traditionally the leaders of modern warfare but now you see it playing a lot on the internet en bin businesses around the world. we feel we can operate in social media. >>host: in recent testimony before the house

committee you said isis presence on social media is a cancer. >> i think it is. we both testified in the hearing and it was unanimous and the incredible presence of isis and the reach they have had. talking to a former foreign minister of italy, talking about the terrorist groups of the '70s and the '80s and the recruiting efforts. and it focused on handing down pieces of paper or a flier with the red stars on the top. but with social media they can take the recruitment

with the geographic location that is a powerful difference i would love to hear his idea but to catch up with them but our groups but governments now trying to confront the new theater of terrorist workers. >> so the use of propaganda to use the tool that was available at the time their

appropriated to may remember in the old days to opus - - open an office in london to have the era of broadcast media. but this terrorist media and the propaganda of the islamic state. the isis brand is revolutionary. the message is not new, repackaged but the way that they do it with the other terrorist groups have not been able to do. >>host: in your testimony alberto you say the good guys are outnumbered. >> yes.

most people condemn the islamic state. there are not a lot of public leaders as did that in the world so if you look at the media worldwide no doubt there is more of us and them but look where people are searching for this type of stuff with the subculture to radically outnumber somebody else. >>host: what is the middle east media research. >> an organization founded almost 20 years ago and the pioneer in the leader to prevent the reality of the middle east of the people of

the region to focus on terrorism and radicalization and arabic or farsi in presenting the tools for key information for what is said so what you see they say one thing in arabic and something else to the foreigner. >>host: a little more from your testimony we need to recognize just like they have flourished they have taken advantage of the most un governed go.

>> we all know that and appreciate that to save the libertarian default position some of those followers are poisonous. they take advantage of rules of service with the technical space with the social media companies provide to use it as a weapon to radicalize people. >>host: have isis been effective with their use of social media? to this service providers have a responsibility? >> uc the collision between new technology i joked in

the past some people think there is so right to tweet in the constitution but there is no reference but obviously a right to free speech so the parameters are fundamental to our society. we concluded that certain types should be prohibited for example, if you are engaging in the stocking of women online bin you be prosecuted for those who are blindly asserting the right to engage in certain social media are overlooking the fact there was a right of

speech and we have to have that debate when it comes to terrorism. wended knowledge they have a problem they should not be appropriated by terrorists with the recruitment or fund-raising break call to action i think they have been successful the reason why he describes them as the most successful because the lifeblood other than money and real is from foreign fighters by systematic recruitment effort and

around the world recruiting to their shores. but alberta made a valid point to understand where they're coming from. we have to deny aid the ability to take down as many as we can. there was a game that you hit the pocket -- a puppet and it pops up somewhere else. when they come back they have you were followers. so we have to systematically take down the accounts and understand what resonates so we advocate messages simply fight in syria.

>>host: do you agree with mark there is a responsibility on community service providers? >> on the very least there is to be a conversation it seems it is a common-sense first step we had an op-ed in "forbes" magazine to say the social media space has been abused and that the very least there should be a discussion. >>host: mark wallace back to your testimony. extremists have been more agile and is the s - - and insidious. >> historically i believe

that is absolutely true and alberto has been on the front lines and his ben underfunded. this discussion reflects the interest in with the state department trying to catch up to minimize the reach to hold people accountable to send back the message up is not an idea if you are attracted to this today

britain into rehabilitation you spend much more attention and regrettably it is the sad stories of young people being recruited to fight many died en terror attacks from lebanon. where we see the footprint of other locals who were radicalized or foreigners and then commit homegrown terror attacks. nine pc eight growing group of opposition. >> those are all good steps but basic the use of the

propaganda is revolutionary. but what gives it power but it is the story that they tell. with the end of the world a rigid lifestyle giving structure to those that dreamless. we need to do technical steps and get in their face but also answer them. there is discussion about ways of the counter narrative but there are some basic ideas that have been proven to be somewhat effective to take a little

bit of air out of it. >>host: you talk about isis messaging about utopian version of jihad that is a wide range that many approaches are not violence build. >> most are about states building. were to give money to a widow. the second largest category is what i you used to is battle footage. the third is that it is made for us the grotesque

violence. it is for people they want to recruit and encourages not the weird and crazy'' we're used to. >> i will push back on one thing. i agree about the counter narrative. with the ability to reach but i also believe it tries to change -- chase the end of the "rambo" but if we suggest these perverse messages will not find a home to resonate no matter what we do. it is the combination to deny that insidious the u.s.

to that region. . . minimizes the horrors of what isis is about. they're treading different messages and they will always find at least some small group of people that will resonate in. i don't believe isolation a solution will prevent them from convincing someone that their cause is right and just. guess who it did downside you define congeners impaired all

too often people use it to make kind of you know a warm cup of cocoa and a blanket. when i mean the common narrative is what are the things that are going to cut them down to size. the number one counternarrative in the islamic state is military victory. it's crushing them on the ground , it's them being shown as losers. a huge part of their narrative, when they talk about the things i mentioned, the state-building and the combat video, those are related intimately to the v. v. word, to victory. you can show them as losers and show them losing territory, they can show them retreating from cities, if you can show prisoners, if you can show weakness that is the most powerful narrative to be used against the islamic state. we forget they can now there are narrative is based on the real world. they didn't talk about taking mosul, they took mosul, so the

most powerful narrative is the reality on the ground showing them that they are not this god ordered perfect society in the islamic prophecy that everyone says that they are, they're basically bunch of losers. >> guest: there are is going to be some people that are bitter dead enders, you know? but we can certainly kind of take a lot of the numbers way down if everyone sees them as the losers that they are. we are not quite there yet. we have a challenge to the physical isis state is under a lot of military pressure and all too slowly being kind of weekend. the virtual state the one that we are talking about is still very healthy and very powerful and very aggressive so we have to make the reality of the physical state catch-up to the

shiny image that's presented in the propaganda. >> guest: i fully agree with what you said and i think we are very like-minded way you describe counternarrative but i also wanted about that again using another comparison, the war on drugs for example became a battle for ideologically driven solution in there with some of with some that would abdicate for example a narrative at one point during the counter extremism debate that was all about poverty. it's not all about poverty. our friends at george washington university that attended the panel at george washington university did a wonderful comprehensive report. we also put out a variety of things on the subject. it is not that poor vulnerable youth. it's across-the-board. the age is different and they come from the different backgrounds but i think you find because of an ideological perspective and a proxy battles

of those ideological perspectives coming into play people wanting to superimpose their old ideologic elites can be a counternarrative. i have to agree i wish everyone would describe it as opportune since some. >> guest: it attracts weird off-the-wall people. one foreign-policy -- wrote a brought a lot of exotic views. >> host: let's start with you ambassador fernandez. how does your group monitor terrorist organizations in social media and the same question to you mark wallace. >> guest: we are the leaders in this family still are in and we don't monitor terror, we monitor it all. we honor political speech and we monitor developments in the political social field. we look for interesting things that people are not aware of. a large part of which is

obviously the discourse of terrorist and extremist whether isis or hamas or kind of a crazed cleric who says the earth is flat and we need to cut the heads off of the jewish because that's what we want to do. we look at it all and we producer rapidly and provide analysis of what's going on. what are the political intellectual trends in the region? >> host: but how do you physically do it? >> guest: we have physical -- to its old school. these are people that armed 24/7. they are across the world. we have people in the middle east who know the language and not deeply who are native speakers of the language. they are looking on line and looking on twitter and looking on television. they are looking at terrorist videos and there are people who are steeped in unfortunately,

steeped in this. we provide that context for people on various sites on line. >> host: ambassador wallace? >> guest: also this has been exclusively, we monitor the news around the world and try to understand the narrative and memories a great help in math but also operationally it's been very much the on line phenomenon so we have a team of people also in offices in the state and in europe, in brussels and london, berlin and the middle east. we try to monitor social media and the networks of these propagandist recruiters and those are falling back. he described these as networks. in fact, the community of these propagandist even though the numbers range you see something

like 90,000 tweets a day to 40,000 accounts in existence and its eyes changing but the networks of those accounts and the architecture of those accounts is not nearly as fast. what we try to do is understand where they are and report on them and identify who are the people behind it. that's why i think our focus is very targeted on social media aspect where we think much of the terrain is being played out in much of the recruitment is being played out. one of the things we have seen in terms of recruitment of foreign fighters, twitter really beginning to gateway for people to be exposed to jihadi recruitment. typically they would go to some other social media platform for example half of them -- they can have a one-on-one come -- conversations asked questions about what are they like to join isis.

they can have a secure conversation and potential recruitment travel through the area and frankly plane tickets and a border crossing in turkey. >> host: this goes again to the point of the service provider. you call it secure but somebody within that company knows what that conversation did is happening in knows what's in the conversation. is that correct? >> guest: it depends is the answer i give. the reality is they should know what they should allow. i think the phenomenon of social media thing what's nice is the first phenomenon and the other area that is troublesome is the secure messaging either phones or apps or the like that are out there where people feel that they have a secure discussion. i think it's very important with

appropriate warrants that law enforcement and different types of platforms has been a robust advocacy from the head of gp hq to general clapper here suggesting that secure messaging app is an secure messaging devices are being of security and their inability to track a potential terrorists or those that are being recruited. frankly there are and insipid comments by the executives were they say oh privacy and security mitigation is paramount over -- i think that's unserious and i think any of the executives of the companies need to take a hard look at what they are providing. they are providing a great service and there has to be appropriate due process to ensure that they are not eating

confused whether the travel of foreign fighters. >> host: alberto fernandez brings up the issue of encryption with some of the techno companies are against having it back door. >> guest: yeah i mean we all realize how you useful social media is and all the sapsin everything but look we do have a problem. there is a site telegram for which memory did a very long report on. it's a german, russian service which is a very recent thing and things got more difficult for isis relatively speaking in twitter. they moved to telegram and there was a time when something in germany, the number one language on telegram was arabic.

and it wasn't love letters in arabic crater was terrorist using it to get their material out. >> guest: it wasn't that telegram are placed twitter. twitter was the place where people -- telegram is a messaging app. the person they run to telegram was the executive that referred to secure communication's over security and we have to shut that down. that allows communications that are secure at all costs. i think that's serious but you should think of twitter as a funnel where people are initially exposed in math. people can go to messaging apps and arranger variety of different things of so it's a chain of communications of different platforms. telegram was the key messaging app and we are hoping and we have sent statements and telegrams that hopefully they will do a little bit better but i think they could do much better. >> host: mark wallace and

alberto fernandez what would you like to see the the u.s. government and other foreign governments do to mitigate some of this use of social media? >> guest: i think the starting point should be our current laws. our current laws related to terrorists, especially national referred to material support of terror. material support can mean a lot of different things. obviously if you give a kalashnikov rifle to a terrorist you are giving them a weapon and that's clearly -- but how about a hunting knife? a hunting knife is a hunting knife except in the hands of an isis killer. i probably we ought to have a robust discussion in the united states that they are really a on notice that their platforms are being used. i think they have to have policies and procedures in place, a lot of which we are proposed.

and the ability of terrorists who use these platforms. they don't i think we have to ever robust discussion at some point that do these platforms support these terrorist groups? i know there are laws under consideration in congress regarding this. i think we should have that debate. what is the main? you can't just turn a blind eye and say oh to medication over all else we have a right. i think industry needs to be part of this base and i think we have ever robust discussion about what the appropriate limitations are. we are not there yet and hopefully we will get there with discussions like this. >> host: alberto fernandez. >> guest: i agree with that generally but i would add the biggest step we can take is to be more serious and more intense and are dismantling of the islamic state in its homeland. that's the most important thing. that's the best propaganda we can make. guess we need to work on these

things and there's a larger issue of the jihadists salafi ideology which is poison and rampant imports of the world but the most important thing about this problem is take a rock off from them, take mosul from them, reduce them to where they were in 2011, 2010 when they were still killing people and doing terrible things but they didn't have a state, much less a state which is gods gift to to humanity which is what they presented as. >> host: alberto fernandez the vice president middle east media research institute former u.s. ambassador to equatorial new guinea, came to the u.s. as a refugee from cuba in 1959. mark wallace is the ceo of the counter extremism project former u.s. ambassador to the u.n. representative for u.n. management reform, served as general counsel to the imf and

senior adviser deputy campaign manager to george w. bush in 2004. gentlemen thank you for being on "the communicators." >> thank you. >> thank you.