this was held by the governmental affairs committee. it is two hours. this hearing is called to order. i am liking to title it jihad 2.0 social media. i think that is the wrong title. it is really the current evolution of recruitment. we have a panel of witnesses to

lay out the reality. if you can solve a problem you have to recognize and acknowledge that reality. i think we have a good panel. i would ask consent to enter my written opening statement in the record. it is always granted because our ranking member is such a kind gentlemen. i would like to talk a little bit about an sis message warning of 71 trained soldiers in 15 u.s. states 23 signed up for missions. i will read some experterts here. this is a perfect example of what isis is trying to do and how they are trying to use social media. their post and of course this is claiming credit for the

attacks in texas. we knew the target was protected. our intention was to show how easy we give our lives for the sake of allah. 23 signed up for missions like sunday. we are increasing in number. of the 15 states virginia, maryland illinois california and michigan are the ones we will name. the disbeliefers who gave their body were watched in public eye. they go on to say the next six-months will be interesting. let's hope not. the reason we call these hearings is i have questions. i need to understand what these problems with. i am learning a lot and i will learn a lot more through the testimony. i like time lines. i had my staff prepare the timeline of potential terrorist plots that have been foiled.

the arrest that we have been made by individuals who have been inspired by isis and other islamic terrorist. you go through the list. we had christopher lee from cincinnati ohio planning to come to the capital and bomb and opened fire on people fleeing the capital. that was in january '14. february 25 three brooklyn were arrested. and march 17th three people arrested after failing to across the board. march 25th an army national guard agent arrested after trying to get to syria. april 3rd a philadelphia woman is arrested before going to syria. april 8th, this one hits closer to home. this is a man from madison who was arrested in chicago o'hare airport after his flight landed from turkey. april 10th arrest in kansas

after finding a man preparing a bomb for the nearby military post. april 3rd, texas terrorist attempt. we have a chart i think was surprising. the point of the timeline is these arrest the rebilations of these things are growing. they are increasing in frequency. another i thought relatively shocking thing as i was being briefed by staff i was saying is this true? did the number of terrorist attacks in 20the years these numbers? my staff members went wow. 2012 11,000 individuals killed in terrorist attacks. grew by 61% to almost 18,000 in 2013. in this chart, we have broken it up between terrorist attacks in

afghanistan, syria, iraq and pakistan. i guess i consider those war zones. that is still leaving almost 3,000 terrorist attacks. the point of this hearing is to show that the danger is real. many respects the threat is growing. we will have testimony there have been setbacks for isis. maybe not as strong as they report to be. they are using social media to show they are actually stronger than they are to inspire action. they don't need a lot of territory. they don't need too many computers or too many people spewing hate and information. this is a real threat. i really want to thank and welcome the witnesses for your thoughtful testimony.

i will turn it over to the ranking member. >> to each of you, welcome. this is a great panel and we look forward to asking you questions. this committee has discussed a number of hearing over the years. the threats our country faces and the chairman gave a quick view but the nature of the threats have evolved since 9/11 when i was a new member of the committee. after that most of the threats came from al-qaeda who orchestrated large attacks from remote caves in afghanistan. today bin laden is dead the core of al-qaeda has been largely dismantled. unfortunately, affiliates in africa yemen and syria filled the void. isis presents an immediate and

different kind of threat to the united states and others here and abroad. while the threat of major aviation have used online propaganda to carry out their own attacks. we must be in partnership with our allies broad and examine the root causes of why westerns join

the rank and act in the name of sis and al-qaeda. we must continue to evolve our own counter terrorist attacks to address the root causes. we will examine the narratives put forward by these terrorist over social media and how they are being used to influence vulnerable influences here and other western countries. we will look for solutions that our government and other governments can implore to counter these groups. narratives and to eliminate the tool in the terrorist toolbox. with that i look forward to the conversation and thank you for joining us. >> it is the tradition of the witnesses to swear in the witnesses. if you would stand and raise your right hand. do you swear the testimony you will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god? thank you. please be seated. our first witness is peter bur

gan. cnn analyst and the author of manhunt and the longest war. thank you. >> thank you senator johnson, and other members of the committee for putting this hearing together. my count today is to outline the threat from american's by the syria complex which is the newest wave and cohurt of jihadist. we are identified 62 individuals woo have tried to join isis or supported others doing so. here are the big take aways. they come from across the united states. we found cases in 19 states. the fbi director said there are

ongoing investigations in 50 states. they don't fit ethnic profile. white, arab americans, pakistani americans, bosnian americans and this produces challenges because unlike in the case of al-shabab that was a focused group of syrians from minnesota going. we found a high group of females. the group of the goal is to prohibit women from having a role outside of the home. a number of the people are teenagers and this is a new phenomenal. this is a relatively young group. the average age is 25 but there

were teenage girls as young as 15. 53 of the 62 individuals were very active on social media downloading and sharing items and like elton simpson was doing directly communicating with isis in terrorist. this is a new way of the way they are communicating. an al-qaeda recruiter was coming here recruiting someone is creating a cell. but that is rare. that happened in one case where there was an al-qaeda recruiter who recruited six yemen americans to go a training camp. and we saw it in minnesota when veterans of the somalia war went to minneapolis to recruit them physically. we are not seeing that anymore. we found none of them were

recruited by a radical cleric returning fighter or radicalized while in prison. instead they self recruited online or on twitter with members of isis in syria. why would americans abandon what is a comfortable life a lot come from comfortable backgrounds and are intelligent backgrounds. why would they be attracted to isis? brutal war against their own people is an attraction. the claim that isis created a caliphate which is a powerful attraction for fundamental muslims. thirdly, isis is presenting itself as the fan guard of the muslim army that is significant signaling the end of time. they are the vanguard of the group that will usher in the

perfect true islam and the saver of islam returns. you know this morning i saw a very large number of americans, something like four in ten believe we are in the end times. this isn't an uncommon view of the end times. isis is presenting itself as ushering the end times. it is also saying it as a real state. that claim is not completely false but it is less true. woo we have seen people fight and isis fighters say it is like playing the call of duty but in 3-d so that is a heroic attraction. what is the true threat? 80% of americans believe isis is

a serious threat to the use. well it may be a threat to american interest in the middle east but so far only one foreign fighter has carried out a successful attack which was the frenchman who attacked the jewish museum in brussels killing 14 people. that doesn't mean the threat doesn't exist. it is worrisome but not existential. syria is proving to be a grave yard and also a launch pad for attacks. it is a very dangerous war. half of the men who have gone over there have been killed and a larger sample of 600 foreign fighters we examined and 5% of the females so it is dangerous for women as well. if the returning fighters isn't

the issue what is the issue. the issue is sunday people inspired by isis taking up weapons that are easy to acquire and doing something with them. luckily sunday's attack didn't mature in the way the attackers wanted it to but i think that is what we will see in the future. so the real issue is not syrian foreign fighters coming back. law enforcement has done a great job of tracking the folks. there is only one case where law enforcement didn't recognize a person went to syria when was a florida man. but the returning problem is much less an issue than the home-grown isis inspired we saw on sunday. and it is hard to prevent truly lone wolves these attacks. but there is a lack of what they can do. in boston those brothers were

lone wolves they killed four people and it was a horrible day and a horrible situation but it wasn't a satcatastrophic attack like 9/11. >> jan burger is the next guestment he is the author of jihad joe and isis the state of terror. >> thank you for having me. i would like to start by talking about the lone wolf because that is on everyone's mind after this weekend. isis appears to be the first jihadist group to crack the lone wolf. the idea of individual attacks goes back it the 1980s starting

with the white supremeimacy movement. that is defeating the purpose of being a lone wolf. isis mixed up this formula. there are a couple reasons for this. the first thing they did that is different than what al-qaeda did is they are a popuopopulus movement. it was difficult to join al-qaeda. they were an elitist movement. so this affords them access to more people. their propeganda is violent,

dynamic and action oriented. in comparison to al-qaeda theyended toward discourse trying to convince people we have the right idea and reasonable people agree this is the correct thing to do. isis doesn't care about that much. they are willing to get people agitated and cut them loose. the third element of change is isis has changed sort of the fundamental underlying assumption we see in the jihadist argument. al-qaeda proceeded from an assumption of weakness. their argument was based on the proposition that muslims are weak and that they were unable to stand up to a regime in the

region and they don't because the idea was the west wasn't behind them. the idea of using this as a tactic is this is the tool of the weak. we have to degrade poplar support in the united states and the united states will withdraw support and we will be able to fight them directly. isis skipped ahead to fighting directly and taking the fight to the local regime and attacking the united states in a secondary way. their message is we are winners and you should join us because we are strong. all of this is part of a very 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 very abusive terms about how we can change the world. and this is the first

manifestation of how that is going to work. what we are seeing is social media allows people to self-select the beliefs and information we receive. if you have an interest in jihadism you can find other people who are interested in that very easily and quickly, and establish relationships with them. this is very different from say the 1950's. if you were a radical jihadist in the 1950s living in peroria it might take ten years to find someone sharing your views and now it takes ten minutes. it is providing reinforcement and personal validation of your beliefs. if you were going to act out as the lone wolf you would achieve a level you would not without them. it is very reciprocal.

there is a sense of remote intim intimacy on social media. when you talk to someone every day you feel like you know them. someone tweeting from syria from isis can develop an emotional relationship with someone sitting in the united states. that is part of the reason 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 of movement practice takes place over a spectrum. there is no one thing they do to try to recruit westerns or locally. they attack this from every channel and every direction using a variety of styles and using a very large number of people because isis is a large organization so it can afford to

have 2,000 people who tweet 150 times every day and have a ratio of 2-3 recruiters for every recruit that might care out a lone wolf attack. a question of resources is an area we might be struggling in. and the problem we face is no body can agree how to use those resources. our efforts are countering extremist and have a lot of problems that are adhering to them. and we have a problem if we are monitoring 60-100 people it takes 500 people to monitor these people on a partial bases let alone 24 hours a day. if they jump in a car and drive to texas there is not lot you can do. i will save most of the rest of my thought for the q&a.

i want to talk about the prospect of an isis organize organizational attack. there are reasons to think they are not as skilled or competent as al-qaeda because of the training cycles. i think we should not assume that is not something not happen. i think we are better prepare today prevent that. i don't think they are an ex exetential threat. but i think we should be ready for something happens so we don't overreact in fear. thong thank you. >> our next guest is an expert on terrorism and violent

extremism. he works with the special operation command, nato, interpole and other agencies. i appreciate and thank you for having a change of heart after 9/11 and for all of the help and support you have given this government in terms of counter acting this and helping other young people who might be inspired. looking forward to tour testimony. >> thank you, sir. [speaking native tongue] the greeting of peace of christ be unto you. i was driving to work when i heard a plane attacked the twin towers. i screamed out god is great and i asked myself what if the office building i was working in was struck by a plane. i would have perished along with everyone like the incent people

did. for me 9/11 was the beginning of the end of my commit punishment -- commitment to the end of violent extremism. i grew up attending a very conservative koran school with roys of boys separated from the girls, sitting in benches rocking back and forth and reciteing things but not undering the word. contrast that with attending day school that was the opposite. here i could talk to girls and have a normal functional relationship with them. when i left the koran school at 12 i wasn't discriminated against or anything. i was one of the cool kids. i had a party when i was 17 while my parents were away and

my conservative uncle walked in and they were angry over bringing non-islams into high mouse. i traveled to india and pakistan and ended up in the center of the taliban and the group known as al-qaeda. i walked around the area and chanced upon ten armed men dressed in black turbines and flowing robes and black sandals. one of them said interested in change would only happen through this and he happened me an ak-47. in the following years i proclaimed that jihad was the only way to happen. i was on board.

then 9/11 happened and i thought wait attacking businesses where regular people worked muslims included. i sold my belongings and moved to syria in 2002 when there was a sense of normality there. i took classes and spent a year and a half studying verses of the koran. i came to let go of my views completely and returned to canada with a new found appreciation for rights for muslims in the united states. individuals were arrested with the london fertilizer bomb plot. one of them was my classmates from where i attended school as a child. i thought it was a mistake and contacted the government to give a character statement.

i was recruited by an undercover operative and i conducted several infiltration operations. one of them moved on to be a criminal investigation. what came to be known as the toronto 18 prosecution i helped with. i gave fact witness testimony in five hearings where 11 individuals were convicted. i have worked with mechanisms of the government national terror organization homeland security and u.s. department center for counter terrorism communication. three main outfits engaged in studying counter terrorism. i spent the last years on twitter directly observing recruitment from isis online and i reference appendix a the

members should have. i have engaged with many of them male and female and some of their victims they have tried to recruit. my approach is to show how wrong they are. they mutilate the words. the correct terms to describe terrorist in costume is a term that is known by muslims. i put a stop to trying to convince girls their view is correct. i think i have a good understanding in terms of recruitment and what needs to be done from the civic service, ngo side and operations. ...

the state avoids having to declare which part of islam they approve of.

i thank the committee and my colleagues and hope this is a start of a solid discussion in dealing with the challenges and opportunities now before us. thank you and god bless. >> thank you. our next witness is david gardenstein ross. is that correct? >> that's correct. >> that's very unusual. he is a senior fellow for the foundation of defense and democracies, an adjunct assistant professor in the security studies program. lecturer at the universities of the america and author he the report "home grown terrorism." >> it's an honor to appear before you today. what ike going to focus on what the u.s. has done, what can the u.s. role be in countering this violent messaging. with respect to isis, which i think right now is rightly at the center of our concern we

have seen the most dramatic brand rise of any jihaddist organization in large part us a of the reasons laid out. they're excellent at messaging technically they go faron what al qaeda and others have done, and they take advantage of web 2.0. the interactivity of the internet and which suddenly makes someone who is alone a part of a group. they also-under vulnerable so its not inevitable, to the most dramatic brand reversal of any jihaddist organization we have seen. you might have noticed at times their messaging and the u.s.' counter-messaging have been exactly the same. often the u.s. will show the islamic state's brutality. people they're killing people that they've tortured. and the islamic state proudly proclaims the same thing. the reason why is what they have fundamentally is a winner's messaging. to them it's not bad to show they're brutal because the brutality shows that they're stronger than other groups, that they can impose their will.

they're actually very recently as the islamic state as increasing pressure on it, particularly being concerned about the pressure being put on mosul, a statement by a supporter named al jabadi. i asked people in islamic-state held cities not to show the brutal of the enemies and not showing the bombing to kill civilians, not to show the impact of a siege upon the cities. his argument was the islamic state in its placaging will show the brutality of its foes but the brutality is always connected to punishment. in other words they want show to they can deal with their problem. that's what a winner's messaging is. they emphasize their strength north weakness. the reason why we know they're vulnerable to brand reverse val is because we have seen that before with the exact same organization in 2005 to '06 you head a very similar dynamic. not identical but similar with

al qaeda in iraq, it's' predecessor. all quite in iraq was nope for its brutality shock people with videos beheading victims and thought of as a romantic organization. people wondered if the ameriof al qaeda in na iraq had century passed osama bin laden as the leading figure of the jihaddist world. what happened? we remember more -- the 2007 and the 2009 period they overplayed their hand, particularfully anbar, where there's in the process of inflicting sim lashing although greater brutality upon the population you. saw a grassroots uprising known as the awaken, and combined with two other factors a surge of u.s. troops in iraq and u.s. counterinsurgency tactics that defeated al qaeda in iraq. their brand went from sky high to suddenly the entire al qaeda organization wondering what

they could to do undo the damage done by their losses in iraq. this is a brand reversal because what had once been a symbol of streak was reversed into a symbol of having overplayed their hands and turning the population against them. now, with respect to isis, it's experiencing a trajectory of losses. it's been in a somewhat decline phase since october of last year. it lost territory rather than gaining it, and as a result, they started to emphasize other ways in which they're strong. one particular way has been their expansion into africa which very clearly is at the center of their current strategy. at times they've exaggerated their gains and they've gotten the media to report on this. the best example is their claim to have controlled the city of dirna in northern libya. it's not true, never been true, but they've gotten the media to report it through multiple outs including bbc and cnn. the reason why is they were able to sew a photo of an islamic state flag on a government

building in dirna and able to also show a video of a parade through dirna with islamic state supporters. this city is controlled by multiple falks so the fact they could have a show of force or flag on a government building is not determinative. but this was reported and you have this cycle in which the islamic state pushes out its message, its message goes to the media and supporters and unfortunately, sometimes the media pushes back the same message to supporters. so rather than cognitive dissidence, having to convince themselves the islamic state message is true and the objective media is wrong instead both or reporting on exaggerations and do this where social media's penetration is low so their facts are the only relevant facts. how can the united states reverse this messaging of strength? one thing that we have to fundamentally be able to do is to compete at the speed of social media. you're all in government.

you understand that our bureaucratic processes would be hard pressed to compete at the speed of the gutenberg byele. we need to dedemocratize competing with them. dealing with the islamic state is different than dealing with jihad gist message -- jihaddist messaging because it that a particular haven't another groups don't have in the case what would be effective is a small cell able to operate that fuses intelligence analysts, those who are able to see the messaging, what irthey hoping to gain and who where does it not match with reality with strategic communications professionals. the u.s. government is not the best voice. often the best voice may to push information out to media. fact sheets, selectively declassifying information and giving them information where they can sever as the objective voice. if you get them reliable information. right now i know from

interaction with media this is often not being done. i'll point to an exaggeration of the islamic state journalists are hearing it from me for the fir time as opposed to the u.s. government. begin that -- given that media and the battle of perception is so central to what the islamic state is trying dierks u.s. government has to be more quick to react and to understand the strength of its messaging and to be able to respond at the same kind of speed focusing on the key message of the islamic state, at the same speed at which they can push out their own message. overall defeating the islamic state's messaging does not defeat jihaddism but this is an important point for a variety of reasons, and furthermore i can say, on an optimistic note, i see promising signs within government we are trying to shift to trying to diffuse the perception of the islamic state's strength but it's worth following up to make sure we're taking the appropriate steps and there the senate can play a

major role. thank you all. >> thank you mr. gardenstein ross. we may not have that rapid communication response capability in the federal government but most elected officials have gone through campaigns, particularly presidential campaigns have that within the political world rapid response. maybe that would be a piece of legislation to impose as rapid response communication team, pull from campaigns. we've got those capable individuals within our knowledge base. i would like to talk about the online process. i'd like to ask a question. isis is using social media to connect and talk, and i would like to enter into the record without objection the web pages provide bid mr. sheikh. if you haven't read them, read them. it's powerful in terms of examples of hough -- how isis is using the social media.

what's the next step? maybemer mr. burger. they recruit, talk online, and then what happens? >> so, there is a series of stages that you go through with this. typically somebody is exposed to their propaganda that's being broadcast out. they take an interest in this, this isn't just isis, this is how social media works generally. you find a subject take an interest in it, and when you start following it online you see there oar people talking about the same subject and you start conversing with them. so what we'll typically see is there will be a period where somebody is consuming this stuff in the public, and if somebody is seriously interested in and will tolling -- willing to take steps further or consider a step further they take it to a private format. so that can be direct message on twitter, which can't be read in the open source or on facebook. more often they'll go through an

encrepted didn't encrypted app which is basically text mess yacks with an element of encryption. >> our authorities can follow the open source but the can minute those individuals who are serious go offline we good dark. we lose our capability of following that, and we have no idea. isn't that basically correct? >> you-approach it with subpoena and other authorities. it is possible to get -- >> if we can decrypt. that's part of the problem. >> yes. >> silicon valley is resistant to allowing us to decrypt, and if they did allow it there would be other sites that will also decrypt. so we're losing or capability of being able to follow this. >> i add that the ability of governments to follow it on open social media is often murky. >> very limited. >> people in different agencies have different understandings what they're legally allowed to do when it comes to monitoring communications of americans

other, on open social media platforms and that's where where a government-wide initiative to clarify authorities would be very helpful. >> it wasn't in your testimony but in my prep, you have a publication where your best guess was there were 46,000 -- your words -- overt isis supporter accounts on twitter maybe as high as 90,000. can you describe what your talking about by an overt isis supporter account. >> that figure was from last year so is a significantly smaller now. >> why is that? >> because twitter started aggressively suspending accounts. so an overt isis supporter for the criteria we used for the paper was that the person -- we had a series of steps. first, you're just like tweeting isis propaganda and i love isis, you're a supporter. if you're not then we look at who you have followed and then who followed you and sort of analyze the network to try to see if there was a clear case. so very conservative approach to

coding somebody as a supporter. somebody who is not actively trying to conceal their interests in isis. >> mr. sheikh, as somebody who is trying to prevent young girls, for example or other people that are making those connections, where are they going now then? there is alternative? >> they will remain in the ore built of their particular network. what i try to do is engage them openly and directly online. i've seen others try to do that as well. in fact you're seeing people even on the al qaeda side, strangely, arguing against isis types, making theological argument which is kind of strange considering they're al qaeda. but they will continue to orbit to their networks. those that do go off into the what's up and kik i don't follow them offline but that's what they do. >> there are officials of the u.s. government going into muslim communities talking and

one of the reports we got back -- i was very surprised to hear this -- because of the revelations of edward snowden there is a perception in america that federal government knows all and we have perfect knowledge and we know exactly who is online and know exactly who is on these sites and is becoming radicalized. the members of those communities were actually very surprised we had no idea. can you kind of speak that, mr. sheikh in terms of the necessity of members of different communities to be policing themselves and reporting that from dhs? if you see something say something. >> i think hollywood has done this as well, giving the where would the intelligence services are omni present and all-knowing. maybe in some cases it's a good thing, to let people think we can see everything. of course, on the other hand, this is something that the government agencies are trying

to achieve. get into the communities and give them something by which they can actually convince their own communities outside of law enforcement, these are things to watch form these are your kid being lured over by these individuals. these are your parents going end up in front of tv cameras as they attend court or whatever it is. these are your mosques that are going to see press and retaliatory attacks and things like that. so it's an ongoing challenge with the communities. there's a level of mistrust and there's -- there are professional naysayers like community organizations trying to obstruct the way they approach this, but this is an issue that is continuing -- continues to play out.

-- whether it's legitimate caliphate. for people who support it, it could be anything from going over there at and living in the caliphate and that is a pull, to

for those who aren't able to do are so those who are more well-swifted to carry out attacks. that is also one reason they've been so successful compared to other organizations, and having a prompt to action. they have a lot of things going for them right now that make them acting essentially from a position of strength and within their very small target audience. from a position of religious legitimacy. >> so one goal is to deny the territory, deny them the caliphate. >> i think so yes and also to make sure that those are being broadcast because it has a -- civil society activists. as we improve our communications capabilities, one thing it does is allow those who are close to isis to have a better vehicle to attack isis with. >> thank you. i apologize to the committee members for going overtime. senator carpenter.

>> again, thank you all for your testimony, for your responses to our questions. i think you used the word muslim in your comments to describe the authority with which our officials have to do certain actions. >> well fundamentally i don't think there's a consensus in government that we can -- you can do large-scale monitoring of social media open social media of american citizens without a probable cause to investigate. so the role we see in social media in a lot of cases -- we have seen some plots and people intending to travel who are detected on social media -- more often what we see is social media provides an evidence trail to go after an arrest after you identified a suspect. you know, fundamentally, for instance, there are questions about how we collect and archive this data and do we need have a

reason to go after -- sweep up thousands and thousands of accounts. in the case of garland, for instance if we had been sweeping up those conditions, we would have much clearer idea of the track of radicalization for the suspect in open source. you can go after the stuff with subpoenas and try to retrieve the data but when twitter suspends an account that information is no longer available. so this user had previous accounts seven previous accounts, and we don't have that available to us in the open source to talk about that. and i don't know if law enforcement has that available.

several years ago there were issues in terms of military investigating americans who were in al qaeda, in pakistan and afghanistan. military intelligence sometimes had to take names out of documents because the privileges that we afford american citizens is a different context are sometimes not totally clear how you reconcile that with a pragmatic approach. >> this is again for mr. gartensteen-ross it is more advantageous for our government to work with companies to shut down social media conditions or keep those conditions open for intelligence persons? >> jm has done some very good work on showing the

disresulttive impact it has. -- dieses runtive impact. there's big debate whether to shut the conditions down. on the one hand you have the able to radicalize people on,. on the other hand you have the ability to gather information on them. increasingly that debate is actually becoming settled because we can see with isis the massive impact that these accounts have had. the amount of people who have been drawn to the syria-iraq theater is greater already than it was during the afghan-soviet war. social media plays a very big part in that in general it is advantageous to shut these conditions down, and this is something that should absolutely be a company's decision. the u.s. government has no authority to do that, with one exception. if jihadsists get frustrated at having their account spined on twitter or facebook they may create their own version of twitter or facebook, at which point our superiority in terms

of technological capabilities plays a role. that's the kind of site we can shut down wholesale i think without any sort of free speech or constitutional problems. >> thank you. very briefly on this question. i have one more. >> i do think there's utility in shutting them down. i mean, the intelligence argument is important but ultimately the goal of intelligence is to stop terrorists from doing whatever they want to us, and so you take that into the context of an attack obviously you get a lot of intelligence if the terrorist successfully carries out an attack. in the same way in the lower scale, think that we shouldn't give them carte blanche to do whatever they want because it allows to us make nice charts and spreadsheets. >> this is a question for all of our panelists. like to focus on root causes, not just symptoms. addressing the underlying root causes. what are the root causes or underlying causes that compel americans to engage in violence

in the name of jihad? what common factors if any do these individuals share? >> it's a tough one. i've look at hundreds of cases of americans who have been so drawn to jihadi activity, and there is no ethnic profile. there's no -- some of these people on average tend to be slightly better educated than most americans and tend to not be -- but then on the other hand you have people from criminal backgrounds that it's very hard to make a one-size-fits-all description. in another era in then 1970s perhaps these people might have been drawn to the weather underground or black panther's other revolutionary utopian movement that promised to remake society through violence, and we have seen that throughout history. but there is no really good answer to that question. it's a form of -- a question of what draws people to crime and the answer is, too complicated to say in a very quick and

sound-bitey kind of way. >> thank you. mr. berger. >> i would agree with that. i think what we see, there are cluster of causality. you can see in the a al-shabaab recruiting in minnesota you can quantify why that happened, why there were so many from minnesota. you can look at towns dyrna where an organization has a long history that gives you some insight why that group of people about when you lock to certain of generalize, it's very difficult. who you know is probably the most important thing and that's where the social media comes in. if you know somebody on isis online that presents a greater risk. >> i share the same caveats of the complexity, but i will give a sound bite version. without grievances ideology doesn't resonate, and without ideology, grievances are not

acted on. the interseconding ideology and grievances play a significant role in this. >> thank you. >> i think being articulated very well, and let me focus on one thing related to this question, which is, what can the u.s. do? >> always a good question. >> we're in the world where ideas catch on much faster, whether they're good ideas or bad idead. it's either to achieve a critical mass and that can play off grievances and ideology can intersect together. the question is, what are we doing to ameliorate grievances? to some extent that's hard. we live in a world that doesn't have perfect justice at all and we live in armed would of finite resources and a world of competition. but if you look at what companies are doing that is corporations in the united states those who are prospering are increasingly transparent in terms of decisionmaking, in terms of what they're doing. the companies that are much more legacy industry companies and floundering are less

transparent, more top heavy. in many ways the u.s. government looks like a egg gays industry one thing we need to be able to -- there are many representative would who are good at this -- be much more transparent in terms of u.s. decisionmaking. there's a lot of hard choices to make. jm berger outlined the hard decision in terms of monitoring americans use of social media. we understand that people who are on twitter and radicalizing can pose a danger, but on the other hand when we think of the fbi sweepings up thousands of accounts and archiving them forever, that feels like the 1984 by george orwell. so thinking these threwthrough possibly explaining what we're doing, can help to diffuse the grievance. because moving forward we're in a world where grievances, whether real or imagined, can catch on very quickly and the u.s. should think of what it can do in those evolving structure of communication to minimize the u.s. being a target. >> thank you all.

>> i was handed a note, our vote that was scheduled at 10:30 has been moved to 2-so we won't have any interruptions. senator. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you to all of you were hog near. after reading your testimony my main line of questioning was going to be about how you creating strategic brand damage to icele and future jihadi groups but i'd like to have a detour and follow dr. gardenstein roes, your comments about the inare play between traditional and social media, and the media cycles of people wanting to make news today on social media to be picked up by producers on social media. can you unpack your dyrna. >> dyrna not much social media penetration so when you look what is being broadcast out isis started with information dominance. that's because reporters really couldn't get into dyrna to fact check. the have had two different sets

of reporters both sets of reporters can few nissans and libyans, have gotten executed in the past only of weeks. no a good place to do fact checking. so when they have this information about what is happening and they're pushing it out, and others aren't pushing out on social media, the way the news cycle works now here's information, and there's no competing information and maybe you'll check with a few sources but media moves much quicker much less fact checking, so easier to get an invented fact out the and then have it widely repeat and it what happened in dyrna. >> decider bergen, not to but you on the spot but could you walk us through how decisions in a circumstance like that are made? >> i'm not familiar enough with cnn's reporting on that. as a general matter, cnn is going on a very careful

fact-checking process. >> but you didn't know if they reported that isis had taken dyrna. >> i'm not here to comment on cnn's reporting on that. >> dr. gartenstein roes, one of the things that is unique about isil versus al qaeda in iraq, is obviously a mere decentralized network structure as opposed to more top-down structure. obviously that creates unique opportunities for them to capture entrepreneurial activity on social media at the same time it seems harder for them to control their bran. they have a deficit in terms of trying to have a territorial claim with they cal feat, -- caliphate, but to the extent they can exploit social media dot that mean their band becomes diffuse or if they can suffer losses because they'll eventually suffer territorial losses? what does that do for larger social media strategy.

>> both a centralized and also decentralized structure. on the one ahead they've have a bureaucratic still system of governance, official accounts. then you have the best number of people who are -- the vast number of people who are fighters tweeting from the battlefield. they've have put directives in place to rein these guys in but at the end of day when you have large number of people on twitter, it's difficult to fully control your message. that's something the u.s. military also grapples with as well. just lie isis, we have directives although we have a better -- an easier job of running our guys in, obviously. with respect to isis' brand i think it has a trajectory of its brand overall that is being affected by people of multiple layers those who temperature stray central of the communications operates and those on fringes. so the answer is, yes, has more difficulty controlling it brand and especially because -- i referenced before the statement by al gentleman bad di, the

supporter of isis who is trying to say don't broadcast the enemy's atrocities how hard life is in the cities under siege, only broadcast strength. you look at my argument, that there's is a winner's message that's very hard message to enforce when that is not actually what is going on, because you don't just have isis fighters. you also have people who are living in these cities and you can see some resistance movements have sprung up. there's going to have a hard time keeping their message the same just like we have controlling them on social media. they're having the same trouble. suddenly they're the counterinsurgents and they're experiencing something like insurgent activity. i don't want to overstate the dissension but you have it, and they've had this for a while. it's just that it's increasing now. >> mr. shaikh, i'd be interested in your thoughts on that

question. >> thank you sir. of course i agree very much with what david was saying itch think we need to continue to amplify the mistakes they make, the weakness their the ranks the dissension in the ranks especially when it comes to educating potential recruits, individuals, teenagers who may want to travel. in the beginning when a lot of this began there was a concept called five star jihad where they were putting out -- they had taken over some guy's villa and they were swimming in a nice pool in the back, and they were saying come on down, and for a while i took a lot of screen grabs of food pictures they'd posted. we had swedish gummy bears. guys posting kabobs, we got that. or mangled milkshake, or the epit me of an identity crisisy are you have a pakistani

ethnicity, uk resident living in syria, referring to pizza as home-cooked food. so i think to educate people, just by using their own mistakes their own failings, this is another way in which we can achieve our objective. >> thank you mr. chairman. senator peters. >> thank you mr. chairman, and thank you to the panel grist your testimony today. i want to explore a little bit more in depth about the counter-messaging we need to do, particularly with the broader muslim community here in the united states. and i think it's important to remember when we're talking about folks who are engaged in these activities with extremism it's the tiny, tiny sliver of the muslim community here in the united states. i have a very large middle eastern population in michigan, one of the largest populations outside of the middle east in my community, and it certainly is an opportunity for us to harness the -- that community which is

strongly opposed to isis and other extremist groups. in fact, there are regular protests against the activities of isis as a perversion of islam and not reflective of the broader muslim community. folks want to be engaged in that counter-messaging, which i think is the way you try to delegitimatize the ideaol. the white house has made this type of outreach or priority with their empower local partners to prevent violence extremism efforts. it was also part have summit on countering violent extremism this year at the white house but a 2013 rand corporation report highlights challenges to countering violent extremism online, including alienation and lack of trust in the u.s. approach to counterterrorism among american muslims and the oversecuritized approach to government engame. with the muslim community. i've heard from some of my con it tunes who are concerned about -- con city tunes who are concern about pushing back against the extremism and lies online because they think it

might draw undo attention to them personally as they engage even though these are antimessaging they're doing. some 0 have also experienced racial profiling other activities at airports because of their muslim heritage, and so have certainly some level of distrust when it comes to the law enforcement activities, and yet this is an incredible opportunity for us to use patriotic americans muslim americans who live here in our country, if the panelists could address how can we engage those communities? what would you suggest? what are the messages that will be important? perhaps mr. shaikh, we can start with you, but others who would like to weigh in. >> thank you very much. so i was also -- i'm actually doing my ph.d in psychology and looking at community enter intervenors and what works in enter generalization programs, and -- intervention programs and there is this professional

obstructionist community organizations who -- they are hyper defensive. they really mistrust the government and i have portrayed any kind of even meaningful, sincere interactions between law enforcement and the community as just an excuse to intelligence-gather. so, given that level of mistrust how can we do it? i think there is a way to do it. first and foremost, the muslim community understands as you have observed, they don't want anything to do with isis, and really if you look at the tens of millions of muslims living in europe north america in total we have a maximum amount of 5,000 western foreign fighters. that's a very, very small number of people. so, i think first and foremost, the muslim community needs to understand that it affects us first and form for most, ice him kills more muslims and the

community feels the retaliation and marginalization so it's a boston on behalf of -- it's on behalf of the religion. we have a duty to speak up and give the correct understanding of the religion, lead by example. and there's a way to still work with law enforcement but keep them arm's length and that is to use programming that is developed inhouse can -- inhouse, in the community where the law enforcement agencies understand what they are using so they can back off and say we understand they have this identifying vulnerable person's guide, let's say and we understand they have a mechanism in place where they can give rehabilitative program without it necessarily being a top-down approach. and just lastly, i think of course people have their views free speech, of course, but we have to be very careful not to perpetuate the isis ideaol, which is islam is to blame. if with say that, muslims or

terrorists and islam is all about terrorism that's exactly what isis says, and in fact i've seep that you have people who are very antimuslim, they even use the exact same verses of the koran that isis uses and if you didn't see the name, you would swear it was an isis account doing the promoting. so i think there are multiple layers to this and it can be done but it needs solid direction and community leadership. >> in and direction from within the community? >> within the community. >> an organic process. >> yes. >> also in that process, law enforcement here in the united states understand that to let the community lead and back up and back off if i'm correct what you said. >> yes. the local police, i think are best suited for this. the local police are the ones who respond if somebody throws a rock through the mosque. or if there's a crime that happens in the community. they're not seen as investigating terrorism like the fbi might be. the fbi will have big problems

in dealing with them at that level. so there's a way to develop the relationships and it needs to be done. >> anybody else want to add? >> give a couple of specific examples. we can't take down all bad speech even though that's desirable but we can also help reinforce better speech two examples a maryland-bearingsed american muslim american lawyer who goes around the country training muslim american leaders and imams, ebb many two don't understand the internet, how toite themselves. google rankings so that's one very concrete thing. it's very hard to measure countering vie violent extremism. the success is when nothing happens. another is a woman called nadia, -- who is aggregating satirical content in isis online. satire is a very powerful weapon against this group. and finally for the u.s. government the u.s. government

can't engage in theological debate but the message the u.s. government officials should constantly say is this group positions itself as a defender. victim but the victims are overwhelmingly muslim. it's a factually correct statement that requires no special knowledge of islam and it's apparently undercutting message for what this group is trying to say about themselves to the muslim world. >> i'm out of time? >> thank you senator peters. senator booker. >> i have to say in preparing for this hearing i was surprised if not stunned at how we're approaching our messaging and our counter-messaging frankly. i find it clearly that there are about 2.9 million muslims living in the united states and half of them are under 30. we're talking about a very young population. i agree with senator peters, the overwhelming 99-point whatever percent are good, young people, that reflect the rest of the population but we're dealing with a population of young

people that are online and engaged and in an extraordinary manner and in the n the middle east you have even a greater percentage of people that are under 30 years old. and the new form of communication is social media. 90% of americans age 18 to 29, use social media. nine in ten 18 to 29 yearses watch online video and half of them, that's where they get their news? i know a little bit about social media, i have to say and when i started going around to the sites that we have, in our various agencies, dhs national counterterrorism, state department i was shocked at what we're doing in counter-messaging. want to pass this ipad to my colleagues and two things to take note of two tabs at the top and you can toggle between. one is a youtube video hundreds of hours going up every minute on youtube and at the individual wyoming are incredibly slick fancy and

attractive. here a bunch of extremist terrorists giving out things to kids. if you toggle over to the united states, and what we're doing here is the think and turn away web site by the attend of state. if you know anything before the social media one thing is look at the engagement of people on our social media feeds and it's laughable. three retweets, two retweets. if you think about this, last year -- at least fiscal year '13, we spent $196 million on the voice of america. this is old-school media. it's radio and the like. and maybe you know, how much money are we investing and appropriating for social media counter-messaging? >> they don't specifically budget out social media separately but it's clear that it's a small percentage of what

is being done, and further as you point out a lot of times what we push out via social media is very crude. >> crude is a generous statement. you said a wonderful phrase you said we need to compete at the speed of social media. michigan -- mr. bergen you say one thing that been their cage age is common, and we asked -- domestic lone wolf individuals this where is the majority of them are getting radicalized which is online in social media and will have an inadequate response to that, it's very frustrating. now mr. shaikh? your work is incredible. i see you online, trying to push back on this. there are easy tactics -- i know

them from politics -- how to get more voice and virility to messaging we're not using as the government to get course message out here. i know something about means muslims killing muslims to get memes to go more viral. look at theirs fancy memes compared to what we're not doing. i just want to start with mr. shaikh. you're trying -- looks like to me you're trying to do counter-messaging but we have a government that is spending millions and millions of dollars on old-school forms of media and as you said, very crude social media efforts. what do you imagine could be done if we were going to do an effective social media counter-messaging effort? >> thank you very much. in some kind of defense to the senator phenomenon strategic counterterrorism and communications, they have a very

small group of people. they're trying to contest the space, and they're trying to do something, and i get that, and yes, crude is a very polite statement. at the end of the day, if you want to fight back against recruitment of 15-year-old kids, you need to work with 15-year-old kids. when i see my own kids showing examples of what affects them and what motivates them and what resonates with them, it tells me this is exactly walt you need to do. talk to the kids. they can do a really good job. with respect to producing material one of the comments i said was really i feel that it is unacceptable, especially given -- you have hollywood in the u.s., people who you decent even need to go to that level. maybe this should be done to got go at that level blow the production capabilities out of the water. but high school kids could be given projects for them too as

part of a school project as part of a civic engagement process. even muslim organizations maybe you have ngos who could fund projects within the community to come up with these sorts of things. the government is really not -- if you were to take it to the covert level of psychological operations and then you do have individuals individuals who know influence activities, who know to generate stuff which they can deploy but in a more covert manner. so multiple layers, there's a way to do it. >> mr. bergen, very little time left. when i was mayor of newark, we saw that the mentions of our city were incredibly negative and we set out on social media and used a simple sentiment analysis to see that engage independent social media began to change the brand of our city. and i'm just wondering you talk in your testimony about crowding out the negative messages, and i've seen people do this in many different forms, that's lots of different strategies how much do

you, whichize we are doing to crowd out the negative messages to arm the people withins the american muslim community and others, to sort of compete within this space to begin to push other messages? how would you describe our attempts? is there a better way to centralize and coordinate across numerous agencies a better push for the united states? >> nctc has been doing this work and trying to work with some of the tech companies and the muslim american community but there's a kiss of death problem with the u.s. government being involved. so it has be to hands off. it's not all doom and gloom there are people doing the work that is necessary. >> mr. chairman, thank you very much. >> thank you senator booker. there's an obvious piece of legislation we need start working on, already directed staff. we invented the internet, the social network sites we have hollywood. we have the camables to --

capabilities to blows the guys out of the water on communications. so we need work an that quickly. senator ayotte. >> i want to thank the chairman and appreciate senator booker's comments as well, and it strikes me though, in hearing your answers, makes sense that this isn't going to just be a government function, because government isn't particularly well at some of these updated use of technology, and so i think engaging the private sector engaging ngos and others to help us to that, and we can provide the support for that but that would be great to establish the partnerships to make that happen. i was interested in reading in your testimony especially mr. bergen, about women that -- they're there seems to be an attraction for young women that they're recruiting with more

than i think a historical basis to isis and can you talk to me about that and -- it seems to me as i look at some of these uses on social media they almost romanticize what is happening over in iraq and syria and what these women who might make -- might want to either join or i guess connect themselves in the u.s. or in some other western country, with isis, and so it strike mess that the more we can get the truth out also, whether it's imbedding reporters or what is really the conditions -- i know it's dangerous so is challenging but however we can get the truth out about what is really happening on the ground in the caliphate this isn't some kind of romantic endeavor you're probably traveling to or asking to engage in. so i want to get thoughts how to dress this as women. >> that's right. senator0. 20% of the software from the

united states were women and 10% from the west were women so unprecedented. why are they going there snow they've been told it's a perfect society. meet their perfect marriage partner. the average ace age is 19. how do we contest that? people like shaikh and disillusioned militants who can speak the truth about what is happening amplifying their voices. that's the most deeek fifth to go. we saw is in minnesota when people started saying, wait a minute shabaab is not the promised land. so it took two or three years for the message -- j.b. berger can amplify but we're at the point where there are enough bad stories coming out that that's a reasonable kind of idea, which is amplifying the voices disillusioned militants. >> when we're looking at trying to undermine isis' messaging one

problem we have is the information we have that does undermine their projection of strength this, utopian society is mostly eye witness testimony from detectors and that not as compelling as photographs, video and audio. so one thing i propose in snatches inasmuch as we can deploy intelligence ates to enter extent -- intercepted communications and thing that are more drivenning and compelling instead of one person's story because radicals radicals -- >> on the flipside is a wonderful site called silently slaughtering iraq. there are pictures of red lines. they're saying, only on -- electricity is on three hours a day. so there's an alternative universe on social media that exists and we should understand and know about. >> absolutely, and we should promote and it encourage people to see what really is happening.

because i think there is a romanticized view being pushed out there that is attractive to people. i want to get your thoughts, all of you on the leader of isis, al-baghdadi, and the seems to -- using social media using information to put out a certain image of himself that is not lining up with the truth. so what is your authority on the lead are now -- i understand we take out a leader and another leader can follow but he seems to have portrayed himself in a certain way and what thought you have for us to try to undermine the leadership to show they're not really who they purport to be. >> so, think baghdadi's kind of an interesting figure in this context. he is kind of an empty suit or rorschach test. he has a basic biography

calculated to support the legitimacy of naming him caliph. we know other few about him through independent reporting but the image he projects is somebody who appears rarely, who speaks in jihaddist prattitude -- platitudes and he is somewhat replaceable. you can bring your expectations to who he is and understand him in the context that you want. he doesn't have the same powerful cult of personality that somebody like osama bin laden did. he is replace able. and i would assume that isis has plan for his succession because they do have to meet certain criteria to replace a caliph. it's not like al qaeda where you can get the gave with most seniority the job, and he may be an important strategic thinker. there's some reasons to think that. so replacing him my undercut their able to operate but may not. >> how important in all this context is it that we, thinking about what isis is doing on the ground and trying to establish

is this caliphate in iraq and syria -- i serve on the armed services committee as well -- that we continue to work with our partners there to actually diminish their capacity. one of you said the fact they control territory gives them greater ability to recruit because it shows they're legitimacy and the more we -- it's almost like we have to address this on all froms. >> i think the short answer is, yes, to that. >> one element of this that i would just bring up, we talked about how their loss of territory would undermine recruiting and it would but isis is also an apocalyptic group and traditionally what happens with groups like this is when the prove seize turn out not be correct they'll double-downton violence so we could undercut recruiting but could see disastrous secondary

effects. >> we have seen that with al qaeda. >> with al-shabaab, and a al-shabaab doesn't have the same platform or prophecies that isis bit itself on -- built itself on. >> thank you. senator portman. >> thanks for having the hearing. this has been fascinating and i appreciate the experts coming and talking to us about this. let me give you an interesting case study from ohio. the middle of the country. like every other state here, we're concern about radicalization and there are recently two case. one is christopher lee cornell a 20-year-old cincinnati, ohio, my home town, wanted to come here and bomb the capitol. that happened this year. he is now under arrest. just last month sheikh mohammad of columnus can the first

american accused of training in syria and then returning to conduct a terrorist attack here in the united states. so bulletin is a classic lone wolf. right? so he is on the internet, gets radicalized, a loner. the second is a member of a community in central ohio, as i understand it, the somali community. i know a number of members of that community. they're very concerned about the radicalization. they're engaged and involved it in. the leaders are working hard to have a productive dialogue about it. some of the things you talked about they're doing. and it's two very different challenges. we have talked more about the community one and i'd like to hear more about that if you have thought, but also about the lone wolf and maybe this goes to more of what senator booker was talking about. i looked at your apen dissees --

appendixes and it's unbelieve what they're doing and we have the capability to do more. my first question would be, do you view these as two distinct challenges two very different strategies and just assessing the two strategies, and a subpart would be a specific question i've always had. you have three groups, dhs nct and fbi all working together to try to support these community outreach programs, understanding that local police are the face of it but to get the best practices and expertise frankly our local communities won't have access to that. are they doing a good job coordinating? should there be one agency that has more responsibility and therefore, accountability? i will open it up and hear from alloff you. >> training oversees makes you more dangerous. ...

the focus focus is a lot on isis but the two cases of americans coming back to the united states states, one of them didn't plot anything here and one that managed to read both al-nusra. this is particularly troubling because it wasn't al-shabaab even though he came from the somali community and you thought it was al-shabaab. >> i think in that particular case it was not clear in the court documents exactly.

it started with al-nusra and went to an unspecified training camp and talk to clerics while he was posting about the islamic state. in terms of the problems, these are two different problems. we could see prices try to bridge the two to coordinate loosely multi-activity with organized terrorist activity. the in the case of this attorney you know this may be a dry run to see what happens when you send somebody back. we have seen that isis has had returned fighters acted in europe. we have seen at least one case of what was described by isis is an operational cell in belgium. there's not much reason to think that they won't try this kind of thing so you know we need to keeping an eye on this as it develops. the lone wolf piece of it is easy for them. it's something they have proven that they are pretty good at relative to other groups and

it's going to capture a lot of headlines for them without big investment so the question is how much they want to invest here and i think that's unclear right now. we don't have a clear bead on that. >> could you talk about the coordination between dhs and the fbi and nctc? >> there he is a dhs coordinator david gerston comes from a civil liberties background which he was surprised to see that dhs is putting that kind of resource in that area. the office of civil rights and civil liberties is also looking at how to avoid the securitization aspect of it. the securitization aspect of it is really poisonous to cve branding. they perceive especially at the behest of what i call the

obstructionist community groups are giving a false narrative of what government is trying to do and will continue to be a problem. if i could quickly make a point on the lone wolf. what kind of lone wolves are we talking about? i call them issa zombies. these are the self activating might have mental health issues really low level of competency but then you could have directed attackers who are serial returnees and you have a level of competency were just one person can pull off quite ineffective attack. in paris of course only two guys did what they did so you could easily have a cell of six people people, three, two-man teams to do simultaneous attacks and would really cause some great destruction. so there are again there are a number of threats in that spectrum. >> back to the community for a second, you were making the point that we need to do a

better job of providing best practices, community by community. getting community engagement involved and the somali community has been involved in a productive dialogue. as the federal government where we have responsibility doing an effective job of coordinating between the three and agencies i mentioned and perhaps some other agencies on the intelligence side. is it working nor should there be more accountability that comes from more definitive responsibility? >> it is working. i am positive and optimistic on that side first and foremost because there was no coordinator before so now that there is a coordinate or and that is happening it is a positive step. it's running into these issues up critics saying it now this is just an excuse to intelligence gather but i think dhs and their particular mechanisms that are

working are trying to navigate this space as best as possible. >> thank you senator portman. we will start another round. i started my opening statement with the description about posting that claimed there were 71 trained fighters. again nobody knows whether it's real but i will ask the question is that unprecedented and are we seeing semi-things like that, similar threats anybody? >> i think we have multiple signs and i'll give an example. on the east coast i think it was in 2005 some jihadi group claimed credit so just because they say something doesn't mean it's true. >> what about from isis though recently or is it unprecedented from? >> is pretty precedent. the volume of material they put out is truly expensive and comes

in a lot of different formats so that it has led to a variety of threats with more less specificity over time. one of the reasons that is surprising about the garland event was it was something they specifically talks about that entered into an attack and that's pretty unusual as they create so much noise that needle in a haystack can be difficult. >> so you take that with a degree of skepticism? >> yeah, i think certainly they have dozens to low hundreds of passive supporters in this country and some of those people made be prepared to act but i don't think there's anything remotely as organized as what the post described. >> mr. gartenstein-ross your testimony written and oral you were talking about the rise of the brand of isis but are also vulnerable to reversal of that.

i certainly hope that's true. i also understand she strategically they have made a lot of enemies there and being attacked on a number of different fronts. the goal of this administration and of america is to defeat isis isis. i have asked administration officials in the past what this defeat look like? define it. i would like to have you gentlemen take a crack at what this defeat look like to you? i was there with you mr. gartenstein-ross. >> there's actually very clear context which isn't true of other jihadists groups. they have staked their legitimacy to the caliphate continuing viability and if the caliphate is no longer viable they can lose legitimacy pretty quickly so i think if you are able to make the caliphate no longer a viable entity and they are no longer perceived as a viable entity then at that point they have an effect loss.

their narrative will be completely different. if you understand the nuances of their narrative they have certain outs that for example they believe a grand battle and they will be crushed but essentially it means you make this already marginal advance much more marginal and let me out one final thing because this ties into the way we are conceptualizing community. as we talk about what can we do to delegitimize the message the way i think of it is what can the community do to continue to be -- the gentle amount -- delegitimize the event. isis can have a 5% approval rating and that's great for them them. they are dealing with those who are very much on the margins. there are many within the jihadists movement to argue against isis so the question really is not how do we change an entire community but how do we stop this fringe group from spurring people to action and

that is why this legitimacy of the caliphate will in my view have a disproportionate impact on their ability to remain viable. >> does anyone else have a different definition of defeat? >> i think that we are best served by strategies that encourage isis to fail on its own terms. cutting it off economically a major schism inside the group would be better for us then enforceable dejection from their territory especially the ejection was done primarily through american military. >> how it looks is the denial of the territory by the caliphate. >> is into their territory but it's not the end of their story. they have branches in nigeria and bolivia. >> an important point though i'm glad you pointed that it out. anyone else have the definition of defeat?

my next question is i'm no military expert and i don't have on the panel, no offense, but the expertise has been very valuable here. how far away are we from that definition of defeat? >> as you said i don't think anyone on this panel can say that i can point to a few things we should look to. number one looking to internal resistance movements is very important. i agree that with jm berger with the defeat comes within that will be much more resounding defeat. >> we see resistance movements in some areas. the question is, there are two points to this. number one is how or bust are they? in the past we saw a robust resistance but the u.s. also played a role in helping to ensure they weren't destroyed. the second thing i should warn as i think a lot of these resistance movements are also people we don't like.

i'm the one hand you have baptist resistance movements and almost certainly al qaeda resistance movements with a greater struggle within jihadists in. with that being said listened to it turn all squabbles. there was a question before about baghdadi and while i think baghdadi is replaceable what you have a success you have his success in the especially within an organization like this which hasn't a call to personality internally. this might cause greater fragmentation with isis specifically in the final thing we can look to is given day are a bit overstretched militarily you could possibly see rapid reversal just like when the u.s. engaged in campaigns early in the iraq war and the afghanistan weren't even in libya. there were very rapid reversals of the enemy. it is hard to hold the territory particularly when your population is not particularly happy with what you are doing.

>> i have earned many questions i've asked this question. mr. shaikh talking about engaging communities in understanding by local police all the better with a coordinated effort but how do we find more people like you that it had a change of heart and have your capacity and capability and willingness to really turn people away from this? >> i wish we could. >> i think we all do as well. >> i tried to do the right thing thing. i got here because i believe i did make the right decisions and it came with a lot of personal costs. i will be honest in the think a lot of people may not be ready to do that. i think when we say empowerment it needs to be made clear for a lot of individuals who are back and the intelligence community knows who these people are.

after they have been vetted and maybe they need to have continual monitoring that you have to step up. go to some conferences. let it be seen on mainstream media where people hear the message. i don't want to be the only person and a lot of times i feel frustrated. i see i'm the only guy doing it and everyone is talking about it but not doing enough of it. but there are others like me. they just don't know how to come forward so they will need some direction to do that. >> i think i speak for all of us when we say god bless you for what you are doing. senator carper. >> i am john carper and i approve of that message. god bless you. i just want to say mr. shaikh how do you pronounce your name? have you ever been called -- goes. >> yes the joke was like bin

laden and his top ain't funny. >> we have a been in our family. several of my colleagues have said in order for the u.s. to have success against al qaeda and against isis we must adequately defined the problem at hand with their enemy and suggest that we should unequivocally announce the u.s. is at war with extremism or radical islam. is it your opinion is it necessary or beneficial for the u.s. to define isis and al qaeda in this manner and gophers please. >> is the benefit of doing so. i'm not sure there's a method in explicitly emphasizing that we are radical islam. there is a question embedded in that with what is radical islam?

in libya one of the problems with the warring factions in that civil war is a dignity faction is their commander-in-chief defines radical islam as including both islamist who work in the political process and jihadists organizations which makes it if one or two face his organization would make it a civil war that is much bloodier and broadly defined that it should be. secondly the administration has moved away from the rhetoric. it is tried to avoid terms like islam and jihad. that's a reasonable thing to do in public messaging. the area where sometimes disagreed is that i think if we as analysts are able to process the ideological dimension we are at a disadvantage but in terms of public messaging i don't think it's advantageous for the u.s. to make its enemy radical islam at large.

>> pic terrace uses the adjective islamic in a correct way because i believe islamic terrorism is too long but because they are appealing to islamic sources we need to see something. if i could impose the muslim term for these people it is call robbie and i have been giving references referring in the most vile terms. in fact we believe in the tradition of these people subscribe to that the antichrist himself emerges from the remnants so those are the two terms of anchorage using. >> thanks. jm. >> i do agree that we need to understand as people studying

the problem however in terms of public dialogue in terms of the motivation of this we must name the enemy and the thing i think about why think about this is in 2013 i did a study of white supremacists use of twitter. mainstream conservative republicans and we don't insist that they be referred to as conservative or republican radicals and i think there is a double standard. it's easier to insist when it's a minority. >> thank you. >> as a public messaging matter for the u.s. government it should be careful about using these terms. as an analytical question has something to do with islam

difficult maybe to say but those are two different aspects of the problem. >> thank you for those responses. as you know in this country and i won't speak about other countries but the protestant faith we have different -- we have methodist and lutheran's and baptist and list goes on and on. when we think of muslim bets as i understand it not just one or two but we oftentimes think shia and sunni but i realize it's not that simple. when you look at those isis and al qaeda if you look at the folks that are jihadists whether it's caliphate or domination and

destruction i don't notice as much shia involvement. is it my imagination or not? could you speak to that both of you? >> certainly with respect to isis and al qaeda you don't have shia and both of them are sunni. isis and particulars vehemently anti-shia and al qaeda is anti-shia although when you think of -- state sponsorship you also have shia movements who are kind of part of our coalition in iraq. its nonstate shia militias that they put in their own set of problems. they are revising the sunni population that could create this longer-term problem so isis and al qaeda absolutely but i certainly wouldn't factor out the imp porton sub some of the shia militant groups and one

person was done good work on this is philip schneider releasing an autograph from his earlier this year which is essential reading for understanding that predict or aspect of the conflict. >> last question. mr. berger can you share the story of omar amani and your experiences with him please? >> omar hummami was an alabama native. he was born in a family of the syrian father and irish catholic mother and he became radicalized in joined al-shabaab and where it came into the story was after he joined al-shabaab he got there and discovered things were not to his liking so foreign fighters were not being treated well. al-shabaab had a nasty habit of

assassinating al qaeda emissaries who had tried to rein in groups in. there was corruption and inconsistencies ideologically so he took the intend that and put out a video saying i have all these problems with al-shabaab and i expressed my opinions and now they are trying to kill me and i need help. this was directed to al qaeda central. he imagine someone from al qaeda would come riding in to save him which didn't happen. in many ways he was the vanguard of the emergence of this and movement on social media and not the only one by any stretch but prior to 2012, 2013 jihadists use of social media was much lower. because of omar and other dissenters from the lockstep jihadi movement people started getting on line. they started coming on line to argue with omar so al-shabaab dispatched people to come out and say this guy is a liar and

people popped up to pushback on that and it escalated out from there. the same thing was happening in the al qaeda iraq context so i have had extended correspondence with a mommy on social media which was an unusual experience. some of my comments about the remote intimacy and a feeling of knowing somebody over social media are informed by that he caused when you talk to somebody briefly every day or every couple of days you can get a sense of them as a person which may be artificially inflated in your head that they become much more real to you than someone you are reading about or someone you correspond with via posts. >> very interesting. thank you all. >> thank you senator carper. senator booker.

>> i want to thank the panel so much for being here today and your written testimony was so strong and put my step to thinking about these issues and i'm grateful that. in the final minutes of this hearing i would like to ask you all if you were a senator and i know that's a scary prospect but if you all were senators are even in a high-level executive position looking at this issue of communications we use words like nascent and rudimentary before but what is the decision we are trying to get to avika the good push for two years and the chairperson said this makes us think about legislation. what specifically in terms of strategy and tactics would you want to see being implemented in a broader scale bite 2016 or 2017. anybody. >> i think we often look at this

problem in a way that's very inefficient and isn't getting to the solution. in your previous question senator he spoke to this. i referenced the u.s. government and i don't say that lightly. a lot of established companies have actually seen it as beneficial to create a startup within the company and it has been a very successful thing for a number of companies to do. i point to the tax tax company is one that did a good job of creating a very interesting tax app where people through their cell phone could get tax documents. they did this like a startup would do by creating a startup within a broader company did with respect respect to this specific issue social media would want to see a startup within the u.s. government something where we can get the best people on board and there are few layers of that. one is are we able to work with the right people? yesterday i spent the morning

with a lebanese businessman, the owner of a media company who have this remarkable anti-extremism app on his computer that his company had put together. he knows the region well and was looking around but the production value is extraordinarily high. do we have the right people in place? most people make it hard to have the right people in place so one of the things i would look at is not just a startup but the broader rules that prevent us as a government from having the best people in place to tackle this very thorny problem. >> anything you would like to provide an hearing of the image you just said and i would love to counsel on this? i think you are speaking not only the truth but speaking the urgent truth but mr. shaikh. >> very quickly subject matter expert to guide and train government agencies whether law

enforcement or military psychological operations and ultimately autonomy efforts to move us to social media. i can quote bristly formlessness autonomy. >> it's an important point because somebody else mentioned that. to legitimize the organic voices voices i think it's really important that strategy that creates an atmosphere in which those organic voices can merge without being legitimized by the u.s. government. mr. berger. >> we are getting on social media not just by isis but i rush to iran and syria. this is a difficult thing. we don't do propaganda well because we have principles that we adhere to and these adversaries don't and turns of fairness. what we can measure his volume. we talk about cse see as an

effort to programming because they are working with a handful of twitter account. what would have an impact and what would get around some of the logjams of government in terms of content would be to have hundreds or thousands of accounts putting out very innocuous messaging just to get us into the space. we can refine the messaging as we go. i think there is risk in government that prevents us from doing things that are experimental and daring in that case but space first we can figure out how to take -- where to take the ship after that paid. >> to ideas on what to do and what not to do with messaging that haven't been discussed if you look at isis english message propaganda and turkish intelligence is not your friend. we should be getting technical

insurance to turkey for changing our lackadaisical approach a more proactive approach. another thing we should be doing as a government is -- every foreign fighter from the west because we know from gb is jihadists the foreign fighters engaged in active terrorism and if that continues to be the case in this jihad we need to know he's a waiver countries who exactly these people are to the best of our ability. >> gentlemen thank you very much for a really great panel and for your work on these issues. i'm grateful and i have learned a lot. >> thank you senator booker and i'm very serious when need work on this and i certainly want to gauge the members of the panel and other experts. you can put us in touch with in terms of how do we do this. how do we set up a center of excellence and is it inside of government or outside of government whatever. >> i think it's both.

>> i agree but it's urgent. one thing i would like to do is provide witnesses a finals bite at the apple here. if there's something you want to get off your chest a final statement and i will start with mr. berger. >> looking forward we have a chance to not have a hearing like this five years from now about afghanistan. the idea that we are going to turn off the lights of our presence december 31, 2016 is crazy. the afghans want us to stay and we were attacked obviously on 9/11. it's an r. and just to stay and i think it's in the interest of both parties to say that we plan to stay and we have an agreement with the afghans until 2024 strategic partnership. the work has already been laid out so i would look forward and this is a proactive measure to prevent having the same kind of hearing about afghanistan several years from now. >> i hope we have learned that failed states are not good for

security. >> indeed. >> mr. berger. >> i think isis is a harbinger of radical social change and we need to sort of be prepared to see what happens when people can communicate in these daily routine ways with people of similar interests around the world and you can travel to join somebody in a relatively easy way. i think we are going to see social networks and societies that are going to be sorting themselves out into groups clustered around these centrists and unfortunately we are seeing what i would hope would be the worst example and that is the first but i think there is potential for a lot of interesting evolutions on how we go each other as human beings. >> i fear that as a future reality. mr. shaikh. >> very quickly in the muslim side of things given things that have happened we really