And its surrogates, and thats hard. Announcer we will leave the remaining few moments of the discussion and go live now to a conversation on lone wolf terrorism hosted by the Washington Institute for middle east policy. Just getting underway here on a spin. Cspan. On good afternoon everybody. Good afternoon and welcome to the Washington Institute for our east policy, and program on counterterrorism and intelligence lecture series. It is my pleasure to have on the podium today, a speaker from israel, bruce hoffman, from Georgetown University, and an adjunct scholar here at the Washington Institute, and i am matthew levitt, director of the concert Counterterrorism Program here at the density. Thank you, for joining us. Terrorist acts conducted by individuals acting on their own, inspired by others, completely alone, not so much alone, it is not a new phenomenon. But for the past few years, weve seen an alarming increase. And a number of what some would describe as lone wolf actors, or offenders. The isis has been proactive in using their Global SocialMedia Presence in particular, to constrict conscript individuals, some who have personal problems and some inspired by belonging to a higher cause, to commit acts in their name. Especially if they cannot be able to join the Islamic State, when it existed. Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, israel in particular, we are seeing a sharp rise as well, of individuals taking it upon himself to carry out the violence, without having being recruited by or trained by or armed or funded by an actual group. The question for todays session a looming this is threat, or a passing fad. So i am very pleased to have three good friends on the panel ganor is theoaz dean at the ict counterterrorism atter, and the law school the interdisciplinary center, university in israel. Bruce hoffman, is director of both the center for Security Studies and Security Studies program at Georgetown University s edwin bulls of service, and marlene is l is an adjunct scholar here on leave from her position as director of counterterrorism at the Israeli Ministry of justice. Friend, i sitood s the board for boys boaz board in israel, and i teach at georgetown to read this is really fun for me to read also as it happens i have some expertise in the matter. So i will start with boaz, then go to bruce, then marlene. The i will moderate from table, the q a sessions until we end at 2 p. M. Boaz, ganor, please. And i would add, please shut off your silence please fellas your cell phones. It is a pleasure to be here at the Washington Institute and this panel with you all. Minutes, andnly 10 it takes me more to stop might and jews, but i will try the impossible and try to squeeze in my thoughts into the 10 minutes. I would like to open with trying to allocate where the phenomenon of the wolf the lone wolf stems, so let me start by classification. I would start by classifying different perpetrators of terrorism. The first type is the one we are discussing today, i call it the personal initiative attack. It is more known under the title of the dickey lone wolf dickey wolf he lone radicalized, being an individual decides that he wants to do something about it. One option is to join a terrorist organization, maybe fly a plane to syria, or iraq, and the other option is to come a to become a homegrown terrorist. This is the lone wolf attacker. He has been inspired by a terrorist organization, and many scholars today, question the fact that he is alone a lone wolf altogether, because almost always there is a connection to terrorist organization, or at least inspiration which has been done by a terrorism organization. I would use the term lone wolf, because the lone wolf, being inspired doesnt have any operation with the organization to rid meaning that a terrorist organization is not necessarily involved in the initiation, landing, preparation and execution of the attack altogether. The second group of attackers is the independent network. Usually a bunch of lone wolf, a group of them. This group, usually, a small of 5,up a small group of 4, people together, usually friends or family members in some cases, for example the San Bernardino husband and wife an independent network. It is an inspiration effect, not without the involvement of the operational involvement of a terrorist organization. By the way, if you were to ask them before the attacks, they would refer to themselves as activists of crisis or al qaeda or whatever, and after the attack the terrorist organization would take responsibility for what they did, but since they do not have any operational ties with the organization, they were just inspired. Attacker, isup of what i call the organized terrorism. Isis, sleeper cells, infiltrated cells, a different ballgame altogether. Here, were talking about a includedit could even individual in some cases that has been recruited, trained, and the terrorist organization is involved in all of the operational that ground and activities which launched the attack the red have good news and bad news. And i compared the lone wolf attack to organizational terrorism, usually lone wolf attacks are not that different. Of course, there are exceptions such as nice. But in most cases, how many people can be heard in a lone wolf attacks . Most of them, the majority of the attacks use cold weapons, either a nice, guns, or running people down. In some cases the use light weapons, but seldom use explosive devices. But when talking about this phenomenon, it is limited to read the casualties are limited altogether, compared to organized terrorism. Organized cells, such as the but the clan attack the aclanine the bat attack in france, or the 9 11 attacks, those are different. The bad news, and it will explain in a minute why, we used to believe that intelligence is incapable of dealing with the phenomenon of the lone wolf. Why . Because traditional intelligence, human sources, and communications intelligence, is based on what . Based on the fact that there are some kind of discourse between at least two people who share the secret of the planning of the attack. Either an agent, telling you that, or the ability to wiretap these conversations. In the lone wolf, in most cases, there are no conversations. Everything starts and ends with the sick mind of one person. So, intelligence seems to be useless in this regard. Anotherng back to classification, the classification of the terrorist attack, i would suggest that i dont have enough time to going to it, but we have two scales in our lives when we are trying to classify them. One scale has to do with the level of the terrorist organization in the attacks, starting with no involvement whatsoever and ending with full, organized terrorist attacks by an organization. The other scale would be the level of independence of the attacker. Is heis it really really independent, or did he share a secret with a friend, or peer, or did he consult accomplice who gave him active support, that he conducted the attack with others, like an independent network, and so on and so forth. With these two scales, we can go back to the classification we had before and see how lone wolf terrorism, falls into that scale, and then we can judge which attacks, what type of attack was conducted. It is not just a theoretical discussion, of course, you need to behave differently, you need to have different operational counterterrorism activities in reference to lone Wolf Networks as opposed to terrorist organizations. When we are talking about the lone wolf attacks, usually they conduct hold weapon attacks, stoning, hills, running down, in israel, we had bulldozing, which is running down with a bulldozer. But also, as i said, shootings and bombings altogether. One exception, suicide attacks, were not conducted by lone wolves. Of course, we need to just define the term suicide attacks. The way that i describe them is that the type of person who was threatening themselves with a suicide belt, or carrying explosive devices, and pushing the button, those attacks are usually always organized terrorism. There is always an Organization Behind it planning that, and executing it. Usually one individual conduct the attack but this is organized terrorism. When youre talking about the rational behind that, the best answer that i can give you today, that waste on my experience and counterterrorism in which i have been in for 35 experience, on my terrorists are rational actors. What does this mean . It means that terrorists in general are calculating costs and benefits and choosing their alternative, which they believe is more beneficial than costly. That is what rational people do, that is what we do every day. But, they have a different costbenefit calculation than we have in the western society and other places. They have a subjective calculus of cost and benefit. A good counterterrorism expert missed understand, take out his own considerations, his own costbenefit calculations, and put on his head, that enemys calculations. The bad news is that there is practically no one generic calculation. Costbenefit calculation of isis is different than that of al qaedas, different than the one of hamas, or hezbollah. You can see that considerations of isis today, our different from the considerations that they had a year ago. The real values that they have is that when were talking about lone wolf, it is much more different to understand more difficult to understand their rationale. I want to show you for pictures that are been taken in israel, in which the common denominator are for lone wolf that have just been arrested, after stabbing people in the streets in jerusalem and other places altogether. Theyre are being handcuffed, and being escorted to the police car. Probably going to spend life in jail. That is a common denominator. But there is another common denominator which you will see immediately in the pictures. The other, denominator, is the smile on their faces. It is not a coincidence. Visited chinatown yesterday, in new york. And there was an arrest in front of my face, the nypd arrested a criminal there. He did not smile, he was walking to the police car, handcuffed without a smile. , i they are smiling, because would argue, this is a reflection of their calculus of costbenefit. What they believe, is that although they are going to pay a high price, spending life in prison, probably, they did something which is more beneficial at than costly from their point of view. So counterterrorism experts need to understand this calculus and then develop counter messages and so on and so forth. By the way, i used the term jihadi zombie in order to describe this concept. The first reason is that youngsters understand what zombies are. The second, the term on the, doesnt have any shred of honor. I want to take this concept of honor from them. You will see, and the other example, another jihadi zombie, next to my campus in israel, stabbing every person that is waiting in a public bus stop altogether. Jihadi zombie. It is not just in israel, this is another attack in london, rigby, killing lee in london, and not even running away. That preaching to everyone who was ready to take a video clip about the reasons behind his attack. In united case, here is a case of thompson in 2014, the afroamerican who converted to islam and went to wage jihad against the nypd officers. By the way, in a nutshell, one new from phenomena that we see is the threat of radicalized philip radicalized islamists who were converts. A guy from manchester was a convert, and we had other cases including in israel by the way, jews who have converted to isler him. It is much easier to radicalize a person, converted to islam. It is much easier to radicalize a convert. I said at the beginning, that we used to believe that intelligence was useless in reference to dealing with lone wolf attackers, because of the secret kept in their mind. Well, we were wrong. Instead of human sources, and communication sources of intelligence, we have found that we have the ability to understand, maybe even to predict what is going to happen, make based on open sources of intelligence. On the wall, on facebook, on instagram, you name it. Many of those attackers actually gave forewarning, because they like to brag about it. To believe that what they did was the honorable thing to do, therefore the share that over the social network. This is one example of a lone wolf in israel, who said in the name of all, today, i decided to become a motter, eight map a martyr. The attack in berlin, was an outcome of the understanding of the attacker, and the lesson dust the Lesson Learned from an attacker from an attack that happened before. Arer the attack, they becoming a model of imitation, and what we see practically is a vicious cycle. Starting with incitement, coming from the terrorist organization, moving on or being processed by the individual, then they decide to do something about it, planned the attack and before conducting the attacks, in many cases he published on a political platform, and after the attack he becomes a fertilizer for further incitement at the end of the day. It is becoming an epidemic phenomenon, and the good news, which i will end with, is that we can watch it and understand it, analyze it, and maybe even prevented. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you, matt, and the Washington Institute for this invitation to come and speak today. And to serve on this very distant west panel. Let me focus, and talk about isis, or that Islamic State, or eiffel. And start with a very broad observation. I see many people in the audience who i have known for decades in the counterterrorism world. Of stating the obvious, i think one of the mythologies of both the study of terrorism, and counterterrorism, is the collective amnesia, or a short memory. This is not that surprising, the inbox, the daily day luge of threats that one has to contend with, but one of the problems or challenges is that it often crowds out in historical perspective. So, in that respect, i would like to read you a quote, and think about who would have said this and when it wouldve been said. Trekking down, the americans and the jews is not impossible. Willng them with a single let or stab or device made up of a popular mix of explosives, or hitting them with an iron rod is not impossible. Property withhere a molotov cocktail is not difficult. Bemeans, small groups could a frightening horror for the americans and the jews. Any takers . Anybody want to guess . Zawahiri in al book released in 2001. The current leader of al qaeda today, was on the run from perhaps the greatest onslaught directed against the terrorist group in history, operation freedom. Nevertheless, he wrote this statement designed to redirect al qaeda and carry on the struggle. The only problem was that it fell on deaf ears. The phenomenon of lone wolf terrorism did not materialize until a decade later with the rise of isis. Then we have this statement of Mohammed Al Adnani from september 2014, the late deputy commander, senior official and operational planner, pagandist, our exelons par excellence of isis. He said if you are not able to find an ied or bullet, then single out a disbelieving american, french man or ally. Slaughter him with a rife slot him with a knife, run him over with your car, choke him, or poison him, it is precisely isiss innovative revolutionary use of social media that has transformed both the nature of terrorism in a remarkably short span of time, and in less than three years, it has become one of the most challenging threats that we face. I wouldof the most, argue, durable terrorist organizations. You do not have the ability to be innovative, and then fade from the scene because of the loss of a couple of cities. I would argue that isis is here to stay, at least, for the foreseeable future. And the main reason for that is their ability to harness and exploit social media, and harness this broad universe of attackers. There is another point in which isis has been the norm is the innovative, which will have many consequences for us for years to come. The 9 11 model of terrorism, the 9 11 attacks, involve professional terrorist trained overseas, deployed and operating under a very clear hierarchy, command and control structure with strict operational orders. It was the traditional model of terrorism. Of course, the lone wolf terrorism that boaz just described, challenged Law Enforcement. They have no logistical tail, no way to predict them. Fortunately, as he pointed out, their violence is limited. But nevertheless, there ability to overwhelm, preoccupy and distract Law Enforcement and intelligence and Security Services, is a norm is. And yet, what we see is that the most formidable terrorist organizations are the ones who are most innovative and dynamic to read unfortunately, like isis, which has now in recent months pioneered, a third barrier a third form of terrorism. Bottomup form of terrorism, the lone wolf, and now they have a hybrid. Which i would argue, presents a new and very serious challenge for Law Enforcement and intelligence. This is a new hybrid of enabling that takes advantage of individuals that have no prior connections to terrorist organizations, that may never have met a terrorist in their life, or left their own communities to go and be trained in overseas by terrorist organizations. But they are manipulated and exploded, ultimately inspired and animated to commit terrorist of terroristehalf organizations. The new twists now, is that the terrorist organizations are providing these individuals with very specific, often fairly very detailed intelligence and instructions. Thus empowering and making the lone wolf more of a threat than they have been today. This new emergence of the challenge was brought home last march, one isis released a hit list, a targeting list of some 8000 names of americans from around the country. When i attempted to print it pages, ran for about 25 and had names of individuals, their home and work addresses, people who lived in the metropolitan d. C. Area, will recognize some of the addresses. And emailer dresses, sometimes mobile phone numbers, and in other words, this was a hit list, a target list. Least, meant to stir some amount of psychological discord and anxiety, which is always be object of terrorism. But also enhance the power of the lone wolf. Consequently, isis has changed the nature of terrorism in a very