 that siege was criminal behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism. Social media serves as a gathering place for many of these domestic terrorists. We are facing a more dangerous period than we faced in Oklahoma City. January 6th was not an isolated event. The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a long time now and it's not going away anytime soon. More than two months after Ryder stormed the Capitol, Washington DC is still occupied by National Guard troops. The police say they want to make the fencing that surrounds the Capitol building permanent. The government responded to January 6th by turning the Capitol into like a green zone or like a war zone that you would find in a war-torn country. Political scientist Max Abrams, who studies global terrorism, says the US government's response is disproportionate to the actual threat. This was one of those situations where the government swung like a pendulum from doing too little to doing too much. They're clearly overwhelmed and unprepared for this onslaught and so the government responded by putting in place something like 25,000 National Guards in keaging up the Capitol and that would be appropriate not to deter next Timothy McVeigh but to deter something like ISIS storming Baghdad and luckily that's not the kind of threat environment that we're dealing with in the United States. Abrams worries that the war on terror started by the Bush administration after 9-11 which included detaining suspects without due process, torture, mass surveillance and counterproductive military action is coming to the home front. The target, white supremacists and anti-government militia groups. Our response to 9-11 and this isn't stressed enough was actually deeply counterproductive against the kinds of terrorists that we were combating. American can do much better. We don't need to use a faulty model and apply it to the very real terrorism problem that we have at home. Instead of toppling dictators the tactics of this new domestic war on extremism have so far been limited to bullying social media companies into evicting influential voices from their platforms such as Donald Trump. FBI director Christopher Wray wants the government to consider repealing section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to make it even easier to hold tech platforms liable for content that the government says incites violence. While the immunity under section 230 has obviously helped the evolution of the social media industry it's also allowed it to avoid a lot of the burdens and risks that other brick and mortar companies have had to face. Since the mid-1990s FBI directors have been citing international terrorism as a reason to consider preventing the use of end-to-end encryption. Wray is now making the same arguments citing domestic extremists. We are concerned about end-to-end encryption especially default end-to-end encryption in connection with a lot of these platforms. In his book Rules for Rebels Abrams argues that the foreign war on terror created power vacuums that made the world increasingly dangerous such as when Saddam Hussein was replaced by al-Qaeda in Iraq or when U.S. intervention in Syria helped the jihadist group al-Nusrah foment power. Abrams says we're in danger of repeating the same dynamic in this new war on terror. Removing somebody like Donald Trump from Twitter that might seem like a great idea to some people until they realize that actually Donald Trump isn't the absolute worst leader that could possibly bubble up. In an all likelihood the replacements are going to be even more extreme. We see a similar phenomenon with people moving from more mainstream social media platforms like Twitter to ones that have a higher concentration of right-wing extremists like Parler or even apps with sort of end-to-end encryption where nobody could surveil them. The Biden team are now moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements that we've seen overseas. And it brings together an unholy alliance frequently of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians. Abrams argues that the perverse effect of lumping such disparate groups together is to push otherwise reasonable actors towards the extremes. I think that these different issues need to be unpacked. And mainstream media can't simply say that everyone on the right, including those who are more in favor of limited government and sympathetic to some libertarian views, are crazy and believe in pedophile rings at pizza parlors. There's a massive difference there. And I think that mainstream media and the government are trying to weaponize some of the rightful fear that has come out of January 6th in order to score a political advantage and marginalize those on the right, including those who have quite reasonable views. And frankly, many people on the right continue to do so. It was not some sort of spontaneous decision by a bunch of, quote, protesters to go up to Capitol Hill and storm Capitol Hill. This was all planned out. There's this perverse phenomenon where terrorism commentators and pundits broadcast ubiquitously by the media. They make it seem as if terrorists are just so brilliant and strategic and effective. There was a significant coordination with this attack. This was a planned assault as if going after a castle. January 6th in some ways was a galvanizing moment, a moment where some of these extremist groups saw what was in the realm of the possible. But in fact, we often see the exact opposite. Terrorism very often has a backlash against the very organization that perpetrates it. And we're already seeing some of that in terms of participants on January 6th. Some of these groups on the far right now, they don't look nearly as attractive for members. For one, it's become a national embarrassment to be part of these groups. The government is all over them. It's become much more dangerous to be in them. The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, which passed the House back in September, would create new federal law enforcement units focused solely on domestic terrorism. Some politicians and law enforcement officials have said Congress should go further. Under US law, there is no list of domestic terrorism organizations the same way there is for foreign terrorist organizations. Well, I don't know if we should have one or not, but I think it's time to think about it. Eliberalism begets more terrorism. One of the tell-tale signs of an illiberal government is when it makes no distinction between what it deems as political extremists and tactical extremists. One of Abram's biggest worries is that in the same way the war on terror that swept up many innocent Muslims spurred even greater radicalization, a heavy-handed crackdown lumping the extreme beliefs of some on the right together with the extreme tactics of would-be terrorists will ultimately backfire. I'm really worried, frankly, about Timothy McVeigh 2.0. And I think that the government needs to do everything possible not to create one, but I'm not confident that the government actually is doing that. And we should absolutely throw the book at people who use terrorism, especially against American civilians. What I worry, however, is that there is going to be slippage. We cannot crack down on people just because we don't like their ideology, because otherwise the government is going to turn into the thought police. And that is going to spawn the next generation of terrorists.