I think we can go ahead and get started. I have a couple things to discuss before introduced our steam speaker. Forceful and introduce myself. My name is deanna lee. I am part of the Digital Communications team here at a nonprofit and nonpartisan Global Research organization that tackles the Worlds Toughest problems. I am very happy to welcome you all to todays policy on very important topics addressing violent extremism in the u. S. Our policy lab series is designed to give you an opportunity to hear directly from experts about the most important policy issues. Im really pleased to see so many folks have joined our zoom webinar. Additionally i want to welcome those of you are watching and listening on cspan radio and shes been 1. Both are testing to go live today. For those of you who have joined us on zoom i have a couple housekeeping items. We will have some time at the end of the presentation for a short q a session. If you do have questions please post those in the q a forum, not in the chat. You can check out the chat with some additional information. We have posted links there that are relevant in todays presentation. Closed captioning is available for this webinar. You can display the captions by selecting that option in the menu bar at the bottom of the zoom window. We are recording the session. We will make that recording Available Online at a later date. I think we are ready to get going. I will tell you a little bit more about our speakers ryan browne and todd home is. Ryan browne is a senior behavioral social science his work concerns the role of culture and social network in driving risktaking, violence, and other distracted and self destructive behavior. His current work focuses on the individual, social, and cultural drive of domestic extremism. He also conducts research the better the lives of rural and remote populations. With a focus on American Indians and alaskan native groups. Ryan holds a phd and an ma in anthropology from Emory University and received postdoctoral training in Population Health from the robert wood johnsons health and Society Scholars program at uc San Francisco and uc berkeley. Todd hellman is a senior Behavioral Scientist with the corporation. A nationally recognized expert on disinformation and violent extremism. He specializes in the use of data and evidencebased strategies to understand and counter disinformation and extremism. He has studied the disinformation threat by deep fakes, russian propaganda campaigns targeting u. S. And europe, and the use of social media by violent extremist groups. He is also led research on the effectiveness on online intervention to prevent radicalization. He has a phd in Clinical Psychology from wayne state university. Ryan and todd, take it away and i will be back in a bit for q a. All right. Thank you for joining us. It is an honor for ryan and i to be able to present to you the results of this study that we recently did. It is on an important issue affecting the nation. Ryan, did you want to show the slides . Great. Next slide. This study was, we were able to bring the study to you because of the generosity of the Epstein Family veterans policy institute. They conduct research to improve the lives of those who have served and support them. We also received a generous grant from the two wanting foundation to enable this work. So we are grateful to both places. Anyone who has followed brand those we have done a lot on the terrorism issue. We helped organize and run one of the central databases of terrorism events in the u. S. We no longer do that but we do a host of, conduct a host of policy Research Studies to address extremism. I myself have been doing work soon after 9 11 focused on al qaeda radicalization and recruitment. When Osama Bin Laden was killed , ices came on the scene and started doing work then. Iran has also done a lot of domestic extremism work. Ryan browne i did a violent extremism in america. We can talk about some of that work today. But has also done other work. Including racially motivated extremism and extremism of the military. This continues the long line of work both ryan and i, and more broadly rand has done over the years. Next slide. January 6th is what sparked americas interest in the issue of veterans. Soon after the riots, reports were suggesting 20 to 25 of those who are identified in the riots had military past. Most often a past and in some cases current military affiliations. I think we are all aware of ashley babbitt, the air force officer was shot and killed during the assault. Also the proud boys, their membership is heavily loaded with veterans. Three of the four veterans, three of the four members convicted of conspiracy work veterans. We are concerned about extremism. There is concern that veterans offer a lot to extremist groups. They have skills, capabilities , not only in military and Tactical Training skills, but leadership skills. That could potentially make these groups more violent and more deadly. I think more broadly, certainly since the time of the civil war , has really acknowledged the responsibility that American Society the veteran community. So we want to do anything we can for veterans to live safe and secure fulfilling lives. So addressing the threat is really important. I will say i forgot to mention the previous slide, those initial 20 to 30, 25 references of veterans being engaged and extremism has dropped considerably. So they went down depending on who is measuring it. George Washington University has a bit more structured criteria on how they include people. Whereas the university of Maryland Program has them at 18 . Still not the 20 to 25 but certainly nothing trivial. Next slide. The university of Maryland Center also suggests that the number of veterans arrested is increasing. At least over the last 12 to 15 years. Another issue to be concerned about. Next slide. The studies we have not seen what prompted us to do this study was that we dont know to what level veteran support terrorism, or the mystic extremism is in the u. S. Understanding the prevalence is important. A basic caveat that just supporting extremism does not make one a terrorist. Ryan will talk more about this at the conclusion of our brief. Its important to at least do this is a form of barometer so overall ideally we can track overtime to assess the degree which veterans are at risk. We do presume supporting extreme causes does lend one to be more at risk. There are factors into joining terrorist movements. But it is understood at least having an intellectual affinity with the terrorist movement oftentimes is considered condition. Next slide. We did the study and conducted a representative survey among veterans. It is not a trivial task. We were lucky that we were able to work with an existing rand study that was conducting a representative survey among veterans. We were able to have some questions that related to extremist causes. Here you see the topics we included. We ask our sample of nearly 1000 participants about white supremacist support. Black nationalist, proud boys as well as antigua. We also asked about three ideologies that we know they can drive extremist movements or actions. Political violence, support for Political Violence. The conspiracies. And finally the great replacement conspiracy. I will talk more about those in a minute. We were able to, we basically took the questions for this from existing surveys that were out there. We were able to identify how our numbers compare to what might be were presented of surveys of the general public. So we used the same questions. And the next slides when i show you the results you will see we do make some comparisons. Ryan will talk about this more in a little bit. But we make these comparisons with some degree of humility recognizing that we have different samples, Different Survey methodologies, and different demographic makeups among veterans compared to nonveterans. All that place in to how we want to interpret these results. Here are the key findings. One thing we noticed overall was among support for extremist groups like broadway seven whites premises groups, the veterans underperformed compared to the general surveys. White supremacists, only 0. 8 of the veterans that are sampled expressed support for the white supremacist movement, like the kk k or a neonazi organization in comparison to typically what we see at 7 in the general ovulation. Support black nationalist, we have no comparison for that that was at about 5 . For the proud boys that was at 4. 2 compared to the general population. For nt for we saw about half of the percentage among the veterans supported compared to the general population. This will be my last slide and then i will turn it over to brian. We asked about three ideologies. One is Political Violence. I guess the wording is important. For Political Violence when we asked the question was because things have gone so far off track true american patriots may resort to violence in order to save our country. The general population finds 18 of their respondents agree with that statement. We see a comparable percentage among the veteran population at about 17. 7 . Relatively comparable numbers. For qanon , and for those not familiar with this conspiracy theory, the government, media, and financial world is composed of satan worshiping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation. In the general population we see around 8 support that whereas our study is about 13 and half among the veterans. Finally there is a great replacement theory. A group of people are trying to replace nativeborn americans with immigrants and people of color who share their political views. At least in this case we see relatively comparable numbers. The general population of 34 in our bedroom population at about 29 . Fairly high on most of these marks. Ryan, you want to take it from here . Thank you so much and thank you to everyone for attending today. We also broke down the results by branch of service. Army, navy, air force, marine corps. What we found was the marine corps, veterans of the marine corps showed higher support for proud boys, antifa, and white nationalists. If you look up support for any of these groups veterans of the marine corps are twice as likely to show support for one or more than army, air force, or navy veterans. We also broke down branch of service for the specific ideologies and beliefs. We saw marine corps veteran showing higher support for Political Violence. True patriots may have to relate to violence to save our country. There is a conspiracy to replace nativeborn americans with the great replacement theory. Most marine koren air force veteran showed higher support for the qanon narrative. Logy. 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 wo on one hand maybe its good news. You dont see a lot of, there is importance in but also makes us wonder for those 18 , it is pretty high, are these folks ready to be radicalized by a cause . We do know the extremist threat is evolving more rapidly than it has been. Much less dependent upon specific group number should then it has been in previous decades. Todd, todd hinted at this. But 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 a Great Innovator and represents broad crosssections of the u. S. Population. It it is still quite different. So veterans are, in the u. S. On average tend to be older, more likely to be men. In the military is predominantly male. That means we are comparing veterans and the overall u. S. Population. They are both representative samples meeting we are not power to support so we cannot ask a question like, the average 40yearold veteran mail more likely for extremism than the average 40yearold mail . That is a question that requires a Higher Powered survey. The specific characteristics for recruits. That is one major limitation. It is related to a pattern in findings recently that todd nodded to her described the beginning of the presentation. We have this study that took a specific sample of those who were involved in mass casualty plots for the tax. These are things that either occurred or were intercepted and there were arrests and prosecutions. We found Prior Military Service was the largest risk factor for participation in one of these plots or attacks. To kind of contradictory patterns in findings. We are showing there is lower support overall for these groups and ideologies. But there is this pattern of what seems to be greater involvement in extremist activity. So that had us wondering things like, maybe the pipeline is narrower. Overall members of, servicemembers who have separated from the military and are now veterans are less likely on average to support groups. But if they do they have a previous position of action. There are number of reasons this might be the case. There are selection factors for joining the military. You are also trained. These are all just guesses right now. But it really makes us wonder what is happening to drive these contradictory findings . I thought mentioned, even if the overall percentages are lower, the capabilities that one of those commitment actions may be very useful for transfers and make them as we know likely to try and target veterans in the recruitment attempts. Not only the acquisition skill but extremist groups can be impressionable because my status of veterans. 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 little bit more about their experiences serving in the military, separating from the military, and civilian life related to extremism. This is an area of hypotheticals at the moment. We have a lot of anecdotes about how trauma can lead to hatred. How loss of moderate in these individuals, or extremist groups support that. So to replace that camaraderie and have veterans join. We have a lot of stories but we are still gathering data. And to that end to understand this issue more closely, including comparing like groups. That 41yearold male comparison. But we will also need more survey research. We are at the very beginning of understanding what might be driving, particularly the higher association, the higher involved in actual watts. What might be driving that and what we can do to better support veterans to protect them from recruitment into extremist groups. And just improve their lives. Just part of the veterans policy research. With that, i think we have a poll question that we wanted to give to the audience. You may have had ideas about this at the beginning. But now we want to assess with your, with the data we presented in the discussion, how concerned are you about veterans and extremism . You will see a poll question pop appear. Please go ahead and select an option. We will keep this open for probably another 30 seconds or so. We will take a look at the distribution of results after. If you have already voted please go and start putting questions and. We are happy, we will have enough time for q a on this. Okay. We see some results. About 10 are not concerned. The rest are very concerned or somewhat concerned. Okay. I think now i will turn it back over to deanna for q a. And i can stop sharing slides. Thank you, both. Very interesting. Just a reminder to everyone who has questions, go ahead and put them in the q a. We do have a few already. I will get started. Todd, ryan, fielded these at your discretion. You too can fight over the answers. First question, how does social media correlate with veterans joining or anticipating in the extremism activity . You want to start . I will take that. The short answer is i dont know specifically. But we know were broadly social media is a key radicalizing agent. Not because there is anything inherently bad about social media but it does connect people. It connects people to like ideals and like people. It provides often times the venue for individuals to engage in dialogue and debate and discussion, which is all great, but often times when you get into these sort of ideological bundles, where people become more extreme, politically extreme, then their social network of, it likewise becomes politically extreme. That can often times sort of ignite or facilitate further radicalization. Because people are online, sharing content, theyre getting reinforced for sharing that content. They are getting reinforced for even more extreme forms of ideas amongst their social network. And they feel emboldened because without the social media it would be hard to connect with these groups. But with social media it is easy to connect and it is easy to feel like you are not alone and that many other people also have these views. So social media is a key radicalizing agent. I dont know whether or not veterans are more or less likely to rely on this form. My guess is probably not. It is sort of an equal opportunity issue. Brian might have a better idea. I would say it is a common but not necessary path to what we have seen in foreign extremist more broadly. And in the conversations we have had with veterans. It is kind of an option. It is one of many pathways. The number of facetoface connections that seem to be supporting a lot of these beliefs o