That looks at this issue and then george, Senior Vice President of programs and the homelandrector of security. You have a range of views on the subject. A couple of points of order before we begin, we are going to have a discussion for about 40 minutes or so and then we will open it up to questions from you. Please remember this is about questions. If you give a monologue, i will cut you off and ask where the question is. Peak into the microphone raise your hand. We will call on you. You can identify yourself and ask your question into the microphone. Emergency there is an , the policy is to move to the National Geographic museum, which has a cafeteria and is located next door. That was not an indication to go there before or after, although you can if you want. With that, we will start and i will sit down. Thank you for coming. Off. Y dont you start us , theus a sense after 9 11 u. S. Government focuses on al qaeda and the Islamic State. We have added other kinds of extremist threats in the u. S. , attacks from farright, white supremacist groups and farleft groups and others. How do you see this issue involving . Thanks for the opportunity. Ofill use the broadest brushes in offering thoughts on the way the threat has evolved over time. I will do that, there are a number of people in the audience who have their hands on estimates or other documents that framed this problem. With apologies to some of those folks who might shake their heads if i generalize about the nature of the threat. It is fair to say after 9 11, the first several years, we were al qaeda focused. That is not surprising. That was the threat most proximate to the United States. We had a model in mind of an organization that was trying to penetrate the United States, that was trying to infiltrate operatives, clandestines, operations to get individuals inside the United States to carry out terrorist attacks. We have a strong capability to detect that kind of threat using our intelligence and tools. As al qaeda became not just an organization we were dealing globalcally, but a , the challenge and pressure placed on the Homeland Security apparatus to succeed got intense at times. And then i would argue the threat began to shift to one that actually became much more thelenging, that of socalled homegrown violent extremist. Dayere not as threatened today by the sleeper cell from abroad, but instead the individual who would be inspired, who would be motivated and encouraged, propelled by an ideology or actual individuals overseas. That became a much more difficult and challenging problem for Law Enforcement because identifying those individuals in the absence of the usual communication was not going to be easy. That was already a problem at the time isis came onto the qaeda as supplanted al a visible concern overseas. The isis phenomenon only accelerated those trends in terms of the homegrown extremist problem. I wont go into why that is so. This is a sophisticated audience. You know how capable the Islamic State was and is in its ability to use modern tools to motivate individuals. That model is one i would argue translates very well to this new threat we are talking about today. Most likely to be individuals operating outside of the group structure. From someot drawn kind of playbook that a group. Ublished they dont have a lanyard that says i belong to this group. Ild be interesting would be interested to hear from rebecca on this. Volume, if terms of you go by what the fbi is saying, the caseload the fbi is concern hasthis come to be the same as the international concern. This, inose by saying the overseas environment where people are saying, arent you spun up over domestic terrorism, we are, we should be. Dont forget you cant go a day without also reading of an arrest, prosecution, or disruption involving what we would Call International terrorism, tied to the ideology propagated by isis or al qaeda. Problem ofing with a rough parity right now. Turning from nicks overview question,k city, one how are you seeing this play out, this international and domestic terrorism play out in new york . On the domestic side, including domestic groups, farright mean, how how i are they structured . How informal is it . How do you characterize it . Thank you for having me here. To reflect a little bit on this threat. Nypd has a different position on the matter. I think if we want to understand this threat, motivated violent extremism, white supremacist, we have a toolkit to understand it. What we see in new york looks similar to the homegrown landscape, a very similar set of actors who are angry, often disenfranchised in some way or another, who are seeking an ideology that justifies their intentions rather than driven in a formal way, like was how years ago with al qaeda, driven by that ideology. Also demographically more diverse than what one might imagine. Our textbook examples are slightly broader than we may think. The radicalization process is hveewhat similar among subcultures that are spending and open to closed forms, increasingly telegrams, where individuals are disseminating propaganda that looks like propaganda we are used to from isis. Some formal aesthetic similarities as well. Ideology f defining pillars, there are text that drive, whether the loan actor or formal groups, similar to what we have seen in the isis world. It is a difference that is, there are more similarities than differences. The mobilization to violence also bears similarities. Tactically you see the same doityourself style tactics we see if we look back to unite the right vehicle ramming, which is out of isis. The Mass Shootings we saw in el paso and in pittsburgh. What this means for local Law Enforcement is that we need to rely upon the tools we have developed, starting from 9 11. In the 2010 timeframe where these shifted radically, to be hve, the loan actor. This is a conventional fleet of tools. The new york city numbers, and this goes back to your point about numbers. Plots against2 new york city since 9 11. We have seen a couple of shifts over that timeframe. If you separated it into two see 12 incidents in the first nine years after 9 11. 20 and the second nine years. That is a dramatic uptick. The actor has changed. Of the 12 in the first nine o were homegrown. 10 external. Thinks been 15 we would about in the homegrown context. Two were white supremacist extremism. Trying to weigh international or vaped hve versus domestic, we are seeing more of the international hve, we have begun looking a lot harder like when James Harris Jackson traveled to new york city to fatally stab an africanamerican man. Hedid this because new york thought of as the Media Capital where his attack would be amplified by the media which would help to drive the more recent incident, which is less formally as what we would think of as white supremacist violence. This is a spectrum of activity. Similarities, we should not be surprised to see what we have started to see in terms of individuals we would not characterize as one or the other. If you look at the person who killed his roommates in florida, someone who switched allegiance from a Violent White Supremacist Group to isis. Remember that people who are looking for ideology to justify violence will often look for multiple, conflicting ideologies, we will see this blending and blaring. So weecca, can you talk get a lot of the cards on the table, to what degree are you seeing in the new york area threats, intent, and or someties from antifa of the environmental groups like the environmental liberation front and the anarchists . Some of these groups are networks that feed off of each other. Absolutely. New york has been a center of gravity for the anarchist movement. What we tend to see, the concern we are focused on is this opportunistic loan actor threat. We are also interested in the formal groups and we see this cycle of violence. That tends to take place in terms of street violence. Boys, look at the proud that brawl that happened after the club year and a half ago, that is the threat we have to take note of as lawenforcement. We need to make sure the streets are safe. We view that as reciprocal and important. We view that as less likely to result in the same kind of mass ofoting, copycat subculture more profound ideological hate than some of these other actors. They are important. That is af threats, much more familiar pattern for us. George, from your perspective, where you are now and where you came from, how do adl has a lot of data on the domestic threat front. How do you see that . And picking up on what everybody is saying, how do you compare and contrast to the threat we dealt with in the first decade and a half after 9 11 . Thisank you for convening really important set of conversations. It is great to be with colleagues i worked with a long time. In terms of laying down the data, three points i want to make sure we understand, the first is that calendar year in7, we saw a 57 increase antisemitic incidents across the country. You might wonder, why is that relevant . There was a 17 increase in hate crimes across the country. Thiseason i lead with statistic is because we know across the country, and we have seen this, incidents of antisemitism are the canary in the coal mine. Is likely an incident of islamophobia or racism, homophobia that happens in that same municipality. We know we have seen a marked increase in bias and hate motivated violence and crime across the country. 2018, over 90 r of murders and homicides attributed to ideological violence were at the hands of white supremacist ideology. Ver 50 murders and homicides that is in the context of the past decade of data that shows 73 of violent murders and homicides, actual killing of people, was at the hands of rightwing white supremacist ideology, not jihad terrorism. Ofwe look at the indicators hate and bigotry, coupled with what we see overall, with murders and homicides, we know we have a combustible mix. To the point nick started to allude to on what we have seen in the post 9 11 era and in new york, the tools and infrastructure of the federal government that have been building from the bush to the obama administration, the infrastructure, for prevention and tools for state and local governments to prevent and intervene in the process of radicalization, in the current atinistration, when we look the staffing and the programs, we look at the authorities, there has been a cut in those. When you look at the data of the threat and the resources applied to prevent or intervene, they do not add up. Last jobve spent your looking at the terrorism threat from a global perspective. What is striking if you look at the last couple of years from we haveright threat, seen attacks in christchurch, u. K. ,sque attack in the the assassination of an mp. To what degree is this becoming or was a much more serious global issue . Or one that moves across europe and australia and new zealand . I want to be cautious about that. Theres a lot we need to learn. Ant i can say, there is International Dimension to this problem. Need to do more to understand that. Does that mean it is going to look like isis, like al qaeda . Of course not. Ande may be a transnational International Dimension. What we learned in the aftermath of christchurch suggests that individual had international contacts. He was engaged internationally. He found himself among likeminded travelers in this movement. To me, that argues for doing more to understand that nature. That means opening a conversation with partners that is broader than it has been in the past. I dont say this with a sense of pride, but for all of the years where i have been across from other countries, senior officials, talking about terrorism, not once did it include a conversation about this dimension. What we would call domestic terrorism. At was because of the way our system is architected as opposed to what fell within other agencies. It is a feature of the landscape. The idea we would not try to maximize the kind of intelligence and information we could get by talking openly about our challenges and wanting to learn about the set of challengers our partners feel, that is an obvious step we should be taking. I imagine we are. Glad and i hope those expand. I want to be careful. I dont want to assume because it is at the top of our agenda right now it looks the same way as our post 9 11 concerns. Lets dig into it and find out if those individuals who are connected overseas, are they going to be on that, engaging in the sharing of tactics and technology and other tools that allow them to be more effective than the homegrown activity . Or are they dabbling and sharing frustrations . Or is there a network here . I dont think we know the answer. To what degree is it a we deal with the subject of domestic terrorism and sharing information across agencies . We are talking about u. S. Citizens potentially operating in the u. S. We know with individuals with the rise above movement, in germany, i suspect when people leave the country, there are tools available to monitor their activity. Different from an International Terrorist organization in terms of sharing across Government Agencies . It is a complicating factor. Be true even if youwould were talking about the sharing of information on u. S. Nationals in the context of International Terrorism. Ast to point this it is little bit of a Silver Lining of the isis experience. There were not many Silver Linings. One of the Silver Linings i felt did exist was it caused u. S. Agencies and departments to be more willing to be sharing with our foreign partners overseas with our own population of foreign fighters. We needed that reciprocal cooperation from them. When we had cases involving u. S. Nationals traveling to fight for isis or the conflict zone in iraq and syria, that was information we were now prepared in ways we were not previously to share with partners and in ways that did elicit greater cooperation from foreign partners talking about their nationals. I am not sure the same phenomenon or dynamic applies in this space because it is a challenging set of circumstances. In many cases youre talking about an individuals perceived political activity and political views. How much of that should we be willing to share, or in a position to share with foreign partners overseas . I recognize the kind of dilemma that may pose for Law Enforcement and intelligence agencies in terms of figuring out what is appropriate to share. Rebecca, im wondering if you can unpack what the potential threat looks like. In terms of the plots that have been disrupted or even attacks that have been successful the last couple of years, what are you seeing some of the trendlines in terms of the types of tactics that individuals are using, or how they are attempting to recruit individuals for an audience like , what shouldould people be concerned about in the direction of this in terms of the nature and the degree of the threat . Rebecca it is interesting, hearing nick talk about the transnational element, while we do seat similarities tactically, structurally, ideologically even in some ways between the white remacist extremist and the the transnational picture is quite different. When we think about transnational we think about former hierarchical command and control and that is not what we have been seeing in this landscape to this point. We do see transnational links and they tend to be more fluid. The Group Structures tend to be more fluid. Theof the perils of leaderless resistance mode of structuring yourself is that you open yourself up to factionalism , which is something we see frequently in this landscape. Groups that fight with the dutch other that fight with each other, divide, reconstitute, and with these activities happening online with these subcultures, is easy to imagine the links you are forging, the travel, the training, and that. I would go on to the tactics and techniques. The Mass Shootings. We do see a preoccupation among this group of individuals with making explosives, sharing bomb making instructions. This is not fundamentally different than the threat from hves since 2009. That is something that has dominated. The timeline has gone up, all of us know this and that is why we are here. Part of it is the attention we are giving to these threats begets more of the threat. Part of it is the more you look, the more you find. We are increasingly seeing these drivers. Some of the factionalism you see within the group is playing out within contests for attention. You mentioned antifa. That is something we have seen play out in the new york landscape. Groups vying for attention and increasinglyan noisy echo chamber online and in the real world. I think, again going back to what we are doing about it, it is a familiar problem set in many ways. It requires similar tools. We wrote an oped last week about the statutory framework. I know there will be a fantastic Panel Following us that deals with some of the legal issues. New york has a terrorism statute that is ideologically agnostic. We have used in the context of homegrown violent extremism as well as in the context of white supremacist extremism. We will be increasingly looking to tools familiar, tools a little bit out of in figuring out how much we need to resource this threat. Seth george, from your perspective, rebecca just noted concerns about a rise in activity. What is your sense about some of the factors causing that rise. How important, based on your background, how important have been the social media and other aspects in contributing to radicalization . What have been the main factors . George one of the most significant factors we have seen of onlines case study radicalization and mobilization is we see what many of the counterterrorism experts referred to as a flash bang period. In the white supremacist context, this term of accelerationism has been something we have seen be a key motivating factor in the past 24 to 36 months. That is in the context of if you are an individual who believes the white race is under attack, that black, brown, muslim, or other minority people are coming into this country and will soon become the majority, that i need to do something now. I cannot wait a month, a year, two years, i