Transcripts For CSPAN2 Washington Institute Discussion On Counterterrorism 20240713

Welcome to the Washington Institute for near east policy. I have the pleasure of directing the institutes rinehart pergamon counterterrorism intelligence and i am very pleased to be joined here today by the acting director of the National Counterterrorism center, russell travis. Todays conversation is part of the ongoing counterterrorism lecture series. Russell took office as the acting director in august but its not his first, second or third time in the building. He told many other leadership positions in ctc including a director at the office of Data Strategy and innovation, chief data officer among others. Hes held positions at the office for Defense Intelligence agencies, National Security council, the u. S. Army, joint chiefs of staff so we are very thrilled that he has been able to carve time out of his busy schedule and spend some time with us today to talk about counterterrorism in the era of competing priorities. One russell will deliver some remarks from the podium and then we will sit down for a fireside chat. I will ask the first few questions and then i will open up to all of you here attending in person to ask questions and we welcome all of you who are watching via a live strea the ar cspan thank you for joining us today. Russell, the podium is yours. Thank you very much. Its a great pleasure to be here among a number of old friends to talk about counterterrorism in the era of computing resources. I happened to testify earlier hr this week with the leadership of the fbi and dhs and talked with a friend of mine yesterday and she said a colleague of hers had seen the testimony and characterized my performance as that of a thoughtful nerd so i hope to aspire to something more 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 protecting against largescale attacks against the homeland, i think the notion of competing priorities will do nothing but get more challenging as it should. Ever since former secretary issued the National Defense strategy last year, theres been athere hasbeen an ongoing implit discussion about risk. How does the threat of trigger for some stack up relative to those posed by great powers in north korea or iran or syria or lots of other threats. The testimony this week was along with terrorism is a layout different kinds of threats come election security, election security, counterintelligence, intellectual property theft, International Crime that kills more americans than terrorism ever well and as i said at the hearing it is completely understandable terrorism may no longer be viewed as the number one threat to the country but i dont know what that means and it begs a host of questions. What does the National Risk equation look like as the country conference a complex interNational Security environment. Second hell do we optimize the resources in the best interest of the country when the departments and agencies may have different priorities and if we reduce the efforts against terrorism hell do we do so in a matter that doesnt reverse some of the gains of the past 18 years. But id like to do the next 35 minutes or so is walking through a bit of a roadmap for the issues that need to be considered as we address the questions. Im going to develop ten new themes and in doing so snarky with the geostrategic and worked on to the electron level and back up again. So, number one, good news. Let me say at the outset, terrorism is not and never has been an existential threat to the country unless it changes who we are. This hold up ththose hold up thr killing a 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 have made a lot of progress on this front. The last significant al qaeda directed attack was five years ago today the last centrally directed oasis attack the turkish nightclub three years ago and before that, paris and brussels. Violent extremist attacks are down. Down. They won last yeathe one last yy half a dozen in europe both numbers are substantially lower than previous years. Capabilities o of them floatingf the nicest struggle to sustain success for libya where the franchise isnt doing very well. None of it 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 many secondorder effects. Theres less sophisticated messaging, squabbling and its not just iraq and syria. Weve moved around the globe. Dhs and state pushed for herself and made the homeland much less hospitable to terrorists. Weve also seen global efforts to improve Border Security particularly after paris and brussels. Weve seen in cyberspace less hospitable and services around the globe are working together against terrorism unlike the efforts against any other National Security discipline. The u. S. Continues to pass on Lessons Learned for interested parties with an exercise program of information sharing and cooperation and we are seeing Capacity Building in other countries. And other countries. Improvements and interservice cooperation and enhancements in information sharing to mitigate the impact of terrorist attacks. You compare the response of these attacks against the west eight and 2013 and the hotel earlier this year. Fullstop with far faster with fewer casualties. We will never eliminate terrorism a tremendous amount os amount of good work has been done and allows for the conversation of the comparative risks. And that brings me to seem number two that is a concern of the potential for complacency. We do need to be careful. When i started working after 9 11 we were overwhelmingly focused on al qaeda and one piece of real estate along the border. 18 years later we see the diverse threats that has been homegrown violent extremism. The afghan insurgency and command structure that maintains cohesion over 20 branches of networks. We have al qaeda that has received less attention the past few years and it also retains command structure and half a dozen affiliates. We see coordination among its affiliates and has a full range of threats has provided the iranian code to force also a growing concern for the militant groups in iraq. At the various strands, one complicated enough whe that youe also seeing a global threat of particularly extreme rightwing terrorism. More on that later. Terrorists around the globe are proving capable of exploiting technology. They are good at it and innovative. The use of communications for planning, social media to spread propaganda and transfer knowledge between and among individuals and networks, drones for a tax, delivery means and even assassination attempts. Highquality fraudulent travel documents that undermined screening and watchlist systems in front and Border Security. Crypto currencies to Fund Operations and potential terrorist use of chemical and biological weapons has moved from the low probability eventuality to something that is considered much more likely. In many cases the exploitation of technology has outpaced the associated legal and policy framework to deal with the threat. Looking out for five years we are particularly concerned with the growing adverse impact encryption will have on the terrorism efforts and is the key point. We cannot freeze our thinking and 2019. In 2019. We always need to be looking to the future. Finally come both al qaeda and isis have shown themselves to be successful at radicalizing the vulnerable populations around the globe. Sometimes they dissuade adversaries to establish and organize a group. Sometimes an adversary is deployed to aid in an existing group. Sometimes its already present with historic ties or personal connections. Sometimes it is done remotely with social media or letters and sometimes deployed to an isis court. They are innovative and bolstering the ranks. Things need to do need to focus on prevention. By any objective standard there are far more radicalized people now than there were at 9 11. Think tanks think were looking at four times the number and the number of terrorists has grown by a factor of almost 20. Unless you believe it was and they burn itself out, we will be faced with a growing radicalization problem around the globe no factor captures this worldwide. We believe a mix of personal, group, community, social, political and ideological factors contribute to recruit and to the organizations in mobilization to violence. We are gradually as a world accumulating more Empirical Data for instance the United Nations Development Program evaluated 718 active reform extremists mostly from alshabaab or boca hung on to identify the reasons individuals are radicalized and recruit into these organizations act to person level. The most important factor cited with Human Rights Violations by the Government Security forces but also poverty, the nature of religious education, stable families and government corruption but its not about poverty and being downtrodden. As we said in sri lanka the individuals are well educated and well off but radicalized by heat features. There is a great deal of Fertile Ground in countries and we are facing the radicalization in prisons and even among Young Children being targeted by extremist propaganda. There are various initiatives with the radicalization, reintegration, offramp in as well as broader programs to focus on good governance, Economic Development and human rights available resources remain a problem. If the numbers of radicalized people around the globe keeps growing i just do not like the odds of identifying the right people to capture, kill and keep out of the country and there are second and Third Order Effects as the situation gets worse in africa and Climate Change takes its toll we are seeing greater migration into europe in turn is exacerbating tensions getting further rightwing violence to protest if violation is a vicious cycle which brings me to team member for the need to focus on identity, people of concern. Threats revolver from people and networks and while tracking identities is pretty arcane not as interesting as talking about the future of isis or the latest strike, it is incredibly important. They work underpinning much of the screening and fitting architecture that evaluates 3. 2 Million People a day and this is where we failed the country on 9 11. Two of the hijackers were allowed to get a visa, 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 eight years. We have effectively pushed workers out creating a multilayered defense to identify those with the rest connections at the earliest possible point and weve continually improved building dossiers, making better use of technologies, performing near realtime classified screening for the watchlist sent a where possible, making use of biometrics. This will never be a riskfree proposition, but the system has overall performed extraordinarily well. And ctc working with our partners is responsible for compiling u. S. Government database of known and suspected terrorists and the data is used to support screening partners. There has been some confusion on this point and when we talk about the precision its very important. Each da paid approximately three individuals that meet the definitions the country to come to the country. This is not to say they intend to conduct an attack but that there is information that warrants a scrutiny. Upwards of another southern watchlist of individuals each day may have connections at wheelock individual derogatory information required to consider them known or suspected terrorists. When 3 Million People per day are screened, drawing conclusions about any one particular individual can be fraught with challenges over the course of 16 years the system has through the test of time in some cases refugee refugees fore scrapings are provided we have no indication terrorist groups have exploited the program and screening limit the ability to do so. Over the past two decades thereve been two individuals who arrived as refugees and have not been attacks on the homeland both radicalized after coming to the United States. As effective as we are we cannot rest on our laurels. There are warning signs as we saw in the case of the terrorist attacks many of the individuals were known to security services. But they have highquality passports and id cards. By a graphicallbuy a graphicalls are on the wrong side of history. We saw this in Northern Syria where the captured fighters routinely gave fake name pence the fbi and Defense Department have as many people as they could. We also have ever increasing amounts of information. How do we process is to ensure highquality databases, i will get into that in a few minutes. In my opinion we should treat this much like we did that after 9 11. What do w we try to accomplish d how are we going to get there . We have a lot of piece parts and we need to ensure that they are properly stitched together. The vision should be a mere realtime screening against all available u. S. Government information to determine if an individual is a known or suspected terrorist. This would involve the collection of integration and sharing of biometrics. The benefits would extend well beyond counterterrorism and support screening against other categories of threats. That brings me to number five, the need for the robust intelligence none of this happens unless we maintain a robust integrated intelligence capability. There is no question the counterterrorism enterprise is the best integrated for the community. We have been doing as a community for a very long time but as good as we are in as well resourced, there will be challenges Going Forward. The globally dispersed terrorism threat that involves individuals and networks places a great pressure on the intelligence services. We need to evaluate the threat at multiple levels and have sufficient insight to determine if and when they pose a threat. The first is to provide by this sri lanka problem this was simply not a high priority before last easter. The Islamist Group denounced isis and 2016 and at a much wantemuchlonger because smallery that was apparently responsible. It had been a bit of a fringe element separatelelements progrr attacks on the buddhist statutes. Not obviously associated with isis we didnt recognize the threat. One step up from that with the local indigenous islamic insurgencies around the globe was to affiliate themselves with isis and with that comes greater interest in attacking the interests. Consider the longstanding insurgency in northern mozambique where we recently be affiliated with isis and are now focused on attacks on u. S. Energy interests. Extrapolate that. And one level higher we need to have sufficient insight into these insurgencies to proces asf and when they may be expanding beyond the country, local threat to one that may threaten the homeland this has been a challenge in the past. In 2009 we thought of a q. A p. As a regional threat. Christmas day of 2009 there was an attempt to blow up the fight over detroit and in 2010 we viewed the Pakistani Taliban as a regionallybased south asia threat and yet they trained the bombing in the New York Times square. Think about the people in the networks and the ability to exploit technology and we had more than a few challenges. At the macro level as we adjust to the 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 start focusing on, what is the associated risk . As we drawdown military forces we will have less intelligence capable. There will be less liaison with underground partners. Those are simply facts. With that comes a degree of risk when we determine how great the risk is. Compensated for and so forth. And then at the national level, we are sure we have the right constellation of organizations and authorities. And that brings me t to be numbr seven, the need to get the electrons right. If we are going to get the intelligence right, we need to get the electrons right. Data is everything whether we are looking for strategic trends or conducting tactical Level Analysis associated with individuals and networks its the lifeblood of the community. Its extraordinarily complex particularly when we are dealing with information that is invariably incomplete generally ambiguous and often wrong. Ten years ago this month the nigerian father walked into the embassy said his son may be associated with extremists in yemen. That was a capable to every analyst in the government. It got no attention. Other data existed but the relationships were obvious. I spent my entire career and will state counterterrorism has the worst ratio of any discipline which ive ever been associated. I think th think that he wishesn analyst working counterterrorism since 9 11, he or she has seen a quarter of a million threat. Overwhelmingly they were bogus but when they come in, how exactly do you know . To be a little more concrete we average about three druid abroad a threeyear, almost one and a. To get a little more concrete, the Center Receives in excess of 10,000 terrorism related intelligence reports today that they have to sift through and of those 10,000 reports contained 16,000 names daily. All our services are challenged to uncover potential threats. With the growth of captured media on the battlefield or the explosion of social media, the magnitude of the problem only grows. Terrorists to communicate. But these are not terrorism information, so they can quickly implicate legal and policy, privacy and operational at codys the limit sharing and processing of such data. Determining which information is relevant and addressing the competing with the associated remains a work in progress. I will never have enough analysts to process the information so Artificial Intelligence are not nice to have. They are absolute imperatives. As such i noted with interest earlier the National Security commission on Artificial Intelligence chaired by eric schmitt the former executive chair issued its interim report with a quote. With respect to the data, the government is well positioned to collect useful information from its Worldwide Network of sensors that much of the data is unlabeled, hidden in various silos across sprick networks or is inaccessible to the government. Even more data is simply expelled as exhaust because it isnt deemed to be immediately relevant. And the because it is not deemed to be immediately relevant. The infrastructure is woefully inadequate. We have a long way to go to realize the benefits. In the case of terrorism the problem is difficult because so much data is unstructured and it is unstructured in different ways. That makes it difficult for machines to help our analysts. I hearken back to what i said about the evolving nature of the threat all about individuals and networks. As we have seen with homegrown violent extremists it is extraordinarily difficult, and the needles are increasingly subtle. We see this across the western world where partners may be dealing with tens of thousands of radicalized individuals. That brings me to theme 7, a rhetorical question. 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. Efforts to ensure Public Safety can bump up issues of privacy. Part of the governments response after 9 11 is to provide very broad authorities to receive terrorism information. That was an extremely good move. With that came extensive oversight and Compliance Regime and im extraordinarily proud of the record in this regard and my experience is the entire community is conscientious about these issues. But looking forward, given the pace of technological change, seems to me the issues are more difficult and the need for informed, transparent public discussion becomes creator. Keeping the country safe in a world of transnational threats that straddle the domestic declined balancing legitimate privacy rights. There is no consensus in the country about that. The notion of discovery is case in point that linking nonobvious relationships and finding unknown unknowns, some call this. Connecting. How much can we, should we do . The processing of inexplicable amount of information is infamously complex and defies a simple solution. InterNational Cyber criminals, terrorists, proliferators and transnational criminals have linkages in the United States. They may be us persons with foreign connections or they may travel or use our financial institutions. They use our openness against us exploiting the attributes of globalization they can easily hide in the daily Noise Associated with millions of people that cross our borders or trillions of dollars or the unimaginable telecommunication activity, virtually all cases the data associated with these necessary us actors is sidebyside in data repositories that hold connections. There are lots of complicated challenges that limit our ability for discovery. In the case of the 1225 underwear bomber was a function of dots being left in the background and inability to discern nonobvious relationships between two apparently innocuous pieces of information. In other cases relevant data may exist in departments repositories. But for operational Law Enforcement for privacy reasons, the information is not broadly available. Retention and subsequent use issues make limitations with that information. In other cases, the case of financial data, it is a separate repository that can include any large scale analysis. Things like the need to balance privacy and security sound superficially attractive but didnt really help them. Which organizations or what purpose and when, some representative questions. What level and type of counterterrorism risk should we be willing to tolerate to preserve critical freedoms and perhaps most importantly how can the National Security Community Structure a dialogue with the American Public to constructively address the question . Second, how do we govern and approach exploitation of the internet particularly at a time when technology is far outpacing legal policy rulemaking and we are able to find information on the internet that is more risk rich, valuable and intrusive and statutory regulation. And third what is the role of the private sector in 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 intolerable privacy risk to individuals. I suspect these questions are going to be increasingly important in the future. Let me move from electrons to the last three themes, broader National Security issues. Theme 8, the need for whole government. Counterterrorism intelligence integration across all relevant departments and agencies particularly in an era of constrained resources will be cortical and i suspect increasingly difficult. It will also be insufficient. As we have found over the past two decades we need whole of government integration. That has always been a challenge for us. Any practitioner will acknowledge the reality of the way the government is configured limit interagency effectiveness. We are government sovereignty, the way money is appropriated and congressional oversight works. We have this across the government and that is a new issue, and the interagency process, the 9 11 commission, quote, it is hard to break down stovepipes where there are so many stoves that are legally entitled to have castiron pipes of their own, not impossible. One good example is the post 9 11 watch listing in screening architecture that brought together the entirety of the government but that has been under stress as the agency begins to adjust to evolving priorities. The director of Strategic Operational planning has a role in the interagency to develop government ct strategies. Arguably the enterprise is more coordinated in part because of those efforts. That said, information efforts such as these will always struggle and in the absence of telecommunication. In syria integration happens at the National Security council and that happened in the years after 9 11, a major focus of the most senior levels of the government because of the imminence of the threat. In a high threat environment we see major al qaeda plots, there were multiple Committee Meetings every week, there was tremendous attention on all levels. Understandably has the perceived threat has declined so has the degree of interagency focus. In addition there has been a degree of downsizing and deemphasizing since integration that goes to the last administration. There is a sense decisions could be back to department and agencies partly because of micromanagement and partly born of a desire to wean department and agencies off of the nfc. We need to address this very carefully to determine how well it does or doesnt work. The nsc will continue to handle the highest priority issues. What happens when lesser important questions arent recognized as important until they are . It was a very arcane subject 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 snowden. They implicate multiple department agencies, they become strategic failures. Finally, one result of the engagement is potential for muscle memory. Harrison like any national as we move forward we make sure the interagency mechanisms affect coordination. That brings me to theme 9, the need for whole society. As we look to the future we need to look beyond government. Terrorist use of the internet will require a Robust Partnership between government and Technology Industry to prevent the distribution of propaganda, communication with supporters and proliferation of information to support a tax. In the past two years there has been a marked increase in industry willingness to work with one another, the Us Government and foreign partners to counterterrorism through the Global Internet foreign to counterterrorism. Originally created by facebook, microsoft twitter and youtube it provides vehicle for discussions for potential information sharing and there has been substantial progress. Facebook, twitter and youtube detect 90 of terrorist content through Automated Technology and much of it is removed immediately after being uploaded and never reaches the platform for public consumption. So far this year youtube suspended 42,000 channels and removed 163,000 videos for promotion of terrorism. Facebook removed 6. 4 million pieces of terrorist content in the first 3 months of this year and suspended 166,000 unique accounts in the second half of last year for promotion of terrorism. The recent move to establish an independent ngo offers a more formalized opportunity to better leverage respected strings with the private sector and the government against this dynamic problem. The new construct looks to sustain and deepen Industry Collaboration and capacity, incorporating the advice of key Civil Society and government stakeholders. It remains to be seen what role Government Entities will play within this construct. Success against the future, online terrorism threat will only be realized through greater transparency, information sharing across the publicprivate divide in near realtime. Current transparency reports pertaining to content takedown efforts, provide a snapshot of the scope and scale of the problem but typically they lack sufficient detail on the methods and type of material being purged. Government efforts to support Technology Companies could be better targeted with Greater Knowledge of the content being removed, the location of its origin and potential attribution. From this information Government Entities would affect trends and assess trends in terrorist propaganda, identify new and emerging groups, key radicalize is and credibility of potential slots. New insights could be passed back to the companies to enhance their models and algorithms. None of this will be easy. Companys willingness to engage governments depends on host of policy, legal and proprietary concerns but if we mutually work through the impediments, there are dividends. Organized crime at the nfc, i find publicprivate partnerships like the National Cyber forensics in pittsburgh to be a very useful platform. 501 c3 brings together government and private sector representatives for information sharing in the cybercrime arena, both government and private sector construct work well. As the threat evils we need to evolve and that brings me to getting our arms around the Global Dimensions of nonislam is terrorism. Nothing highlights the evil the nature of the terrorist threat more than the growth of what some call dt and others rightwing or White Supremacy terrorism and still others racially motivated violent extremism. The fbi has a lead on domestic terrorism but i want to focus on Global Dimensions for seeing a movement. The increasingly transnational nature facilitated by social media and online communication has resulted in an environment that features frequent communication between sympathizers and exchange of ideas with a large percentage of attackers in recent years, with groups or referenced early attackers and sources of inspiration. For instance, dylan roof and international reverence with story of information including those looking to plan or conduct attacks. They have been praised or researched by where attackers are since 2014 spanning from the us to the uk, germany, roof has inspired two attackers or plotters since his june 2015 attack against the Historic Black Church in charleston, South Carolina and was inspired by braddock and praise roof and other attackers, has inspired at least three attackers since his march 2019 attack in christchurch, new zealand. The connections go well beyond inspiration. We see overseas trial, communication against racially motivated extremist and the provision, some of this involves connection to rightwing organizations. Some involves connections, that have been banned or designated terrorist organizations by other countries. Some involves connections with likeminded individuals who might or might not move from exploring extreme ideology to radicalization to mobilization. We dont fully understand how attackers are influenced and or what constitutes meaningful relationships between extremists. Unlike islamist extremism in recent years has been led by large hierarchical organizations like al qaeda and isis, does not feature authoritative or structural organizations or monolithic ideology. Instead it is motivated by loan actors to use the online space of borderless safe haven inspired by a number of procedures involving political, social, economic, legal, demographic, environmental or personal issues. Moving forward we will have to address a host of issues. There are Lessons Learned that could be applicable. government including information sharing focused on individuals and Facilitation Networks work at the private sector and foreign partners and so forth. That said there are some challenges unique to this problem set, associated Material Support charges, the added complexity of constitutionally protected free speech and the difference between the United States and our partners and the fact the perpetrators are often loan actors substantially complicates those used in it. And i would highlight some broader issues. For almost two decades the United States has been a broad for extreme islamist ideology. We are now being seen as exporters of white supremacist ideology. That is the reality we have to deal with. Secondly as we grapple with how to deal with a Global Movement we need to be very careful. In the case of the International Islamist terrorist threat we lost some control of the narrative. Among vulnerable populations, radicalization has succeeded on the pretense that the west is conducting a war against islam. It is false but effective. We need to guard against that. We must disaggregate. Appropriately dealing with violent whites the premises activity while not being perceived as painting with too brought a brush with legitimate rightwing political activity and free speech. Keeping control of the narrative and creating the International Toolbox with that disaggregation will be tricky but absolutely necessary to make the problem worse than it already is. In conclusion, let me take you back to the question i posed at the outset, what does the National Risk equation look like as the country confronts a complex interNational Security environment. How do we optimize our ct resources in the best interests of the country when department and agencies have different priorities and if we are 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 cant answer those questions in different ways and the answers are most assuredly not selfevident. They deserve informed consideration by far leaders inside and outside the beltway. I do believe the 10 themes i layout involves focusing on all aspects of the current future terrorist threat, addressing a host of must dos and involving a series of complicated issues will help develop a government Risk Assessment as we move forward. Thanks very much. [applause] thank you, russell, that was a tremendous presentation that covered the waterfront. I will take moderators prerogative and ask three questions across the ideological spectrum and open up to peter for questions and answers. You mentioned a military drawdown leave to less liaison and you talked about making sure we do what we can to make sure we dont reverse our gains. Next week, the coalition is holding a minister in dc and i understand they have taken some things off the table but for the purpose of next week dealing with the provinces and whether the coalition is geographic is expanded to specifically focus next week on syria and iraq given the turkish incursion and without getting into the policy issues, strictly from a counterterrorism perspective what needs to be done to make sure the Current Events on the ground in northeast syria dont lead to intelligence collection and losing some of the progress we have made. From an intel perspective weve been pleased with the secretary of defense, reiterating the forces that remain still have a counter isis mission that is really important. From an intel perspective the foreign fighter problem and isis prisoners in that part of syria have been a source of much attention over the past couple years, pushing hard to get our partners to repatriate our foreign fighters. That has not gone well, there are tremendous issues associated with the judicial system and european partner countries. As a result as i mentioned, we have gotten ballistic about this, concerned that there is a growing likelihood that we could see many of these foreign fighters again when broken out of prison or released from prison and so the focus is making sure those individuals are on the appropriate watchlist the past couple years so i am pleased with that. The sdf have been fabulous partners over the years who have born tremendous costs in Northern Syria. There is a willingness to provide information to us. They are still possible in the way they are focusing on prisons although they drew down substantially with the turkish incursion. For us, probably the greatest midterm concern is retention of those prisoners, not bolstering isis ranks or seeing any foreign fighters. Do you have a level of confidence that biometrics have been taken of people who have been detained so reports of the hundred or so people who might have escaped from biometrics . It is a problem. We dont know who exactly these hundred people are. Moving prisoners to different prisons, our expectation was and has proven to be the case, the knowledge of where specific things are and the bookkeeping associated with that is increasingly problematic. We are quite confident that we got biometrics on foreign fighter component so in the case of iraqis and syrians we are not as comprehensive but the expectation is those individuals are likely to stand. Away from extremism for a moment and talk about extremism you mentioned early on concerns about iranian hezbollah and other threats, theres been an uptick in iranian terrorist activity in the region and an uptick in activity abroad including the United States, news the two iranian split guilty to a plot which involves surveillance of jewish targets in the United States. On the hezbollah side we had one individual convicted in new york city and another who pled guilty, a third who has been indicted and is awaiting trial. How did the Community Look at the issue of extremist terrorism in the context of this uptick in activity. The bureau works this probably really hard in the United States and we see periodic arrests and i think the uptick in activity in the region is greater concern to us as a Pressure Campaign or response to the Pressure Campaign or potential for hair triggers and the activity of the shia militia groups in iraq and particularly the relationship with this force. That will bear close watching in the years ahead. That is where we are i think. Before i open it up to questions from the audience i want to mold to gather your thoughts about the right wing, racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists and your points on social media, the growth of one is so dependent on the other. Do you think government needs to play a greater role in regulating the social media in the private sector or doing a good enough job . I lead a small group to california a few months ago and we came back feeling there were some things in which the private sector on social media was doing incredibly good very forward leaning work but wasnt consistent. For some platforms the issue of free speech, say anything you want anywhere is taken more strongly than others. Some platforms not only the platform you for counterterrorism but for hate, in some ways more forward leaning in government. The fact that it is inconsistent, is it a problem the industry is selfregulating . The government has to be careful about getting involved, hence my point about transparency. The terms of service are the province of individual platforms and as you say, some are more forward leaning, some more willing to engage with the government. We have been a huge fan of guest ct. It is fair to say the platforms themselves are struggling with once you get outside the realm of and isis association or al qaeda association it is harder for them to train their algorithms and theres going to be i hope a growing conversation related to rent the space and how do you do that . There are lots of questions what constitutes incitement 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 and so we are in kind of new territory. I think the strategic picture here is there has been a tremendous growth in the conversation between social media and the government. They have been more forward leaning and that needs to continue. Final corollary to that and we will put it up. I was pleased to hear you acknowledge because i hear it every time i go abroad, we the United States are seen by many as the source of a particular type of extremism, right wing extremist ideology the same way we saw others responsible for that in other contexts and a significant amount of anger and frustration with us saying we have legal restrictions on how we deal with that. Clearly in the fbi and doj realm, the fancy perspective as you engage with partners. Are there authorities of some type you would like to change domestically so we can deal specifically with transnational aspect of this, do you find when we follow a transnational threat and it comes back to the United States in some way that we are pursuing that . This is a work in progress. The government is feeling its way forward, cautious about the way i talked about the nature of those connections and what they mean. There are some that want very much to designate overseas organizations the way we do with ftos. We have to be careful about that. We have seen some examples recently about the opportunities in ukraine, and designate that entity. Parts of that entity are parts of the Ukrainian National guard so the potential for unintended consequences, making the situation worse, are simply there so we have to go kind of slowly and the deliberative to understand the problem. Thank you. Let me open up to questions and answers now. Raise your hand if you have a question and ways to identify your self. Thank you. You mentioned the problem of european fighters in northeastern syria and iraqis and syrians detained in northeastern syria as well. My question on the european question which has gotten a lot of attention, what is your assessment of the risk, and iraqis and syrians knowing in 20072009, al qaeda and iraq and emerging years later so there is a history of entering. What are the possible scenarios from iraq and syria in the region . Six years or so, down to 1000 individuals in iraq and syria. The numbers 14,000, some think it is higher than that mostly in iraq, they recognize the end of the caliphate coming a couple years ago and moving towards an insurgent orientation going underground as you suggest. Our concern about that is what they did 6 years ago, 14,000 people now at least, potentially another 8 or 9000 in prison, he did a radio thing in which he called for attacking those prisons and breaking people out. The expectation is that will do nothing but grow. In terms of activity on the ground, there are already now go areas at night, isis flags and sharia is being implemented and the whole crop burning thing and everything else. The insurgency is alive and kicking in iraq and to a lesser degree syria. I dont see the function for why that gets better. It will require a combination of both military pressure and dealing with the entire demand side of the equation, reconstruction, the potential for longterm sunni disenfranchisement in those countries is pretty significant. In that regard there is a lot of work to do. My name is sadat. I come from egypt. Im up politician, parliamentarian. Im here as a guest caller. I would like to have your comment on two issues. One, how do you see terrorist attacks happening . Do you think this, terrorist attacks or kind of revenge . As a result of Security Strategy that is not working, the whole area is economical whereby the army was monopolizing a lot of troops, the police and such close cooperation with israel on the border. It is kind of revenge of young business who are somehow feeling marginalized, not blogging anymore. Number 2, do you believe running or having the kind of deal with those who are in prison and the youngest of those. Is there a real chance for convincing them or changing their beliefs so they could refrain from violence and integrate again at the site . Do you think this is a possibility . Since the environment outside, the same social, economic problem, human rights abuse, what chances do you think . Thank you. There is both and isis and al qaeda presence in sinai. To answer your question it is a little bit of both. There is an underlying cause of the issue but we have seen the isis element inside i, to the new head of isis i think we have got an existing terrorist cells that are conducting attacks on the northern part of sinai. On the second question, unfortunately i think globally we are seeing prisons the incubators for radicalization and terrorism. I dont think anyone has broken the code on how you deal with it. We have individuals in United States prisons who have gotten out who are as radical as when they got it. Our European Partners have this problem in spades. Because of the length of prison sentences we are because missing hundreds to thousands of people come out that were radicalized when the window got radicalized when they went in. I take your point the we have a lot of work to do but there have been sort of debates about whether you put these prisoners together or try to break them up. European partners have gone back and forth on this and all of them demonstrated challenges. There is not a lot of Success Stories in terms of people coming out of prisons that have not been the radicalized or disengaged. In the middle please. George mason university. One of the points you made was the increasing intersection of transnational crime and terrorism but in your strategies you didnt talk about ways that you can utilize the analyses or interactions and to Network Analysis from one side that may be more vulnerable to infiltration than the other. I mentioned a couple years at the nfc, working transaction on organized crime. I actually went there with the of our goal of doing this. It seems to me good things happen when you bring the government together and give analysts broad access to information to do the kind of identity Network Analysis. We are moving a little bit in that direction right now and there is a belief that we want to do similar work in the transnational criminal databaseing the we do in the case of terrorist identities as that seems to be a very good idea, we start cataloguing people for the purposes of looking at intersections with terrorism as well as knowing of potential bad guys want to come into the country and who they are connected with but there are lots of issues because as disparate as terrorism was before 9 11 transnational crime has spread even further across the government so you have a long way to go with consensus how to consolidate those efforts, who should do what kind of database but that is the direction we need to go. Anyone right here . Thank you. You opened by starting a discussion about risk and the risk we are facing as we try resources toward the Great Power Competition as we are refocusing across the government away from the terrorism threat. Americans are feeling quite safe at home not having witnessed another 9 11 attack. The challenges you lay out, the terrorism efforts we have included decline in interagency coordination and focus, the question of how we have a whole government approach to counterterrorism but what i wanted to ask is outside of the counterterrorism realm can you discuss the risk about relying on only counterterrorism strategy against threats from al qaeda and the Islamic State and how the counterterrorism strategy might match up with a country or region wide strategy to counter the local groups themselves that are eventually producing the threats you are working against. In my opinion the strategy that came out last year was a very good exemplar of how government is still working on the problem together and people in this room worked on it and it is not just about capturing and killing. Theres a lot of focus on the prevention issue, working with locals and having to do this on a multinational, all of which is exactly the right thing to do. The question is followthrough. The notion of terrorism prevention has, i think, played a significant role in three out of four terrorism strategies we have done since 9 11. We havent made a lot of progress in terrorism prevention. For a long time we didnt know what worked and i think it is fair to say that there will be a tremendous challenge in some of these groups in africa and how does it relate to the Africa Strategy and what do we do with Foreign Development and so forth. That will continue to be a significant challenge. Do you know any more today than you did last week about the new isis leader and are you surprised by the Propaganda Campaign the Islamic State has been running to show how different people are supporting him and secondly, where does the counterterrorism strategy fit into the great power strategy, any signs the great powers or regional powers are starting to manipulate or use terrorist groups if not to accomplish something for themselves but make things more difficult for the us . This is playing out largely as we expected. We saw the announcement and the new guy got named and we saw the call for retaliatory attacks and eulogies and the branches and networks swear allegiance. This is similar to what happened back in 2010. There is substantial time between the name that came out and the recognition of figuring out who he was. I mentioned on the hill, our view was abdul would be a logical candidate for taking over but we are not at a point of having a confirmation who it is. On the great power thing this is an added dimension to the problem i didnt mention but that we have to work our way through but there are certainly examples of the russian state exploiting issues to play 2 rightwing grievances and how do we deal with that. It is an interesting question. My remit is counterterrorism. I get access to counterterrorism information, issues associated with russian state would not fall within we have to work that with the bureau in terms of how to handle it. You would have an opportunity to work with the russians, comment on given events in syria and iraq. Not everybody in the region the number one threat that we do. In particular the majority of forces on the ground and countries like turkey or syria or russia that have a different prioritization than we do, how does it affect our ability to work with them or other partners on the ground to deal with it . The turks are the clear example here, that they will profess interest in counterterrorism but it is primarily they are concerned about isis as far left. I harken back to the issue of prisons and who is going to take them over and how concerned the turks will be. I do think that they would not be interested in holding a ton of european foreign fighters. They would wants to get them back to European Countries and if it is going to work and this sort of focus and emphasis we had on our stf partners for a long time is going to be challenging with the turkish incursion. More in the back . You kind of touched on turkey a little bit. They announced yesterday, what does it mean . Touched a bit on European Partners and lack of willingness to take people back . Is there a plan, what are we doing . I dont know the answer to the question. What we have seen from our European Partners, some concern here and they started stripping citizenship. How the answers will shake out in the back. Thank you very much. We were concentrating on the middle east but we have a nice little piece in our own embassy. Particularly in the south, a connection between iranian affairs, are we doing anything about that . And see what happens . What is being dealt much more by the regional bureaus. In the back. Harrington. Are you seeing any evidence of outright Russian Support to these groups you mentioned that are racially motivated violent extremists either in the us or Financial Support sponsorship or activities . Not that i have seen. Work schisms, and a Greater Movement in that direction. Your mention of finance makes me think since one of my georgetown students from my class, on national threats, i will have some questions for her. Can you comment on continued efficacy of counterterrorism finance tools. Generally about whether sanctions are effective. Im not asking about sanctions in general but how effective and important do you see the counterterrorism finance tool. It has demonstrated success in the past. The history of a lot of terrorist attacks has been that it doesnt cost a lot of money and in new zealand, small amounts of money being donated. That is a challenge back to the signal noise problem, sloshing around with particular money going to the particular individual, and the additional issue, there are a lot of regulations that go along with being able to comingled data sets and that makes it difficult for analysts for the treasury and the bureau to track it. Talking about things like that or other hd attacks in the Al Qaeda Isis world is the fact, when i started my career in the 1990s. When it comes to these loan offenders are largely irrelevant which is to say travel communications, what are the greatest challenges operationally in dealing with the threat given that reality and how do we accommodate . Pretty much every western Country Services grappling with that precise problem. The uk is one of the highlights given the attack they had in 1617 and at the time they did a review and concluded there was Something Like 30,000 subjects of interest that had been on the radar screen at one point. That any given time they could do 24 seven surveillance. There would be open investigations of thousands and there are going to be a lot more that we have to sit fallow unless something caused them to be higher on the priority. The question, how do you identify a. In the noise level and bring it up so that you know you have to allocate resources . This goes back to the issue of technology. The ability to do a recurrence search from an individual who might be on the screen, to deal with the problem, also to deal with analysts, so many people will resurface several years later and a workforce that comes and goes. The issue of management and downloading a brain, technology can help with that. To look at every individual who is radicalized on that. I found this remarkably chilling and scary, your presentation. Enormous progress, the amazing achievements you were doing. The implied note conclusion which is the situation is really bad out there. I want to ask you, if there are 20 times more potential bad guys, we 20 times better than we were before 9 11, are we in the net way worse than we were on september 10, 2001 . The strategic concern i have isnt that there are moderate more than 14 years ago. Are individuals of primary concern in a local region area that should bother us but not perceived as threats to the homeland. We certainly dont have currently the kind of capability to reach out and touch the homeland in the heyday of al qaeda, and freeze thinking in 2019. In some years Going Forward if we start to pull back against the counterterrorism target, and deal with these organizations, enough intelligence to know what the nature of the threat to us interests in theater or to the homeland, that is going to get to be a harder problem for us. May be the threat will stay local but given the history of the last 18 years i dont think you can count on that but the technology issue, you heard the director of the fbi talk about this encryption problem and we are really good at technology but it is going to make a harder problem for us which probably means there will be far more humans which means we need to be there. How does all that net out . There is a tremendous amount of good news and we need to embrace that, we need to recognize this effort has to continue because there are some worrisome trends out there. In the middle, the mic over here please, thank you. Jeff smith. The ways in which you said things were looking a little darker was the prospect of chemical or biological use. Can you help us dig a little deeper on that, and say what you have seen so far in terms of groups embracing or moving towards embracing that kind of technology and what is your prediction, more concretely, the possibility, you said it changed from considered unlikely to more probable but give us a more granular estimate than that . Sure. To a degree, it was normalized in iraq and syria with what isis was able to do. We have i dont know how many, we have seen numerous plots interrupted around the globe over the last several years. There is tremendous concern about the ease with which poison gases could be developed and for many of my colleagues there is a bit of surprise that we havent already seen that, just given past history. Our qaeda flirted with this stuff 15 years ago. We never saw it operationalized. It looks to us like isis has got a somewhat easier route in terms of those capabilities and there are instructions that float around. We cant be saying what i think of the nature of that threat. Please. Chris wilkinson, recent graduate of the university of new haven. You mentioned in your opening remarks about the shifting tactic of continuing to focus on targeting children and bringing that out. I wish to speak more about how terrorist organizations are going about doing that and how we should respond to that as well as the radicalization efforts for children who have grown up by extremist ideology in iraq and syria . A tremendous amount of attention from our European Partners who have this problem much worse than we do, and 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 . There has been some willingness some countries are increasingly 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 what kind of mental shape are they going to be an is an area of concern across europe. We have learned a lot about the Islamic State over the years, domain material we see in the baghdadi raid. The program on extremism through the isis files project, is becoming public to be used by researchers outside government as well. What do you think from the material we know about isis can help us be predictive towards what it is going to become next . I ask you that because last time we had one of your colleagues at one of these lectures a year and a half ago, talk about the strategic surprise that caught us with the sunrise of isis, it became something so much more. We have given some thought to the way we think about these movements in between big mobilizations, the attempt to get our attention when we dealt with mobilization. What do you think we can get and what we might expect from that in the future . I do think the next couple years are likely to be very interesting. We discussed this among ourselves all the time. When the caliphate was declared and they started taking over large swaths of territory they put a huge bullseye on the back. Isis is a learning organization. It is very bureaucratic. In my own mind i wonder if they would be content with conducting sort of a prolonged insurgency and staying underground. The ground to avoid the pressure they absorbed from the coalition the last couple years but nobody knows. That the more we drive down that we siphon those resources off in the greater the likelihood is if we dont understand that thats probably the biggest concern. Okay. One last question for charles. What is the impact of the kind of the concept of terrorism that we see in different contexts context in countries . Was impact of this on yoursm wo . How does it affect the information you process and the kind of working relationship you can have with partners when they use the concept according to other National Interests . It gets into a real wonky answer, but things like the houthis is that a terrorist organization . Is it an insurgent organization . Its an areata state support. What we find it within our community is that the counterterrorism effort was pretty well stitched together for many years. Over time, some of these efforts in africa, the houthis, others have moved from the counterterrorism to regional bureaus. And that complicates the sort of course nation and effort across all departments and agencies. Theres a a massive number of people in our Intelligence Community making sure you know all the right people so you can talk to them on a daily basis as the effort is more disparate across the department and agencies, it does make that harder. It also makes things like information sharing harder. Chris and his colleagues when they beat us up after the 9 11 commission were focused very much on ensuring information got to all the relevant analyst so we could do that kind of analysis. Information sharing comes with legal and policy and privacy and security restrictions and impediments. When its all come when it is husbanded in the Counterterrorism Community then we can look that. As you sit moved out to all of these other disciplines than it does make it harder and some of these entities are, in fact, our parting very much like terrorist organizations answer that can complicate the analytic discipline. Im very pleased were able to end with the question that truly was able to bring out your inner thoughtful nerd, to be embraced as as a fellow traveler. Please join me in thanking Russell Travers taking the time to be with us today. [applause] thank you for all you do. Have a Great Holiday weekend, everybody. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] for 40 years cspan has been providing america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court and Public Policy events from washington, d. C. And around the country so you can make up your own mind. Created by cable 1979, cspan is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. Cspan, your unfiltered view f government. Deputy defense secretary David Norquist testified on the full financial audit of the pentagon. He appeared before a Senate Armed Services subcommittee