>> c-span washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up thursday morning, the atlantic -- discusses president trump's foreign policy agenda. the new york times talks about the trump administration threat to impose additional tariffs against china. and utah republican congressman john curtis on president trump's meeting with nato leaders. be sure to watch c-span's washington journal live at seven eastern thursday morning. join the discussion. >> the former chief of the fbi's counterespionage section is on capitol hill in the morning. he is scheduled to testify on the clinton email investigation and russian interference from

the 2016 presidential election. live coverage beginning at 10 eastern right here on cspan 3 and as always, you can stream it live on our website cspan.org an the free cspan radio app. >> now we take you to the washington institute to hear from lieutenant general michael. he direct strategic operational planning at the national counterterrorism center which runs an hour and 35 minutes. >> good ooafternoon everybody. i had the pleasure of directing the reinhardt program on counterterrorism and

intelligence here at the washington institute of foreign- policy. welcome and thank you for joining us for the latest in our lecture series. we just recently realized that we have been running the series for a decade now. there is a lot to be learned over the past 10 years as we look back at what we have been doing in counterterrorism and what we have been doing well, what baby hasn't worked out quite as well as we look forward to trying to figure out which of our counterterrorism strategy be. i am looking forward to having a conversation about -- i am really honored to have with us michael who assumed his position as director of operational planning at the national counterterrorism center in may 2016. previously, general served as emily of special operations command central. a sub unified -- and provided -- and participated in

operations against the islamic state. career special operations officer with over two decades of military and interagency counterterrorism operational experience. he participated in contingency and combat operations in such varied locations as somalia, iraq, pakistan, and syria. we will have him give some opening remarks and then we will sit back down. i will offer the moderators for discussion. then we will open it up to q&a from the audience. we will end at 2 pm sharp because i promised your staff -- apparently have another meeting. i promised i would get you out of here by to: 30. -- to: 30. please turn off your cell phone so you do not disrupt the

program. [ applause ]. >> thank you very much. i thought i would be remiss if i do not accept my gratitude for all the other members of the washington institute for is -- extending the invitation to be here today to make a few brief remarks. more importantly, to engage in conversation about what i came here to talk about. as you already here, i have been in my position as the senior strategist for counterterrorism at the national counterterrorism center for about three years. what i am about to try to convey to you is a melding both of my own tactical operational experience some of which has been successful in some of which has not. what do you call experience or scar tissue, i have a lot of both. but also, what i have been

forced to learn in the last two years and considering how the u.s. government in its totality, not just the u.s. military, addresses the problem of terrorism around the world. >> so what i intend to do today is discuss those counterterrorism efforts and give you my perspective particularly with an eye for how our nation strives strategically to protect u.s. citizens and our interest around the globe from the threat of terrorism after i make these two brief remarks, i will get to the more important parts which is a conversation with all of you and with matt. my goals today are to make a few remarks about what i consider to be the state of u.s. teaching efforts and in so doing provide my perspective on what the future of contesting terrorism will require. for nearly 17 years, the united states in conjunction with a large number of its allies and partners around the world, has exerted extraordinary efforts

and invested enormous treasure and to conduct -- contesting terrorism in its many forms. as all of you know, our principal focus has been on the kind of international threat the organizations like al qaeda and isis pose. during this time, the united states has spent -- sent some of its best and brightest to the farthest reaches of the globe to combat terrorist organizations and franchises in their sanctuaries. along the way, we have developed an almost dizzying array of intelligence capabilities, tactical and operational innovation, and technological breakthroughs year after year. >> as a result, all of us can and should be very proud of all that has been accomplished not the least of which being the prevention of another catastrophic terrorist attack on u.s. soil such as our nation experienced on 9/11. we rightly grieve those we have

lost along the way and still strive to take care of those who have been gravely injured and wounded in this longest of all american wars. yet after nearly 2 decades and despite all that we should rightly be proud of, i believe the time has come to ask ourselves some difficult but necessary questions. despite the capabilities we have developed and the progress we have achieved, why is terrorism today more widespread and complex than when we began? why has terrorism proven to be so resilient and adaptive despite our successes and the continuing pressure and might that we and the world bring to bear against it? as just one example of why the underlying trend of terrorism despite our best efforts are so troubling is a sobering statistic that one can derive from the global terrorism

database that is compiled and maintained by the university of maryland. since 2010, terrorism related fatalities worldwide have increased more than 300%. terrorist attack have increased by attacks have at home, federal law enforcement open in our to suggest that our efforts have been proven, the plain fact that there's been no repetition of a 9/11 style attack on our own accomplishment. we have revolutionized, and i do not use that term lightly, our our own abilities and practices when it comes to attacking terrorist leaders and plots is likewise a big deal. that said, i would like to share with you some observations from my perspective both as an

operational practitioner for several decades and today as a dc based strategist strike me as jermaine toward answering these questions. 9/11? first, where have we been since 9/11? the lion share of our investments have gone into developing new capability and capacity that are primarily oriented on identifying, illuminating, targeting, tracking, and as we say in the ct world, finishing terrorist and terrorist plots. our principle focus both tactically and strategically has been toward developing our ability to eliminate terrorist leaders, their foot soldiers, while simultaneously identifying and disrupting their most dangerous attack plans. this has driven extraordinary investment in new intelligence capability. a revolution in military affairs when it comes to combating irregular and insurgent forces.

and the creation of new agencies focus on hardening our infrastructure, and investigating and disrupting violent extremist threats both inside our country and abroad. second, where are we now? on the one hand, as i've all ready described, we have developed enormous proficiency and expertise in ct, today. most recently, when the islamic state exploded on to the world stage in 2014, the united states was far more ready to grapple with and begin the military defeat of that entity that would have been possible 17 years ago. on the other hand, the fact that isis suddenly emerged as a strategic surprise for the united states only four years ago should be a sobering realization for all of us. it has compelled a large number of experts within our ct community to recognize that for all the successes we have had, violent extremism in virtually

every form continues to be very resilient. i'd like to provide three examples to emphasize this point about the size, capability, and resilience of terrorism today. first is a personal experience. more than a decade ago, i once commanded a foreign fighter task force that focused on foreign fighters that were joining al-qaeda in iraq. i vividly remember that we were struggling to deal with fighters that totaled in the hundreds. since the rise of isis in 2014, our best estimates are that in excess of 40,000 foreign terrorist fighters have flocked to its black flag in that time. second, isis unfortunately has been a strategic pioneer in at least two arenas. first, it is weaponnizing and effectively employing commercially available and

affordable unmanned aerial systems. as much more capable technologies such as unmanned aerial systems become more readily available to anyone with a credit card, a terrorist's ability to create highly lethal ifect is no longer dependant on centralized planning, centralized training, or centralized preparation. second, and in some ways even more dangerously, is this group's innovative use of online propaganda, including social media platforms to recruit, radicalize, and mobilize individuals to violence. no longer is the creation of new terrorists primarily dependant on physical or face- to-face contact between a prospective recruit and a terrorist recruiter. nor do new recruits require extensive training or guidance given the islamic state's emphasis on encouraging its

followers to conduct attacks in their home countries using sink simple tactics and easily accessible weapons. consider that the truck driver in nice, france in 2016 was able to kill and maim as many people with his truck as a large ied attack would have. and third, as many of you recall, we had a notion right after 9/11 that quote, we will play such an awesome away game that there will never be a home game. nearly 20 years ago, i had to confront the sad reality -- i'm sorry, nearly 20 years later, i've had to confront the sad reality that inspite the impressive nature and the enormous effectiveness of our away game efforts. and we should be proud of them. the over all movement of terrorism and violent extremism has proven durable and resilient to our attacks. today we are contesting an unprecedented scale of violent

extremist activities. not just internationally. but against a wider array of domestic and home grown violent extremists on our own soil. assuming the forgoing is reasonably accurate, we're faced with a question of how to make ourselves and our allies more effective in reducing the size, the capability, and the resilience of terrorism, not just how to identify and attack it. we must find a way to preserve today's impressive ability to disrupt terrorism while significantly strengthening our ability to reduce terrorism in all its forms. both internationally where it threatens u.s. interest or u.s. citizens and more effectively, within our own borders. while we maintain our all ready formidable ability to disrupt and detect activities, it's up to the united states to shift more of its investments in people and capability towards what i will imperfectly call

nonkinetic prevention of terrorism. it may seem a little unusual for a military special operator like myself to make such an argument. but like many of my military colleagues, i've been forced to confront the simple reality that attacking terrorists is not in and of itself creating lasting strategic success against terrorism. it's necessary, but it's not sufficient. i'm not suggesting that we reduce our investments in what we have so successfully done in the past 17 years, illuminating and effectively attacking terrorists. nor am i suggesting we necessarily need an equivalent investment in what we have committed to kinetic cts on nonkinetic capabilities. the organizations both governmental and nongovernmental that currently strive to prevent terrorism or terrorist activities have neither the absorbative capacity or the proven methodologies today that could

justify such a massive investment approach. further more, the federal government has learned that it must be very thoughtful and very careful in how it supports or even resources or funds prevention programs and activities. especially with respect to our imperative to ensure civil and constitutional rights, personal privacy, political freedoms and free enterprise are protected. what i am suggesting is simply this. we need a much more vibrant dialogue and effort. both within our government and across our society about the degree to which we are willing or able to increase our investment in terms of fiscal resources, manpower, and genuine policy support for at least five related mission areas. first, becoming more effect assistive in assisting local communities and families in identifying those vulnerable terrorist recruitment and enabling local actors to either

prevent or off ramp these individuals or groups by teaching them how to address their needs or grievances without resorting to violence. second, becoming more effective in contesting terrorist ideology. both as a global command -- i'm sorry, becoming more effective in contesting terrorist use of the internet. both as a global command and control system and as an increasingly powerful radicalization instrument. fourth, becoming more effective at preventing terrorist travel. both internationally and domestically. and fifth, becoming more effective in denying terrorists the resources they need to operate and to propagate their ideology. it's important that i acknowledge that thousands of extraordinary and dedicated people both within government and across civil society. both at home and abroad are striving to succeed in all five of these arenas today.

they deserve the credit that is due them. unfortunately, there are simply not enough of them. they universally suffer from resource short falls and most importantly, they would benefit from the kind of constant and durable policy support that kinetic ct approaches enjoy today. identifying terrorists and their plots has exhibited vivid and substantial support. not everything we did was successful but we learn from every mistake. we were willing to absorb these set backs, publicly defend them against domestic and international criticism. and persevere because it was so important that we learn how to succeed. if we're to become successful in the five nonkinetic arenas i've outlined, it will take the same kind of sustained commitment. we do not yet know all of the

prescriptions, approaches, skills, capabilities, or organizational models best suited to strategically succeed noncan i netically. and it will only be through the kind of ruthless experimentation that we were once willing to endure in our kinetic journey that we will learn how to be equally successful in preventing terrorists. this will ultimately determine if we learn to prevent the creation of new terrorists as well as we are able to kill or capture them today. i'm going to stop there. i would be delighted to answer any questions you may have. ordeal with any challenges you may wish to make to any of my assertions today. thank you for listening to me. i appreciate your patience. and we'll move to q&a. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> if i if i could have someone move this podium back so that i can see people on this side of the room as well.

if we have plenty of time, we'll get to everybody, general, thank you so much. there are several things that come to mind. but i'm going to ask you one for starters so we can get going. by my count, four of the five missionaries, the nonkinetic missionaries that you just laid out in one way or another touch on what we once called kind of radicalization, and then we called countering violent extremism. now some are calling terrorism prevention. some are still calling it countering violent extremism. it's the one area, strategic nonkinetic terrorism, that there's still a tremendous amount of debate about. especially in this administration. when i look at what we do on cbe as a country abroad, i see us doing lots of great things, and indeed the state department office that deals with these

issues is ntcve. you mentioned the home grown violent extremist threat, there's a lot theses less happening at home. if you asked how would you better shape our cte efforts here in the homeland? >> there is so much there i could try to address. but i'll try to be brief about this. the thing that i'm most concerned about. not just inside our own country but pretty much everywhere around the world is how -- is what i consider to be a strategic deficit in various forms of support for the people, the leaders, and the populations that are most likely to be successful in preventing someone from taking the path to terrorism.

and those generally are not governmental actors. this is particularly true in our own country. because we have this imperative as i mentioned in my prepared remarks. to protect privacy. to preserve the freedoms americans enjoy. and said perhaps a little more practically, just avoid the dangers of this being seen as an intrusive, unwelcome invasion by the federal government in places where many of our citizens don't believe we belong. >> do no harm. >> right. but the deficit i'm going to talk about is pervasive. in my jungment it's pervasive. it's true abroad. it's true at home. the dearth of effective training and effective education and sufficient

support for mostly civil society actors, family members, religious leaders, community, activists, community leaders of various types. so that they know how to identify those who are potentially vulnerable or may have all ready under taken the initial -- go, both internationally and in the u.s., the most frequent lament i get from community leaders, from civil society actors, the people i have described, is where can i go, who can i turn to who can teach me, who can train my people, train people in my

community? educators, law-enforcement people, religious leaders, how do we know what we are looking for? once we know we have found, what are the most effective approaches to dealing with it so we avoid globalization of violence? as allricky in the u.s., americans should know. holding a radical idea, an extreme idea, is not a crime. it is constitutionally protected, necessarily so. the treacly heart -- the tricky part is how to help local actors identify those who are beginning to take that path avoid violating their rights? avoid creating the impression? this is all just a government program to spy on americans, and yet be effective in preventing the final step of violence.

it is a very tricky thing. what i consider some of the complex kinetic operations i have been involved in, some have been very complicated and tricky, but i think what i just described is more complex. >> if you could wait for the microphone and identify yourself. -- other people will quit to use them, we have plenty of time -- other people will get to use them, we have plenty of time. >> michael gordon, wall street journal. stillght against isis continues, particularly in eastern syria. implications the of removing the 2200 u.s. troops from syria at this point in time? what needs to be done to consolidate the gains, interns -- in terms of stabilization and the international community doing enough?

i'm going to try to take this in three bites. the last part was consolidate the gains, if i remember right. the fight against the islamic well, is you know very not confined to eastern syria. it's not even confined to syria. we do have to finish off. we are well on the way to finishing off the remnants of the declared geographic caliphate, that has shrunk down to a small part of the euphrates river valley. there arem is that

still plenty of isis fighters elsewhere in iraq and syria. may have adopted primarily insurgent taxes -- tactics, but they're still terrorists. even when we finish the fight in the euphrates river valley, isis will still be in relatively car numbers -- large numbers in iraq and syria. including something we should all be worried about, a large number of foreign fighters. the coalition has finished off a lot of those people, but there are still a lot left. they have gone to ground in a lot of cases -- places, but they remain a threat. they will still be a threat to those people longed after we have finished off our military operations in the euphrates river valley. the fight is not over, it it is not even over in iraq and syria,

even once we finished off the last remnant of the original geographic tell if it -- caliphate. i begged the question, which leads to the other things, what do we do of what remains? my view is that the role of the u.s. is irreplaceable in dealing with what remains. there are many different formulas one can come up with about what the nature, composition, or size of the american involvement is. some of those are going on today. i don't know what the outcome of those debates will be. my view, and i express this view in the circles that i live in inay, the role of the u.s. maintaining focus on the remnants of isis in iraq and

syria is irreplaceable. if we are not the galvanizing after, i think it is very unlike the someone else will do our place -- unlikely someone will fill our place. if the pressure on the islamic state remnants in iraq and syria is lifted, all you have to do is refer back to what happened in isis,rney from aqi to to realize what the remnants of isis will all become stronger. what can be done to consolidate the gains? you what can be done to consolidate the game. you ask anyone in our development agencies. anyone, any of the civil society actors in countries like jordan or iraq or what have you, you'll get the answer i'm about to give you, if -- if -- if the governments in that

region are unable or unwilling to redress the original grievances that allow the morphing of the rem nanos of aqi into what became the islamic state, there will be no consolidation of our gains. in other words, we cannot consolidate the gains there. the people in the region have to consolidate the gain, some of them are trying. we have, it's in our interest to support them. wherever and whenever we are willing or incapable of doing so. but consolidation of the games cannot be done by the united states. the consolidation of the game haves to be done by people that live there. >> over here on my right. there you go. >> tim andrews. i'm a contractor at the state department.

you spoke so resources for nonkinetic activities. i was wondering if we could drill this down a little bit and look alt the nonco we are assistive noncan i knelt i can activities. in other words, other than law enforcement, and ask you the question of whether we have our risk for that kind of activity calibrated properly. we've been willing to take a fair bit of risk on the kinetic side. in my observation, roughly over ten years in this arena, we're not very willing to take risk on the doors of nonkinetics. what can we do about it? >> the short answer is i think it requires us to make different decisions. the longer answer is this, in my opinion, as well as my experience, if you want to see a very vivid example of a term i used, policy support, watch

what international leaders do in the wake of combat casualties. as a general, what you hear a policymaker say is this is very tragic, and very unfortunate, we mourn our dead. we're going to take care of the family. but the best way to honor our fallen is to persevere, we have to keep going. this is so important. we have to keep going. we have to be willing to endure and absorb these blows and these set backs. that's a common experience in the military. in these nonkinetic arenas or nonco we are assistive. nonkinetic arenas as you styled them, often that does not happen. when there's a set back, when there's a perception of failure, very often, this is not just true of the united states government. this is true of governments around the world. the international community tends to flinch from failure in these nonkinetic arenas. companies were less willing to

accept risks in these arenas than we are in direct combat with the enemy. that's a decision. that's a choice. whether we're aware we're making it or not. that's a choice. so i come back to my original answer, it will require us to make different decisions. i'll close by being a little more specific here. this policy support can take many forms. the one i just described is the most important. but there are other examples as well. in my role as the director of strategy at nctc, we periodically do assessment of how our fiscal resources and the capabilities that they fund are being used. i doubt it will surprise you to know that a very small fraction of our counter terrorism expenditures go to things like counter messaging, terrorism prevention, etcetera. it's a very, very small investment that we make.

now, as i said in my prepared remarks i'm not suggesting the hundreds of billions we pour into campaigns needs to be translated into these arenas, that can't absorb it. and there are still a lot of things we have to learn. there are things we could fund that could blow up in our face. we need to be careful here. but they do need people and they do need money. that's also a form of policy support. more people and more money, recognizing that some of this won't work. recognizing that if we're willing to accept fatalities and keep going, we should also be willing to see an effort to counter an ideology or to prevent the recruitment of an individual or group that may fail. may fail very badly, the united states government or our partners could get accused of

every sin under the calendar, everything from being foolish to being perverse, but if we're not willing to accept that, it begs the question, how serious are we in this arena? because we don't know everything that can succeed in these arenas. this is in direct contrast with our kinetic experience, we have years now of knowing what doesn't work in tracking down and capturing or killing a terrorist. we have two decades of experience. there are probably some people in this room who can harken back to some of the ways we tried to hunt terrorists right after 9/11. we don't do those things any more. because we learned they didn't work. we have not under taken a similar journey in nonkinetic counter terrorism. on the topic of terrorism prevention, i'm frequently challenged when i make remarks like i did today. you got to prove to me it works. my answer to that is we've not

yet tried hard enough to know what works in some ways. i'm reminded, i'm going to mangle the historical episode. but the basic version of it is thomas edison once replied after he was being showers showered with international praise for being the light bulb. he said i didn't invite the light bulb. i invented a thousand ways to not make a light bulb. we have to be willing to under take that journey when it comes to ct. >> thank you. maureen from counter party international. my question is many countries from egypt to bangladesh are often accused of accusing their counter terrorism provisions as part of their efforts to crack down on dissent. which is increasing grievances

and frustrations. and fueling radicalizations. how can we hold our partners to really focus on the real threats that matter. the only the only reason i'm hesitating is i doubt anything i'm about to say is anything you haven't heard before. >> it's complicated. i need to do better than that. i'll try. there is a tendency -- it's not just true of the united states. it's true of a lot of governments around the world that are confronted with a very dangerous physical threat from terrorism. because it is an emergency in many cases that you don't accept risk in confronting the physical threat which means you do accept risk in other places.

increasing the possibility that some of our partners or allies around the world may take license with the support we give them in ways that we do not want them to. in my view, we have to confront the question, is everything an emergency? is the tyranny of the now so important that we have to accept the risks involved in some of our partners going on excursions into activities or behaviors that we believe make the problem worse. but our tendency has been to treat everything as an emergency. and i'm going to take a little poetic license here. i've been looking for an opportunity to say something about this. i'm going to take it now. please forgive me.

i want to offer this audience something to think about. probably something you're all ready thinking about. terrorism, obviously, is a very important problem. any physical threat against anyone's life is obviously an important problem. but terrorism is hardly the leading cause of mortality around the world. i was actually looking at an actuarial table in preparation for public remarks like this several months ago. i was examining in an insurance actuarial table the leading causes of mortality. one of the things i noted is i have a higher likelihood of being killed by a household pet than i do from a terrorist attack. i'm not trying to equate the two. but it's instructive to this regard. when one considers the number of americans that have been killed by terrorist attacks since 9/11, obviously we had this awful event that killed over 2,000 in a single day. but aside from that, the number of americans that have been

killed in terrorist attacks has been -- every death is a tragedy. but the number of americans killed by terrorist attack has been comparatively small when one considers the number of americans that have died in traffic accidents, opioid overdoses and the like. so it begs this question, is everything an emergency? i think the answer has to be no. but our tendency has been to treat everything as an emergency. and i think unintentionally, we sometimes invite what your question suggests. sometimes we inadvertently inable activities, behaviors, or other things that actually ensure that the problem never gets solved. >> right up here in the center from dan. hold your hand up for a second.

there you go. thanks so much. dan with i 24 news. a little bit on the political background that as americans, we live with the reality. and specifically, since 9/11, there have been changing of administration. so i'm wondering if encountered terrorism work at least in offering plans and your insights and your strategies it's effected by changing of administration, who's the president? his advisors think? are you effected by that? or will you insulate yourself. >> of course i'm effected by it. anyone in government service is effected by a change in administration. policy goals. change to some degree. policy preferences change to some degree. so -- but i know that's not the answer you're looking for. yes, i'm effected. all my colleagues are effected by change in the

administration. what has remained constant though, i'm going to over simplify just for the sake of brevity, every administration in my view since 9/11 has adopted the goal of, we're never going to have another 9/11. from that imperative has flowed much of what we have done for 17 years now. whatever we do, we're going to prevent another 9/11. that's been a policy imperative that's not changed from administration to administration in my view. and i think rightly so. that said, we've also been very consistent as i tried to illuminate in my prepared remarks. in being primarily focused on those activities that lead to

the death or the capture of a terrorist. where our focus has generally not been is on preventing the creation of new terrorists. and that's also been consistent from administration to administration. we published strategies and plans about this. but if one examines the policy support, the manpower, and the money we've committed to these things, it's a tiny fraction of what we devoted to bringing a physical finish to a terrorist around the world. and that's the balance that i think needs to be redressed. but that's not unique to the current administration, the previous administration, or the administration that was in power on 9/11. we have not made a -- not an identical. as i've all ready suggested. i don't think the nonkinetic community, if i can use that imperfect term, could have soared the resources that have

been showered on the kinetic side. but the imbalance, there's too much imbalance. and that has to be redressed in my view. >> behind you, we have the ambassador. i'm with the counter extremism project. you indicated that social media companies are the soft under belly of the internet. they have become weaponnized by terrorist organizations. social media companies in the united states claim that they're doing a more effective job helping to reduce the proliferation of terrorist activity, etcetera, etcetera. my question to you is the following. and yet, through the back door, we in our organization are witnessing how isis is using collateral platforms of facebook as well as google etcetera to now hide in plain

sight. given the fact that these social media companies have indicated they're doing more, if you could get them to coeven more than what they're doing -- could even get them to do more than what they're doing, what precisely would you ask them to do? >> thank you for the question. first of all, i think we should give credit where credit is due. i doubt there's anybody in this room who is not aware of the tens if not hundreds of thousands of extremist accounts , untold volumes of extremist content that's been taken off of mostly the large media platforms. the ones you've all ready eluded to like facebook, twitter, many others as well. i think we should give them

credit. they have done a great deal of work to take down that content. and that's all to the good. the world has benefited from that. i want to start by giving credit where credit is due. it's also important to recognize that you don't have to be a company like facebook to create a prolific social media platform some of the most famous social media platforms or most well known, commonly used social media platforms, if you actually look at who's running it, it's pretty close to a mom and pop cottage industry. because it doesn't take a lot of people. but our attention has been primarily on the big tech companies. not the smaller organizations. but perhaps more importantly, i think there's an unanswered question about taking down

content. that we have to address before we go back to anybody in the tech sector and say you have to do more. what's the connection? what's the correlation between taking down content and reducing the scale of terrorism around the world. i, personally, am uncertain about that. i would like to believe there's a direct causal correlation. the more we take down the content, the less terrorism we'll have around the world. i'm not yet convinced that's true. at least i have yet to see any empirical evidence that it is true. i'm not suggesting we should not take down that content. people get killed with that content. but i'm not convinced yet that taking down more content makes the kind of strategic difference that i think some people assume it does. i am unconvinced of this. it may be true. i would like it to be true. but i'm not yet ready to embrace the idea that it is

true. so my -- this probably sounds like i'm dodging your question, but my caution to the people that do in our government, engage in the tech sector is, before you ask them to do more, should we not examine how much of a difference does this actually make? because first of all, we shouldn't do things that don't actually reduce the scale of terrorism we have to deal with. but just as importantly, and i doubt this will surprise you, taking down content, extremist content, is an imperatively easy task for these companies to do. some of the things we'd like to ask them to do that we don't would effect the profit margins their stakeholder interests. their livelihood depends on fostering interpersonal connections on the internet.

if we're not careful, we're going to make -- we're going to demand things of them they're simply unable or unwilling to do. we may be approaching that boundary all ready. i think there's a step we have to take. how much of a difference does this actually make? >> to the left here, the gentleman with his hand up. there you go. >> my name is larry. and i'm a retired foreign service state department. i had the pleasure of serving in turkey when general nigato was coming through pretty often to work with the turks. so my question is general, looking back on it. do you think our joint work with the turks was largely successful. and are there some lessons learned that if you had to do it again you'd employee? first of all, it's great to see you. and i would be remiss if i didn't say thank you to you and all your colleagues in the

country for putting up with me for all those repetitive visits. of course looking back is always a dangerous exercise. but i'll try. as i look back on it my personal view is there really was no alternative to doing what i would argue people like you, people like me, the ambassador, were all trying to do. and that is, take the time necessary to encourage and persuade our turkish colleagues to take this journey with us. now, there are people in this government who completely disagree with me, as you know.

and i don't criticize them. i can understand why people in our government and across the coalition -- but regardless of what our turkish brothers think, we have to do what we have to do. that was not the tack i was taking. but i had the freedom at the time to fake the approach that i was taking. and as i look back on it, of course it's easy for me to convince myself that what i do works. but i do believe it was working. the question i could not answer is could the united states, could the coalition afford the time that it would take to bring our turkish colleagues along the way with us. i still don't know the answer to that. yet, if i had to do it all over again, would i do it differently? no. >> in the back.

thank you general, you know october 16th, militia attack -- no news confirming, day after day isis became stronger and active around -- how important is it to -- and how do you describe security situation over there and what is your opinion of the kurdish leadership in fight against isis, thank you. >> thank you for your question. i was actually recently in northern iraq visiting some of my kurdish colleagues that i remember from when i was a younger officer deployed to iraq and it was a great reunion. first of all, i want to pay tribute to the, particularly,

the soldiers and the officers in the those early days. you were holding the line when many other forces were either unable or unwilling to hold the line. and so we should give credit where credit is due. kurdish bravery, kurdish skill was a very important -- was a very important measure and a very important capability that prevented a very dangerous situation in iraq and it prevented it from becoming catastrophic. so i want to pay tribute to that. and i told my kurdish colleagues when i was in northern iraq a few weeks ago, i think that kircook is going

to be a challenge for the new i iraqi government. the new election has just happened. we don't have a final forum for the new government. but once it is in place, kircool will been an early case for the new government. as you know very well, both the curds in the north. as well as the central government in baghdad both have interest in kirk cook. i think the best people on both sides are trying to find a path toward some kind of joint administration for kirk cook. i've -- i've heard people on both sides caution americans and other coalition members that there's significant payroll for the entire country if that joint administration agreement is not reached. and i agree with them.

but none of this is possible until the new government in baghdad has been fully formed. so this is a story that's yet to be written. some reasonable, mutual hi acceptable joint administration kirk cook, if it's created, will send a very important signal across both the country and the region that if we are to prevent a return of the islamic state or something like it, there has to be a different political outcome in this part of the world than we've had previously.

i just returned from israel. more than spitting distance from gaza. sitting in that chair about six weeks ago, seven weeks ago was a woman who said to us, $250 million into gaza a year or two years ago. obviously iran is the principle supporter of terrorism. i think global terrorism. are we doing enough to counter that globally within africa or south america or in the middle east? could you comment on that? thank you very much. >> i can try. i want to start by saying that at the risk of sounding like i'm trying to dodge your question, the question about are we doing enough? or is the world doing enough because iran is recognized by many countries around the world as a state sponsor of

terrorism. it begs the question, what are our goals ? very obviously we would like iran to stop being a state sponsor of terrorism. we would like terrorism that's connected directly or indirectly with iran to cease. you know, but, just based on your question, are we measure blue closer to that today than we were a few years ago? probably not. that said, our administration has made no secret of its intent and its determination to deal with, i'll use a u.s. government turn here, to deal with iranian, malign behavior, including state sponsorship of terrorists or terrorist like activities. so that's our policy intent. that's our policy goal. is to be much more effective in

contesting iran's relationship with terrorist activities. but it is unfinished work, sir, some of it is under way now, i'm sure you're aware of some of the sanctions, obviously the withdraw from the joint plan of action is a component of this. but there is much more yet to be decided and based on those decisions, there's still much more yet to come that we have not yet decided. so this -- we are at the very beginning of this administration's journey to contest iran's use of terrorism. or terrorist entities around the world.

so i guess rather axiomatically, we've only just begun. >> the secretary of state has given us this twelve point plan. which has been described by some in government as the building block elements of a strategy. the secretary is in the region right now saying things like custom -- is engaging in malign activities. so how does someone like yourself try to translate these big statements, we will destroy hasbala. into actual counter terrorism strategy. >> i want to avoid turning this into a seminar about strategy development. at a minimum we try to look at this through two lenses. the red lense, or the enemy lense. what are they trying to do. how are they trying to do it?

and unfortunately, iran has many instruments at his disposal when it comes to terrorists or terrorist like activities. they've got their own state organs. they have proxies and surrogates around the world and the region that are at their disposal they can use to conduct malign activities of many different types and iran is a global actor. whether we like it or not. they have people that will to their bidding in the western hemisphere. not just in the middle east. they have people that will do their bidding in europe and in asia. we have to understand what we're grappling with. that is an ongoing process. just understanding what are we actually tangling with? how much are we actually tangling with when we deal with iranian misbehavior and malign

behavior, and then finally on that score, we have to recognize they have the ability to retaliate. you know, if we harm them, they have the ability to harm us or our allies. we have to take that into account. it doesn't mean we should shrink from action. we have to be ready for possible reaction. that is also ongoing. finally. what can we do? what are we willing to do? impose cost? send strong signals ? or curtail activities. i'll use one example here. iran is a very capable potential adversary. we will need exquisite intelligence to be effective in

contesting iranian use of terrorism. that's not been where our intelligence community focus has been by in large for the last 17 years. and increasingly, there are other demands. north korea, other nation states that we're worried about beyond iran. so one of the things that we have to take stock of is how much of our intelligence community capabilities can we afford to devote against a very complex and very formidable potential adversary when it comes to iran. when its intention with unrelenting demand for those very same exquisite intelligence capabilities for other problems. you know. our limiting factor is not our ability to impose costs on iran. our limiting factor is our

ability to know where, when, how, and what the likely outcomes would be. and those are all intelligence questions. the ic is coming and going as i'm sure you know very well. with all the multiple terrorism and nation state challenge bans that are pouring on to the dni every single day. >> thank you. thank you general for your remarks and for your years of commitment to the cte and the whole mission entirely. it's greatly appreciated by those of us that have been fighting the fight. i've retired after 13 years in the fbi. and i spent a lot of time in this town. and i could not agree more with your statement about newer decisions and risk analysis and moving away from such high level of risk aversion and nothing gets done. with that said, one of the

great fears that we had that fortunately has not evolved as we thought it might was the danger posed to our country domestically by returning foreign fighters. without getting specific, i'd like to hear you speak to your level of confidence that we know who they are, we know where they are, and when they return, our plan is in place and we'll be effective to the degree that it can be -- and will be effective to the degree it can be. >> i spent a fair chunk of time worrying about the foreign fighter problem. not just for the united states but for many of our partners and allies around the world. i'm going to a conference soon to discuss this. but you use the term confident. we know a lot. we don't know enough. i've used the term in my pri peared remarks that we believe, our estimates, our best estimates are that something in

excess of 40,000 foreign terrorist fighters have joined isis since 2014. astonishing number. the problem is it's a low confidence number. there's a lot of latency in our reporting. we sometimes don't know that a foreign tiger joined a terrorist group or may have even traveled back home until months or sometimes even years after the travel has happened. that's not because we're dumb or incompetent. it's a function of what i said a moment ago. there's so much intention on our intelligence communities, so many multiple competing demands, our abilities to focus, collection, and analysis on just the foreign fighter problem is limited. very limited. so it automatically makes it -- it automatically calls into question our confidence in

making such assessments. but our analysts are trained to be conservative in their estimates. so the 40,000 number is certainly low. now the good news is many of them -- a very large number of them are have died during the military campaign of the last four years, that's all to the good. but thousands of them remain. i'm going to change your question slightly. what's our confidence we can track them from places like iraq or syria to their next destination which might or may not be their place of origin. unfortunately, the same answer, our ability to focus on that question with limited intelligence resources is limited. so we are often surprised by the emergence of a foreign fighter that we once knew was

in location x but has now shown up in location y. and i want to point something out, we're stopping foreign tiger travel, it's a necessary component. it's part of, i would argue, the things we should do noncan i netically, just making it much harder for terrorists to get on an air mean and travel internationally. but i want to point something out to everybody. this is no small task when you consider the fact that the world is very busy liberalizing international travel .. international travel has never been faster. never been more convenient. never been more available. and never been cheaper than it is right now. so while we've been busy liberalizing international travel, we have to under take the challenge of identifying a tiny fraction of that traveling population and preventing them

from traveling whatsoever. reae when we global trans are liberalizing international travel. it is necessary, when you have to succeed at this is this, but another arena that i do not think gets as much attention as it should. >> this is another arena i don't think gets as much attention as it should. >> >> thank you. my name is dan green. i'm a fellow at the washington institute, also a reservist and worked at the state department for a while. i was wondering what were some of the other lessons you picked up during your time in the military in various tours when it comes to harnessing local operations that defeat terrorists groups, whether it be in afghanistan or the anwar awakening. i think there are a lot of lessons to those often contrary to how our bureaucracies are

designed and often are institutionalized often are quite readily abandoned. thank you. >> thank you. i'm going to give you a very personal answer here. this is deeply colored perhaps badly biased by my personal experiences, but here's my answer. if someone want to be effective in harnessing, collaborating with having a functional and effective relationship with a foreign actor of any kind, an international actor of any kind, i don't care whether it's a local tribal militia or a foreign government's military, the key to success is personal relationships. and language logic our logic and our language about ends, ways and means aligning interest are important. i'm not trying to discount that, but in the absence of taking the time and making the

investment necessary to forge personal relationships with these actors there's only so far you can go. after the last 17 years there's a small cottage industry of books that have been published about what i just said. >> dan wrote two of them. >> whether it's titled like three cups of tea and what have you, but the common denominator among those that i've had a chance to read is that this is fundamentally dependent on getting to the point and this happens in our own societies. so it shouldn't surprise us. it happens in american culture as much as it happens anywhere else in the world. you get to the point in developing your relationship with someone -- i have my own memories of this. that's why i'm making this such a personal answer -- where some

local leader is looking at me, a much younger version of me with darker hair saying things like well, you know, what you've asked for here is very difficult. we would not do this normally, but over the months you've done some things for us. we trust you. so because you are asking me, we are willing to do this. if somebody else were asking me, the answer would just be no. now maybe that's just for show. maybe they're lying to me, but this has been such a frequent experience for me that i've come to rather passionately believe that yes, you have to have your logic. you have to have your nation's stated interests in mind. you have to be mindful of the talking points you were given, but in the absence of a personal relationship, particularly when lives are on the line, particularly when the stakes are very, very high, you don't have a personal relationship with the people you're trying to work with, you're probably never going to get there.

>> i read that somewhere in your book. dave pollack raised your hand, right here. >> thanks very much, general. i want to ask you about something that may be sort of a happier prospect here, which is on the -- >> happiness is in short supply, so i welcome the question. >> i thought you'd appreciate this, but i'm not sure if you agree, but it seems to me that in the long term on the ideological front that there is a promising potential today that did not exist until very recently, which is a change in the policy of countries like saudi arabia in particular, but others as well in the way that they institutionally propagate

islam and trying to move in a more tolerant and less violent and generally more enlightened or moderate direction. >> right. >> we've seen that here at the washington institute where i am where we posted senior clerics from some of these countries and heard a very different message in the last year or two from what we've heard. i wonder if you have any way of assessing whether this has made a difference so far, whether you see that in the longer term it could yield some significant benefits for our overall international counterterrorism effort and if there's anything else that strikes you about this phenomenon. thank you. >> i'm going to start by telling you something that you've probably already heard. it's a fairly common story in this town. i can't remember the exact setting, but it was a high ranking leader from china who

had come to visit one of our war colleges, i think a war college, and he was asked the question by somebody in the audience what he thought the significance of the american revolution was. his famous answer was too early to tell. i'm not trying to be i'm not trying to be trite about this. it immediately popped into my head as i was listening to you. this untying this at the risk of using a bad analogy the gordian knot of the variety of causes, grievances and ideology of terrorism as we see it around the world is going to take generations. i actually keep on my rather messy desk a copy of george cannon's long telegraph just to

remind myself it's not impossible to take a generational approach to a problem. take communism. it's just rare. i think the world, not just the united states, i think the world is going to have to adopt a generations long approach to untying this gordian knot of grievances, causes and ideologies. some of what we've heard from our arab friends is promising, but it is way too early to draw any conclusion in my humble opinion. i applaud what they seem to be trying to do. i welcome all of it, but if fast experience is any indicator, some of this will fail. will they keep going when it fails? i ask us that question when we fail at something. will we keep going or will we quit? it' because it's too painful, it's

too hard, it's too complicated or it would take too long. if we're serious, if the world is serious, we will do what george cannon recommended in his long telegram. we will stay at this for as long as it takes. have demonstd we have demonstrated a willingness to kill and capture terrorists for 17 consecutive years. it will take even longer to untie the grievances, the causes, the ideologies. are we willing to do it? i don't know yet. i hope so or we're never going to be rid of this problem. >> >> so we've got about 15 minutes left which brings us to the lightning round because i promised to get you on time and get everybody's questions in. i'm going to mike on my right, please. >> that's matt's way of saying i'm blathering on too long. >> >> your question is? >> eric schmidt, general, new

york times. i just want to look at this point as almost an in flexion point following up -- inflexion point following up on your last response. do you see the trajectory moving forward a consolidation of these various islamic extremist groups or do you see, for instance, them needing competition between al-qaeda and the islamic space or is there yet another area more centralized? we're seeing groups pop up like these islamic extremist groups in the drz and mozambique. >> thank you, eric, good to see you. i think we will see everything you just said. we are seeing everything you've just said. you used some contemporary examples already, but i'm going to give you a slightly different answer from what your

question would otherwise led me to. i'm going to answer your question by i'm going to answer your question saying here's what i worry about the most when it comes to the future of terrorism. it's the convergence of two things i talked about in my prepared remarks. the convergence of -- and unfortunately isis has been a pioneer in both of these arenas. therefore, they've been a model and an example for aspiring extremists around the world. first of all, it's the power of online radicalization and mobilization of violence. we have never seen anything like this. as i indicated in my prepared remarks, no longer does someone trying to recruit a terrorist ever have to physically meet an aspiring terrorist. you don't even have to directly communicate with them. just get the right video in the right forum and you'll inspire that person without any

instruction whatsoever, no training, no preparation, no resourcing, no direction, a complete decentralization of the recruitment process. ng, a e it has been very effective, astonishingly effective. we wouldn't be having the conversation we're having as was suggested by one of the earlier conversations with the tech sector around the world oh, my god, get all this content off the internet if it weren't incredibly effective. we wouldn't be spending all this time on it, but converging with something else that i also talked about in my prepared remarks, the ubiquitous availability of increasingly powerful technology. unmanned aerial systems are the examples i used in my prepared remarks, but it's not the only example. i'm sure some of you in this room have seen if you have a 3d printer, you can make a firearm in your basement and that's not

just true around the united states. it's true around the world. you oacan download a constructi instructions for a chemical weapon on the internet. what happens when these two things converge as they are converging now? recruitment of a new terrorist no longer requires centralized control, centralized planning, centralized resourcing or centralized direction, radicalizing them and mobilizing them to violence. it doesn't require any central authority or centralized connection, an increasingly lethal power available to anyone that has a credit card and the ability to follow instructions on the internet. . that is the future of terrorism. i am less concerned that is the future of

terrorism. i am less concerned about large formal structures like al- qaeda. i'm very concerned about them and don't want to make light of all that, but i'm increasingly concerned about where this is all headed, a very lethal enterprise that much of our current capabilities are not tailored for. tailored for -- lethal enterprise that much of our common capabilities are not tailored for. the gentleman in the blue shirt? >> i was wondering if you could speak to some of the u.s. counterterrorism in west africa. i think highlighted last summer was the success of the special force soldiers in niger. there's been an uptick in political violence in nigeria and surrounding countries and there's much displacement and widespread insurgency in terrorism throughout the region. thank you. gen. nagata:

well, terrorism obviously -- you're obviously well versed in this arena -- terrorism in that part of the world -- it's actually true everywhere -- terrorism is a symptom of a problem, the violence that too many african societies and too many africans are suffering from, whether it's in the lake chad basin area, it's in nigeria, it's in somalia, on the other side of the continent. it's all a result of political, societal, cultural underpinning that all african nations are struggling to address and in too many cases not successfully. successfully. there is no but there's no prospect of the united states being willing to mount the kind of large scale

counterterrorism effort that we have been willing to mount so far in places like afghanistan or iraq. that's not on the table. nobody's proposing it. even if you were to propose it, i think it would get shot down pretty quickly. we've got other problems including the rise of pure state competition that we have to deal with. so we're going to have to find other solutions, we and our african allies, partners and colleagues. we'll have to find other solutions. some terrorists will have to be killed. i'm not trying to dismiss that, but i would argue the future of counterterrorism in africa could be a test for how seriously is not just the united states, but how serious is the international community willing to get involved in things to capture terrorists. >> we'll take two questions. >> i'm fighting the moderator

here. >> katie and katie you can pass behind you. >> thank you. i'm from the american enterprise institute. our counterterrorism efforts as you described them today have been incredibly enemy centric. we've also somehow drawn lines between future insurgencies, so the groups that hold the same ideology as al-qaeda and isis and the terrorist groups themselves, trying to distinguish them from what i see as a broader movement. moving forward as we're looking at how these groups and the movement of them on the ground, they're not focused on the united states or the west in the same way we're focused on them. they're focused on the people and my question is if the enemy is focused on the people and the united states is focused on the enemy, doesn't that create

a strategic weakness in our counterterrorism strategy and how do we intend to fix that? >> the next question right behind you. >> hi. i have two quick questions. one is what based on your okays are the best practices to counter violent extremism and the second one is given the status of terrorism threat, how it's received in the u.s. government, that is like less important or emergent than the threat from pure state competitions from china or russia? how do you raise awareness or convince the government that it's important to raise more funding or focus more on nonkinetic counterbalances? >> i'll try to take these in proper order here.

your question was founded on the your question was founded on en the notion the enemy is focused on the population. we're focused on them. that's a problem. i am i'm not arguing we should not be focused on them, but what you reminded me is something that i worry about and i'm going to use a specific example here as a way of answering your question. there's a specific missionary called counter messaging. some people call it fighting the player active, contesting the ideology -- narrative, contesting the ideology. in u.s. government parlance it's counter messaging. i dislike the term. we're still using it, so nobody cares whether or not i like it,

but i dislike the term because it seems to imply it is sufficient to criticize the enemy's message. is su now i ffbelieve it is necessary to criticize the enemy's message. some of their message is hollow, hypocritical, so yeah, we should criticize their narrative. we should criticize the deal that they are offering to those they are either trying to persuade to join their ranks or simply an effort to cow them into submitting whatever it is they want to do. it's necessary to do that. it's just insufficient to do that. they're offering the population they're talking to a deal. it begs a question that we often falter in answering. what's our deal? what are we offering the same people that is more attractive, more real, more persuasive than what the enemy is offering?

that is where we often falter. one of fethe reasons we falter because it's very hard to get international consensus on what the alternatives ought to be. what i might think the better deal would be and what some other person like me in some other government around the world could be very, very different. ought to be and whai think ought to so getting international consensus or even just regional consensus on what a more attractive, more persuasive, better offer would be has been incredibly difficult and unfortunately it's had the unintended consequence of discouraging us from trying. discouraging us. in terms of your question about best practices, this is a terrible answer, but it reminds me of what my wife often tells me when i emerge from our walk- in closet having gotten ready for whatever social engagement we're going to and my wife

looks at me up and down and says will you just try. and my wi we have me to try. too often we don't try. too ofte the investments that need t.to made -- you'll use tvs as an example. about a year ago i was in -- cb as an example. about a year ago i was in a pretty important conversation with a person in government and said with all due respect, sir, i think we need to invest more in that. his immediate retort was you'll have to prove to me it works first. my response was sir, with all due respect, we haven't tried hard enough to know what works. i can't tell you what works. we don't know yet unless we're willing to try hard enough that we go through what, as i

mentioned, thomas edison went through. if we're not willing to fail, we're never going to find the road to successful that's been our problem. we're so afraid of failure we aren't willing to try. that's the best practice we could have done is try hard enough to succeed and endure the setbacks along the way. ay. >> we'll take two more. kate in the back and right in front of you also in a white jacket. we'll take these two questions together, please. >> kate bower from the washington institute and thank you, general, for being so generous with your time in this wide range of questions. i've had a question that you personally addressed, but i'll follow up back to it. you discussed in your prepared remarks the threat from terrorists getting ahold of unmanned aerial systems and i was wondering given the commercial technology what can be done to disrupt the ability of terrorist organizations to get ahold of them and deploy

them or is this more a question of looking at the battlefield responses? is this just part of the threat picture that we have to take into account from a battlefield perspective or can we do both? ? >> great question. >> pass the mic forward, please. pass the mic >> my name is meredith summers, graduate of american university. fundamentally terrorist organizations have changed to more network structures. for a journal analyst and open first researcher such as myself, where is our best efforts focused understanding how these networks are functioning? >> i'm sorry. could you say it one more time. i don't think i captured all of it? >> yeah, sure. fundamentally more terrorist networks have changed. where is our efforts best focused as journal analysts on where and how to understand

those networks? >> okay, thank you. >> beyond just mining the washington institute's website, of course. >> all right. again i'll try to take these in order, but let me make a quick note to myself here. note. on unmanned aerial all right. on unmanned aerial systems, first of all, i'm going to stipulate something that i actually would like to be wrong about. the toothpaste is out of the tube. we're not going on jam the toothpaste back into the tube. the you wick it -- ubiquitous available of unmanned aerial systems, there's no way to roll that back in the spool. it's out there in the wild. for those of you that don't know, there's an international sport called racing drones.

i was remiss. i was actually intending to check. periodically i do an internet search for what's the fastest racing drone i could find. by the way, there are propeller and jet engine driven racing drones now for those of you that don't know. the last time i checked was about four months ago. i'm sure it's faster now. i went searching for what's the fastest propeller or jet engine driven drone i could buy with a credit card and have in three days. four months ago propeller driven about 200 miles an hour, jet engines in excess of 400 miles an hour. jet you don't actually have to weaponize that. it already is a weapon. alreada now the good news is the lion's share of people around the world are using them for recreational, peaceful or commercial purposes. that's all to the good and i'm not suggesting we stop any of that, but it's like every other

technology since the dawn of mankind. if a bad actor wants to use it for a bad purpose, they can and they will and it's happening now. isis is showing the way. but the thing that i worry about most is that increasingly these platforms are exceeding the neurologic capability of the human brain to pilot. human. they are already achieving performance characteristics that exceed what a human being can match on his joystick. man n match on his so increasingly people are flying these systems with using a form of artificial intelligence you can put on a smartphone. intelligence you caa so we're phdealing with robots, flying robots. robots. it begs this question. are we willing as a government

to innovate faster than the commercial industry is innovating? aster than the commercial industry? matthew: >> not if you can't regulate. >> or that. there was an editorial that came out from the homeland security secretary recently asking congress to take a look at this, but this is not static. this is moving with no regard to what the united states government wants. on the ocean question, asking me for advice is always dangerous. question, asking me for advice is always increasingly i think understanding terrorism is -- there is a lot any analyst can and will learn from what we have in our classified holdings. those will always be important, but increasingly understanding

terrorism is going to require us to become much more effective in learning about terrorism outside of what is available in the classified realm. we're not particularly good at that. most analysts don't get paid or promoted for examining what is out there in the wild. they get paid and promoted for examining what's in our classified holdings. d for promd i think the future is going to require us to expand our aperture that make us very uncomfortable. it's going to require us to examine public information that has no quality control. there's a lot of quality control on classified holdings, but more and more of what's happening in terrorism isn't easily found. >> general, today you walked into the walk-in closet of the washington institute and you tried real hard and you did real well. please join me in thanking the

general and his staff for taking the time today and for making this possible. thank you. for all of you able to join us and for those of you able to join us online through the world of c-span, have a great day! .org]

thursday on c-span live coverage of the house begins at 10:00 eastern as they work on the annual intelligence authorization bill. the senate debate judicial and executive branch nominations, live coverage on c-span 2 and on c-span 3 a joint house hearing on fbi and justice department actions in the 2016 election with testimony from fbi deputy assistant director peter strzok. >> the c-span bus is traveling across the country on our 50 capitals tour. the bus stopped in anchorage, alaska, asking folks what's the most important issue in alaska? >> the economy is really at the heart of all of the struggles we're having right now. the state of alaska has been in

a hole for several years now. we experience just like most of the west coast a homelessness issue like has not been seen before. so we have poverty kind of reaching out, people camping in our parks and people struggling. we have neighbors trying to figure out how to co-exist and so the fact is the state and feds aren't investing in the critical public resources that we need to insure the lowest among us are taken care of and we have to challenge them to do that. >> the most important issue to me is protecting the arctic national wildlife refuge. i was there last week with friends. it is an unbelievably beautiful place that's iconic in the same way that yellowstone national park and the grand canyon is and unfortunately the tax law of 2017 snuck in a provision to allow drilling on the coastal plain of the refuge. we're doing everything we can to stop that drilling.

the natives and other alaska natives are also working to stop that. alaska is a lot more than just oil and gas and those who live on the land and subsist and embrace the fact that the caribou help them survive and are an important part of their way of life are active in this movement and we'd like to do what we can to help and protect this iconic place. >> alaska has among the highest healthcare costs in the country. so if the federal government could fundamentally restructure american healthcare, provide universal access to healthcare, that would go a long way to helping this state. >> right now the most pressing issue i hear about from constituents has to do with concerns about crime. i believe that efforts to increase the police force have been yielding gains in this area, but people are still, you know, very worried and as the mother of three kids that's an issue, too, for our family and one of the reasons why i chose to run for office. >> be sure to join us july

21st and 22nd when we'll feature our visit to alaska. watch alaska weekend on c-span, c-span.org or l last month the house energy and commerce subcommittee held a hearing to consider legislation requiring a uniform anti-doping and medication control program and horse racing. representatives andy barr and paul tonko spoke about their co- sponsored bill addressing the issue and a panel of horse racing and racing officials shared their positions on that bill. this is about two hours and 15 minutes.