[inaudible conversations] good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the Washington Institute for near east policy. I have the pleasure of directing the institutes reinhardt program on counterterrorism and intelligence and im very, very please to be joined here today by the acting director of the National Counterterrorism center, Russell Travers. Todays conversation is part of the institutes ongoing counterterrorism lecture series. Russell took office at nctc as acting director in august, but its not his first, second or third time in the building. He felt many other leadership positions within nctc including Deputy Director counsel to the director, acting director to the office of datacomm strategy and innovation, chief data officer, among others picky suppositions at the office of the director of national intelligence, the Defense Intelligence agency, the nationals could counsel, the u. S. Army, joint chiefs of staff so were really 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 an era of competing priorities. Russell will deliver some opening remarks from the podium and then we will sit down for a little fireside chat. Ill take the moderators prerogative and ask the first few questions and then opened up to all of you for your independence to ask questions, and we welcome all of you who are watching via live stream or via cspan. Take you for joining us today. Russell, the podium is yours. So thanks much, matt. Its a great pleasure to be here amongst a number of old friends to talk about counterterrorism in error of computing resources. I happen to test my earlier this week that the leadership at the fbi and dhs and was talkative friend of mine yesterday from dhs and she said a colleague of ours said come had seen the testimony and that he characterized my performance of that as a thoughtful nerd. So im hoping to aspire to something more than nerd them here 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 in protect against largescale tax installment i think this notion of competing priorities will do nothing but get more challenging as it should. Ever since homer secretary mattis issued the National Defense strategy last year theres been an ongoing at least implicit discussion about risk. How does the threat of terrorism stack up relative to threats posed by great powers . North korea, iran or syria or lots of other threats. The testimony earlier this week was with fbi and teaches leadership as a midget and along with terrorism they went out a dizzying array of different kinds of threats, counterintelligence, intellectual property theft, transnational organized crime which frankly kills for more americans than terrorism ever will. As i said at the hearing, it is completely understandable that terrorism may no longer be viewed as the number one threat to the country but i dont know what that means. It begs a a host of questions. I offered three. What does the National Risk equation look like as the country confronts a very complex International Security environment secondly, how to optimize ct resources the best interests interest of the country went departments and agencies may have somewhat differing priorities . And if were going to reduce efforts against terrorism, how do we do so in a manner that doesnt inadvertently reversed some of the gains of the past 18 years . What i would like to do for the next 35 minutes or so is walk you through a of a roadmap for the issues that if they need to be considered as we address those questions. Im going to develop ten themes. Im going to start the geostrategic and work down to the electron level and then back up again. So the 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. It does, however, hold up the potential for killing a very large number of people. As history has shown it can occupy the countrys attention for a very long time and prevent other important things from getting done. Fortunately, weve made a lot of progress on the terrace in front. The last significant alqaeda directed attack on the west was charlie hebdo, five years ago. The last isis attack was the turkish nightclub for you to go before that paris and brussels. All men violent extremist attacks are down. The u. S. Has had one this past year and roughly halfdozen in europe, both number substantially lower than previous years. Capabilities have been flippant with wheezing isis travel to sustain success. For instance, in libya with a franchise is not doing very well. None of the successes is by accident. There is been tremendous military and intelligence efforts in iraq and syria to eliminate the socalled caliphate. Many skilled operatives have been captured and killed and that has had many second order effects. Theres less sophisticated messaging, their squabbling, there are morale issues. Its not just iraq and syria. We have reviewed leadership from around the clue. Dhs can fbi and state have pushed borders out and made the homeland much less hospitable to terrorists. Weve also seen global efforts to prove border security, particularly in the eu after paris and brussels. Weve seen a growing partnership with the private sector to make cyberspace less hospitable. Services around the globe are working together against terrorism unlike the efforts against any other National Security discipline. U. S. Can to pass on Lessons Learned to interested foreign parties with a robust exercise program that addresses information sharing and cooperation. We are seeing Capacity Building in other countries. Improvements in interservice cooperation, enhancements and information sharing, can mitigate the impact of terrorist attacks. You compare the kenyan response of the shabbat attacks against the Westgate Mall in 2013 and the hotel earlier this year. It was dealt with our faster with far fewer casualties. So we will never eliminate terrorism but secretary mattis amount of good work has been done and that allows for this conversation about comparative risks. That brings me to theme number two which is a concern for the potential for complacency. We do need to be careful. When i started working characters and after 9 11 we were overwhelmingly focused on alqaeda and a centrally directed threat emanating from one piece of real estate. 18 years later we see a diverse diffuse threat that spans the globe. The primary islamist threat has been homegrown violent extremism. Despite the elimination of socalled caliphate, we have an active islet entrance isis insurgency in iraq and syria in a sufficient command structure that maintains collusion over 20 branches of isis. Some are small, others have thousands of people. Nine of them have pledged allegiance to the new isis lead over the past week. We have alqaeda that has received rather less attention the past two years but it retains command structure and half a dozen affiliates. We see growing connections and coronation between and among its affiliates. There are also a full range of related threats, hezbollah and giving quds force, also a growing concern for the shia militant groups and iraq. If the various strands of islamist extremism were not competent enough, were seeing a roving global threat of particularly extreme right wing with her terrorism. More on that later. Terrorist around the globe are proving very capable exploiting technology. They are good at it, their innovative. The use of encrypted communications for operational planning, social media to spread propaganda and transfer knowledge between and amongst individuals and networks. Drones for swarm attacks, and even assassination attempts. High quality fraudulent travel documents that undermine watch listing system and threatened border security. Cryptocurrencies to fund operations. And the potential terrorist use of chemical and biological weapons has moved from a low probability eventuality to something that is considered much more likely. In many cases terrorist exploitation of technology has outpaced the associate a legal and policy framework to deal with the threat. Looking out five years we are particularly concerned with the growing adverse impact encryption will have on our counterterrorism efforts. This is a key point back. We cant freezer thinking in 2019. We always need to be looking to the future. Finally both a kind and i said shown themselves to be successful at radicalizing vulnerable populations around the globe. Sometimes they deploy emissaries to establish and organize a group. Sometimes an industry is deployed to support an existing group. Sometimes an emissary is already present with the store ties personal connections. Sometimes its done remotely via social media or letters, and sometimes a group deployed to an emissary to an isis core. They are innovative and bolstering their ranks. That brings me to team three, which is the main focus on prevention. Theme three. By any objective standard there are far more radical as people now than the were at 9 11. Some think tanks have suggested were looking at four times the number of radicalized individuals and her own database of known and suspected terrorists has grown by a factor of almost 20. So unless you believe this fervor will burn itself out, we will be faced with a growing radicalization of problem around the globe. No single factor captures the complexity of the radicalization process among disaffected sunni youth worldwide. We believe a mix of personal, group, community, social political and ideological factors contribute to the radicalization of sunni youth. The recruitment extremist sunni organizations and their mobilization to violence. We are gradually as a world accumulating more empirical data. For instance, the United Nations of the Program Regional bureau for africa the government 718 active performer african extremists. Mostly from all shabbat or boko haram to identify the reasons individuals are radicalized and recruited into extremist organizations at the personal level. The most important factor cited was Human Rights Violations by the Government Security forces. Also poverty, the nature of religious education, stable families and government corruption. But its just not about poverty and being downtrodden. As we saw in sri lanka, the individuals were well educated and relatively well off but radicalize by hate. Theres a great deal of Fertile Ground in countries and were facing growing militarization and presence and even amongst Young Children who are being targeted by propaganda. There are various initiatives associate with messaging, d radicalization, defection programs, reintegration, operating, as well as broader programs focus on good governance, Economic Development and human rights. Available resources remain a significant global 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, keep out of the country. And they are second and third order effects. As the situation gets worse in africa and Climate Change takes its toll were seeing greater force migration. The movement of migrants to europe in turn is exacerbating tensions, giving for the rights to rightwing filers to protest this migration. It is a vicious cycle. Brings me to theme number four company to focus on identities, people of concern. Terrorist threats revolve around people and networks. And while tracking identities is pretty arcane stuff, that is interesting to talk about the future of isis or the latest strike here it is incredibly important. Our terrorist identities work underpins much of use coverage screening and bedding architecture that evaluates 3. 2 Million People a day. This is this is what we fail the country as 9 11. Two of the hijackers were allowed to get visas, live in the country and eventually get on airplanes because we were insufficiently stitched together. An enormous amount of effort has been expanded over the past 18 years. We have effectively pushed borders out, creating a multilayered defense to identify individual with terrorist connections at the earliest possible point. And weve continually improved building richer dossiers, making better use of technology, performing near realtime classified screening to support unclassified watchlist, and where possible, making use of i o metrics. This will never be a riskfree proposition but the system has over all perform extraordinarily well. Nctc working with our partners is responsible for compiling the u. S. Government database of known or suspected terrorist. The data is used to support screening partners. Theres been some confusion on this point and when we talk about kst, precision is very important. Each day proximally three individuals that meet the definition of a kst seek into her permission to come to the country. This is not to say that thinking to conduct an attack. Simply that there is sufficient derogatory information that warrant scrutiny. Upwards of another seven watchlist of individuals per day may have connections to ksts but we lack individual derogatory information required of them to consider the known or suspected terrorist. As you might imagine when 39 People Per Day are screened, drawing conclusions that any one particular individual can be fraught with challenges. Over the course of 16 years the system has stood the test of time. In some cases refugees extra levels of scrutiny are provided. We have no indication that foreign terrorist groups have attempted to exploit the Refugee Admissions Program and robust screening and bedding limit their ability to do so. Over the past two decades, the past decade the bulletin to the individuals who arrived as refugees and what ought to conduct attacks in the homeland both radicalize after traveling to the United States. Our track record is pretty good. However, as effective as we are, we cant rest on our laurels. There are some warning signs. As is often the case of the paris and brussels attacks many of the individuals were known to Security Services but they have high quality fake and national id cards. Biographical baseless or on the wrong side of history. We saw this in Northern Syria were captured foreign fighters routinely gave fake names, hence, fbi and the Defense Department focus on a biometric as many people as he could. Weve also got ever increasing amounts of information. How do we process the volume of information to ensure highquality databases . All get into that in a few minutes. In my opinion we should be treating this much like we did after 9 11. What are we trying to accomplish and how are we going to get there . We have a lot of peace parts are ready to they are properly stitched together. The patient should be a a near realtime biographic and biometric screening and all available u. S. Government information to determine if an individual is a note or suspected terrorist. This would involve greater focus on collection, integration, and sherry biometrics as well as business process and Information Technology improvements. The benefits would extend well beyond counterterrorism and support screening against other categories and threats. That brings me to theme five company for robust intelligence. None of this happens unless we maintain a robust, integrated intelligence capability. There is no question that the characters in enterprise is the best integrated part of the intelligence community. Weve been doing this for a long time but as good as we are, as one resource there would be significant challenges Going Forward. A globally dispersed and diffuse terrorism threat that evolves individuals and networks, places great pressure on our intelligence services. We need to buy what the terrorist threat at multiple levels and a sufficient insight to determine if and when they pose a growing threat. The first level is typified by the sri lanka problem. This is simply not a high priority before us, before last easter. The most hardline islamist group, slt jake had announced isis in 2016 and that spot a much smaller entity, in tj is apparent responsible. At the vent a bit of the fringe of it primarily known for attacks on buddha statues. Not unless he associate with isis and we didnt recognize the threat. One step up from that with the local indigenous islamic insurgencies around the globe who seek to affiliate themselves with isis. With that comes greater interest in attacking western interest. Consider the longstanding insurgency in northern mozambique more recent they have been fully with isis at a focus on attacks on u. S. Energy interest. Extrapolate that to the 20 odd current and buddy isis affiliates around the world. You get some sense of intelligence challenge. And then one levelwe need to have sufficient insight into these indigenous insurgencies to assess if and when they may be expanding beyond a country local threat to one that may threaten the homeland. This has been a challenge in the past. In 2009 without a aqap, alqaeda in the arabian peninsula, as a regional threat. In Christmas Day 2009, they attempted to blow up a flight over detroit. In 2010 reviewed the Pakistani Taliban as a regionally based south asia threat, and yet they train Faisal Shahzad the winter temp obama in new york citys times square. Think about the broader array of people and networks and their ability to exploit technology, and with more than a few challenges. At the macro level as we just took pointers to other threats there is no question that intelligence resources, collection and analytics will be shifted away from terrorism to other priorities. Actions have consequences. What do we stop focusing on . What is the associate a risk . As we draw done military forces we will have less human and Intelligence Surveillance re