Threat. This is far more dangerous than al qaeda for four reasons. Number one it is its own selfgenerated fully fledged transnational insurgency. Al qaeda, in all the places where it existed in the last 14 years, was a parasitic terrorist organization that attached it self to indigenous insurgencies, whether it was alshabab in somalia or whether it was the taliban in afghanistan, it did not generate its own mass base of mobilization as a true mooist insurgency should or one that follows maos rule book for mobilization. Isis is different. Isis is its own selfgenerated insurgency. And of course the big difference between a terrorist group and an insurgency is that an insurgency holds territory in daylight. And this we know now, isis holds more territory than the territorial expanse of the united kingdom. It is a graduate threat. More importantly, what we dont talk about, it is the worlds first transnational insurgency. Not Just International all insurgencies are to a lesser or greater extent international with foreign support or foreign fighters this is one that operates and holds territory in at least three countries. In the 20th century, insurgencies were always about one thing. Taking control of the country within which the Insurgent Group was established. Whether youre mao in china or in colombia. This is different. Isis has much greater grander ambitions. It wishes to create a global caliphate. Next will be jordan and saudi arabia and on and on and on. With boko harams act of feelty feelity now boko haram territory in nigeria is also under the control of the caliph. This is stunning that we have one insurgency that controls territory in more than one nation in the middle east and now also west africa. Second, completely open source, it is the richest threat group of its type in human history. Lets just leave out the elicit oil sale through turkey, the sale of antiquities, the kidnapping and everything else. Just look at two events in the last year. After the second raid by isis on the Iraqi National bank, isis netted 823 million in cash. 823 million. If we look at the 9 11 Commission Report which did the financial forensics of that attack 9 11, the whole operation, from safe houses to student visas, to Flight School training, cost 500,000. That means that isis has the equivalent at least in cash of 1,600 9 11s. Should they wish to do that, that is a very large threat. Thirdly, as c. J. Cleveland c. G. Cleveland has used the word staggering, which i agree, the recruiting capacity of high sis is mind boggling. You just heard that we have figures that if in historic perspective, we have never seen before. 19,000 foo foreign fighters in nine months. These are the kind of figures that al qaeda had wet dreams about. And isis made it a reality and theyre keeping on this drive to recruit. Lastly, most important of all, in the macro of strategic context, is the declared caliphate successfully. Al qaeda never did. The talibans pathetic little caliphate was never a caliphate. This is a real caliphate. For 90 years, since the disillusionment of the ottoman empire, theyve been demanding a rereestablishment of the caliphate, whether muslim brotherhood, this is the only group that has successfully done it. This puts it at the pinnacle of the extremist islamist threat. Lastly, unfortunately, it has no peer competitor. Unfortunately everybody in this room knows its very easy to estimate, the number of insurgencies defeated by air power alone since the invention of air power is exactly zero. Thank you. Air power prepares the ground for ground troop wloss take back the territory. Therefore we will never defeat isis. With air strikes. Somebody has to take the ground back. Im not saying the 82nd airborne has to deploy tomorrow, but somebody has to. Egypt, jordan, the iraqis themselves, the kurds. But somebody has to contest that soil. So why is isis so successful . Well, a lot of it has to do with its name. In d. C. We have a childish argument is the Islamic State of iraq in syria or the levant . Both of those are wrong. When you do your intelligence preparation of a battlefield, you start with what the enemy calls themselves. Youre not permitted to make up your own labels. We wouldnt call the soviet union, you know, misguided democrats. Now would we . [laughter] all right. So what did isis call itself . Before declared caliphate . The Islamic State of iraq and alsham. Hugely important. Why . Because alsham, as every good muslim knows, is a very powerful term in islam. It relates to the story of end times, of judgment day. Just like in christianity, the plains are expected to see the final war between the antichrist forces and the true believers, well, guess what . Alsham is that of islam. It is explicit. The final holy war before the end of the world and all humans are judged by allah will occur on that territory in alsham. The final holy war. Think about what that name says. As an Information Operations the tool to all those hormoneladen 17yearold muslims around the world looking for some meaning. Not only did he name his threat group after alsham, he captured alsham. And his message is, you want to claim your soul in jihad, the clock is ticking, gentlemen. Come on down. This is the only way to explain more than 20,000 foreign fighters recruited in less than a year because of the significance of the territory that has been captured and the name of the threat group. And of course the problems a little bit bigger than iraq and syria. This is from the isis twitter feed. This is the visual that was splashed all over the internet after the declaration last june of the caliphate. As you can see, their game plan is a little bit larger than iraq and syria and its not about just assad or malikis corruption. It is a global caliphate. The last thing i want to do is get you inside the mind of isis today. I want to give you that you are playbook. I want to give you their playbook. Unless youre looking for the g. P. S. Coordinates of a high value target, everything you need to know at the strategic level about the Global Jihadist Movement is available on that super classified system called google. [laughter] it really is stunning. There is no polygraph at the strategic level for isis. If you want to know what theyre doing right now in syria, iraq, libya and elsewhere, you need to read this book. This is an egyptian that we killed a few years ago or rather the pakistanies killed a few years ago. The book is called the mastery of savagery. If you know your u. S. Military doctrine this is the antipetrino manual. This is the antidote to our f. M. 324. And this is exactly what they are using today to run their operations. If youre interested in the book, send me an email and i will send you an unclassified english language translation. But to summarize it, the operations undergoing now in the middle east and north africa are in three phases. He said that to beat the infidel, you must break your operations down into phase one. Vexation operations, classic warfare where you do dramatic irregular warfare attacks. Not the scale of 9 11 but dramatic attacks. That prepare the ground for phase two. Phase two is the spreading of savagery phase. This is where you coordinate your irregular warfare attacks with the goal of dislocating the local government from its capacity to govern. So youre challenging the syrian government, the Iraqi Government next, the saudi or jordanian government from actually being able to govern its territories. And if its true if the reports i have received that on day ramadi fell they were in excess of 200 vehicleborn i. E. D. s detonated on that one day, we are in phase two. Coordinating that means they are following this textbook and they are on phase two. And lastly, the most important phase, is the administer savagery the consolidate and expand. Here we want to stabilize held areas. Just like we did with our coin manual. But here the purpose is to unite the populations of the fighting force, to implement sharia law, to provide services and here is the real value added. What hes doing here in the final phase, and dont think of this as a phase that ends in a few months or years. This can last for a century in this phase what they are create something a giant f. O. B. A giant Forward Operating base. Which can be used as the platform from whence to deploy more phase one or phase two operations into neighboring territory. This is what i call the hybrid caliphate. The big difference with this is that prior jihadi strategists were purists. Use violence to achieve the goal of the caliphate. He says, yes of course, we want to achieve the caliphate, but you cant just click your fingers with violence and then create a caliphate. There has to be a transitional phase. His transitional phase is this phase three, where you act like a quasistate, you dont reject the west failing model, you just could opt it as a transitory face toward caliphate and this unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, this works. As we have seen. So, most important question, so what . What does this all mean . To conclude, number one. Isis is far more successful and deadly than al qaeda for very identifiable reasons. Its not magic. Theres no voodoo involved. Number one it understands irregular warfare. Its read the right books. U. B. L. And a. Q. Followed the gavaris model of irregular warfare which is wrong and ended up with him dead at the age of 39. This threat group has read their mao. They understand that to win you have to outgovern the government. Right now theyre advertising for less jihadists online and more engineers and nurses. That tells you theyve read their mao. Secondly they have a very expective exploitation of a mobilizational ideology of global jihadism across the internet and social media. Everybody in this room knows the facts right . We are having our lunch eaten every day by isis on social media. We arent even scratching the surface of what they are doing in terms of information warfare. Second, the caliphate will continue to grow unless it is challenged on the ground and in the ideological domain. To deny the relevance of ideology as this administration does, to say its all about economics and jobs for jihadis well, its like a bad s. N. L. Skit. Im very glad the president made some noises in this direction this week, but i want to see some proof that we are prepared to talk truly about the ideology that is being used to mobilize. Lastly the enemy threat doctrine of isis and the Global Jihadist Movement must be better integrated, i put it in better because i dont think its integrated at all must be integrated into the Strategic Response or we will be condemned to w whmbings ackamole. Your children, my grandchildren will be killing jihadis 100 years from now. If you want to go deeper, i wrote an article on the central gravity of the jihaddest movement jihadist movement. If you want the real graduate level analysis, an organization my wife was affiliated with, the Westminster Institute published this book recently called fighting the ideological war. This is a book that ali said is the only book president obama needs to read to defeat isis. In the new york times. We took the very best strategists from the cold war that worked for the Reagan Administration and undermined the soviet union and we put them in a room with the very best experts of jihad and asked for a game plan. This is the book that came out of it. If youd like more of the information or any of the books, you can contact me by email. Everything i do thats for public consumption is on my website. All my lecture, my videos and my articles are commercial sites that support the government and music. And lastmy my wife has a not for profit that maps the growth of the jihadi ideology which is council on Global Security dworling. Toes may be of use. Id like to say thank you to heritage, to jim. Its been a real pleasure. [applause] lisa sara. I think shell dress us from her seat. Sara yes. Im not going to go over what seb just spoke about. My focus has been mainly south asia and isis, for this discussion. And the potential that isis will encroach in this region is growing daily. I have id like to read something to you. A document that i obtained in the region, an isis document. Im going to read just one portion of that and i think it will fit into what seb spoke about. Albaghdadi is very focused on the end times. His focus is on his mindset is to launch this final battle with the west, with the rest of the world, to see a fundamental change between, not necessarily in the way a christian might see armageddon but a change and shift in the world powers and system. That is his ultimate goal. Here is a little piece of whats been floating around in the fattah recently. Talking about albaghdadi. His blessed brilliance shines through his practical life. Hes filled with the honor of god and his informed approach to matters of faith is unparalleled. Before the u. S. Attacked iraq, he had acted as a sermonizer and a scholer in various mosques. He was also highly regarded in academic circles. The purpose of life was to purify one self 6 6 one self, follow prayer, establish the caliphate and wage jihad and warfare until all faith is oriented to allah. This is the important part. Although he was primarily focused on inciting slaughter. This isis document is so significant because it gives us a look into the mind of baghdadi and what his intentions are. And you would say, well south asia, what is he trying to do there . Hes looking for more recruits. Hes looking to gain and spread the caliphate wide enough that it spreaded us spreads us so thin that well be incapable of tackling on all these fronts. Its a brilliant stage. He built up his financial base, he got his recruits, and if you believe what theyre saying, 16,000, i think thats even minimal. I think it was 20,000plus foreign fighters that have gone into syria. And in ramadan alone, according to some of my sources last year more than 6,000 and from the documents that ive seen from the United States from chechnya from europe across north africa, in the month of ramadan alone 6,000 fighters. In afghanistan the situation is obviously very tenuous. You have fractured taliban groups, you have certainly the United States and pakistan in a geopolitical situation that is seemingly neverending. But you also have pockets inside the region that isis is now encroaching on. And this isnt just a hypothetical. This is a fact. It may not be widespread yet, but they do have a plan. And if i can just go back really quickly and just read one more thing that i think is important. When he talks about you talked about the seb, the name and how important that is, for him Islamic State caliphate, you know, the Islamic State caliphate was the transformation, i mean, on june 29 last year, when albaghdadi walked on those steps, and ive been talking to specialists, you know, about his mannerisms and how he moved and what he did, i mean, he was very methodical. He knew what he was doing. He knew what he was doing as far as reaching the Muslim Population those disenfranchised sunnis who feel that theres no place for them to turn to. That the world is kind of somehow working against them. And he uses that to his benefit and to the benefit of his movement. And like seb said and im sure like youll be talking about, you know, the war, and this is coming from a reporter whos been on the ground in the war zone quite a bit and who spent some time in pakistan and had an been able to experience the region its not something that you can win with drone strikes alone. I mean, the commanders on the ground, even when you talk to old mujaheddin fighters, and ive had that opportunity to speak with them, would say, you know, youre not going to win this with a drone strike. Youre not going to win this battle by trying to build a state at the same time youre fighting a war. This is a neverending battle thats going to evolve. And a lot of people didnt listen to them. We thought, oh, were going to wraup the war, were going to wrap up the war, were going to leave afghanistan, were going to tie a bow on iraq, were going to walk away. This is about an ideology. And unless we understand this ideology and this leader and those leaders underneath him, we will never be able to defeat him. Because you cant defeat an ideology unless youre able to exploit it, right . You have to understand where hes coming from in order to teach something different, to deliver a different message. Now, for me, looking at back to afghanistan and looking at the region in itself,coming out is the fear crisis may conduct operations in the region, whether in india or afghanistan. Recently yesterday we saw a drone strike that killed approximately eight isis members and the leader in that region right now. There is a concern among u. S. Intelligence officials that i have had the privilege to speak to, as well as pakistani officials. Mostly their government denies isispresence. That is not what im hearing from the region. That is not what i am hearing from the people. We have seen isis encroach in india as well. Indian officials have been monitoring that carefully trying to garner recruitment and establish some kind of presence there. I think for lawmakers as well as those in the Academic Field the focus is right now on iraq and syria, and north africa, but we should not forget south asia is going to play an enormous role, and it also plays an enormous role in the eschatology, because it looks at the Islamic State the belief. If you look at the hadid, and those are the writings of mohammed, and all one of the things he focuses are the ones on the end times. That is his main focus. Part of the final batter is a per cursor precursor thatll that takes place in south asia. We are not going to get the final battle until the precursor battle actually happens. However that happens, it is definitely in baghdadis plants, and something i think should not be a ignored and an area we should Pay Attention to. To wrap it up, a lot of people think the taliban may never merge with isis, that they are two centric to their own area. I should go you that taste on the investigations i have been conducting an research i have been doing, isis is working day and night to move recruits into their fold. And there is this conception that isis and al qaeda which is true now, are continuously butting heads. What i found to be interesting through the research was that baghdadi is preaching among h