Of staff. Were really very thrilled hes been able to carve time out of his busy schedule. And spend time with us today to talk about counterterrorism in an era of competing priorities. Russell will deliver opening remarks from the podium and well sit down for a little fireside chat. Ill take the moderators prerogative and ask the first few questions then ill open it up to all you here in attendance in person to ask some questions, and we welcome all of you who are watching via live stream or via cspan. Thank you for joining us today. Russell, the podium is yours. So, thanks very much, matt. Its a great pleasure to be here amongst a number of old friends to talk about counterterrorism in an era of competing resources. I happened to testify earlier this week with the leadership at the fbi and dhs and was talking to a friend of mine yesterday from dhs and said a colleague of hers had seen the testimony and that characterized my performance as that of a thoughtful nerd, so i am hoping to aspire to something more than nerddom 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 protecting against largescale attacks against the homeland, i think this notion of competing priorities is going to do nothing but get more challenging as it should. Ever since 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 . Or north korea or iran or syria or lots of other threats . The testimony earlier this week was with fbi and dhs leadership as i mentioned and along with terrorism, they laid out a dizzying array of different kib kib kinds of threats. Election security, counterintelligence, transNational Organized Crime which, frankly, kills far more americans than terrorism ever will. As i said at the hearing, it is completely understandable that terrorism may no longer be viewed as a numberone threat to the country. But i dont know what that means. And i think it begs a host of questions. I offered three. What does the National Risk equation look like . As the country con front confro complex International Security environment. Secondly, how do we optimize ct resources in the best interest of the country when 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 reverse some of the gains of the past 18 years . So, what id like to do for the next 35 minutes or so is walk you through a bit of a roadmap for the issues that i think need to be considered as we address those questions. Im going to develop ten themes. In doing so, im going to start you with the geostrategic and work the way down to the electron level and then back up again. So theme number one, good news. Let me say at the outset, terrorism is not, never has been, an exponential threat to the country unless it changes who we are. It does, however, hold out the potential for killing a very large number of people, and as history has shown, it can occupy the countrys attention for a very long time and prevent other important things from getting done. Fortunately, we made a lot of progress on the terrorism front. The last significant al qaedadirected attack in the west was Charlie Hebdo five years ago. The last centrally directed isis attack in the west was the turkish nightclub three years ago. And before that, paris and brussels. Homeland violent extremist attacks are down. The u. S. Has had one this past year and roughly a half dozen in europe. Both numbers substantially lower than previous years. While capabilities ebb and flow, weve seen isis struggle to sustain success. For instance, in libra where the franchise is not doing very well. None of the success is by accident. Theres 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 secondorder effects. Theres less sophisticated messaging. Theres squabbling. There are morale issues. And its not just iraq and syria. We have removed leadership from around the globe. Dhs, fbi, and state, have pushed borders out and made the homeland much less hospitable to terrorists. Weve also seen global efforts to improve border security, particularly in the eu after paris and brussels. Weve seen a growing partnership with the private sector to make cyberspace less hospitable. And services around the globe are working together against terrorism unlike the efforts against any other National Security discipline. U. S. Continues to pass on Lessons Learned to interested foreign parties with a robust exercise program that addresses information sharing and interagency cooperation. And we are seeing Capacity Building in other countries. Improvements in interservice cooperation, enhancements in information sharing that can mitigate the impact of terrorist attacks. You compare the kenyan response to the shabaab attacks against the Westgate Mall in 2013 and the dusett hotel earl yeariier year. Dealt with far faster with far fewer casualties. Well never eliminate terrorism. A tremendous amount of good work has been done and actually allows for this conversation about comparative risk. That brings me to theme two which is a concern for the potential for complacency. We do need to be careful. When i started working counterterrorism after 9 11, we were overwhelmingly focused on al qaeda and a centrally directed threat emanating from one piece of real estate along the border. 18 years later, we see a diverse, defuse threat that spans the globe. The primary islamist threat in many of our countries has been homegrown violent extremism. Despite the elimination of the socalled caliphate, we have an active isis insurgency in iraq and syria and sufficient command structure such that it maintains cohesion over 20odd isis branches and networks. Some are very small. Many have pleejed allegiance to the new isis leader over the last week. We have al qaeda. It, too, has a command structure and a half dozen affiliates. We see growing connections and coordination between and among its affiliates. There are also a full range of shiarelated threats, surely hezbollah and the iranian kuds force and a concern for shia militant groups in iraq. The various strands of islamists extremism werent complicated enough, were also seeing a global threat of particularly extreme rightwingrelated terrorism. More on that later. Terrorists around the globe are proving very capable at exploiting technology. Theyre good at it. Theyre 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, explosive delivery means, and even assassination attempts. Highquality fraudulent travel documents that undermine name space screening and watch listing system and threaten 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 thats considered much more likely. In many cases, terrorists exple exploitation of technology outpaced the 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. And this is a key point. We cant freeze our thinking in 2019. We always need to be looking to the future. Finally, both al qaeda and isis have shown themselves to be successful at radicalizing vulnerable populations around the globe. Sometimes they deploy emissaries to establish, organize a group. Sometimes an emissary is the ploy to support an existing group. Sometimes an emissary is already present with historic ties or personal connections. Sometimes its done remotely via social media or letters. And sometimes a group deploy to an emissary to an isis corps. They are innovative in bolstering their ranks and that brings me to theme three. Which is the need for focus on prevention. By any objective standard, there are far more radicalized people now than there were at 9 11. Some think tanks have suggested that were looking at four times the number of radicalized individuals and our own database of known and suspected terror t terrorists has grown by a factor of almost 20. So unless you believe this fervor will simply burn itself out, we will be faced with a growing radicalization 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, sociopolitical and ideological factors contribute to the radicalization of sunni youth. Their recruitment to extremist sunni organizations and their mobilization to violence. We are gradually, as a world, accumulating more empirical data. For instance, the United NationsDevelopment ProgramRegional Bureau for africa evaluated 718 active or former african extremists, mostly from al shabaab or boko haram. The reason theyre recruited. The most important factor cited was Human Rights Violations by the Government Security forces. But 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 are well educated and relatively well off but radicalized by hate preachers. There is a great deal of Fertile Ground in countries and were facing growing radicalization in prisons and even amongst Young Children who are being targeted by extremist propaganda. There are various initiatives associated with messaging, deradicalization, defection programs, reintegration, offramping, as well as broader programs focused on good governance, economic development, and human rights. Available resources remains a significant global problem. If the numbers of radical size sizeized people around the globe keep growing, i do not like our odds of identifying the right people to capture, kill, keep out of the country. And there are second and thirdorder effects. As the situation gets worse in africa and Climate Change takes its toll, were seeing greater forced migration. Movement of migrants to europe in turn is exacerbating tensions. Giving further rise to rightwing violence to protest this migration. It is a vicious cycle. Brings me to theme four. The need to focus on identities. People of concern. Terrorist threats revolve around people and networks and while tracking identities is pretty arcane stuff, not as interesting as talking about the future of isis or the latest strike, it is incredibly important. Our terrorist identity work underpins most of the screening and vetting architecture that evaluates 3. 2 Million People a day. This is where we failed the country on 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 expended over the past 18 years. We have effectively pushed borders out, creating a multilayered defense to identify individuals with terrorist connections at the earliest possible point. And we have continually improved building richer dossiers, making better use of technology, performing near realtime classified screening to support unclassified watch lists and where possible making use of biometrics. This will never be a riskfree proposition, but the system has, overall, performed extraordinarily well. Nctc working with our partners is responsible for compiling u. S. Government database of ksts, known or suspected terrorists and the data is used to support screening partners. There has been some confusion on this point and when we talk about ksts, precision is very important. Each day, approximately three individuals that meet the definition of a kst seek entry or permission to come to the country. This is not to say that they intend to conduct an attack, simply that there is sufficient derogatory information that warrants scrutiny. Upwards of another seven watch listed individuals per day may have connected to ksts, but we lack individual derogatory information required to consider them known or suspected terrorists. As you might imagine, when 3 Million People per day are screened, drawing conclusions about any one particular individual can be fraught with challenges. But over the course of 16 years, the system has stood the test of time. In some cases, refugees, for instance, extra levels of scrutiny are provided. We have no indication that foreign terrorist groups expl t exploited the Refugee Program and screening probably limit their ability to do so. Over the past two decades the past decade, there have only been two individuals who arrived as refugees and went on to conduct attacks in the homeland. Both radicalized 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 we saw in the case of the paris and brussels attacks, many of the individuals were known to security services, but they had high quality Fake Passports and national i. D. Cards. Biographically based lists are on the wrong side of history. We saw this in Northern Syria where captured foreign fighters routinely gave fake names. Hence, fbi and the Defense Department focused on a biometrically enrolling as many people as they could. We also got everincreasing amounts of information. How do we process the volume of information and ensure high quality databases . Ill get into that in a few minutes. In my opinion, we should be treating this period much like we did that after 9 11. What are we trying to accomplish and how are we going to get there . We have a lot of peace parts and we need to ensure they are properly stitched together. The five, tenyear vision should be a near realtime biographic and biometric screening against all available u. S. Government information to determine if an individual is a known or suspected terrorist. This would involve greater focus on collection, integration and sharing of biometrics as well as business process and Information Technology improvements. The benefits would extend well beyond counterterrorism and support screening against other categories of threats. That brings me to theme five. The need for robust intelligence. None of this happens unless we maintain a robust, integrated, intelligence capability. There is no question that the counterterrorism enterprise is the best integrated part of the Intelligence Community. Weve been doing it as a community for a very long time, but as good as we are, and as well resourced, there will be significant challenges Going Forward. A globally dispersed and defuse terrorism threat that involves individuals and networks places great pressure on our intelligence services. We need to evaluate the terrorist threat at multiple levels and have sufficient insight to determine if and when they pose a growing threat. The first level is typified by the sri lanka problem. This was simply not a high priority before us before last easter. The most hardline islamist group, sldj, denounced isis in 2016. That spawned a much smaller entity, ntj, that was apparently responsible. It had been a bit of a fringe element primarily known for attacks on buddhist statues. Not obviously associated with isis, we didnt recognize the threat. One step up from that would be local indigenous islamic insurgencies around the globe to seek to affiliate themselves with isis. With that comes greater interest in attacking western interests. Consider the longstanding insurgency in northern mozambique where recently, they have affiliated with isis and are now focused on attacks on u. S. Energy interests. Extrapolate that to the 20odd current and budding isis affiliates around the world, you get some sense of the intelligence challenge. And then one level higher, we need to have sufficient insight into these indigenous insurgencies to assess if and when they may be expanding beyond a countrylocal threat to one that may threaten the homeland. This has been a challenge in the past. In 2009, we thought of aqap, al qaeda in the arabian peninsula, as a regional threat. On Christmas Day of 2009, umar farook abdul matallah threatened to blow up a flight over detroit. In 2010, we reviewed the Pakistani Taliban as a region regionally based south asia threat, yet, they trained Faisal Shazad who went on to attempt a bombing in new york citys times square. Think about the broad array of people and networks and their ability to exploit technology and we have more than a few challenges. At the macro level, as we adjust to priorities to other threats, there is no question that intelligence resources, collection and analytic, will be shifted away from terrorism to other priorities. Actions have consequences. What do we stop focusing on . What is the associated risk . And as we draw down military forces, we will have less human and Intelligence Surveillance reconnaissance assets capable in theater. There will be less liaison with ontheground partners. Those are simply facts. With those facts come a degree of risk and well need to determine how great that risk s is, whether it can be compensated for and so forth. Then at the national level, we need to ensure we have the right constellation of organizations and authorities. This is a very large enterprise. There is duplication. There will need to be rationalization Going Forward to ensure were using resources wisely. And that brings me to theme seven. The need to get the electrons right. If were going to get the intelligence right, we need to get the electrons right. Data is everything. Whether looking for strategic trends or tactic