Last 15 weeks. You have heard what i specialize in. I try to help our operators understand the enemies we face like al qaeda, like isis. Now i am in a National Security position inside the white house working on these loans that a strategic level. Let me give you a brief overview of what we inherited on january 20 and what the president and tents to do. Then we will leave some time for questions and answers. World today. The sad reality is that wherever you look, pick any Compass Point on the compass, any cardinal point, we inherited a world on fire whether you look to asia, whether you look to europe, whether you look to the middle east. The last administration created a vacuum, and it wasnt an accident. In the National Security strategy, which is the highest unclassified expression of an administrations Foreign Policy plans, the Obama Administration actually opened that document with a letter from the president , stating that our policy now is strategic patience. Strategic patience means america doesnt act. America sits back. And allows others to act. Id like to ask you a question. If you look the world as it is today, which other country would you like to be shaping the world environment . If not the United States of america. Would you like it to be iran . Would you like it to be russia . Would you like it to be china . Would you like it to be north korea . We facilitated, as a nation, for the last eight years, the creation of numerous vacuumed around the world, vacuums that were filled most often by actors who do not have our interests as a nation close to their heart, and do not believe in the eternal truths that we hold to be true and upon which the republic was founded. As a result, we inherited a firestorm. One metric to indicate the challenge, the magnitude of what we inherited. The u. N. , hardly a crypto conservative organization, has done the research and has publicly stated that today, as you sit here, there are 65 million refugees in the world. 65 million. Why is that important . Because that is a World Historic record. We have never had 65 million refugees in Human History. Not even in 1945 the cessation of hostilities that world war ii, which saw 60 Million People killed. Not even then, after the holocaust, the death camps, the war in asia, not even then did we have that many refugees about we do today and its not just about refugees. Think about what else is happening as we sit here comfortably. In the capitol of the most palm nation on gods earth, right now, as you are drink your coffee, eating your bagel, there are women and children being sold as sex slaves right now, today, in slave markets, being run by the Islamic State. That is the reality. That is the challenge. But now we have a commander in chief who takes that responsibility incredibly seriously. And in just a cant 15 weeks scant 15 weeks we have turned things around. Let me focus on just one threat. So you understand the enormity of the situation. That threat is the Islamic State and our president has vowed, not to degrade, not to ameliorate but to obliterate. Language is important. And President Donald Trump will not countenance Political Correctness or political distortion of reality. Remember who this man is and was. Not only is he a patriot, not only does he love our armed forces forces and what this nation stands for hurricane was a success and not just a success, an incredibly successful businessman in the Worlds Toughest market, new york real estate. Right, larry . Pretty tough market. As such, he is a pragmatist. And patriot and a pragmatist combined. And as a result, he looks the world as it is. Not as he would wish it to be. That was the last eight years. Distorting reality to fit a preconceived notion of what the world should be like. So, let focus on the most serious terrorist threat to the United States, and that is the Islamic State. Im just going to walk through very quickly three or four yardsticks that will help you internalize just how very serious the threat is to america and why the president has made it his primary mission to destroy this organization. Number one. Islamic state is unique amongst threat groups. Why . Because it is the worlds first ever transregional insurgency. Its an important designation. We now though, its out there in the open source, that the Islamic State holds territory in multitill countries, syria, iraq, and affiliates, according to National Counterterrorism system, full request operational affiliates in at least 90 nations around the world. These arent people who say, isis, youre cool. These are fully operational sub affiliates. Now, lets take a little bit of historic perspective to that. Maybe we have some amateur history yanez room. Go back the last 117 years. And pick any insurgency in modern history. Any insurgency, whether its mao in china after world war ii, whether its the farc in columbia, the maomao and ask yourself a question inch each case doesnt matter which one you page because the answer is the same what was the strategic objective of the Insurgent Group . What did they wish to achieve . Always exactly the same thing. They are in an irregular warfare conflict against a specific government. Mao wanted to take down the nationalists. And take over china, which he successfully did. The farc in the colombia wish to take down the efleet bogota and replace the government with a representing the people of colombia. But its always the same objective, replace the one government that they are fighting. Now contrast that to isis. Its not about one government. Its about all governments. And it isnt just rhetoric. Its actually happening on the ground. We are making their life far more difficult for them, thanks to the great work of people like general mcmaster, secretary mattis and others but think about what they have achieved in a scant six or sevenyearold. They captured and held territory multiple countries of the middle east, as we already know, but not only that, their affiliates have also captured and held territory in other countries. You may have heard thereof organization boko haram in nigeria. Black african jihadi group. It name is a combination of african and arabic, literally means books forbidden. But it means western education forbidden. Its an antiwestern jihaddist group. A few years ago boko haram swore allegiance to the Islamic State and bag dad bag daddy, and they accepted their out egging of of allegiance to the caliphate. Then boko haram changed their name, and names matter. Theyre to longer boko haram, they now call. Thes the Islamic State province of west africa. You may have zero to do with counterterrorism but doesnt matter. Think about nat for a second. A jihadi group in west africa now calls its the west african province of the Islamic State which is based in iraq and syria. We have never seen this before in Human History. We have never seen a threat group that actually spans not only multiple countries but multiple regions. That by itself means it is not a jv team. Means it is a tier one threat to america, and to our friends, our alis and our partners allies and our partners. Second, the Islamic State, isis, is just very impressive when it comes to what we call the first line of operation in an insurgency, which roughers to mobilization of recruitment. The most important thing for any insurgency is recruitment. What separates a terrorist grime from an incentury general si. A terrorist group is 12 guide with a rusty car and hand grenades. Insurgency has mass, has lots of trigger puller, the capacity to move in daylight and capture territory. Isis has that capacity. It decide that it be recruiting tens of thousands of fighters. Im not talking about sympathizers, people that send a little bit of money to isis. Im actually talking about active frontline fighter. All of this is unclassified. In the last five or six years, isis has recruited more than 85,000 active jihaddists. More than 85,000. Active jihaddists. Thats impressive by itself but lets brake down even further. Of the 85,000, at least 36,000 are what the fbi calls foreign fighters. Theyre not from iraq or syria. They have been recruited from the outside. Very impressive. Its relatively easy to recruit somebody who is at home and angry that somebody has come into their backyard, yes . This is what my friend wrote a book on called the accidental guerrilla. To travel from tunisia to syria, thats a different whole level of commitment. To travel from indonesia to iraq, as a fighter, that is impressive. And almost half of their fighters are not from the actual war zone but it gets worse. Im a hungarian ethnically. I dont know if you dish peer genetic pessimists. Can depress you all day. Okay . But i work for a man who solves problems, so im here to set the stage and then the boss can fix it. Okay. So, of the 36,000 plus foreign fighter, if you break that down this it from unclassified testimony by director comey on the hill. At least this is a low, a low figure at least 6,000 are westerners. Webritts, germans, americans, wo have freedom of movement on western passports. Maybe some of them are part of the visa waiver program. This is disturbing, because we will be effective. We will crush and as the president said we will obliterate isis in theater with our partners. But you never catch all of them and you never kill all of them. Some of them will go home and will go home with skill sets they learned that will make them very dangerous. Let me link this all back to here. You may think this is stuff happening in mesopotamia. Who cares. But let me bring it back home. Anybody familiar with what omar mateen, the pulse club shooter said to the 911 dispatcher on the night he killed 41mers in orlando. The largest attack nuss history since 9 11. In me middle of the massacre, omar mateen went to the restroom, put down this rifle, and dialed 911. Not to call ambulances to the scene to save the people he had shot. But on the contrary. To make a statement to the dispatcher. That statement, which you can actually now read, you can think, you can access the original audio, the Obama Administration tried to sensor censor it. Until the attorney general got in trouble for changing the words on the transcript. Let me tell you what that jihadi really said. Omar mateen, standing ankle deep in blood, said, four times, to the dispatcher, i am a jihadi. I do what i do for the new okay live, al albaghdadi, the head f the Islamic State. So im talking to you about things that are not theoretical things 8,000miles away. Its linked intrinsically to the threat here in america youch know the San Bernardino killers. Swore allegiance on social media to al bag dad by as well. So this is not something theoretical but something hyperbolic, connected to the safety of everybody in this room. Whats talking about the context of what isis achieved, making it unique. Its easy to make fun of the bad guys. Much of the left wing media will not even use the word caliphate and just poohpooh the concept there is something called the Islamic State, its a state and that its islamic. But lets look at what actually happened on june 29, 2015. When mosul fell, to just a handful of isis fighters, very soon after, about two weeks later, albaghdadi, the head of isis, walked into the grand mosque of mosul, walked up the stairs of the pulpit and addressed in the black clerical cloak and wearing a black turn ban made an eloquent statement where he declared the Islamic State, the caliphate, had been reestablished and he was in the new caliph. Now why is this important . Lets look at that word caliphate. Caliphate isnt some crazy idea dreamt up with a jihadi in a cave somewhere in south asia. The caliphate was a real entity for over a thousand years, first founded in the arabian peninsula, and the 600s, headquartered out of mecca. Then its headquarters moved to damascus the height of its power, the caliphate was run out of bag dad. What was the baghdad, the caliphate was the imspire of islam, an entity that melded religion with politics and spanned a massive expanse of territory in north africa, the middle east and europe. One metric i like to remind people, the height of thesize, e caliphate of islam was larger than the roman empire had ever been. Larger than the roman empire. Had ever been. So the caliphate was real. And had been for more than a millenia. The beginning of the 20th 20th century the caliphates exited. It wasnt run by arabs out of the middle east and we didnt call it the caliphate but the otto man Ottoman Empire was the latest iteration and the beginning of the 20th century, little old man with a long white beard who was the caliph of all muslims. What appeared to Ottoman Empire in 1914 it put its money on the wrong horse and thought that the hungarians and the germans would win world war i who when the didnt they are in in trouble, and 1918 has to face the fact they were on the wrong side of that war. So they didnt want to be cut into little pieces, so a very charismatic, handsome, ottoman officer, came up with the answer help decide the only dui survive as a policy, as a nation, is convince the winners of world war i, including us, america, that we are now on their side. We want to join their club. We are now going to be a western nation. That man, of course, became none other than the head of the new republic of turkey. But it wasnt just a question of changing labels on the door. Remove Ottoman Empire with republic of turkey. It was much, much deeper. He was a muslim, avoid to all his fellow muslim is, look, we can practice our faith. Thats fine. But thats a private issue. Thats what you do the home five dames a day in mosque on friday. But religion can have nothing to do with politics or the governance of the country. Just as the Founding Fathers separated church and state, i am going to separate mosque and state. And that is what kim mel did. Kimmel did but to make sure that everybody understand his commitment in 1924 he officially dissolved the caliphate. He emperor was given his pink slip literally. And thats when history changed. Because a lot of people had issues with that. A lot of people that had a fundamentalist interpretation of the religion, thought what just happened . An old army guy with no theological credentials defied the emperor and. This is forbidden. This is wrong and there was instant pushback across the muslim world by extremists and fundamental lists and one of the most important things that resulted less than five years later in the ues region suez, the muslim brotherhood. Established witch the express purpose read the founding charter of ham mass, a chapter the suppress purpose of the organization is to reestablish the caliphate that was unjustly dissold by kimmel dissolved. It was wrong to separate islam from politic and the only way we should live is in a theocratic caliphate. Thats history. Thats indisputable. What happened for the next 90 years from 1928 onwards, hundreds of jihaddist organizations were established, following the muslim brotherhoods creation, and every single one of them, al qaeda included, egyptians, islamic jihad, tried to reestablish the theocratic reality to bring back the caliphate but every single one of them failed. For almost a century. Until june 29, 2015. Where one organization didnt talk about recreating the caliphate, they simply went ahead and did it. And thats isis. And thats why isis is the opt of a jv team. And is the most successful jihaddist Organization Since the caliphate was dissolved. Last point on why isis is special and that has to do with the narrative. An awful word. Hate it. D. C. Love these word. The message, if you will, Bumper Sticker of isis, must be understood because that, too is different from all the other jihadi groups. There is a core narrative to the jihaddism of the last 90 years, based upon if youre interested, you can google these people, qutb, the founding author of me muslim brotherhood. Then we have a key individual such as albana the founder of the muslim brother hood. We have the current head of al qaeda, and the most important of all, a man called an do la azzam. The true creator of the preal qaeda and bin ladens boston spiritual guide. These individuals laid the groundwork and the stunning thing is, all the bad guys of significance have read their works. I we captured these documents in every thats at the, so there is a plan. The most dangerous thing to do is to say the enemy is crazy and they have no plan. Wrong. The enemy has a strategy. And that is why they have been so effective. But one interesting thing was that isis put a special spin on their message. For 90 years the narrative was always the same. We are purifying islam. The west has declared war on us. Whether its through colonialism, free markets, through bludgeoned, what have you. Yes, were blue jeans, wi what have you. We must purify the word and we must reestablish the caliphate. That was a core message to all of these organizations. But i took that and added one crucial addendum. If you read the prophetic stricture of islam like any religion, islam has a story of end times. Every religion, whether youre christian, jew, the religion has stories, prophetic tales how the world will end, and islam, in close parallel to christianity, has to do with a final judgment day, a series of battles between believers believers and unbelief. And the specificity of islamic prophecy is a geographic specifity. We had a food fight inside the beltway, call this isis or isil. Remember this . The president , president obama said isil. Levant, and everybody else said isis, syria, yeah. Will, its interesting, that food fight was actually nonexistent because both names were wrong. When you have a new enemy and you wish to understand them, what do you call them . Does your Intelligence Unit open the drawer of