wallace, ceo of the counter extremism project. we try to counter the existence of the propaganda. focusing on the economic and social networks that support terrorism. we try to use the power of economic pressure and social media to thwart extremist efforts in the new theaters of warfare. you see it playing out in the internet. businesses that are providing support for terrorism.

host: you said that the presence of isis on social media is a cancer. : i think it is. i was talking to a former foreign minister of italy. we studied terrorism in college a long time ago. we were talking about the terrorist groups of the 70's and the 80's. we are talking about the recruitment efforts of the red brigades. those efforts focused on handing out pieces of paper in a cafe with red stars on the top. imagine if they had social media. recruitment and

they can reach into internet cafes or computers or to reach young people around the world. that is a powerful difference. terrorists and the recruiters have done a good job of using this new technology. i would love to hear alberto's thoughts. we need to catch up with them. i think you can see the efforts andur group and others governments trying to confront this new theater of terrorism. alberto: terrorists have always used media. of media for propaganda is not that new. they use the tools that are available at the time. they appropriated.

in the old days, when al qaeda first started they try to open an office in london to put out its media. later on it latched onto the phenomenon of an arab broadcasting. there is terrorist media and then there is the propaganda of the islamic state. the isis way of doing things is revolutionary. the message is not new. the way that they are doing it is something that other terrorists have not been able to do it in the same way that the isis does it. said that in the highly charged space we are talking about, the good guys are heavily outnumbered. alberto: most people in the

world condemned the islamic state. newspapers or television oppose those guys. will have the production of media worldwide, if you look at hollywood, if you look at madison avenue, there is no doubt that there are more of us than there are of them. but if you look at the narrow space where people are searching for this type of stuff, this they radically outnumber everybody else who is sending out those messages. memri is the leader in presenting the reality of the middle east.

in the voices in the words of the people of the region. -- issuesn air shoes such as terrorism and radicalization. in turkish, in urdu, and other languages. is being said in their own words? all too often what you see in the region is that people will say one thing and arabic and another thing in english for the visiting foreigners. we try to present that reality is quickly and as accurately as possible. host: you said that just as extremists have flourished in the ungoverned corners of the they have also taken advantage of the mostly ungoverned states existing in social media.

alberto: there is an inherent libertarian default position when it comes to social media. let a thousand flowers bloom. but some of those flowers are poisonous. this is what they take advantage of. rules andadvantage of technical means. things that social media companies provide. they use it as a weapon against us and to radicalize people. st: has isis been effective in its use of social media? mark: i think you are seeing a collision between the new technology, although it is not there is nomore,

right to tweet in the constitution. obviously there is a right to free speech. we have talked about how the parameters of free speech in the united states and other places are fundamental to our society. but we really don't have free speech. we regulate speech in a lot of different ways. have decided that certain types of speech should be prohibited. if you were engaging in child speech wouldthat be censored and you would be prosecuted. blindly in favor of some sort of sacred right of engaging in social media or texting are overlooking the fact that we have a right of speech

but we also regulate that speech in a variety of different ways. we have to have that debate when it comes to terrorism. you are starting to see some progress as twitter acknowledges that they have a problem. terrorists have appropriated their tremendous platform. they shouldn't be appropriate by terrorists. whether it be recruitment or fundraising. calls to action. i think that they have been successful. you have seen them reach in. the mostidn't describe successful terrorist group to use this technology. money hasblood of the been reaching those foreign fighters. building this recruitment effort , in theut the world

united states and in russia, recruiting foreign fighters to their shores. alberto makes a very valid port -- point that we have to understand where they are coming from. we have to take down as many of these accounts as we can. there was a game i was young a mole.acrimawhack if they come back again they have fewer followers. identify these messages and understand what resonates among these vulnerable communities. can advocate messages that will discourage people from joining terrorism. or god for bid committee

terrorist attack in the united states or any other country. alberto: there needs to be conversation and that conversation has to occur. piece in forbes the socialying that media space is being abused. even the terms of service of these companies are being abused by terrorists. at the very least there should be a discussion. host: you said that the said truth is that terrorists have been more agile and more insidious than governments and the private sector has been in tracking them.

mark: historically i believe that is absolutely true. the underfunded state department offices. reflects that. strange bedfellows, a variety of people coming at this from different places. trying to catch up and take down, minimize the reach, hold people accountable. andlso identify messaging send back a message that discourages terrorism. a path for responsible and good people to pursue. we have to deal with that in turn them away, divert them into rehabilitation and the like.

there we much more attention being paid to that area. stories of young people being recruited. dying and their families are devastated. terror attacks in paris and lebanon. we're starting to see the footprint of locals that have been radicalized or outsiders that come in and are radicalized and commit homegrown terror attacks. important and now you are seeing a growing group trying to deal with the weaponization of the internet. alberto: those are all good steps. of basicare all kind steps. isis isof media by

revolutionary in the way they do the swarm on the network that they have. what gives it power is something mark mentioned, the narrative. it is the story that they tell. it is a powerful story. about the end of the world and empowerment. and code thatyle gives structure to people that are aimless. we need to do all those technical steps of making life more difficult for them. we need to get in their face. we also need to answer them. is lots of discussion about ways to produce a counter narrative. a lot of them are little silly. but there are some basic ideas that you can put out there. they actually have been proven to be somewhat effective over time. in terms of taking some of the air out of these efforts.

you talked about isis messaging is mostly about jihadi, grievance laden messages. many of these approaches are not necessarily violence filled. of them are about state building. the guy making pizza or somebody paving a pothole or giving money to a widow. it's not about cutting off hands or stoning people to death. the second thing in that category is something that we are useful. the second-largest category of isis stuff is battle footage. good guys shooting in the air against the bad guys. videos, the grotesque violence.

most of their message is for people that they want to recruit. it's not the weird crazy head cutting stuff that we are used to. there is a logic behind it as well. mark: let me push back on one thing alberto said. i agree with him about the counter narrative. i believe we have to engage in both. i also believe that counter is tryingin some way to change the unicorn at the end of the rainbow. we have to do it and we have to be smart about it. toll be fooling ourselves find that these perverse messages would not find some homes to resonate in no matter what we do on a counter narrative side. there's a combination of denying the insidious actors on the internet the social media to

reach into these homes. we've all been subject to telemarketers in our homes. from someeem calls poor young stockbroker selling some penny stock or some trying to sell us a cruise and we all hang up. obviously it works and they tried messages across the board to different people. in some ways, not to minimize the horror of it, that is what isis is doing. they are trying different messages and they will always find at least some small group of people that will resonate with. i don't believe counter willtives in isolation prevent them from convincing someone that their cause is right and just.

alberto: it depends on how you define it. what i mean is, what are the things that are going to cut them down to size. narrative one counter against the islamic state is military victory, it is crushing them on the ground. showing them as losers. narrative is their which ist video related to the idea of victory. losers,an show them as retreating from cities, elements of weakness, that is the most powerful narrative we can use against the islamic state. we forget that their own narratives is based on the real world.

mey didn't talk about taking osul, the pit. it.hey took we need to show that they are not some perfect society that is promised in islamic prophecy. they are basically just a bunch of losers. they're always there be some people that are bitter dead enders. certainly take some of the numbers they would weigh down if everyone sees them as the losers that they are. we have a challenge that the physical state is under a lot of military pressure. we need to show them being weekend. they are still very powerful and very aggressive. the reality of the physical

thing, needs to catch up with the images presented in the propaganda. mark: i think we very like-minded on this. that the warknows on drugs became a proxy battle for ideological leaders. there was an narratives that it was all about poverty. there was a wonderful comprehensive report on this. it is not the poor and vulnerable who are joining these terrorist groups. they come from different backgrounds. it is across the board.

you find that ideological perspective. people want to superimpose their own beliefs onto this. agree which the way alberto described it. alberto: one person said that same-sex marriage was a way to defeat isis. there are a lot of exotic views on this. host: how can we monitored -- extremist organizations on social media? alberto: we monitor everything. we monitor political speech. we monitor developments in the political and social field. we look for interesting things

that people are not aware of in the last. a large part of which is the discourse of terrorists and extremists. or hamas ors isis hezbollah were some crazy cleric who says that the earth is flat. fight -- siphon it all. we write an of what is going on. one of the political and intellectual trends in the region? people, theycal are on 24/7. we have people in washington. we have people in the middle east to know those languages. they are looking online and they are looking on twitter. they are looking at terrorist videos.

in people who are steeped this stuff, you can put it in context. we provide that context. monitor newssi all around the world. we have a team of people in offices here in the states and in europe. brussels, london, berlin. and also the middle east. we try to monitor social media to map the recruitment efforts of these extremists. alberto described it as networks. the community of these

pointed thes numbers range from 40,000 to 90,000 tweets today. the networks of those accounts and the architecture of it is not nearly as fast. we try to understand where they are. we report on them and say who are the people behind them. our approach is been very targeted on the social media aspect. we think much of the terrain is being played out. twitter really became the gateway for people to be exposed to jihadi recruitment on behalf of isis. they could have a one-on-one conversation and ask questions. what would be like to join isis.

then they pursued to these candidates through a secure messaging app. they can have a secure conversation discussing their own potential recruitment issues. tickets and border crossings in turkey. host: you call it secure but someone in that company knows what the conversation was. mark: it depends. they should know. the phenomenon of social media but there ised also the secure messaging. people feel that they have a

right to have secure discussions. i think is very very important with due process that that lawte warnings enforcement have access to these kinds of platforms. advocacy been a robust on this kind of thing. these devices are a real pain of the security services. it makes it harder to track potential terrorists. you see frankly insipid and unserious concepts from the executives of these companies. they say privacy is paramount over security. i think that is unserious. look atd to take a hard what they are providing the people. to ensureto be a way

that they are not being misused to plan terrorist attacks or facilitate travel to and from syria. host: this brings up the issue of encryption. alberto: we all realize what a social media is. we do have a problem though. that's a nap on the site we did a very long report on showing the german and russian service. things got more difficult for isis on twitter. the number one language on

telegram was arabic. it to terrorists using get their material out. mark: it wasn't that telegram replaced twitter. app.s a secure messaging that is a bit unserious. you should think of twitter as the final where people are initially exposed en masse before they go to secure messaging apps and look at a range of a variety of different things. it is many different platforms. telegram was a key app in germany. hopefully they will do a little

bit better. host: what you like to see the governments do to mitigate some of this use of social media? mark: the starting point should be our current laws. they refer to the material support of terrorists. material support to mean a lot of different things. be giving a rifle to terrorists. what about hunting knife? which have a robust discussion in the united states about how these companies are really on notice that their platforms are being abused.

laws that limit and denied the ability of terrorists to use these platforms. discuss oureed to these platforms providing material support to terrorists? we have to have that debate. you can't just turn a blind eye if you are social media company and say privacy over all else. industry needs to be a part of the debate. we have to have a robust discussion. we're not there yet. alberto: i agree with all that in general. take isest step we can to be more serious and more dismantling of the islamic in its homeland.

that is the best propaganda you can make. this ideology is poison and it is rampant in some parts of the muslim world. is, reduce them to where they were in 2011. they were killing people and doing terrible things that they didn't have a state much less a state that is god's gift to humanity, which is what they presented as. host: alberto fernandez is the memri.nt of e is the ceo of the counter extremism project.