with the people in those particular agencies. And it also involved creating new career paths, upward mobility, promotion opportunities and so on so we could retain the intelligence analysts along with the special agents. Another change that came about was to expand the role of the legal attache. Its a phrase that depicts the fbi people working overseas in our various embassies. They have a unique role. While the cia is viewed and in Foreign Countries as a spy agency, but the fbi had the ability to work with the local Law Enforcement. Either the National Law Enforcement people or local Law Enforcement people, particularly in the large cities overseas. In many ways, they are the tip of the spear in terms of our discovery potential terrorist plots and potential situations and information about terrorist organizations and the like. So they have a new very vital role in the counterterrorism effort. And part o
Development worker warren weinstein, who was kidnapped by al qaeda in 2011. And 39yearold Italian Development worker giovanni lo porto, who was kidnapped al qaeda in 2012. This week we learned that both men were accidentally killed in a c. I. A. Dren strike in january. Heres how it happened. The c. I. A. Spotted an al qaeda safe house in pakistan and closely monitored it. Judging senior Al Qaeda Leaders to be present, the c. I. A. Attacked. And while the drone killed a number of al qaeda terrorists, including an al qaeda leader and an american fighter for the group, mr. Weinstein and mr. Lo porto were later found to have been hidden in the building. Al qaeda had made sure the hostages couldnt be seen by u. S. Surveillance efforts. President obama apologized for the loss of life. President obama as president and as commanderinchief, i take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations, including the one that inadvertently took the lives of warren and giovanni. I profoundly
Negotiations, the law of Armed Conflict and counterterrorism. Shes also the codirector of the hls brookings project on law and security and a member of the program on negotiations executive board. Benjamin wittes is a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institute and the editorinchief of law fair. And joining our that ares we have the jack n. And lillian r. Berkman professor of entrepreneurial legal studies and director of the Berkman Center for internet and society, and also professor jook Goldsmith Jack goldsmith, professor of law. I will hand it over to benjamin. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me, and thank you all for turning out. This is quite overwhelming. I want to gabby and i started out thinking we were writing a book about the governance of catastrophic risk, and rather to my surprise anyway though im not certain to gabbys we ended up writing a book that was as much a book of political theory as anything else which is odd for me because i actually had neve