quarter. honestly, i never saw a any behaviors that seem to me to impinge on the human rights and freedoms of our citizens. i visited nsa a number of times and they explained to me in great detail and even showed me out there in his different rooms where they are carrying out activities of many computers and so forth. ..

undermines to some extent our credibility when we seek to advance human rights. they feel like there has been too much in the way of like it surveillance, that perhaps should've been more targeted or more carefully focus on people who are actually suspects? >> well, first of all you're making some assumptions that are not fully qualified anymore to comment on. i guess i probably wouldn't any weight even if i knew what the current situation was. but i think you should assume, i think it's fair to assume that we have collection priorities. we know what we want to collect against. these are targets where we think some threat may emanate.

you will quickly say, what about angela merkel? my answer to you on that would be it seems to me that anytime somebody in the intelligence community is thinking about collecting against a friendly foreign leader, that kind of activity or proposed activity needs to be reviewed by people at a high political level and it's not clear to me that that was done in the case to which she was so upset about. so there are two things. priorities number one. real care with respect to collecting against national leaders. and i guess the third thing is maybe reverting back to the

issue of priorities is that really, you and i know what the threats are out there. its international terrorism. it's al-qaeda, it's isis, isil transnational crime. we don't have to go looking for things to collect about. and even if we are you know, have this massive computer capability, remember that the limitation is our analytical capability. it's not the physical collection capability. he got to be able to digest and make sense out of the material, the information you require. actually good analysts are a relatively scarce resource. it's also an important area of work. i hope some of you will become analysts in the future. it's probably the most important part of intelligence is the analytic function, and we need

to have an analytically approach to intelligence. >> last question. to what extent do you think digital and social media as would've changed the rules of the game? are we doing enough to harness their power to promote freedom speak with you have to ask somebody 50 years younger than me. i don't really know. everybody says it has come and i'm sure that's true, but i haven't really been able to fully understand it myself, except to understand what i think but we all know, which is the speed with which everything goes around and the speed with which events and reactions to events can i think that's the point we all marvel at is the way the reaction, interaction part of this just happened so quickly today. peter hickman and i were in vietnam together more than 50 years ago, and so i was a

political reporting officer. i did go out to the field for a week. i did collect information about the political and military economic situation, whatever province of me to anthony kim back to saigon my handwriting i would write a long telegram or a message of some kind and then it would be typed up by a secretary and then it would be run down to the code room. the code room would begin to type that classified message onto a teletype tape, a been a teletype tape would be fed into a machine that would absorb it and then that telegram would come out the other end and the state department and would go through the same process in reverse until a tight telegram would appear on the desk of the various addressees in washington. i would send those reports, and all of us who were reporting let's say it five or 6:00 at night, saigon time, which was five or six in the morning in

washington. we had a chance to go home have a quiet evening, go to bed and then we would wake up go to the office and we've gotten the reactions of people in washington if it was something they need to react to. but you sort of had one turn around in 24 hours. think about it, compared to what we do today. i think just that question alone in turn relates to the amount of time you have to think about the problems you face and how do you in this digital world of today carveout that time of tranquility where and you can think the problem through rather than constantly answering the last person's question. so i think our thought processes have been effected by this come in this kind of work at least. >> we are going to open it up to

questions from the floor. i will repeat your question so we get on the mic night and in the ambassador will answer. [inaudible] my question to you of course is anniversary date may 9. what is the nature of american -- [inaudible] >> so this is a question about american russian relations and the may 9 anniversary. >> and you said something about the united states -- all about the haig. no, i understand, i understand the either the weather was a particularly delivered at by our government. as i was saying earlier we made a huge i mean russia was an

ally during the winter i think every conversation -- [inaudible] >> i understand. it's a huge victory. >> what happened to speak with i don't know. that are not in the coming anymore. i on the don't know when those decisions are i think you're saying why do we participate in that may 9 activity, right? [inaudible] spent i don't think it is hate. i really don't. i don't think it's hate. i think america appreciates, and i remember hearing that many many times even during the cold war when we had meetings with the russians that we understand the losses that rush experienced during world war ii that things went in a different direction in 1947 but i think the opportunities for the two countries to get along in the future are still there. i think we're going through difficult times right now because of what happened in the

ukraine. i think that's problematic, but i don't think we should rule out the hope and the possibility of better relations between russia and the united states in the future. i don't think it serves either side interests for the two countries to be antagonistic for a prolonged period of time. one of the problems that i believe which gives rise to some issues between the united states and russia is that other than natural gas and oil there are not many economic factors that link the russian economy with the rest of the world. i think the level of trade between the united states and russia something like 40 or $45 billion a year. with china its 500 billion. so our engagement and our

integration with the chinese economy is much greater, 10 times greater than it is with russia. i think we need more of that kind of engagement in order for us to develop a stake greater stake in each other's well being. >> next question. >> former governor official come had the pleasure of working with the ambassador in the past. is outlined a whole series of challenges, but there's one that sort of is right in the face at the moment in fact i can't begin with it and that is subject of what to do with iran and its nuclear ambitions. could you perhaps, you've had several jobs in that area perhaps you could give us your insight as to how we might look at this and what recommendations you might make for the country. >> this is equation for the purposes of the mic iran and the nuclear situation. >> how do they get away with not

mentioning that? and iran has been a to my mind of course when i was ambassador to iraq. and their behavior was a definitely problematic in iraq. they were supporting the violent extremists shia forces, the quds force and the irgc and iran revolution regard, they were all active and iraq and causing lots of problems. somewhat ironically and then navigate to your question, when i was deputy national security advisor some 15 years earlier under colin powell at the end of the reagan administration, we were helping iraq in its war against iran. i remember working on some intelligence sharing arrangements, sending agricultural credit commodities

under agricultural credits to the country of iraq and so forth. so we have kind of an interesting history of involvement in that part of the world. on the current situation in the negotiations between the western countries, mainly welcome is more than the western countries the p5+1 with iran there is an agreement in the offering. i don't think it's been committed to an actual text you. i don't think it's treaty language but it seems there's going to be some kind of a deal, if it gets completed, which would limit the nature of some of the equipment that they have centrifuges and so forth. their numbers, their quality. it would also place some limits on the amount of material and what level of refinement that

material is at their uranium, enrichment of their uranium. it would place limits, it would allow for inspection for at least 10 years, a variety of facilities iran. but we haven't yet seen the final deal, and i think a lot is going to depend on the details. my impression from what i've enabled hear from the administration and others is that they key issue is really going to be inspection and the ability of international inspectors to have unhindered access to these various areas and facilities in iraq and iran so that they can assure themselves that the commitments that iran has made have been and will be carried out.

i think we're just going to have to wait and see on how that plays out. i take some comfort from the fact that the senate has also established a role for itself in this come into whatever agreement is reached is going to have to be submitted to the congress for its approval. and that was a result of some work particularly by the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee, rob corker. -- bob corker. so i think there's a huge amount of effort that has gone into this. it's not over yet until we see the details but i think i would reserve judgment right now as to whether i think this is a good deal or a bad one. >> my question is about seems like the cold war kind of froze

more changes for a while but after the cold war we have seen instability in the peace. you think like more changes are sometimes necessary? if so, what framework should be used to implement? thank you. >> a question on border changes in the framework for managing them. >> i think i that would be a can of worms. i think it would be very risky. question about whether in the post-cold war period and we can vision of crimea, the seizure of crimea, should we countenance the possibility of order changes there or elsewhere like in the middle east where, or africa if you want to talk about an area where these borders were drawn with a certain degree of artificiality as a result of colonialism. but it seems to me once you

start down that path you are on your way down a slippery slope. and where does where does it end? seems to me it's not only the political dangers of doing this but it's also a threat to the whole concept of the west valley and a system of states. now, admittedly the westphalia system was established back in 1648 but it's the best system we've come up with yet. and i think as long as we don't have an adequate substitute commented on think we're going to develop wind anytime soon come i think we have to remain faithful to the principle of sovereign in all ability and so forth. so to my we thinking, changing

boundaries is a very dangerous course of action unless it's done with a genuine mutual agreement between the neighboring states concerned. and that can happen from time to time but that we live in some relatively minor board of adjustment or a swap or something like that. large-scale changes i think it turned out to be very dangerous indeed. >> unfortnuately, that doesn't apply to congressional districts, right? next question. >> it's been said that africa's future, with the rise of china has caused a lot of african countries. we posture the relations away from the u.s. onto china. some people create the issue as an economic versus political right. and my question to you is how can the u.s. engage china

sorry, how can the u.s. engage africa in an effort to try to woo africa. >> that's a very important question. and in the bush administration until we made a pretty significant effort to engage africa. that you may recall when we created the pepfar program for dealing with aids, hiv/aids and malaria. and very well received program. and it ended up being something on the order of $15 billion a year. it was also during a period when the administration chose to double the amount of overseas departments assistance, which genuinely surprised me for a republican administration that president bush did it at the monterey conference in mexico on

financing and development. i think they're so many different reasons for the united states to engage africa. the historical affinity, the fact that it's some of the fastest growing economies in the world come in the area the world that probably has the greatest upside economic potential, and many other considerations. and i think the administration has done quite a bit. we had the conference of african leaders with president obama last year. we've had our africa and various other initiatives designed to help africa come to grips and deal with some of the vast infrastructure problems, issues that they confront. and, of course importantly you've got to get the american

private sector interests. some of it is the infrastructure part, engineering companies, the companies that manufacture turbines and things like that. are very interested in africa. we need to get others interested in it as well. wal-mart has gone into africa. they acquired a group of south african stores a few years ago to use as a platform to spread into the rest of africa. so i think you are seeing it happen. i think it just needs to happen faster. china, i don't begrudge them making investments they want to make wherever they wish to in the world. their policy tends to be more one of investing to usher access to particular natural resources. i'm not sure they are approach is as listed as ours, but i think there's plenty of room for

investment from many different countries in this big continent of africa. >> next question. in the back. >> is was to become ambassador. thank you very much for coming. i'm also a state department employee for most of my adult career. i'm countries what your thoughts are come at the end of her talk you discuss how your optimistic about our future and what opportunities are maybe ahead of us. i'm curious david got any thoughts on negative trend lines that concerned you can not do so in terms of the conflict will only sink but intense, the affairs that you may think pose problems down the future? and also perhaps trends and now we are conducting foreign policy that may be concerning to you down the line? >> a question about negative trends that may adversely impact our foreign policy in the

future. >> well, we talked a little bit about transnational threats right? so certainly one of the areas to be concerned about is transnational criminality of various kinds, whether it's trafficking in persons or whether it's trafficking in drugs or heaven forbid trafficking in nuclear materials, things of that sort. so those are problems that need to be guarded against. and related to that perhaps i should have mentioned about in my original remarks. the threat of state failure. we have uncovered spaces, or completely inadequately covered spaces, there's a much greater chance that these different problems will arise so that if you have a huge gap in governance let's say in libya, for example, which is the case

at the moment really. it's broken down into just tribal divisions of various kinds with serious security and economic conditions. does that create the circumstances for the export of more trouble to come not only the neighboring states but far afield as well? that kind of situation, the situation in yemen so state failure i think, afghanistan in the 1990s and right to 9/11 that permitted mr. bin laden to develop the capabilities he had that needs to be guarded against. and then i think if you want to talk about ourselves and what's happening in our own country, i think we always have to be on guard about on economic and social development. we went through a very serious financial crisis, some five six years ago and there's still some

imbalances and issues that need to be dealt with and going forward. we've got to keep working on getting our fiscal house in order and our budget closer to balance. fortunately, it would appear that the level of the deficits have started to go down as compared to five, six years ago. and, obviously the events of baltimore of recent days remind us that we still have some very serious social and economic conditions here at home that we need to deal with. i think if we can do with those successfully, that just makes us that much of a better country and a stronger country to deal with issues that arise in the rest of the world. i think it's been very distressing to see what's happened in baltimore in recent days, and for somebody who was here in washington in march of 1968 it brings back sort of the

bad memories of that period in the wake of the assassination of martin luther king. >> next question. >> my name is mike weber. a question about the resources we put towards diplomacy versus the resources would like to add to our military. the trend has been over the years even the diplomacy has helped us, the trend has been there's a hammer, if i'm a hammer i want to nail something down. we tried to use our military power rather than diplomacy. so my question to you is just about the proper resource, how do we check bounced between using diplomacy versus to quickly deciding that using our military is the way to go speak with this is a question about diplomacy as a strategy.

>> what do you do? are you a student? >> i graduate in 2012. >> i was going to say, i look forward to your paper on the subject but i guess it's too late to ask you to do. it's a very good question, an excellent question. sometimes it gets a little bit oversimplified. one of my colleagues used to like to point out that there are, there are more bands music fans right, and the u.s. military than the our office is in the united states foreign service. i wouldn't want to deprive them of their fans. and their musical capability and is probably not a fair and at comparison because if you have a battalion or as a division your doctor hundreds if not thousands of people, many of them are doing, have a very similar

function. it relates to warfare and that's a completely different situation than diplomacy. but are our priorities out of whack? the defense budget, the defense department budget is roughly what? rock numbers 500 600 billion a year. our diplomatic budget is 50 billion 10%. and is about the right proportion? that's what you've got to ask yourself. you know, i guess my answer to that is and i'm being sincere, $50 billion is a lot of money. you ought to be able to do something with that. sought me i would rather just focus on getting good performance out of our diplomats and then worry about, be envious

of next door. and besides, they do have substantially different responsibility. we need small numbers with highly trained and experienced people. when you think about the heroes of our profession, gender, the charles bolden or people from that era after world war two georgette kennon. these are individuals whose careers were very assiduously cultivated and they studied russian and had critical assignments and they were advisers to roosevelt and acheson and george marshall. we didn't create these people by the hundreds. they were created by the dozens. and i think that's still true. i mean i can mean for you i mean even now when i was deputy suggested i had a pretty pretty good idea of who the best

sinologist were and the state department were and who the best russian experts were and who were the best latin american expert. you get to know who they are. you get to know and intelligence community. they get to know who the best analysts are. why? because of their analysis of us up to the president in the president's daily brief. and actually i sometimes get the common brief the president themselves on their issues. is somewhat of a qualitative difference in terms of turning out people in those kinds of highly professional analytic situations that's distinct from a larger scale military organization. although i would be the first to acknowledge that the military has become a much more intellectualized activity can use to be come at the level of skill requires required to be in the military is now far higher than it obviously than it used to be.

so it, too has moved up if you will the educational skill substantially. one has to be if i'm envious of anything in the military establishment, it's their training budget. .. secondly we need more money for that. so we have time for one more

question. [inaudible] -- income and wealth inequality in the united states. do you see this as a potential future threat and how could we address the problem? income inequality and implications for the nature. you know, you are really way out beyond my area of the critiques. like you, i see the issue as and i have a bit perplexed by it. when i joined the foreign service in 1960 the salary is of a starting trainee at the state department entering office there, like a first

lieutenant in the army and a young trainee at national city bank now citibank were roughly the same. i mean i started out at $5280 a year and now is not that different than what people starting in the private sector earned. the discrepancy is today are huge. even at the beginning, not to mention where they go from there. a business school graduate or law school graduate is a great start now. they go to wall street or something like that with the same salary that an ambassador in some points. said there's something wrong with that. and it makes you wonder whether you can retain the kind of talent you want to retain in these professions. if there are such discrepancies.

i'm going to have to leave that one for somebody else to be in their, you know, what you do about it. >> final question? >> thank you for the speech. he was very interesting. i am from the russian embassy. i know that the united states has relation -- what can the american government help ukraine to overcome the current crisis, political and economic crisis? >> question about the ukraine and our engagement there. >> what do i think we can do to help overcome the crisis? first of all we need to support the government in kiev appeared

we can't afford to give them on the economic help they need all by themselves. that has got to come from europe ourselves and from elsewhere. i think we need to work on the minsk process and the cease-fire in the agreement reached in february, which hasn't gotten very far so far. we won't go into all the reasons, but it's proving to be difficult to implement. a good starting point would be for ourselves, for russia and the countries of europe to try to accomplish the fulfillment of that agreement though assigned i believe in february of this year. >> we are out of time. i want to thank everyone for their patience and questions. thank you, ambassador. >> thank you. [applause]

>> cap, said a homeland security here since cnn's peter bergen and others on terror groups recruiting efforts including social media. >> -- start to put this hearing together. my today is to outline the threats from americans inspired by the searing conflict, which is the newest wave in cohort of

domestic jihadist i'm in the united states. we've identified 62 individuals from this report and public records who have tried to join isis, has joined iss or the al qaeda affiliate or supported others doing so. here are the sort of big takeaways. they come from across the united states to refund cases in teen states. fbi director said their ongoing in 50 states. they don't fit in the ethnic profile whether wider african american or arab american or pakistani-american. this of course produces problems for law enforcement and the fans like al-shabaab mostly from minnesota, the percentage of university i believe is a very focused group who are going. this is across the united states. we also found an unprecedented number of american females.

obviously a group of highly highly misogynistic individual to highly misogynistic individuals whose goal in life is to preclude women from having any role outside the home and yet we found about a fifth of the 62 are females, a number of them are teenagers and this is really a very new phenomenon. we also found this is a relatively young for her. the average age is 25 that the teenage girls as young as 15. the only profile this group really showed 53 of the 62 individuals were active in social media downloading and sharing propaganda in some cases directly communicating with members of isaf in syria. you know this is a new development in the way jihadist terrorists are recruiting but the conventional view or the cartoonish review to come here and recruit somebody and create a cell.

in fact, that is very rare. you may remember the lack won a six case where there was an al qaeda recruiter who recruited six yemeni american from buffalo, new york to go to training camp in afghanistan. we also saw that in minnesota in 2071 veterans went to minneapolis to recruit americans physically and bring them to somalia. all of the 62 individuals we found none of them are physically recruited by a militant operative returning foreign fighter over radical ice while imprisoned. they recruited online or were sometimes were in touch with members isis in syria. why would americans abandon what is a very comfortable life with a lot of these coming from comfortable backgrounds or intelligence individuals. why would they be attracted to isis? of course the terrible nature of

the brutal war against their own people is an attraction. secondly the claim that isis has created the caliphate which is a powerful attraction for idealistic fundamentalist muslims. thirdly isis presents itself as the vanguard of the muslim army signaling the end of time that is basically the vanguard that will usher in the perfect true islam when the islam returns. this morning i was looking up and sighed very large number of americans, four in 10 believe we are in the end time. isis is presenting itself as ushering in the end times a powerful attraction that presents itself as a real state for social services in the claim is not completely false, although certainly less true than presented and for some of

the western recruits, this has been heroic and glamorous thing. we have seen people tweaked and isis fighters say at the plane call of duty but in 3-d. there is than a rogue exciting aspect attract young people. finally what is the true level of threat? the true level of threat is not as much as something like 80% of americans believe isis is a serious or fairly areas right to the united states. it is clearly a big threat to american interests, but so far only one syrian foreign fighter has carried out a successful attack in the west which is the frenchman who attacked the museum in brussels on may 24, 2014 on the killing four people. that doesn't mean that threat doesn't exist. it is worth some but not existential. related to that point, of the individuals we found who went to

syria, eight of them were killed over that period. it's proving as much as a great fair to say one chart for attacks. it is a dangerous war as you know. about half of the men who have gone over there are killed in a larger sample of 601 fighters we've examined and 5% of the females. even for women it is dangerous. so it is the returning foreign fighters are not the issue, what is the issue? really what we saw in sunday which is people inspired by iss it is easy to acquire weapons and do something with them. luckily sunday's attack didn't mature in the way the attackers wanted to. i think that is what we will see in the future. the real issue is not syrian foreign fighters coming back to the united states. law enforcement has done a good job of attracting these folks. there's only one case for law enforcement and recognized a

particular person had gone to syria, which is the floridian abu is solid. it is much less of an issue than the home-grown isis inspired that we saw on sunday and very little as a practical matter that we can prevent bone rules from doing these kinds of attacks. the good news is for instance in boston, the brothers who are lone wolves killed four people. individual tragedies as a terrible day for the united states in boston. it was in a national catastrophe. so we have to frame the threat. it is worth some but not existential and nothing on the scale of 9/11. >> our next witness is j.m. berger. mr. berger is a as a nonresident fellow on u.s. relations with the islamic world that the brookings institute and the

author of jihadist joe americans to go to war in a state of terror. >> thank you for having me. i think i would like to start by talking about the loan will thrive because that is obviously on everyone's mind. isis in many ways appears to be the first group to really crack the loan will formula. the idea of leaderless resistance and individual tax goes back to the 1980s come originated in the american white supremacist movement. people have been trying to make it work &-ampersand and the problem is that it is too easy to stay at home generally. people are not adequately motivated to carry out an attack without having social reinforcement and the purpose is to escape detention by not talking to anyone. isis has mixed up the formula and there are a couple of reasons for this. the first thing they've done is different from what al qaeda did

and they have become a populist movement. they have a low threshold for injury and they're pretty undiscriminating about who they include in their group relative to al qaeda it was difficult to join al qaeda. al qaeda was the vanguard and elitist movement. that affords them access to more people. secondly, their propaganda is extremely violent and is also very focused on presenting the group as dynamic and action oriented relative began when you look at a comparison of al qaeda al qaeda's propaganda especially more towards discourse we try and convince people we have the right idea that reasonable people would agree with that this is the correct thing to do and isis doesn't care about that so much. they are willing to get people agitated and cut them loose. the third element of change is

that isis has changed the fundamental assumption that we see in the jihadist argument. al qaeda proceeded from an assumption of weakness. his argument was based on the proposition that muslims are weak and unable to stand up to the regimes in the region that they couldn't stand up because the west was behind them. the idea behind al qaeda and behind using terrorism as a tactic was that this is the tool of the week. we have to degrade popular support in the united states for regimes in the middle east and the united states will withdraw support and then be able to fight these guys directly. isis has skipped ahead to fighting directly. their propaganda emphasizes this. they take their fight to the local regimes and attack the

united states in a secondary way. the message is we are winners and join us because we are strong. all of this is part of a complex set of problems. we are in a period of broad social change. people have been talking about social media for a number of years and often in terms about how it is changing the world. this is the first manifestation about how that is going to work. what we see as social media allows people to self-select for the lease and information so if you have an information and jihadist them, you can find other people interested very easily, very quickly and establish relationships with them. if you are jihadist in the 1950s, you might go your whole

life about meeting anybody who shared your views. today takes 10 minutes to talk to people who share your views and that is a key part of what isis does as it provides a social context. it is reinforcement, personal validation of your beliefs. if you act out as a lone wolf they offer you a degree of fame you would not be able to reach. it is very reciprocal. there is a sense of remote intimacy on social media that can be hard to appreciate if you don't use it a lot. we talked to somebody on a platform and you talk to them every day, you feel they are somebody who is in your life. so somebody from syria who was a member of isis can develop a very emotionally powerful relationship with somebody sitting in the united states and that is part of the reason that we have seen people are more willing to mobilize in the name of isis than they were in the

name of al qaeda. isis radicalization and recruitment practices take place over his back turned. there is no one thing they do to recruit westerners are trying to recruit locally. they attack us from every channel in every direction used in a variety of styles and using a large number of people because isis is a large organization that can afford to have 2000 people to eat 150000 times every day. it can afford to have a ratio of two or three recruiters to everyone recruit to carry out a lone wolf attack. if there is an area in which we are trailing this struggle it is a struggle of resources and of course the problem we face with bad as no one can agree how to use those resources. encountering violent extremism have a lot of problems inherent to them and we have a problem

from a law enforcement that if you are monitoring 60 or 100 people, it takes 500 people to monitor these people even on a partial basis, let alone 24 hours a day. if you do jump in a car and drive to texas, there's not a lot you can do. i will save most of the rest of my thoughts for q&a. i wanted to talk about the prospect of the isis organizational terrorist attack. isis has money and manpower to spare. we have not seen an intent to carry out a 9/11 style attack and there's reasons to think they might not be as skilled or competent as al qaeda was because the training cycle they use. we should not assume that is something that couldn't have been, that they could make an attempt. we're better prepared to prevent something like that today. i think we have to have

realistic exit patient about what they might do when something happens we don't over react in fear. thank you. >> thank you mr. berger. our next witness is mubin shaikh. mr. shaikh is an expert on radicalization, terrorism and violent extremism. he consults devices with the u.s. state department u.s. national counterterrorism center, u.s. special operations central command, nato interpol and other agencies. first of all, i appreciate and thank you for having a change of heart after 9/11 and all the support you have given this government in terms trying to counteract and also trying to help other young people who might be inspired not be inspired. looking forward to your testimony. mr. shaikh. made side --

[speaking in native tongue] >> on september 11 2001 citing stuart and immediately asked them to loud god is great. a celebratory moment was quickly muted when i asked myself, what if the office building i was working on was similarly struck airplane. i would've perished with everyone else just as innocent people perished on that day. for me september 11, 2001 was for all intents of purposes the end of this man said. allow me to explain how this began for me. i was born and raised in canada to indian immigrants as a child i grew up attending a conservative brand of the school in imported version of what you would of what you'd find in india and pakistan separated from the girls sitting up wooden benches back and forth reciting the quran in arabic but not understanding what was being read. contrast that with my daily life which was the complete opposite of the rigid fundamentalist of

them address that. i could actually talk to girls and have a normal functional relationship. when i left the school at age 12 in the two middle-school i wasn't discriminated against, bullied, picked on. i was one of the cool kids. when i was 17 i had a house party while my parents were away, which my hyper conservative uncle walked in on. normal as it may be my uncle and other family members when sensei would've brought friends to my home and spend the next few days berating me over what i done. the only way i thought i could make amends with my family was to quote, unquote get religious. hence the born again seeking to right the wrongs of their past. and the latter i ended up in a place which unbeknownst to me at the time was the center of the taliban shura in the group known as al qaeda. as i walked around a chance to

find 10 heavily armed men dressed in black turbans, flowing robes and sandals. one of them said if you wish to bring about political change it can be done by doing this and he held his ak-47. i was enamored as heroes in literature and media today. proclaiming it was the only way to change things and when osama bin laden gave his thoughts in 1998 that was on board. then 9/11 happened and i thought i'd get attacking combatants, but office buildings and regulatory regular people work. i need to study the religion to make sense of what i witnessed. i sold the long intended to syria in early 2002 when there was still some semblance of normality in the country. i attended their views and spent a year and a half study the koran in addition to the prophet that they used to justify their hate and destruction.

it came to relinquish views and returned to canada 2004 with a newfound appreciation for rights for muslims in the west. bakke or individuals have been arrested in the u.k. at the london fertilizer bomb plot. one of the individuals was none other than my classmate that i attended as a child. i thought this to be a mistake, contacted the security intelligence service to give a character reference. it was too late. as for me i was recruited by the service as an undercover operative because i felt this was my religious duty. i conducted several of attrition operations online and on the crowd including extremists. one of those cases moved on to become a criminal investigation and a child from the intelligence service to the mounted police integrated national security enforcement team in what came to be known is the terrorism prosecution. i gave witness testimony of five hearings over four years at the superior court for 11 individuals were eventually convicted. i've since worked with her as

mechanisms of the government pay the national counterterrorism center of homeland security for civil rights and civil liberties in the u.s. department of state center for strategic counterterrorism communication three outfits engaged in the study and practice of violent extremism programming. in addition i spent the past few years having watched the very start of the foreign fighter phenomenon and directly observe recruitment of propaganda by types online and i reference appendix a here that the member should have. i have engaged with many of them, male and female as well as some of their victims they try to recruit. my approach is to show how wrong they are and criticizing delegitimize the islamic sources they misquote him mutilate. thus that the collect term to describe the technical islamic term. i intervene in cases of an american girl that these predators try to blow her away and put a stop by engaging

online as someone who can show the real interpretation of islam. due to this, i believe i have a good understanding of what is happening and what needs to be done to counter messaging from the civic service and ngo side as well as military side of psychological operations which i can at the commanding general of himself president. finally, there remains a massive gap in all of the areas i've mentioned any sustainable meaningful effect to counter messaging approach needs to be stated. i submitted is not as hard as some may suggest that we already have the talent they need the direction and guidance to get it going. just three quick points on the terrorism recruitment imprisons. number one, terrorist recruitment in prison is happening all over the world. not just the u.s. as for the u.s. the numbers are very low. number two, in the western content, much remains unseen to eye and also to covert nature and does not confess openly in

the prison institution but afterwards when the individual leaves the facility. number three greater vetting that offer counseling is needed to ensure that prosocial messaging is delivered in the context of prison rehabilitation programs by framing under prosocial messaging, the state avoid having to declare which version they approve of since we all approve of healthy productive rehabilitative component of counseling. thank you committee and colleagues here with me and hope this is the start of a discussion dealing with challenges and opportunities before us. thank you and god bless. >> next witnesses daveed gartenstein-ross. am i pronouncing not even close? >> that's correct. >> is very usual by the way. mr. gartenstein-ross is an adjunct assistant professor at

the security studies program and a lecture at the catholic university of america and author of the report homegrown terrorists in the u.s. and u.k. mr. gartenstein-ross. >> senator johnson, senator carper, an honor to appear before you today. but i focus on in the testimony is the question of what has the u.s. done, what can the u.s. role be encountering the brand messaging. with respect to isis which i think right now is rightly at the center of our concerns we seem the most romantic brand rise of any organization in large part because of the reason j.m. berger lays out excellent messaging, ugly they go far beyond what al qaeda and others have done and they take advantage of web 2.0 indirect via the internet which suddenly makes someone who was alone a part of a group. they are also vulnerable though it's not inevitable to the most romantic brand reversal of any jihadist organization we've

seen. you might've noticed at times the messaging in the u.s. counter messaging have been exactly the same. often in the u.s. will show the islamic state brutality, people they are killing people they've tortured an islamic state proudly proclaims the same thing. what they have fundamentally as the winners messaging. to them it is not bad to show they are brutal because the brutality shows they are stronger than other groups, they can impose their will. they very recently have increased pressure particularly concerned about the pressure being put on mosul abu soulman of a shoddy which is very insightful. it asks people not to show the brutality of the islamic state enemies, not to show bombing to kill civilians, not show the impact of this niche upon the cities. the argument is the state will show the brutality of the

clothes, but the brutality is connected to punishment. in other words show that they can do with their problems. that is what he winners is what he winners messaging is. emphasize their strength and they don't want to emphasize weakness. the reason we know they are vulnerable to a brand reversal is because we've seen that before in the exact same organization. in 2005 you had a similar dynamic. with al qaeda and iraq which is the predecessor. al qaeda in iraq was going for brutality. it shocked people with videos for the beheaded victims and was thought of as a romantic organization. people wondered if zarqawi had surpassed osama bin laden as the leading figure of the jihadists world. but what happened? remember in 2732,009 that they overplayed their hand, particularly in an bar province where they are in the process seven-foot similar although

greater brutality upon the population. site grassroots uprising known as the awakening and combined with two other fact there is a surge of u.s. troops in iraq and also u.s. counterinsurgency type date ended up defeating al qaeda in iraq at the time. the bread went from being sky high to suddenly the entire al qaeda organization wondering what could they do to undo the damage done? this is a brand reversal because what had once been a symbol of strength was reversed into a symbol of having overplayed their hands and turning the population against them. with respect to isis experiences losses. it has been in a somewhat decline phase since october of last year. it is lost territory rather than gaining and as a result started to emphasize other ways in which they are strong. one way is the expansion in

africa which clearly is at the center of their current strategy. at times they exaggerated their games i've got the media to report on this. the best example is their claim to control the city of durham in northern libya. this is not true. it's never been true but they've got the media to report it through multiple outlets including bbc and cnn. the reason why they were able to show a photo of an islamic state flag on a government building and they were able to show a video of a parade with islamic state supporters. this is a city controlled by multiple factions. the fact they have a show of force or a flag on a government noting is not determinative. it does not mean they control the city. but this was reported. he had the cycle in which it pushes out a message to go to the media and supporters and unfortunately the media pushes back the same message.

rather than cognitive dissonance and having convinced themselves that message is truly objective media is wrong both report on the exaggeration and they are able to do this in areas where social media penetration is low. the fact that the forwarder that the forward idea of the relative fax. what can the united states do? how can the united states reversed the messaging of strength? one thing we have to fundamentally do is compete social media. you are all in government. to understand our bureaucratic processes would often be hard-pressed with the gutenberg viable let alone social media. we need to de-bureaucratized the process of computing with them. in this case dealing with the islamic state is different than dealing with jihadist as a whole because it has a particular vulnerability that other groups don't necessarily have. in this case what would be effective as a small file that is able to operate that uses

intelligent analyst those able to see the islamic state messaging, what they hope to gain a word is it not come with reality with strategic professionals. not always the best voice. the best choice may be to push information to media. fact sheets, declassifying information and giving information where they serve as the object of voice of days. if you give them reliable information. right now from interactions of media this this is often not done. i will point to an exaggeration the islamic states. hearing it for me for the first time as opposed to hearing it from the u.s. government. given that media in a battle of perception is so central to that the islamic state is trying to do, the u.s. government has to be more quick to react and understand the strength of its messaging and responded the same speed focusing on the key message of the islamic state at the same speed they can push out

their message. overall defeating the messaging does not defeat jihadist of. but this is an important words and. furthermore i see signs of an government starting to shift her as the paradigm of trying to diffuse the perception of the state string but it is worth following up to make sure we take the appropriate steps and can play a major role. thank you. >> thank you mr. gartenstein-ross. we may not have that rapid communication was on capability but i think most of the officials have gone through a campaign and have that within the political world. maybe that would be a good piece of legislation to pose as a rapid response communication team. trust me, we've got those capable individuals within our knowledge base.

i would like to talk about the online process. i would like to ask a question. isis is using social media to connect and talk in right away i would like to enter into the record without objection the webpages provided by mr. shaikh. if you haven't read them read them. it is powerful in terms of the examples of how to isis is using social media. whoever is more accurate talking about this. they recruit, they talk online and then what happens? >> so there is a series of stages you go through with this. typically someone access to propaganda is broadcast out. this isn't just isis. this is how social media works generally. you take an interest you start following online, you see other

people talking about the same subject you start conversing with them. but we typically see is a period where somebody is consuming stuff in the public and if somebody is seriously interested and willing to take it a step further were considered a step further they'll take it to a private format. that can be a direct message on twitter which can't be read in the open source or on facebook. more often they go through an encrypted apps such as what app or cake, which is basically text messaging with a method of encryption. >> the minute those individuals who are serious go offline we go dark. we lose our capability following night and we have no idea. is that basically correct? >> you can approach a can approach of the subpoena and other authorities. >> that is part of the problem. obviously silicon valley is

resistant to allowing us to decrypt and even if they go out, there are other sides offshore. so we are losing capability. >> yes, i would also add the ability of government to follow on open social media is often murky. people in different agencies have different understandings of what they are legally allowed to be when it comes to monitoring communications on open social media platforms and that is somewhere governmentwide initiative to clarify would be helpful. >> u.s. and in your testimony but you have a publication where your best guess was there are 46000 overt isis supporter accounts. maybe a high number of 90000. can you describe what you are talking about by an overt isis supporter accounts? >> à la spread last year so it

is significantly smaller now. >> why's that? >> twitter has started aggressively as ending accounts. for the criteria we used for the paper we had a series of steps. if you would tweet propaganda you are an isis supporter. here are not doing that, we look at who you followed and who followed you and analyze the network to see if there is a clear case. as a conservative approach to quoting somebody as a supporter. fundamentally somebody not trying to conceal their interests. >> mr. shaikh, someone is trying to prevent young girls, for example, or other people making connections, where are they going now? is their alternative? >> they will remain in the orbit of their particular networks. i tried to engage them openly and directly online. in fact, you see people on the

al qaeda side arguing and making theological arguments. they will continue to orbit networks. those that go off into the n. k. i k. i don't follow them offline into that, but that is what they do. >> or officials going into muslim communities talking. one of the reports we got back and i was surprised to hear because of the revelations of edwards noted there seems to be a perception that the federal government no solid way of perfect knowledge and know exactly who is online and exactly who is on the site and becoming radicalized. the members of those communities were actually very surprised that we had no idea. can you speak to that mr. shaikh in terms of the

necessity of members of different communities to be policing themselves and reporting not dhs if you see something, say something. >> i think hollywood has done this as well, given the idea that the intelligence services are omnipresent and all-knowing. maybe in some cases a ticket to that people think we can see everything. of course on the other hand this is sent in the government agencies are trying to achieve get into their communities and give them something by which they can convince their own communities outside of blunt force and that these are things you need to watch for. these are your kids being lowered by individuals. your parents will end up in front of tv cameras as they attend court or whatever it is. these are your mosques that was the prize and retaliatory attacks and things like that. it is an ongoing challenge with the communities. there is a level of mistrust and

professional naysayers community organizations trying to obstruct in our obstructionist in the way they approach this. this is an issue that is continuing -- continues to play out. >> my final question really springs from a very adjusted article diagram would in the atlantic. the significance of the territory of the caliphate established and how that is driving the narrative. perhaps you'd like to speak to that mr. bergen. >> the short answer is that it's completely true. without the territory claimed to be the caliphate, if you don't control population, if you don't control territory the size of the united kingdom roughly your claimed to be the caliphate disappears which has an important strategic implication which is we need to keep chipping away for demolishing the caliphate.

>> again, what does that inspire in the minds and hearts of followers? what is the call? what is required once it is established? >> i think the columnist is where it gets complicated. for some, ultra- fundamentalist muslims may feel i want to be supportive. that doesn't mean i want to be a fighter for isis. as a matter for law enforcement community to think about, if somebody is not actually in diet for a potential act of terrorism but trying to go to syria we should be thinking about or 15 years in prison because right now the problem is this year they are five glycine and say should recall the fbi? the son or daughter make it 15 years in prison. in minneapolis as you know

there is a case where something other than a log term prison term for a 19-year-old young man is now in process. it is a model we should be thinking about going forward. >> before the turnover, anybody else want to respond to that? >> this also speaks to what i've been mentioned, the debate between al qaeda and isis supporters online. the reason they've never declared a caliphate is because they didn't think they could create something that would have stayed in power. silica gets chipped away geographically, you'll see much more people attacking the decision to declare the caliphate in the first place which is one reason they are so acceptable because jihadist themselves would turn if they lose the territory. for someone who believes the caliphate has been legitimately declared, if they don't accept the caliphate authority they

die in a state of sin. this also gets to one of the debate as to whether it's legitimate caliphate. for people who support it, as was outlined, it can be living in the caliphate and that certainly is a poll for those who weren't able to do so for those who are more well situated, doing so at the homefront is also one reason they've been so successful compared to other organizations and have a prompt action. you have a lot of things going right now that make them act team essentially from a provision of string from within their small target audience from a position of religious legitimacy. >> one of the goals of u.s. policy should be to not deny them the territory and deny them the caliphate. >> i think so. also to make sure they are broadcast because it has the magnifying effect being podcast for multiple actors including civil society activists. as we improve communications

one thing it does is allow those opposed to isis to have a better vehicle to attack as his weight. >> i apologize for going over time. >> senator carper. >> thank you for her testimony and responses to our questions. mr. berger you used the word murky in your comments to describe the authority with which our officials have to do certain actions. go back and mention this again just revisit for a moment. >> fundamentally, i don't think there is a consensus in government that you can do large-scale monitoring of social media, open social media of american citizens without a probable cause to investigate. will be see in social media in a lot of cases we have seen some plots and people were detected

on social media, more often we see social media provides a relevant strip to go after an arrest after you've identified the suspect. you know fundamentally, for instance, there are questions about how we collect and mark we collect and marker-based data and who we collected on the period to need a reason to go after her can we say but hasn't been thousands of accounts. in the case of ireland for instance, if we had been sleeping accounts would have a much clearer idea of the track of radicalization for the suspect in open source. go after the stuff of subpoenas. you can retrieve the data in various ways. when twitter suspends an account, that information is no longer available. they have seven previous accounts and we don't have that available to us in the open source to talk about that. i don't know if law enforcement has that available if they have been archiving it if they have access to it via subpoena. i am not sure if twitter saves

the data. so these are questions. i think the appetite in the country is in very friendly to the idea that the fbi should be vacuuming thousands of thousands of social media accounts. so these are the kinds of things that are in play. when you go from agency to agency, there's a different kind of boundary issues we've run into over the course of some years. several years ago there were issues in terms of military investigating americans who were in al qaeda in pakistan and afghanistan. military intelligence sometimes have to take names that of documents because the privileges we afford american citizens in different contexts are sometimes not totally clear how you reconcile that with the pragmatic approach. >> thank you. and this would really be for mr. gartenstein-ross and again

for mr. berger. do you thing for us to work with our government to work with companies to shut down social media accounts that promote isis or like-minded messaging or keep those accounts open for intelligence purposes. mr. gartenstein-ross. >> jim has done some very good work. j.m. berger has done some good work on showing the disruptive impact it has. there's a very big debate amongst analysts as to whether you shut the accounts down. on one hand you have the ability to radicalize people to action. on the other hand you have the ability to gather information. increasingly the debate is becoming saddled because we can see the massive impact these accounts have had. the amount of people drawn to this area of iraq theater is greater already been it was during the afghan soviet war in terms of the number of foreign fighters who have come. social media plays a big part in

that. general disadvantageous and this is something that should be a company's decision. the u.s. government has no authority to do that with one exception. if jihadist get frustrated they may create their own website, their own version of twitter or facebook at which point superiority in terms of technological capabilities plays a role. we can shut down wholesale without any sort of free speech or constitutional problems. >> very briefly on this question one more. >> i do think there is utility and shutting it down. the intelligence argument is important, but ultimately the goal is to stop terrorists from doing what they want and so you take that into the context of an attack, obviously a lot of in our chance to carry out an

attack. you know in the same way in the lower scale we shouldn't give them carte blanche to do what they want because it makes nice chart number achieved -- spreadsheets. >> i like to focus on the root causes and symptoms addressing the underlying root causes. what are the root cause is the underlying causes that compel americans to engage in violent and what common factors advantage of these individuals share? >> it is a tough one. i have looked at hundreds of cases of americans who have been drawn to jihadist activity and there is no ethnic profile. some of these people on average tend to be slightly better educated than most americans. they tend -- on the other hand you have people from criminal backgrounds. it is hard to make a one-size-fits-all description in another era in the 1970s,

weather underground with the black panthers or some other utopian movement. the promise to remake society through violence and we've seen that throughout history. there is no good answer to the question. it is a question of what draws people to crime. the answer is too complicated to say in a very quick soundbite way. >> thank you. mr. berger. >> i would agree with that. what we see are clusters of causality. you can see an al-shabaab recruiting in minnesota you can quantify why that happened or why there were so many from minnesota. you can look at town where an organization has a long history that gives you some insight into why that group of people goes. when you look to generalize it is very difficult. do you know is the most they and

that is where the social media comes in. if you know somebody easily online, that presents a greater risk. >> thank you. mubin shaikh and then mr. gartenstein-ross and i will yield my time. >> i share the same caveats of the complexity. i will give a soundbite version. but that grievances, ideology doesn't resonate with that ideology, grievances are not acted on. the intersecting ideology of grievances play a significant role in this. >> thank you. >> these articulated very well. they focus on one thing related to this question which is what can the u.s. do? we are in a world right now where ideas catch on much faster, good ideas are bad ideas. it's easier to achieve a critical mass that can play, blake mubin says, they can intersect together. the question is what are we

doing to ameliorate grievances? to some extent that is hard. we live in a world that does not perfect test if at all in a world of finite resources in a world of competition. if you look at what companies are doing corporations in the united states, they are increasingly transparent in terms of what they're doing. companies that are much more legacy company is are less transparent, much more top-heavy. in many ways the u.s. government looks like a legacy. one thing we need to do is be much more transparent. there's a lot of hard choices to make. ayotte j.m. berger outlined on one hand we understand people who are on twitter and radicalizing danger but on the other hand the fbi sweeping up thousands of accounts and archiving forever anyways feels

like 1984 by george orwell. explaining decisions, can also defuse the greatest because moving forward, we are in a world whether real or imagined grievances can catch on very quickly and the u.s. can think of what it should do to minimize the usb anda target. >> good. thank you all. >> i was handed the vote that has been scheduled. >> thank you to all of you had after reading your testimony. my main line of questioning was about how you create to the future groups. i would like to have a detour and follow. dr. gartenstein-ross, between traditional and social media and all so wanting to make news today on social media to be picked up by producers.

could you unpack more your comments, please. >> yes. he didn't have much social media penetration. when you look at what is being broadcast i say started out with information dominance. reporters couldn't get an a to fact check. both of their reporters have gotten executed in the past couple of weeks. not a good place to do fact checking. when they have the information about what is happening and they push it out and others are pushing it out on social media, the way the news cycle works now, here is information and there's no competing information and you'll check with a few sources. it has much less that checking. it is easier to get an invented facts out there and have a

widely repeated, which is exactly what happened. >> dr. bergen not to put you on the spot but could you walk us through the situation where that is made. >> i'm not familiar enough with reporting on now. the matter has a very careful fact checking process. >> you don't know if the reported isis had taken burnout? >> i am not here to comment on cnn's reporting on that. >> okay. dr. gartenstein-ross one of the things that is unique previously is obviously a more decentralized network structure as opposed to a more top-down structure. obviously that creates unique opportunities to capture a trigger of activity and at the same time it seems harder to control their brand.

so they have a deficit in terms of having a territorial claim with the caliphate. to the more decentralized structure and can exploit every time does that mean the plan becomes defuse or if they suffer losses because they will eventually suffer, what does that do to the strategy? >> i have a centralized and also decentralized structure. i'm the one hand they have the bureaucratic system of governance. then you have a vast number of people who are fighters from the battlefield. they put directives in place. it is clear to rein some of these guys in. at the end of the day you have a large number of people on twitter. it is difficult to fully control your message. that is something the u.s. military grapples with the thought, just like isis has directives.

with respect to the brand and as a trajectory over all been affected by people in multiple layers. the communications apparatus and those on the fringes. the answer is yes it has for difficulty controlling his brand and especially because i reference before the supporter of the ice is trying to say okay, don't broadcast the enemy's atrocities. don't broadcast how hard life is. there is a winner's message. that is a hard message to his orders when that's not actually what's going on. you have people living in the cities. you can see some resistance has sprung up. they will have a hard time keeping their message the same. just like we have trouble controlling that on social

media. .. >> in the beginning when a lot of this began, there was a consent called five star jihad where they were putting out, you know, they'd shaken over some guy's villa, and they were swim anything a nice pool in the back, and they were