Coming up, behavioral scientists from the Rand Corporation will talk about violent realism in u. S. We will have live coverage when it gets underway shortly, here on cspan. I am happy to welcome you to todays policy lab on very important topics, addressing violent extremism in the United States. Our policy lab theory is designed to give an opportunity to hear directly from rand experts about todays policy issues. I am pleased to see so many folks have joined our webinar. And seeing so many folks watching and listening on sees than one and cspan radio, both broadcasting live. For those who are joining on zoom, we will have time at the end of the presentation for a short q a. If you have questions, post them in the q a forum on zoom, not in the chat. However, you can check the chat with additional information. We posted links relevant to todays information. Finally, quote captioning is enabled. You can display it by selecting the option in the menu at the bottom of the window. We are recording this session and will make it Available Online at a later date. I think we are ready to get going. I will tell you a little more about hours acres tom hom is an rind brown. Ryan brown works with culture and social networks in driving risktaking, violence and other destructive and selfdestructive behaviors. His client workshop focuses on individual, social and cultural drivers of domestic terrorism and does research that betters the lives of rural and remote populations with a focus on American Indian and alaska native for native groups. Ryan holds an m a an ma. And is involved with a program at ut berkeley and San Francisco uc berkeley and San Francisco. Tom is a nationally recognized expert on this information and violent extremism and specializes in the of data and evidencebased strategies to understand and counter these messages and extremism. He has studied threats caused by deepfakes, russian propaganda targeting the u. S. And europe, and the use of social media by violent Extremist Groups and has led researchers on the effectiveness of online interventions to prevent radicalism. He holds a phd from wayne state university. Ryan, todd, take it away. I will be back in a bit for the q a. Thank you everyone for joining us. It is an honor for ryan and i to print that the reason those of this buddy we recently did. On a really important issue, affecting the nation. Did you want to show the slides, ryan . Next slide. We are able to bring this study to you because of the generosity of the rand Epstein Family veteran policy institute. They conduct research to include the lives of those who have served and some or them. A generous grant to enable this work so we are super grateful to those, the towani adn rand and rand epstein center. Anyone who has followed knows rand has done a lot. We famously helped organize and run one of the central databases of terrorism events in the u. S. We no longer do this but do you conduct a host of different policy Research Studies to address extremism. I, myself, have been doing work since soon after 9 11, focus on al qaeda radicalization and recruitment. When Osama Bin Laden was killed, isis came on the scene and rand started doing work then. Rand has done a lot of Domestic Work on domestic extremism. Ryan brown and i coled a series on violence in america and constructed interviews with former violent extremists. But rand has also done other work including the wing extremism or races extremism and including in the military. Brian and i, and more broadly rand, has done this over the years. January 6 is really what sparked americas interest in the issue of veterans. Soon after the riots, reports were suggesting sometimes even 25 of those who identified who were identified in the rice had military paths. Most often in the past but sometimes current. I think we are all aware of ashli babbitt, the air force officer who was shot and killed during the assault. And the proud boyss membership is heavily loaded with veterans. Three out of four members of the proud boys convicted of seditious conspiracy were military members. This has raised concern. We are concerned about the veterans being in extremism for many reasons. Veterans can offer a lot to Extremist Groups. They have skills and capabilities, not only military training skills but leadership skills, which could potentially make the groups more violent and deadly. More broadly, america since the time of civil war has really acknowledged the responsibility america as a society has to the veteran community. We want to do everything we can to help veterans lift, fulfilling live fulfilling, safe and secure lives. I forgot to mention in the previous slide that the initial 20 to 25 references of veterans being engaged in extremism has dropped down considerably. They were revised down to either 13 or 18 depending on who is measuring. George Washington University pens it at 13 and have a more structured way of how they include people. Whereas the university of maryland, a very auspicious terrorism center, has at it at 18 . The university of marylands center also suggests the number of veterans are politically motivated in violence is motivated suggest that the number of veterans politically motivated in violence is increasing over the last 12 to 15 years. Another issue to be concerned about. One thing we havent done, is we have not seen what prompted us during the study. We do not know to which level veterans support terrorism or domestic extremism issues in the United States. Understanding the prevalence of this is important for many reasons. One is a basic have got that show supporting extremist ideology does not make one a terrorist. Ryan talked more about this at the conclusion. It is important to at least do this as a form of barometer. So ideally we can track over time to assess the degree to which veterans may be more or less at risk. We do presume that supporting extremist causes does lend one at risk to violent extremism. There are other factors that go into joining terrorist movements but it is understood that having some intellectual affinity with a terrorist movement is often times a precondition. We conducted a representative survey among veterans which is not a trivial task. We were lucky in that we were able to work with an existing rand survey conducting among veterans. We are able to add questions that related to extremist costs. Here you see the topics included. We sampled nearly 1000 participants about their support for white supremacist, black nationalist, proud boys, antifa, and asked about three ideologies we know can drive extremist movements or actions. One is political violence. Support for political violence. The second is the qanon conspiracy. Then finally the great replacement theory. I will talk more about what those are in a moment. We basically took the questions for this from existing surveys out there because we wanted to be able to identify how our numbers compared to what might be representative surveys of the general public. We used the same questions. Then you will see we do make some comparisons. And ryan will talk more about this in a bit but we do make comparisons with some degree of humility, recognizing we have different examples and survey methodology, and different demographic makeups among veterans or two nonveterans. Ryan here are the key findings. One thing we noticed overall is among support for Extremist Groups like white supremacist and proud boys, the veterans underperformed in a good way, compared to the general representative survey. For White Supremacists, only 0. 8 of the veterans we sampled expressed support for white supremacist is like the kkk or neonazi organizations, in comparison to 7 in the general population. Support for black nationalist organizations we have no comparison but that was around 5 . For proud boys, it was at 4. 2 compared to the general population of 9 . With antifa, we also saw around half of veterans compared to 10 in the general population. This will be my last slide and then i will turn it to ryan. We asked about three ideologies. What is political violence. The wording is important. The way we asked the question is, because things have gotten so offtrack, true american patriots may have to resort to violence to save our country. Around 18 of respondents agreed with that statement. We see a comparable percentage among the veteran population around 17. 4 . Relatively comparable numbers. For qanon, the question was, for those not familiar with this conspiracy rate, the government and financial worlds in the u. S. Are controlled by a group of satanworshiping pedophiles who run a global sex trafficking operation. Again, we see around 18 in the general population whereas we saw around 17 among veterans. Then the great replacement theory is a group of people in the country are trying to replace people born in america with native americans and other minorities. It was around 24 percent generally and the veteran population was around 29 . Fairly high on most of these marks. Ryan, do you want to take it from here . Ryan thank you so much todd and everyone. We also break down these read votes by branch of service these results by branch of service. What we found is veterans of the marine corps showed higher for black nationalist, proud boys, and antifa. Which means if you look at support for any of these roofs, veterans of the marine corps are twice as likely to show support for one or more of these groups then the army, air force, or navy veterans. We also break down branch of Service Support for the specific ideologies and beliefs. Again, marine corps veterans showed higher support for political violence. In the true patriots may have to resort to violence. And higher support for the great replacement theory which is there is a can searcy there is a conspiracy to replace nativeborn americans. Marine corps but then air force showed Higher Results for the qanon conspiracy. Marine corps shows some increased support for both ideology and theory. We can talk a little bit during q a about reasons for that. We also looked at overlap in support for specific groups and endorsement of political violence. The reason is particularly concerning to see a law of importance. The good news is the degree of overlap and supporting the need for taking up arms against the country to support specific groups was pretty mild. It is a couple ways of looking at it. The overlap was great for antifa and the proud boys. But if you take everything for supporters, only a little less than 20 of supporters also supported political violence. For proud boys, around 33 supported the proud boys and endorsed critical violence. You can look and say 18 of veterans supported the violence so how many supported proud boys . When you look at it that way, it is less than 10 . On the one hand, that is may be good news because you do not see a lot but also, it makes us wonder for the 15 which is pretty high who do not support a group right now or maybe support a group we did not measure or is this kind of a focus ready to be a part of a group that does not exist yet . We know extremism is evolving rapidly compared to previously. And is much more specific to membership than it had been in previous decades. Todd hinted at this. The veteran population in the u. S. Is demographically very different than the rest of the u. S. Population. On the one hand, the military has been the great emigrate or. But it is different. Veterans are in the u. S. On average tend to be older and more likely or predominantly male. This means we are comparing veterans and the overall u. S. Population. And they both represent samples of each but it also means we are not power to support these civic comparison. We cannot answer, is the average 40yearold veteran male more likely to support extremism than the average nonveteran mail . That is a different question and needs a Higher Powered survey to ask pacific questions for groups with or without veteran status. That is one major limitation and is related to a pattern in findings recently that todd nodded to or described at the beginning of the presentation. So we averaged this study at the start to take a specific sample of those involved in mass casualty plots or attacks. These are things that are either thats either occurred or were contradicted. They found Prior Military Service was the largest risk factor for participation in one of these plots or attacks. Two kind of contradictory patterns we are finding is there is lower support over all for these and ideology, but there is a pattern of what seems to be greater involvement in extremist activity. That had us wondering things like may be pipeline is narrower. So overall, members of servicemembers who have separated from the military and are now veterans are less likely, on average, to support extremism. But if they do radicalize, they have a predisposition to action . There are a number of reasons this may be the case. There are selection factors for joining the military. You are also trained to be action driven. These are all just guesses right now. It really makes us wonder what is happening to drive these. As todd mentioned, even if overall percentages are lower, there are capabilities. One of those being commitment to action. It will make them, as we know, likely to try to target veterans in their recruitment attempts. It is not only skill but Extremist Groups will get the pressure the impression of stability because of this high status. What do we do with this . There are a few different directions. Right now, we are conducting interviews with veterans over the phone to understand a bit more about their experiences serving in the military and separating from the military and how this might be related to extremism. This is an area of hypotheticals at the moment. We have anecdotes about how trauma can lead to hatred and loss of camaraderie for Extremist Groups to replace the camaraderie and draw veterans into the rank. We have a lot of stories but we are still gathering data. To understand this issue more closely, including comparing like groups. The 40yearold male comparison. We will also need more survey research and more drilling down on case studies. We are at the very beginning of understanding what might be driving particularly the higher association or involvement in actual plots . What might be driving this and what can we do to better support veterans to protect them from recruitment. It is Extremist Groups and just to improve their lives which is part of the Greater Mission of policy. With that, i think we have a p oll question we wanted to put to the audience. You may have had ideas about this at the beginning but now we want to assess with the data we presented in the discussion here, how concerned are you about veterans and extremism . I think there will be a question popup. Please go ahead and select an option. We will keep this open for probably 30 seconds or so as responses accumulate and then take a look at the distribution of results. If you have already voted, please go ahead and start putting questions in. We are happy to have a good amount of time for q a on this. All right, so we see some results. Around 10 say not concerned. The rest say very concerned or somewhat concerned. I think now, i will turn it back over to deanna for q a and i can stop sharing slides. Deanna thank you both. Super interesting. A reminder for everyone, if you do have questions, go ahead. We have a couple already. I will get started. Todd, ryan, it will be at your discretion. First question, how does social media correlate with veterans joining or participate . Todd we do not know specifically but we know that social media is a key. Not that there is anything inherently bad about social media but it connects people to like ideas. It provides often times a venue for individuals to engage in dialogue and debate and discussion. Which is great. But when you get into these ideological funnels, where people become more extreme politically, then they have the social network likewise that becomes more politically extreme. Which can often times ignite or facilitate radicalization because people online are sharing extremist content and getting reinforced for sharing that content. They are getting reinforced for even more extreme ideas amongst their social network. And they feel emboldened because without the social media, you would never know. It would be hard to connect with these groups. But with social media, it is easy to connect and feel you are not alone and many people have these views. Social media is a key radicalization element. I dont know whether veterans are more likely to rely on this. My guess is probably not. It is probably an equal opportunity issue but ryan may have other ideas. Ryan it is a common but not necessary pathway for those we have seen. Both those in extremism more broadly and the conversations we have had. It is kind of an option and one of many pathways. We strive at the number of facetoface connections that seem to be supporting a lot of these beliefs or cohorts and groups who believe similarly about the need for political violence. There are some very clear narratives where that was the primary radicalization pathway and later became facetoface. There are quite especially with older veterans who may not be as likely to be tech savvy. Some of them are extremely tech 70 and older veterans as well but its kind of all over the place and we just dont have an answer statistically. Deanna ok, we have a couple of questions here about different types of extremism. Im just going to paraphrase. I know the work you talked about today focuses i believe mostly on far right extremism. If i remember the study correctly. Can you talk about the prevalence of the risk of that compared with other types of extremism you found in this work or maybe some of your other studies youve done . Todd you want to take a shot, ryan . Ryan for the veterans, we did not look specifically at islamic extremism. A lot of todds prior work has focused on that. In terms of the overall risk and weve seen a shift over the last decade or so towards lets say nonreligious, there is still a risk but todd, you want to ryan todd terrorism fluctuates and wanes. We know terrorism grew. They are fed by changing ideologies in the population so thats why you see in the 1970s, leftwing extremism was the most problematic in common. There is a period where animalrights extremism was common and it might still be but and then 9 11, we saw islamic