Good afternoon will them to the Heritage Foundation you can join us on the web site and to those in the future joining us on cspan booktv. Please turn it your mobile devices on silent you are welcome to send questions and comments at any time. We will post the program on our web site for future reference. To encourage you to purchase copies of Digital World war is on amazon and the author would be glad to have that coming into christmas. Welcoming our special gas is margaret bob bin before arriving at the Henry Jackson society was a fellow our think tank in london testifying numerous times before congress as well as providing oral evidence and with britains intelligence agency. A master of science degree of u. S. War policy and earning a bachelor of arts degree in International History please join me to welcome robins. [applause] this is a great pleasure to be able to invite haroon ullah. Serving as a chief Strategy Officer at the Global Media Agency and a scholar and the diplomats and policy practitioner with a focus on the Digital Strategy and trans media engagement. Most recently serving on secretary tillerson that the state Department Teaching at Georgetown University with the council on Foreign Relations in was a fulbright fellow a president ial scholar and a publicservice fellow. And he is here today to speak on his fascinating new book Digital World war with extremist and the fight for cybersupremacy. Haroon the floor is yours. [applause] thanks to the Heritage Foundation i am thrilled to be here today to talk about something i am passionate about this has me thinking about the information battlefield that is not well understood how to keep the u. S. Say with National Security. I do a lot of work with interviews my background is on data i built a database of directors and it wanted to think carefully of the reasons that young people are attracted to this type of propaganda that makes somebody get up to buy a ticket or what i call the fee employee support. I was in the gulf with a defector to a comeback recently. So i asked her give me a one word identification in my head i am ready to take notes i think of though one were the answers of horrendous or horrific or murderers. With the accurate ways to describe the hateful rhetoric and hateful approach. And she started to lift off her one word identification which was ted kennedy, longing, a trust and belonging and i did one of those double takes because i wanted to make sure that we were trying to get the good sense and it struck me because i said how you describe this disconnect . Hi have very strong opinions but how is it she comes to a very different conclusion . If you think about propaganda and communicating with young people when i Read Research for the book with this ecosystem on line to say it something in arabic and Something Different in english which is what i want to talk about today which is some key in sight with the group is doing and other groups like them are doing also the solutions there is a lot of analysis paralysis so what can we do together or hardness in terms of a blueprint to fight well and fight back . So i start with the key in sight flowing from the story i was just telling you but audience segmentation matters. Content is king, distribution is queen and she wears the pants in the family. If you think about that if were if the content war on the information battlefield they really understand the journey. That the bigger the impact so we read the isis material in english during research i found that isnt even in the top five languages of their material of what they are producing on social media. It is arabic, russian, french, so when you start thinking about the way they are reaching out then you get a very different picture. The other conception that i stumbled upon is that a lot of their messaging without one Word Association we think isis sells this medieval and gloomy narrative when we read the messaging in arabic bread of words of 80 is positive messaging. They say that stuff in english to instill fear or in other languages but we find they do a lot of positive positive messaging with corruption so we to now to those that are disenfranchise they talk about the arab spring and the field arab spring and political reasons offering a narrative that is aspirational for young people in terms of their identity. So then you say that is why with social media with the bushel of apples they say the caliphates is bountiful they are talking about handing candy to young kids that is positive messaging you give a better sense of the propaganda. The other thing that struck me with the audience segmentation who are those key influence sirs . You are the people that help to scale up the message . They have the owlets but those key employers that help to elevate the message. One person that kept coming up again in interview after interview was a gentleman named ahmad. I would guess that most of us here dont know who he is in even in their region so now muhammad is the most popular person on twitter in the middle east. Your thinking and to love or actor or actress or politician but muhammad is an extremist cleric based in saudi arabia with 20 million followers on twitter. Also prolific on snap across platforms and probably one of the single biggest drivers of why young people will buy n ticket to go to syria and iraq he doesnt violate terms of service but his narrative complements a lot of what they are doing and people are watching him 30 percent of youth in saudi arabia alone follow him he has a huge following across the gulf and across the world as i say looking of the 100 most followed people died after Hillary Clinton and right before ed sheeran. He has a huge constituency and platform if you think of the counter narrative. And to get a sense why they buy in to those on about what he says with segmentation matters the second is realtime feedback loops. So speed kills what we find with extremist groups is that they are perfecting their pitch like any good Marketing Strategy they will try certain things but often times they can move very quickly to be much more nimble to change their approach at times it varies at about 25 or 35,000 if you look at the ecosystem to change based on their audience even before the halloweehallowee n attack and after to see how they are on telegrams or other channels looking at what they are doing you see they put out memes based on the statue of liberty and how they take credit to see the approach and how they reach out to young people so that is the important thing of the realtime feedback because a lot of times they set up the david and goliath narrative they can win even if losing on the physical battlefield because they can turn the narrative upside down with who they are fighting against with a grant and Global Coalition the third thing with insight is the idea that platform agility matters so talking in terms of realtime feedback there is an idea that isis can move between different platforms it is more influential than they would estimate but to move to the open source platforms using those for certain things to a closed platform for the encryption is or others called riot or a new app that a lot of people have not paid attention to it is called siraha that is the new siraha it has now surpassed snap chat man was developed by a young saudi entrepreneur meant to provide Like Old School highschool Bulletin Board to post anonymous messages developed to give workplace feedback for young people in the workplace to give feedback to colleagues but it is also used for bullying and now to recruit to perot so we all talk about twitter and facebook which they were on line in 2014 and as we continue to talk about them they have moved on. Think of the of visual image we had representatives of those Tech Companies and that is important and censorship does play a role but think about it we are three years later they came in line 2014 i space just to talk about siraha than two years they are moving at a much faster rate that is important to recognize our they moving to these new platforms using technology and reaching out that people have not spent time thinking about what that instant messaging and up app developed in japan but there is 90 million users it is their version so the point is thinking through platform agility and that is important so what i have talked a lot about in my book i think of myself as a field person into a start that dialogue and to think of that key audience segmentation with some realtime feedback loops and with that platform agility. And to Leverage Technology with the information n battlefield as i mentioned in the beginning when the futures kim now we wanted to celebrate that they were defeated on the battlefield the what they care most about they made unexpected gains that includes social media but the dark web the things we may not understand as well that are still new. There is a lot of research that shows they are using bitcoin and crown sourcing of how they raise money so think how day are leveraging these new platforms. In a lot of ways we have a collective action problem that to have the best technology fantastic stories with alternatialternati ve pathways with a lot of those right ingredients we have a little bit of issues of motivating so what i say oftentimes i talking the book in Digital World war we almost need a new Manhattan Project think of the race in the 40s about getting the best talent we need that level of urgency for the informational battlefield. So lets look at the data. What works . There is the alternative pathway narrative. We know of the victim narratives work well and mothers are influential their stories are incredibly influential this is what we know that works and to think how do we tell those stories to the light of day to increase the impact . When you hear the work on counter narrative the idea of the up backfire of fact sometimes you think titfortat so if you say the caliphate is bountiful they say no. Be careful because oftentimes we can get trapped in that backfire you can reinforce that belief by countering the narrative you have to think different without alternative pathway so these are the stories of thousands of young people i have met had you tell their stories that our authentic and organic . That is the idea second what i have seen the social media incubators a group based agenda their fantastic taking on isis with some very edgy content using satire. You cannot forget a lot of what makes isis influential is that they had a video that was approaching young people using new media or animation and drama and music that was one of the best examples of the groups that combat them but they take them on they try videos of they dont work that they directly tackle those narratives that i say is like the alternative pathway so it is like these, petite competitions one of the most popular Youtube Space they are using organic content so there is a lot of potential vehicles but how you supercharge the efforts . And third there is room in this umbrella for a lot of interesting ways how you tackle them using new techniques there has been some interesting work done in the space of targeted apps. So google will look at what searches people are putting in to say how do i travel to syria . There is an ad that comes up and they target those towards people that are looking for certain types of content. That is a way to reach a very targeted audience. There are other ways to do that like diluting the content but also full basket of these techniques that our important. If i was to describe our approach it is like the Counter Insurgency approach so what they need to do is move to a Public Health approach if you think of isis as a way that it spreads its models what we see like herpes through intimate close contact my data shows it is actually a bio coefficient would get the number of recruiters or those that like the content online in the Public Health field is selling somebody gets up in the Public Square to say lets join. It is very targeted and nuanced so they wanted that spread to the hot spots so if you think of networks and neighborhoods but the foreign fighters it shows it is highly localized all radicalization is local 80 percent of foreign fighters coming from tunisia came from men neighborhood in tunis or in belgium and was from a southern part of brussels. Think of this in terms of hotspots if you think of the city as the unit now we can come up with a more robust way to think about intervention and campaigns because they have to be highly localized we have a lot to learn from the cdc they may not just about but that is of very interesting way to think about intervention. With this blueprint for Manhattan Project, a pathway is and social media incubators and how to use artificial talents howdy scale up content with a coordinated campaign because of all matters on the information battlefield the urgency cannot be understated otherwise we find ourselves behind the curve as we talk about isis 3. O is already on the horizon already and we are behind in the battle. Thank you so much. A fantastic presentation some of you have predictions other very fascinating so talk about that response to be somewhat local so could you apply those solutions to a case like muhammed for those that have often written about this recently the you have somebody like that who obviously is very popular as you point out out, also the saudi government with the extremist cleric with the criticism and using that for their own purposes that the same time with those foreign fighters and the caliphate. How would you go about approaching that kind of problem . That is a great question. So one is understanding on the face he has not violated a terms of service or twitter would kick kim off. He goes up to the line and does not cross and do things where he will use a robert frost prome paul m. Showing there is another path to success did he violate terms of service . Not necessarily be in people read back get motivated by what he says it nationally draw conclusions about his support to what they should be doing because he rallies them to say dont stay at home dont just sit there young people want to do something. That is how he is skillful so oftentimes in discussions i think there is a role for taking content down but think in this war that is not the solution in itself because if you see new groups there using coded language. How do we start taking back down . There is a role for taking content down but with that understanding of how he is successful but think about in the echo chamber of his audiences who are the antimuhamed . Mckee is not nearly as high on the followers list. How do people support or build a Civil Society of ecosystems to help support his messaging . It is almost like he brings the gun to the fight and everyone else brings the knife so how do you match that intensity . That is why the social incubators are important but think again as i mentioned him as the extremist cleric theyre actually on the front lines you just have never heard about them. They are not good using social media here is somebody who was the third great preacher who would never gotten a job but he realizes he can do social media in a way so who are those that are fighting it . So how do you amplify what they are doing . And think about responding young people look for content so water those narratives he is using to attract people and combat those narratives . It is very smart to show the influence over the last month with the changes and leadership he is one of the few people and that is not curtailed in that same sort of way without outside influence because if he was there was even more backlash so that shows how they are coopted by establishments and recognizing batch messengers matter so maybe those that are associated with a regime may not be the best messengers for the message if you have the top cleric bin egypt one of those old this institutions so to talk to that state establishment in Civil Society. In order to address these problems. Thats a great question. I think there is a couple of things. I talk about being nimble, the speed. This is a network to defeat a network. At the state department they have the structure to tackle it. It was an interagency body to tackle this type of propaganda. You need the Manhattan Project. , the earliest incarnation was a few minutes ago. Now its up to 40 plus million. , bless our military ban it has about 400 plus million. Are we putting enough resources, enabling those structures to be successful . Increasing the recognition that this is the new wave, not just information warfare, just something on the backend. This is the new arena that the National Security rest. Two, we are only as good as our partners. It cannot be government alone. About enabling the private sector. It is had we motivate these different stakeholders to come on board. One thing i talk about in the book is a 1990 model. On social media 1 of people are key influencers and they create content. They are the game changers. 9 are the curators of content to share content. Though this 9 . 90 are passive consumers, consuming the information. The ideas how do you get that 90 to move and be motivated . To me, thats where these organic stories are. That is the content wars and what you need to mobilize. I have a question about lawenforcement today to dhs. What parts you think theyre getting right now know what you think they could prove themselves at the local level . Theres a recognition in terms of what the enforcement and the importance of it, i have a lot of respect for field agents in the cases they are dealing with ten to be very immediate. The big headline is if you take the Public Health approach we have to think about this in a citywide model. There is no