chief economist thomas hazlett about his book, "the political spectrum: the tumultuous liberation of wireless technology, from herbert hoover to the smartphone." politics history and of u.s. communications policy. at 8:00 eastern, the conversation between walt mossberg and the america online cofounder, steve case. c-span bus tour continues its 50 capital tour in january with stops in columbia, atlanta, and montgomery. they will speak with state officials during our live "washington journal" program. join us january 16 at 9:30 a.m. eastern for a stop in rodham, north carolina when our guest is north carolina attorney general, josh stein. a look at how violent

extremists use social media, and what is being done about it. washington journal talks with a federal official who wrote a book about it. host: we continue our authors series, welcoming haroon ullah. his book was published in october called, "digital world war: islamists, extremists, and the fight for cyber supremacy. ullah, before we get into the fight for the digital battlefield first define some , terms for us, especially the important distinction you make in the title and throughout the book about islamists and extremists. -- between islamists and extremists. dr. ullah: thank you i am , thrilled to be here to talk to you about something i'm passionate about. part of it is that i think islamists, when you think distinguished from extremists you look on a couple of different dimensions. do they play by the rules of the game? what did they say publicly about the constitution? do they use extra electoral

means with votes or trying to run for office? the big one is do they use , violence? do they think violence is a legitimate way in terms of communicating and achieving their goals? when you look at those markers, you will find by and large i think of islamists as a group that has a foundation in religious orthodoxy but plays within the rules of the game in the current mandate. extremists want to use extra out -- electoral means and violence because their aims are different. host: how do islamists use the digital battlefield here, and how do extremists? i know it is a spectrum you talk about. dr. ullah: let's take islamists islamists are interested in , first. audience segmentation. historically they have been not as influential. so they see this information

battlefield as a new arena in which to recruit people and raise money for the political party. of a pan-arab identity. extremists are different. i think of extremists, they use things like black swan incidents, because the return on investment for doing a big terrorist attack or suicide bombing is just exponential. isis is getting a lot of free media when they were doing these beheading videos, producing game of thrones type apps for young people. their audience on their end is a very low investment to put themselves on the map. has isis proven to be the best at using the tools on the digital battlefield? dr. ullah: they have. if you think of taliban as elementary school and al qaeda as middle school, isis is in college. they have taken it to the next

level. they built an ecosystem, a fan base. they think differently about the ways to communicate their message. at the end of the day this is a , content war. this is why this information battlefield, which is not as well understood -- we know about social media, but i am talking about the whole spectrum, social media, deep web, dark web. they have perfected a way of how to reach people in a way that is sophisticated, and with the mantra that the narrower the audience, the bigger the impact. host: i want to explain that a little bit by talking about some of the specific platforms you go into in your book and how these groups use different platforms in different ways, whether it be facebook or twitter or youtube or dark web spaces. let's start with twitter. how do the extremists and islamists use twitter? and what is their goal on twitter? dr. ullah: twitter is interesting because they are able to use bots.

they use a lot of computational tactics. what they are trying to do is amplify their message, trying to get folks out there. they will put up something that they know will violate twitter's terms of service and it will get taken off, but then they regenerate. part of it is, how can we do that? the other way they use it as they will have some of their key influencers put out things that do not cross the terms of service. on twitter, the number one person on twitter, and extremist -- an extremist religious leader in saudi arabia, he will put a picture of a bushel of apples and say the caliphate is bountiful. does that violate the terms of service? it does not come on twitter necessarily. , it is not that he is advocating anything violent, per se. he is not putting a like around the black flag of isis. they will come up to the edge and they know they will reach one audience on twitter, and then move them to a more end-to-end encrypted app like whatsapp or telegram or

something else. they have a whole range of how to reach people. host: go to facebook. is it a different tactic and strategy being employed on facebook? dr. ullah: i think on facebook what they will often times do, they are looking for -- facebook is great for them in terms of how they can see where they can get the likes and see where they might be able to get people that are sympathetic, that engage with them in discussions. it is like finding a needle in a haystack. somebody that is sort of reaching out, somebody that might be interested in some of that content. they might see somebody that likes something that is seemingly pro-isis, so for them it is really about targeting and that is where facebook is important. twitter is about amplification, facebook is about targeting. host: youtube is another platform. you talk a lot about it in your book. dr. ullah: youtube can visually tell the narrative. even if their videos get taken down, they can regenerate and be put on other places. they do everything from two

minute highlight reel clips to raw, authentic video, person on the street-type of video. they are attuned with visually telling the narrative, because for the young people they are de. .ndependents, (202) 748-8002 how long have you been studying this digital battlefield? guest: probably too long in some ways. alwaysinteresting that i thought about what drives young people toward extremism. i grew up in rural america in a

small town, and grew up intellectually curious. and lookuld see haroon at me and say, what is going on in the middle east? i would say, i don't know. i drive a truck. i play tennis in baseball. -- and baseball and i don't know. i have no idea. that planted a seed in me because i wanted to go abroad and make sense of what is happening in iran, pakistan. could this be the black box for people, like we saw the soviet union 50 years ago? i went abroad and a lot of times i went into cap's, tell a band and al qaeda camp's and i would ask people, what made you join? tell me your journey of how to get here. first we need to understand what is going on if we want to counter the dynamic. so often, i think we miss out on the first part and jump to --

because really my goal as a policy practitioner, i do not want to just write about this, i want to solve it. i want to put together a project to mobilize people, because there are thousands of malallas. how do we mobilize all these pieces? that is what i talk about. host: how did you make it into those caps? -- camps? guest: i was doing doctoral work and as a student and many people do not go in that area. there is restrictions. i tried to take the chance to get into the northern area of pakistan and i came to them almost as a journalist saying, explain to me why you are doing what you are doing, and they wanted to talk. nobody ever asked that question because of the danger and what they represent, so i was able to get access. in that area of pakistan and

afghanistan you have to have a political family, so if you do not have that, you are in trouble. i had people who looked out for me and believed in my aim so i was able to interview them. in my earlier book, that is what i talked about, which led to this book, how do we explain that idea, the mentality, almost like a customer journey? a young person's journey. did a job in the state department under secretary tillerson and he recently left. what was your role? guest: we produced white papers, tried to coordinate national security and think about ways of , how do we tackle the main key issues facing u.s. national security? host: you are now at the broadcasting board of governors. guest: it is an $800 million global media industry. voice of america. middle east broadcasting network

. it is really an amazing platform , producing over 7000 hours of broadcasts a day in 71 languages, original content. for me, the work, the stories that the broadcasting board of governors is telling his fascinating. it is reaching audiences all around the world. how can we -- audience? how can we be more effective? host: haroon ullah is with us for the next 45 minutes, taking your questions and comments as we talk about the digital ward war -- world war. republicans,gain, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. likean start calling in tom did from florida on our line for democrats. caller: i wish you could

elaborate on the use of lots -- bots. it and aretouched on putting a purchase price of about $58,000. i wish you could elaborate on it a tad bit. guest: that is a great question. they are a big piece of this. i had a piece that came out yesterday in "vanity fair" which looked at isis 3.0, the role of silicon valley, and bought on the information battlefield. 2014 startedn, in using confrontational tactics cheap, itecause it is scales up exponentially, and they are able to reach an amplification and resonance in the way that they normally would not. back then, some of the companies like twitter and facebook were a little slower and did not have

the teams to take them off the internet, so their ability to live on and able to gain traction was much higher. bots,he sophistication of they learn from the russians and the elections last year, so they use those tactics because they are able to reach key audiences in urban areas. host: explain isis 3.0. guest: the way i thought about it was in early 2014, most people were caught off guard by the rise of isis. we were still talking about al qaeda and taliban. the people that noticed isis where the web operators, people that sought them online. they started seeing virtual beheadings, and it took a long while to mobilize against that. in my head, now we are talking three to four years later, what is next on the horizon? ul and pictures from mos

people want to say mission accomplished, but it is not because isis has continued to adapt. what are the next iterations around the corner? when we thought of al qaeda, we were thinking cameras and caves and an ice came along. -- isis came along. we are seeing that new iteration and whether they have the staying power is a new issue. i think of them as kind of a cloud caliphate. they are thinking about the information battlefield in a unique way and they are using crowdsourcing to recruit people, using bitcoin to raise money. this is the new iteration, and they are thinking about extremism on a new level. host: they are not as interested in creating a physical caliphate that they would have to defend physical space? guest: that is right. they are almost exclusively in this virtual space. you do not have to travel anywhere. you can stay where you are. it is a different approach and

they may be realizing there is a whole suite of things they can do like shutdown electrical grids or steal intellectual property, things that have an effect. u.s.o we as the government, international community, mobilize? we have the best thinkers in silicon valley, the best tech people, the best military. young people all over the world are trying to get on the front lines of this, that we have a collective action issue. that is why i advocate for a new manhattan project. we have that type of urgency. host: pittsburgh, pennsylvania, james is waiting on the line for independents. caller: my name is james and i do not think there is a politician out there better than me. my thing is why? why are we still wanting to blow each other up?

why are these young kids wanting to commit suicide, putting on vests and blowing up themselves? these are children. what is so wrong in the world now that people feel so depressed they want to kill themselves? what is wrong? president trump is out there golfing. we got your question, the why is what james wanted to know. guest: that is a key question and a subject of my research. the why part of it is identity grievances. these young people grow up and see a system that does not change around them, let's say in the middle east. they grow up with dictators and being a failed arab revolution, so they want to do something. a lot of young people -- a lot of the work i did was interviewing defectors. i wanted to understand why young people went to isis. i want to ask them, what was it

about their propaganda that attracted them. many of them said, we want to get rid of bashar assad. they got sucked in and by the time they got there, it was too late. there are a lot of dictators in the region, and they feel like if i play by the rules of the game it will not work. they oftentimes are not very religious at all, are not appealing to that idea. a lot of them have criminal backgrounds and mental health issues, but they get recruited because they want to try to do something. to me, the idea is these honorable the youths, we have to provide them with a positive alternative narrative. host: if they can find their way to an isis recruiter, why can't the united states government shutdown those avenues? guest: part of it is it is hard to find oftentimes. they oftentimes are communicating with an encrypted platforms, tweeting on things

that it is difficult to get access to, and many groups are using coded language. they will use things like kitten , two of my favorite things. kind of like gangs, using color-coded things and visual things. it is almost like a see something, say something. the same ways you think about child pornography and identifying diseases, we have to have a new approach, almost like a public health approach to thinking about getting leaders on the front lines. oftentimes, i make a point that all radicalization is local so if you look at it, you start seeing patterns. for example, in tunisia, 80% of foreign fighters come from one small neighborhood in tunis. if you look at the same thing in belgium, you start looking at the pattern. this is not everybody is a potential extremist, it is a small sliver coming from one

area. it may be a charismatic leader. there may be a chain of people being recruited. connecticut, avon, line for democrats. you are on with haroon ullah. caller: i have a question regarding viruses on websites. a lot of them can come from downloads, but these click save advertisements, do you think these will change? i want to believe i have been randomly selected to win two free ipods. i like to believe i am the 999 thousand 999th visitor on this website. , do youest question is think this will change and there will be viruses out there? guest: you bring up an important point. the click bait attracts people for a variety of different reasons, and i think there is something being pioneered by

google and other folks called the redirect method. it is using this idea of click .ait to identify vulnerable use when i google search something about syria or about identity grievances, on the right-hand side it will come up ads. those can be targeted, because you can see what people are searching for. maybe on google, how do i buy a ticket to go to syria? the ads on the right-hand side, through this redirect method, it makes it so that people think they are speaking to them and when they click on it, it leaves them down a path that gives them information. often information they are seeking can move them away. isis is not what you think it was. it is not club med for foreign fighters. here is another thing if you want to do something productive, here is a peace corps or something productive, because young people do not want to be told no. i want to do something.

host: a part of your book focuses on the history of this digital battlefield. "in every country in which they have a presence, islamists have proven more adept at using established then governments, and indeed almost all other politically active forces, crippling ruling parties first in the court of public opinion and then on -- guest: they had to go underground because there were no public forums to congregate. they were banned or censored. they had early on to look for ways using cassette tapes, using other means of going underground because they were afraid of state-sponsored violence. so they were able to pioneer certain things on the internet before others as it was about survival. host: you mentioned cassette tapes.

talk about the history with the iranian revolution. play a bigette tapes role in spreading the message, because as many people know, the ayatollah was abroad and exiled in europe most of the time. how do you get lectures he was giving to people that were hungry for this content? it literally was a whole system of basically cassette tapes traveling in suitcases and carry-on baggage, and people taking it all over and making copies in their basement, and people congregating in a basement to listen to lectures. that is how, early on, how communication traveled and how these lectures modal dated -- motivated and mobilized people. i must 30 years later, the information battlefield is so much wider. host: lewis is in pikesville, maryland, line for independents. caller: i think the whole mantra is common sense.

, you have interviewed those students in the areas, but the americans need to hear some of the students' answers, and this is what i mean. you need to substitute the word radicalize for pest off -- pissed off. they have seen their homes destroyed, their fathers and mothers destroyed, and leaders decapitated. if you keep decapitating the leaders, you have no one to talk to, and they see desperation. it is like somebody in 1776, the british came in with central georgeand killed off washington, thomas jefferson, so they had no leaders to negotiate freedom. you need something with the word "radicalized" and put in the word "pissed off."

cause.will die for their when is the last time you heard someone say they will die for jesus? and let usmmon sense hear some of the answers the students have. host: dr. ullah? guest: you are exactly right, defector stories are so powerful . oftentimes times when i would speak to them, i would ask them in one word describes isis. i thought they would say something like dangerous or horrid or horrible, that they would say words to me like trust, the longing, identity -- the longing, identity -- belong ing, identity, and i am talking to them almost like there is a disconnect. i am listening to their narratives, what is the propaganda they are reading and what are they consuming? the factors need to be on the front line.

i took a data-driven approach. might doctoral work was that defector stories are the most popular antidote, and it is important to understand their grievances. that is the first step. host: what is the flames of war video series? guest: that is a sort of whole suite almost like a game of thrones type video series, where extremist groups are smart and realizing, we cannot reach out to young people with a 140 page book, but we need to reach out with something visually interesting, that is entertainment, that is drama, because they are coming out of the videogame generation. and are playing video games a lot of it, it is my cheese know and adrenaline filled, and they want to see -- machismo and adrenaline filled, and they want to see something that will get them excited. host: the daily mail focuses on

isis propaganda posters, some of their recent propaganda pieces targeting attacks in the west in the new year. i am wondering if you are seeing qs same thing in the visual -- cues that they are giving out, talking about attacking the west. i know you have seen this series. guest: the thing that you can see from this is they are doing things that are visually provocative. they are doing things that they know this is the main generation. they are reaching out to gen y z and millennials so they are doing things that are planting the seeds for young people who have identity grievances, and that is why it is so key. the more i talk about this manhattan project, we have so many people on the sidelines ready to fight against this. we have religious leaders all

over the world and in the u.s. we have thousands of young malallas. on social media, by research shows 1% of people are content creators. 9% share content and 90% are passive consumers like me and you. we need to get more people off that 90% into the front lines of the battle, because those stories are organic and articulate and can turn the tide. host: speaking of threats during the holidays and the new years, the story from "the new york times" the ball dropping in times square has long drawn heavy security but this year the send rooftop observation teams and counter snipers into more buildings. officers will be patrolling hotels leading up to the ball drop on new year's eve. for the first time, the police department is planning to attach reflective markers to the outside of buildings at certain

intervals so that in the event of an attack, officers can quickly figure out what floor a gunman is on. "there are no direct credible threats to new york city, to times square specifically, or to our new year's eve events generally," james o'neill, the new york police commissioner. we have about half hour left in this segment. we are talking to her room, ,uthor of -- haroon ullah asking viewers to call in. bill called from mount airy, maryland, a republican. caller: good morning. i wanted to ask -- do you look at the war as more of a means of suppressing or cutting off the message, or by countering the message and showing how they are losing the war or that they will not win or that there is a better way to go?

how do you measure success? host: fantastic questions -- guest: fantastic questions. we have to think about what they have done on the physical battlefield. the have set up a david and even ifnarrative so they lose on the physical battlefield they can win on the informational battlefield. we have to think broader than the war. god bless our military and our folks on the front lines. they are doing their job, but the problem is what we are finding is that in the virtual caliphate, in the virtual sphere they are able to build on these identity grievances. they want a war with the west. a want a civilizational war. i think it is important not to buy into the rhetoric of feeding into what they want. they want that because it legitimizes their viewpoints. i think it is very important to understand we have to present

alternative, positive pathways for these young people. my work -- and this gets to your tatnd question -- tit for messaging does not work. somebody telling me the caliphate is bountiful and i am like, no, we will oftentimes have in that tit-for-tat that i am reinforcing someone's predisposed belief, and they are more -- stronger. host: does it matter who the messenger is? guest: yes, that is why defector narratives are very important because they have credibility. let me tell you why this path does not work. the messages are important, but it is also about content. a lot of people say u.s. government produced content does not work. i will tell you, bad content does not work produced by anybody.

that can be effective. we have to think of it in a way that is almost in terms of a content war, in terms of media savvy, interns of -- in terms of, in the middle east the number one drama is a drama called "selfie." it is making fun of isis, a an going around with a take on isis, and it was incredibly popular. 20 million people watched her episode. that is incredibly important. they made death threats. 10 "selfie"ed programs as they are directly tackling, dispelling the narrative in a smart way that is entertaining. host: on the issue of counter and article focuses

on this issue. "many experts and radicalization are asking a question -- if you cannot beat them, why not ban them? instead of coming up with more theirt, why not make toxic material much harder to find on the internet? better yet, why not just remove it altogether from the web?" "i am unconvinced counter ridratives work," hany fa says. guest: i think there is a role for censorship and a lot of the internet companies have realized , from their business model they do not want toxic stuff on their ecosystem, but oftentimes we overplay the role of censorship. these groups are evolving really quickly and using a coded language. are we going to stop -- start nutella and kittens? this is a content war.

you can see about taking stuff down, but at the end of the day it is about producing content that overwhelms them in this freedom exchange of ideas, and that

and they don't want the competitors to know that they have your engineers and expertise. and they don't anoubs it. and it gets the purchase was er and $3 billion and had to announce that. and the other guys are doing the same thing. so, i mean, i do lament. i think it's a little harder for a small company to get all the way to the end line and proximate cause a big company just because it's very hard and some cases, it's legally impossible to review or refuse a very good offer. >> see the entire interview with technology writer and interviewer steve case tonight

at 8:00 eastern. part of our series, "the communicators." saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern, rth korean refugees describe life under the kim regime. >> tens of thousands are leaving without papers. and are being physically or sexually exploited while the u.s. is continuing to urge china and russia to support economic sanctions, it should also do more to stop beijing repay try ating detectors back to north korea. >> sunday, james clapper in his career in the intelligence community.

>> at noon, former clinton administration firms on the legacy of bill clinton. >> he got there every day and he knew the people he wanted to help. and the second thing when in times were good or times were bad, could he deliver for the people who needed the government to be on their side. >> watch this new year's weekend on c-span.