 Good morning and welcome to new America. Thank you all for coming to our session how we win How cutting-edge entrepreneurs political visionaries enlightened business leaders and social media mavens can defeat the extremist threat My name is Melissa Sallick Burke, and I am a policy analyst with new america's international security program For those of you new to new america We are a think and action tank a civic platform that connects a research Institute Technology lab solutions network media hub and public forum The international security program aims to provide evidence-based analysis of some of the toughest security challenges Facing American policymakers and the public from homegrown American terrorism to the United States drone wars abroad and the proliferation of drones around the world To the profound changes in warfare wrought by new technology and societal changes I'd like to introduce you to our two panelists this morning far upon death and Peter W. Singer Far upon death is an author foreign policy strategist and former diplomat a World-leading expert and pioneer in countering violent extremism. She is a frequent media commentator and public speaker She served as a political appointee under presidents George H. W. Bush George W. Bush and Barack Obama And most recently she was the first ever special representative to Muslim communities serving both secretaries Hillary Clinton and John Kerry She has served on the National Security Council at the US Department of State and the US agency for international development and various senior roles She has also served on the Department of Homeland Security's advisory council chairing its task force on countering violent extremism She is a senior fellow with the future of diplomacy project at the Belfair Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School As well as an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Pondett divides her time between Washington, DC London and Cambridge, Massachusetts We'll be discussing her new book today how we win How cutting-edge entrepreneurs political visionaries enlightened business leaders and social media mavens can defeat the extremist threat Peter Warren Singer is a strategist and senior fellow at New America He has been named by the Smithsonian as one of the nation's 100 leading innovators by defense news as one of the 100 most influential people in defense news by foreign policy to their top 100 global thinkers list and As an official mad scientist for the US Army's training and doctrine command His latest book is like war which explores how social media has changed war in politics and war in politics has changed social media His past work includes serving at the office of the Secretary of Defense Harvard University and as the founding director of the Center for 21st century security and intelligence at Brookings And he has written a number of award-winning books This morning will get a comprehensive overview of how we can win against international terrorist organizations By going all in in order to extinguish this threat Farah and Peter will touch upon the book's call to action for policymakers tech entrepreneurs the media business Professionals and anyone interested in fighting hate will save the last 20 to 30 minutes or so for audience questions Please engage with us on Twitter using hashtag how we win and following at New America ISP Farah's book will be available for sale at the close of today's session. Thank you so I want to begin first by thanking you for the very kind introduction and for Putting together this event and all of you for turning out and I don't want to thank. I want to congratulate you by hitting The trifecta of nonfiction How we win is a book that is interesting important and timely and I think there's also a Incredible parallel within it in terms of capturing the personal journey that you went on with the larger journey that the Government but more broadly American and global society really need to go on and wrestle with them. We're talking about the issues within the book So Congratulations, but then again, thank you for joining us. So let's let's jump right into it You know government style bottom line up front. What's the primary goal of the book? What are the key lessons of it? Thank you, Pete, and I want to thank New America It's a pleasure to begin my Washington journey here with a friend at my side and somebody who has been a supporter of my work from the very beginning. So it's an honor to be sitting on the stage with you I mean that sincerely Let's do Washington style indeed. Why would I even take it upon myself to go through all of this because as you will Understand and after you read the book for those of you have not yet I wrote this book because I know that there are solutions that are available and affordable for all of us And we are seeing in real time The rise of hate the rise of us versus them the manifestations of this are Triggering all kinds of things around the globe as I was taking my Uber over to New America today I was reading about the attacks in the Netherlands This isn't something that we have solved So I've written this book because I want people to understand that they have an option here to be able to vastly change the landscape of us versus them globally and it isn't about one kind of Extremist it's about the hate that we're seeing around the world So let's pull back on this and I mentioned that that idea of Journey both personal professional but also kind of political and societal I actually interviewed you many years back during research for the like war project and The stories that you told not just merely from your role in government But really how you personally started on this this journey. I think They were compelling, but they also kind of captured some of the underlying things going on that so Talk about your what took you from there to here? You know when I look back on the work that I've been lucky to do in both Bush and Obama administrations I have to go back and think about what happened to my family In the mid 90s when I wasn't really paying attention to the issue of extremism I had not yet gone to graduate school. I was born in northern India in a region that is in the news today, so I was born in Syrian anger and Even though I grew up knowing that there was this tension obviously between India and Pakistan I didn't really understand the issues in the spring of 1993 almost around where we are today two of my family members were killed and It was the first time that I actually because our family was affected and that may be clear that almost every family in Kashmir has lost life over the insurgencies that have taken place over the last many decades, but I Came to the table in graduate school with this very fresh family tragedy on my back and and really thinking about What had happened and why it had happened who these extremists were and where this ideology was coming from? But I went to the graduate school thinking that I was going to study development work Because I had worked at the US agency for international development Because I was really interested in giving back in a different kind of way But when this thing happened to to our family, I remember talking to professors at the Fletcher school who said to me Why wouldn't you be looking even more into this issue and in the summer of 94? I went to Kashmir as a graduate student and began to interview militants and that was my James Bond summer That's a whole different story But it it began for me this idea of understanding what can happen emotionally to people and how they can be moved to violence fast forward to 9-11 and when 9-11 happened, I was in the private sector in Boston and I remember our building was on the 41st floor overlooking Logan Airport and I Grew up outside of Boston. That's where my family is and I loved it. I loved my job Everything was great, but I remember looking out at the airport on this perfect morning Knowing what we were getting the news feeds in that these people had done had left from Logan to go do this horrible thing and I Remember just the sense of doom, you know Could this be could this be somebody who is claiming Islam as their as their you know Ideology to move forward what it what was this all about? I didn't know much about al-Qaeda But in the days afterwards, I walked into my boss's office and I said this terrorist organization Is claiming to define my country? America it is claiming to define my religion is slum and I don't care what I do I don't care which way I serve, but I need to go back and serve in government And that brought me back to DC and in 2003 is when I came back It took a couple of years to sort of get the clearances on board again, but I came back in thinking I'm just going to serve You know, we're going to try to do this I had no idea I was going to stay as long as I did stay And it was a privilege to be able to do that but what it it did for me was it gave me Not only an insight as to how our country was actually Dealing with all of these weird questions that I know we'll get into about What was the the ideology that was sparking all of this? But it made me as an American feel extremely Strong-willed in this sense of we cannot let this terrorist organization define Who we are as Americans and what we stand for and that mean by that For me as somebody who grew up outside of Boston as a Muslim I never ever grew up with anyone asking me anything about my identity in this sort of weird way I'd never was looked at as sort of an outsider. I was never Asked to explain my religion the most I would get would be when I wouldn't eat a bacon Or something from a pig and I would say it's religious and I I don't do that and then that was that was fine But there was never this all-day every day Attention on me this fierce Focus on what it could possibly mean for me to be Muslim interestingly Peter Today in my 50s. I have people asking me why I speak English so well And it's bizarre You know something has changed in our country I have people asking me questions about the way I dress and the way I practice my faith That never ever growing up outside of Boston did I ever get questions about The change that's happened here in America to get to the heart of your question. We are a diverse nation We're Thankfully a nation that believes that everybody should be able to practice their faith freely and for me I when the attack happened on 9-11 and You had this guy named Osama bin Laden who is trying to say we're a country that hates Muslims It didn't feel real to me because I had never been looked at in that way because the people that I went to school with We're never looked at that way because my own family came to this country to practice medicine to serve Humanity not to take away from it So it didn't make sense for a lot of different reasons and it made me really mad Because it made me feel as though the the false narrative that he was selling to the world about an us versus them About what America stood for was wrong It wasn't it wasn't a correct analysis of why this country was founded who in fact We are no country in the world of course is perfect But mosques can be built here You can practice your faith freely here as a Jew as a Christian as a Hindu as a Muslim or as as no one of any faith you have the right to be able to be who you are and Here he is after 9 11 telling the world that America hates the the West hates Islam Telling the world that we don't have the right to practice our faith freely and it really hit home to me personally Here he is yeah 2001 saying this false narrative 2019 He's dead Is he right or did his narrative when those are two different questions, but You know why I'm pulling this threat sure There's a reason why I talked to you about what it feels like to be in my 50s in America today with people asking me that question when When we were attacked on 9 11 America came together in a very specific way we did not want an External force a terrorist organization or a terrorist of any kind to tell us who we are as who we were as Americans I think too about the Boston Marathon bombings again almost you know we're almost at that anniversary Boston came together as Boston strong. We're not gonna let this define us and yet, you know Here we are today in America where that same landscape has been turned on its head We are seeing a push and a pull because of political forces and I as you know, I was a political appointee for both a Republican president and a Democratic president. I'm not talking about the politics of it I'm talking about a very different kind of set of circumstances that we are in that are not just within our country But our global with external forces that want to define us in a particular way and I find that Unbelievably scary we're almost in a more dangerous moment today than we were right at the at the 9-11 point from the book and a connection point for this is in the book you talk about the system of extremism Unpack that what do you mean by that and how does that link back to this notion of external but also internal forces, right? When I began to write this book I really wanted to be able to explain from my perspective having traveled to nearly a hundred countries What it is I was seeing because there are lots of dots that that often and we'll get to the point of what I'm gonna interrupt Because someone in the audience doesn't know specifically your personal history. You just said oh, I traveled to a hundred countries Like as a toss away line. Why were you in a hundred different countries? so when I when I was serving in in the Bush administration I Right after the Danish cartoon crisis was asked to move from the from the National Security Council to the State Department to operationalize the idea of how do we begin to build the Antibodies in the system to stop the appeal of an us versus them Ideology because we had seen that something that happened in Copenhagen was affecting a life in Kabul And it was the this is called the war of ideas. What's the ideological? Component that we are actually thinking about As we began to think about what we ought to do We knew that government couldn't obviously Have credibility with those with those forces on the ground to be able to tell them don't find this ideology appealing We know that peer groups talk to peer groups We had to do a better job of listening to what was taking place on the ground And so we began to look at Communities within Europe to talk to them about what it felt like to be a Muslim under the age of 30 as they were growing up So whether I was in Finland or I was in Sicily I was having the same kinds of conversations with hundreds and hundreds of Community groups all over Europe and by the end of the Bush administration had gone To 55 cities and 19 countries talking to young European Muslims And what I was beginning to see across the board was something even though each country had a different origin story for the Muslims That were there some countries had colonized some people were not calling some countries were not colonizers Some populations were on their second generation of Muslims others were on their fourth things were very different But there was one point that connected every Single community that I spoke to and that was that they were had that young people growing up post 9 11 Were having this like fierce crisis of identity. They were asking questions about the difference between culture and religion What it meant to be Muslim with the context of 9 11 all around them and surround sound With the word Islam or Muslim on the front page of their paper online and offline They could never get away from it now Peter I thought by the end of the Bush administration what I was seeing in Europe was unique because I thought This was something that was happening to Muslims that were living as minorities And you could almost understand that they would that would happen When I briefed Hillary Clinton At the end of the bush administration, I mean sorry right at the beginning of the Obama administration I was on my way out I had I think a couple of weeks left at the state department and I was sort of winding things down One of the things I said to her in the briefing was please don't ignore the importance of Europe Please understand the work that we've done on the war of ideas That there are things or systems that we can build peer-to-peer systems That will make a difference in terms of building resilience in communities and when I briefed her She was asking a lot of amazing questions about well, what were the european governments doing and why were the Why was the american government in here and people were listening to what the american government said Even in the context of the wars in afghanistan and iraq and so she was asking The right kinds of questions and by the end of the briefing she said You're not leaving. I thought she was kidding, but she wasn't kidding And she asked me to do what we did in europe but to do it around the world So the reason why I was able to go to nearly 100 countries was because we had taken this approach of listening at the grassroots level Making sure that we basically were talent scouting finding amazing people who were actually pushing back against the us versus them Ideology manifested in a lot of different ways. It wasn't just sort of one thing that they did But we were linking them together and building like-minded networks So uh when I talk about what I heard and what I saw as special representative It wasn't as though it was this easy thing for me to say. Well, you know, I was it I was working as special representative 2009 to 2014 and I this is the one thing you have to take away There were lots of things that I was I was seeing that all of a sudden by the time you get to your 40th country And then you're 50th and then you're 70th and you're seeing the same Thing whether I'm in Suriname or I'm in Malaysia You understand there are commonalities that are going across the board. So the system that's underlying extremism Is what are the things that I saw that was the platform that allowed this us versus them to build And it was important for me in this book to To express to the reader You can't just look at this in the context of this one off over here. Here are the similarities I'm connecting the dots for you the way I Saw the world and what what I saw. So there were several planks to the system One of which is this identity crisis that I thought was only happening in europe But what freaked me out and was really shocking was that Even in muslim majority countries Young muslims and this is the key the demographic where we're looking at are millennials those that were under the age of 30 as they were growing up post 9 11 We're having that same kind of identity crisis They were asking the same questions as the muslims that I met in spain or I met in the netherlands or I met in france So I could be for example in a place like pakistan. I could be in a place like morocco I could be in a place like indonesia and the demographic was asking the same thing So that's a really important Part that that I thought People should know so there's an identity crisis the second plank was And we can talk more about this is Is this this idea of the role of saudi arabia and what they what they have done around the world and while I sort of kind of had heard about things that Our government had called saudi arabia out on for example textbooks or translations of the quran or pushing out a idea of The other in terms of how they're they're treating minorities What was profound was that no matter where in the world? I went there was a system in place that was decades long That the saudis had deployed to make sure we were eradicating any kind of evidence of islam That was not the way in which they interpreted it and most importantly Pushing forward an idea that islam was a monolith and that's what extremists want you to believe that there's only one way to be a muslim So you have the identity crisis you have the role of saudi arabia that was bearing itself out and then you had Obviously part of the system is obviously and you're the expert here But how the demographic was expressing their identity through technology And that force multiplier was really significant not just how the bad guys use technology But how peers were connecting identity across Technology so these are some of the ways in which I was unpacking what I saw Um, I I coined a phrase in the book that I call halalization to describe this very peculiar Thing that was happening to men and women in terms of trying to live their identity out loud It kind of like a lifestyle brand Which one can laugh at but when you think about the implications culturally It really surprised me that we were not as government Picking up on these sort of cultural cues that we're going to make a difference because at the at the baseline here Peter the thing that I think we have to understand is we're not just talking About a small number of people one fourth of the planet is muslim And one billion people are under the age of 30 who are who are muslim So if you understand these trends and you understand what's taking place We have to get serious about what we're what we're seeing The subtitle of your book though is Not how to defeat al-Qaeda Isis Or we could have the the wonderfully awful debate on the terminology The radical islam violent islamic extremists violent islamist extremists It's actually just extremist So one why that choice and then The next thread to pull on that Can you apply what you've learned from that journey and writing the book to What we saw just play out in new zealand? and um some of the lessons of why And in turn how to respond such an important question We as the you know, we're sitting here in washington um The policy Establishment has Fallen over itself since 9 11 to get the language right on what it is. We call the ideological us versus them Antibodies that we put in the system this concept of a Ideological war came out of bush's 2006 national security strategy when he talked about a battle of arms and a battle of ideas Anybody who knows anything about anything on what we're dealing with now knows that we have We we cannot only measure success for any kind of group in the world If you're only looking at the physical manifestations of a group you have to understand why they're able to bring recruits in Right, so that ideological war is the thing that i focused on in the roles that i had Obviously i was looking at one dimension of the us versus them I was looking at how terrorist organizations that use the name of the slum Use the us versus them. Okay, but clearly there are different types of us versus them around the world when i was thinking about How to talk about this problem that we're having how to defeat how what are the solutions? This is a book written out of optimism This is not a doom and gloom. We'll never win this there's solutions here based on everything i've seen you can apply What i know will work From government from the private sector for regular citizens citizens to any kind of us versus them It's how to stop the appeal of this So i wanted to make sure that i wasn't using language that only said i'm talking about al-qaeda or i'm talking about shabab Or i'm only talking about the taliban Or the so-called islamic state. I wanted to be clear And fair that my experience in in the navigation of my work since 9 11 has been around young muslims And i can speak to that firsthand But um as i look at the tragic events that have happened in the last couple of days in new zealand I know that some of the things that i talk about in this book in terms of solutions For what each of those different sectors have to do are absolutely applicable to to the to the kind of tragic situation We're in today in the world where there is a rise of hate I remember peter talking at the state department in 2007 Um about the rise of anti-semitism in europe And i remember saying that we cannot just put that aside to the to the Democracy human rights and labor part of the state department to be able to say this is going to be in a human rights report we're going to talk about anti-semitism and um and as it's growing in europe And as people who have survived the holocaust are dying because they're getting older And there's an increase of holocaust denial all of these things are really important for us to understand And i remember people you know people's eyes glaze over they think oh gosh You know, yes, we're not really talking about a rise of hate, but we are talking about a rise of hate There is something in tragically here. We are in 2019 and we're not just seeing Groups like the so-called islamic state and the thing that comes after it We're not just seeing what Is going to happen with islamic bin laden san hamza and how we we see how he you know recalibrate al-qaeda But we're now seeing in our own country A rise of us versus them around white um sort of the the white manifesto And and like other groups You are seeing uh extremists learn from each other and learn in real time It is not isolated. We cannot look at something in new zealand and think that's way over there You know, it has no bearing on what's happening here We know we have learned things over the last 20 years almost since 9 11 that everything is connected So I I I want us to understand the word extremist in a in a real way Can you give examples of that real time learning because it's it's very top of mind for everything from policymakers to media right now is the question of um, obviously there's many parallels and similarities between um, the extremist ideologies of far right extremism What yields an isis, but there's also operational similarities. There's use of technology And there's this question of how much of this is just The natural What works now What works now operationally what works online? And how much of it is them actually learning from each other mimicking even though they claim to have diametrically opposed ideologies It's a great um thing for us academically to understand But it's a profoundly serious one emotionally for us to understand because we're not able to Disrupt that learning at a fast enough pace So if people are trying to evoke emotional responses quickly, they're going to look at what's the last tragedy Or what's the last thing that they can learn from so this idea that this guy put The murder in an alive stream so that he could Not only spread it virally But he could make sure that he was giving as much grief to the situation as he could because he knew That those images were going to go over and over he knows that these technology companies are not taking down the videos fast enough He knows people will be able to slice pieces of this and use it for their propaganda. How does he know that? Well, let's just go back to isis for example What happened when we watched that Jordanian pilot burn in the cage? What happened when we saw the beheadings? What happened when we listened to the sermons? I mean this is over and over we are learning You know, it doesn't mean it just because people are learning lessons from groups that they don't like that They can't learn the lessons. Let me take a much softer. This is not by any I'm not giving a pass to this but this is just something historic when you think about When the Bamiyan buddhas were decimated by the Taliban And the world, you know watched as the dynamite, you know eradicated them from the earth's surface Was anybody asking why the Taliban thought it would be a really great idea to eradicate cultural history? We weren't asking that question, but they but they knew what they were doing. They had learned lessons from actually from what Saudi Arabia had done From eradicating any evidence of anything that came before Saudi Arabia also had learned lessons from what Hitler did. He did the same thing with cultural The cultural pieces. So it isn't just in real time, Peter It's things that are learned over time. What can you do to make sure that you get to your goal? I think one of the things that we have to do as a community of humans on this planet Is to understand that the lessons that have been learned by all of us are lessons We sometimes understand and absorb but some of some of those things are in the back of our head When I think about how the media is responding To the attack in New Zealand one of the lessons and this is to give them You know, they've learned. Let's not use his name. Let's not reach, you know, they took it We took some time to get to that place, didn't we? Remember when 9-11 happened we were media was airing we were airing Osama bin Laden's sermons in real time For hours on end You know 20 years ago. We have learned not to try to give that kind of Platform to the bad guys. So I want to I want to get to the what can we do but Let's take a pause because we're being Obviously super dark and as you mentioned this is a book that has An optimistic side of it. So before we get to the what can we do? I want you to do something that Writers are like parents They Secretly have their favorite child So who of all the characters and scenes Who is and that's for my kids watching online. That is me making a joke Um So you've got this packed with with characters and scenes What's what's the one that? Is uh, most heartening or brings you the most joy. Uh, what's one that stands out in that way? There are lots of really great, um anecdotes in the book Well, let me give you two. Okay. Let me give you two different types. Can I do that? One is one that just makes me laugh out loud every time I think about it And the other is somebody who I met early on in my work when I was in the europe bureau Who just had a way about him? In terms of describing what was possible. So the one that was just really funny. I was in timbuktu And I what no, I was actually in timbuktu And we you know when you travel with the u.s. Government, of course, are people who are with you There are no takers and all these kinds of things. Anyway, so we get out of the car And for those of you who have not been to timbuktu It is one of the most incredibly beautiful places. I have ever been it just it just has A spirit about it. That's just remarkable. So we're going through the old town We're going around corners. Um, we you know, we're getting lost in this whole thing They're beautiful doors everywhere. I'm looking around we finally get to this old building And we go up the stairs. We're going to meet this sort of the the head imam Okay, and uh, and it's a it's an honor to be able to do this Really excited all of us are really happy that he's agreed to meet with me We we go into his um his his office space, which is just this very large room and on the walls are All these pictures of very famous people that he has met You know, there's one with him and jimmy carter. There's one. I mean, you know, they're various people So we all sit and he's like in sort of in the back and he's wearing and forgive me because I don't know the name of it It's a it's a special kind of robe That they that they wear uh in timbuktu and so but it has a lot of material And it's has embroiderer uh in it and he had a had Sort of a turban and uh and with him behind him and around him were also imams So there were all of these imams looking very regal and in the back and we were way down over there And so it was like a very serious meeting and we're all just getting ready to start And we're just about to start and all of a sudden um jingle bells starts playing and um we where I was really I was like am I hearing this am I hearing this Is anybody else hearing this but I just tried to stay calm for a moment because I thought okay Something is up But it's ringing and it's ringing. It's the phone. It's the phone ringer, you know on his phone And so he puts his hand in his big, you know Thing pulls out the phone and it's in he's playing jingle bells and he presses it and he kind of laughs And then we went on the way and I and it just it was it was great And it was great because not just it was jingle bells And we're in timbuktu and we're in this very serious like we're going to talk about islam But it just it was the humanity of it. It was just it was real and it wasn't he wasn't all hyped up on This is a christmas song that I can't have on my phone It was really just a normal wonderful moment. So that makes me laugh every time I think about it In terms of a character who who inspired me There's a guy in uh northern england and in um In luten Named lukaman ali and lukaman is a guy who I met um who it just has a way about him he Luten is a very working class town in the united kingdom. It is not filled with Like many very old towns some really beautiful architecture in the uk. It's it's very simple and very basic And what he wanted to do in 2007 Was to say to the young kids who were finding appeal finding the us versus them ideology appealing and Confused about what it meant to be muslim what he said was there are so many characters in islam islam is almost 1400 years old I want to pull them out and make them real for people in a way that That will give the kids agency and they can see themselves in these characters from history And I said look mom there are so many characters and he sort of said to me He's like I've been working on this for many years and he had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of he had done all this history And you know work through history of women and men of all different kinds from islamic history that he could point to to say These are your superheroes for today and he was turning those stories into street Street theater and he was getting the kids to work with him And it was it was a really powerful example of one person who began to Take an interest in how to convey A new kind of identity to these folks based on an ancient ancient stories the kyle theater company When you talk about this people think oh give me a break. You're telling me street art is going to stop the kids from from from joining A bad group It's not that's not the point the point is They are interested in learning about their identity and we have to give them a way that might work for them For for look mom. That was the way he was doing it one of the reasons I love his story is because we often don't think about how powerful culture is And culture is ultimately one of the most powerful forces We can use to be able to manipulate the way people think about their power their own power So for the the last question that i'm going to ask before we turn it over to the audience It's the the classic Washington, what can we do? Um, I'd like to frame it this way you break down in the book the role of government private sector civil society Queen for the day, but queen that has to be realistic. Yeah One thing that government can do one thing that the private sector can do One thing that civil society can do Well, let's start with the easiest one of all all of us are Witnessing us versus them and the rise of hate and Citizens need to understand that they can no longer be lazy on hate We can no longer say this is somebody else's problem and they're going to deal with it So I want every person to think in their own lives on a daily basis What they can do to give respect to somebody else It sounds like polyana But even the one-to-one interventions can make a difference. So that's one thing From the perspective of government There is a very long list of things But if I'm queen of the day the thing we don't have peter if you can believe it all these years since 9 11 Is an actual strategy for the for the ideological war We have a strategy for what we do to use every lever in the physical force We do not have a roadmap. We do not even know what our assets are We don't have nobody who wakes up every single day looking at everything we can do in the ideological war And that blows my mind 20 years after 9 11, how is it possible that we cannot even know What and who we can deploy there is a chairman for the joint of the joint chiefs for a reason Where is that person for the ideological war? So that is Ultimately if you don't have a strategy, we can't get anything done Then on the on the private sector if there's only one thing that I would say to the private sector It isn't just about the technology companies that we all think just need to take things down and everything will be okay the Private sector all aspects of the private sector have one thing in common they understand behavior They have lots of information about how people behave and what they do The NGOs that are working on the front lines of this problem Which is ultimately the local solutions are how we build the antibodies in the system We ask NGOs to do this work because government doesn't have credibility Because we don't know how to build the kinds of things that we need to do and these NGOs spend their days Trying to get this done for us while they're trying to raise money to keep the lights on and pay their staff Because they're nonprofit organizations the private sector should get real And help the NGOs Scale up what it is that they are already doing Great answers. Okay. Let's open it up to all of you. Um, please Raise your hand. I'll call on you if you can identify yourself and finally All questions end with a question mark is the rule. So, uh, let's begin right here. Um in the green Day after st. Patrick's day. They'll hold it on Thank you. Um, I have a question about which actually can you introduce yourself first? Um, my name is mark. Nadel Um, which pundits or analysts do you look to for insights on Developing issues. I mean anything if for read zikaria david gherkin and in particular with Saudi Arabia where you Looked at the history. Um, were you fooled by nbs originally or Um, did you know understand this and other people got fooled? So two different questions there. He's sneakily packed Um, one, what are the the what are the useful sources that you you turn to? uh insight for insight and then separate question is, um You you you came out swinging on Saudi Arabia nbs How were you were you? What did you see on the narrative early on? Where are you now? Great. There are two really great questions Let me start with the first one I tend to look to my partners on the ground the NGOs around the world that are doing the group the work day in and day out Because they're the ones who are seeing things in real time They're the ones who are working on projects and initiatives and programs and can tell us What's working and what isn't working and what needs to be done needs to be done so There are some wonderful And i'm not going to call out one particular Think tank in town because I have colleagues in all of them who are doing great work on this issue So whether you're looking at uh folks here at new america. You're looking at people George washington's program on extremism whether you're looking at brookings or you're looking at like You know the washington institute There are specialists in each of those places that have in fact been looking at the ideological war and been looking at How the us versus them is playing out so I would urge you to to take a look at some of the reports csis And I'll call them out only because I was working on the commission In 2016 there was a commission report called turning point that we was a bipartisan Commission report that was done on what american government needs to do on the ideological war I would turn your attention to that because it really lays out what needs to be done And I would turn your attention to the department of homeland securities 20 16 Task force on combating violent extremism It is a 50 state plan on how do we stop the us versus them state by state again? I worked on that too. So I I will tell you those are those are places where a lot of research and if you look at the bibliography You'll see where we got our data Um on the issue of Saudi Arabia I have come out swimming swinging and I've come out swinging because I feel something very strongly And that is I had the privilege of serving my nation for three presidents and The american taxpayer paid my salary To travel around the world to see what I saw And I feel strongly that it is my responsibility to tell the american public what it is I saw Now when I'm in government, I can only go so far because you're in government and you kind of have to their protocols in place When I left government in 2014 it was not Because uh, I had served a lot But one of the reasons I wanted to be able to write this book was I wanted to tell you From my own perspective what it is I was seeing this is before mbs You know came came into into power There's a difference between The system that they are deployed that they have deployed over many decades and and there's not enough time today to go through All of the methods that they have used globally But the implication that the united states government and the american people are not standing up for what what it is We should which is to make sure that we don't see more of that around the world is very concerning mbs's approach On the on the ideological front was to come out strong and to say we want to do more than ever before To make sure that we stand Against you know these extremists. They stood up a multi million dollar Outfit in uh, they built it uh in south arabia that is a state-of-the-art machine that monitors What's happening in the online space? Uh presumably because they believe that they can go out in real time and counter what the bad guys are putting out there Which is not enough, but so I visited that uh organization called entedal. It's Spectacularly impressive. It's where you saw president trump go to put his hand on the orb during his first trip Out of the out of the gate as president But but sir, I will say this uh, I I have not seen any change whatsoever In the efforts of south arabia to pull back On the things that that I know are happening around the world that they are responsible for one of which for example Is the way in which they are Sending off uh karams around the world that have been translated in a very specific way And what their response has been went to american government when we ask, you know, yes specific way How you gotta unpack that again? So one of the things that um, we have to be careful about as americans and as american government rather That's more particular. We are not in the business of telling people how to live their religion out loud We do not take a position on what is realist on what is not who's the better muslim? That's not what I mean But what we know is that the Translations of the koran have been done in such a way That they make sure that the us versus them is embedded in things that are not part of the original translations I would recommend reading zia sardar Who is a scholar and an expert on this issue and he can really unpack this for you We have called this out in our reporting from the state department that we see that the translations of korans have Gone out in a particular way and they're free. They're all over the world at textbooks that have gone out again Calling calling out on this sort of monolithic interpretation a very strident interpretation of how to live How to live as a muslim now Saudi arabia has said that they have paid attention to our complaints that they have in fact pulled back They've changed the textbooks the korans are not going out That is not what we know to be true And so that's one way that I think you know, you can sort of if you say something I'd like to see it actually in action. We can monitor and see the changes. They have not happened another question right there on the front Pretty quick question. You'd mentioned Disrupting the learning process in your experience. Did you find a narrative format or a type of action that can actually Effectively disrupt the learning process and what does that look like? So for those people who don't know what the global engagement center is, uh, and I I appreciate the work that you're doing There one of the things that I have to be frank with you that I come out really hard in the block about the gc The global engagement center in my view is Doing uh, the goal is really great But the manifestation of how we do it is troubling to me because we don't have enough people We don't have enough skill sets on the ground and the legitimacy of the united states government going in and trying to do that Counter speech just doesn't make sense to me. So when I talk about disruption And learning it has to come from credible people within the local communities who can do that and that happens in a lot of different ways It's not just a theola. You know, somebody who has a theology That can talk through sort of what Islam is or what it isn't it isn't just somebody who is working on the the The learning according to hadiths or learning, you know, it is it is about Listening at the cultural listening at a granular level And making sure we understand how kids interpret their own Uh, their own identity. So for us to be able to do that well, it means that their own peers Can make a difference to how they're learning and they need to be given And and programs that we have tested need to be scaled so that it's not just happening in schools in terms of how they think about themselves But it's also how parents understand how the bad guys are manipulating the internet to pray upon their young people It's also how young people understand the messages that the bad guys give them off and online And why they do it and it's also to understand and this is really really important The journey that their own peers took towards the dark side and have come back so that they can talk Kid to kid about what really happened or youth to youth what really happened to them So former extremists are really important one of the things that we have an opportunity to do As we see all these people coming back from syria is to take Their content their stories and use them in ways that can actually make a difference to the young people Who might find the next version of this appealing we haven't even there's no strategy in place at all Anywhere in the world to mine that content and do something real with it So we got uh front right front left. Let's give um back right right there in blue I'm bob burg I chair of the alliance for peace building which recently hired as its CEO The person who recently ran dml The interesting thing going on in town In a lot of parts of town is that people aren't just Trying to figure out how to do the status quo ante But trying to think ahead on big issues about some new things to happen And I've only owned your book for a matter of minutes. So forgive me But you do have a little discussion on public diplomacy. I see and But is there a center of gravity Of really rethinking the cve approach and really thinking institutionally what ought to happen for example a resurrection of real public diplomacy work Sir, I can't wait for you to get through the book. Um, and I hope you'll still like me When you get to the end of it on public diplomacy I think that there is a role for public diplomacy in our government And it is a it's one in which congress should be spending more time and energy on soft power On the people in our embassies that need the resources to do the work that we should be doing in the field of public diplomacy That's a very long and very important conversation. This book is not about public diplomacy We made some big mistakes after 9 11 sort of Loudering trying to figure out how we're trying to do things. It isn't about us Trying to convince somebody else how to love us That is not what we're trying to do here What we're trying to do is to take that young person and to tell them in a way that makes sense for them And most of the time it's not the u.s. Government telling them It's somebody who has agency with them to say what the bad guys are saying isn't correct and it's not right That is a different thing So this quote winning hearts and minds stuff Belongs in a different Uh At a different roadmap for a different purpose and a different goal. I'm all in I think we ought to give a lot of attention to what we can do to do public diplomacy better But the work that I've been doing on how to stop young kids from finding this ideology appealing It is not here. It is over here. So you ask the question about countering violent extremism If in fact we went back and looked at what it is We know what we have to do it is not a conversation that has to be recalibrated on the ideological war I am so tired of 20 years after 9 11 this town talking about what we call it Call it unicorns and rainbows. I don't care what you call it But understand that there is a role for soft power There is a role for our government to play in scaling up how we design a system to make sure that young kids Don't find an us versus them ideology appealing It the problem is not countering violent extremism The problem is we keep talking about what we ought to do in a reconfiguration as opposed to giving the money the resources And the skill set to scaling what your taxpayer dollar has already spent money on If we did one thing and one thing only Scale scale all the experiments and all the programs that we've spent 20 years Building at the right pace 24 7 and let's see what happens after a couple of years Back left quadrant all the way there. Yeah Hello, uh adam cap on us aid's office of transition initiatives um As to roles i'm wondering if you could speak a little bit about the role that you see for so um social media And that industry There's trends there's trends away from more open conversations towards more private conversations And there is there's the embedded profit interest of social media and making sure that we're all outraged Which seems to work against their interest in actually partnering with solo society in ways that might make a difference So i'm gonna i'm gonna take that question and break it up into two parts First is um, you know, I said queen for the day. So Same thing social media companies, which is actually because they are run like digital kingdoms Literally, you know one person can decide to change it one way or another So key policy shift at social media companies. And then the second is there is a transformation within Rather one of the key Not just kingdoms, but empires facebook of moving from a Model of openness to this decision this discussion came out just two weeks ago Facebook becoming more about a space of private conversations What will be the effect of that on the discussion of extremism? So queen for a day, uh, there's a lot that can be said sir Obviously on on how the technology companies have looked at this issue and how long it's taken for them To recognize that they have a bigger role to play facebook is one of the largest countries in the world Okay, there are norms of action of responsibility These companies are made of humans the actions that are taking place I don't have to give the story to you. You know it. So what is it that I would want them to do? While they've been late to the game they have come to the game and they are in fits and starts Helping non-profit organizations do the thing that they know how to do. Okay, which is great But they're not doing it at the scale that they can and they're capable of doing it So you talked about the issue of profit. I am not sure why You wouldn't want to go all in if you're a technology company and show us what you're capable of doing If you scale things There is a way there's a way to do this. They do not their argument has often been we are trying We don't quite know what is good. What's bad. We want freedom to be able to to navigate through some of these conversations We don't have the luxury of time at the moment I don't believe takedown is the solution here the only solution as much as we need to Some of the stuff they have to do obviously but people tend to think if you just take things down It's fine. It's what goes back How can you bring new content in and how do you change the algorithms so that kids who are looking for the bad stuff Are coming face to face with ways in which they get off of that that that journey We have tested ways to be able to do that and I'd like to see us actually See it deployed in a way that is 24 7 not a little bit here and a not a little bit there So my one thing would be scale At the at the at the pace that we know is needed Okay, there are many other things I would actually say for the technology companies But if I only had one choice in terms of how we think about the shift Of private conversations, I don't think we're ready yet to understand what's actually coming Because I I think that the the We've been late to the game to see how the bad guys have manipulated platforms that are just really obvious to all We all have the same tools in our toolbox. It's not like they have something special that we don't have But it's how they're using it. Um, we don't yet know peter That's the that's the honest answer I am frightened by what is to come because we haven't been able to catch up with what we have seen already We're not actually doing everything that we can do that It's the biggest tragedy of all since 9 11 rather than keeping up the pace with we're trying We're trying everything. We're trying everything. We're not trying everything just because people say we are Doesn't marry with what the reality is Let us let us only hope that we can catch up to this new philosophy on what they want to do In a way that's ahead of the bad guys not catching up with them. I might push back at you I think we do know because we've had a couple of National-scale tests of it Uh, one example would be the brazilian election. Um, another would be The series of riots, um in india So if you move to that model, it doesn't mean that hate and extremism is um faces more friction Actually, it just becomes harder to track And um that no, but that's fair. That's definitely fair Do you think I'll ask you because you know more about this than than I do as we As we think about we talked about this in my book. Yeah, I talked to peter for my book. Obviously Can we switch to AI for just a second? When we're looking at Some of the ways the bad guys will deploy AI Do you think that we are our companies in america are ready for that? No, no In both ways, I mean, uh, so let's be clear at first the the shift What what facebook is announcing is a and it's not yet certain whether they will go down that pathway, but that shift is About a which you bring up is about a very different set of considerations It's it's um a vision of facebook and its future more looking like the a different profit model like akin to China's we chat, but it's also about um defending the empire because it makes it harder for um facebook to be potentially broken up into parts. Uh, so it's about it's kind of a anti anti monopoly law play, but back to this this space It has ripple effects Into the story of hate and extremism Just like for example live streaming did the companies did not plan for that to be part of the discourse around Their product, but it will inherently So I don't think they're making the decision with anything in mind related to this topic But they're going to be stuck with it again. So there's this wonderful cycle, but the AI part of it. Yeah We already know that like every other technology It will be used for both good and bad by good and bad people And uh, you know, so if you think of the phenomenon of um the Pushing out um imagery well now you have the possibility of pushing out Uh hyper realistic false imagery that will be done for entertainment It will be done for politics and the people who do it for politics will be people that we agree with and people That we think are anathema Yeah, but this is part of the this is part and it's connected to what you're saying We're always playing catch up, right? I mean if you know that a new technology or a new dimension of what's not happening has the capacity Of being used by the bad guys Why are we not thinking about the manifestations of that as we roll it out as we think about things I It's no surprise to anyone that twitter can be a platform for good or a platform for for for bad and You know, we we were we're now in a place where you know, things have gone So crazy that you can't bring it can't bring it back We weren't thinking through some of these things as and i'm not talking about Not being innovative and stemming creativity I just think the responsibility of technology companies and and and others In the world that we're living in today has to be one in which we're real About bad actors that can manipulate things that they're using. I mean, it's it's that's the world that we're living in today Yeah, I think it's it's an issue. I'm gonna You pulled a thread on me. So it's it's a problem set of denial Um and versus the denial of oh my product can be used for both good and bad No, you you know in essence you go in with that that understanding and you you red team it before you deploy it to figure out How might bad guys use it and how can I limit that? Exactly You should not be surprised that someone is live streaming whether it's a teenage suicide or an attack That should not catch you by surprise which it did back when those products are first deployed and then the other aspect of denialism goes to um the Denialism that we have towards all the different forms of extremism. So for example Over the course of your journey the internet went from being quite hospitable to isis Black logs everywhere on twitter to now. They're mostly to ai mostly screened out interesting that um 1488 A white supremacist, um, you know mantra Used by um everything from the pittsburgh synagogue shooter What not not screened out why because that's a harder conversation for us to have right All right, I've talked too much. Let's jump right there Yep Mike nelson have been teaching internet studies at georgetown And I've been in a communications culture and technology program This has been an incredibly rich conversation particularly about communication and culture You just started talking about technology You've been asked to be queen for a day. You've been asked to be ceo for a day I want to ask you to be chief technology officer for a day And in particular what how could technology help the truth spread as fast as falsehoods? And how could truth Help citizens do what you said Not be lazy about hate. How could we mobilize 100 of our community? To deal with this issue today 99 percent of us think You 1 percent you security people you ceos you take care of this problem Is there some technology that we're lacking? Is there something that could really help us? Move beyond where we are today The technology is a human heart And you know We are watching our world Do this it's not robots that are doing this these are humans that are doing this Technology companies are made by people Who live lives outside of their role in the technology companies? I look it's I looked when I was writing this book Because I believe that there is a very strong role for the private sector to play here One that for the longest time we're like You know, it's it's it's it's not it's something for government. Terrorism is too scary If I if I had a dollar for every private sector You know ceo I talked to who said our shareholders will never touch this issue It has something to do with terrorism. They don't want us our brand, you know on and on and on and on And I've said we're fighting hate. We're protecting youth. That's what this is. This is what this is. It's protecting youth Sorry, can't do it can't do it I come back to leaders in the business space Who have pushed the system to say even though Our brands are our company Don't do social good because we don't have to sell soap for social good We're going to respond to how humans are responding to the world that they live in and they're moving and I'm not polyanna here I get that they're making money off of this. I understand that But when it comes to how what's the world we want to live in I go back to that. I think I look at a paul polson I look at some of the the courage he took to move unilever in a particular way and again I do understand that they have made money off of this but um, we when we're looking at the young generations both generation z and millennials they have Demonstrated that they are more willing to pay and work on connectivity with their products Based on what that company stands for. So I think we have a moment right now For technology companies for the ce of for going back to that human heart thing. What do we want to weigh out? You cannot weigh good and bad equally that isn't A fair proposition in my view Today in 2019 if I were queen for a day and I was in that tech I would weigh Good over bad in such a way That when you're working in the platforms that you're working there is a way for us to help Bring forth more connectivity with good ideas more connectivity with A way for these young kids to off ramp so that they're not going down the rabbit hole of of you know The things that we're seeing right now and and clearly You know, we're not talking about We're not talking about Fantastic system changes. We're talking about just a tweak in terms of how it is. We think about the platform that we're using In my work, I have not yet run across that kind of thing at pace. I don't know peter if you kind of a longer conversation So I'm I'm gonna I'm I want to um I'm eyeing the clock. So I want to end on uh A term that you first used In our conversations, but it also captures something unfortunately You are not queen for the day in these different realms but You have been involved in an effort That um Is kind of part of this this conversation not just within the book but wrapped up in it Use the remaining uh two minutes to tell the story of Your dumbledore's army And what does it mean to this larger discussion? Uh, I had the privilege after I left the state department of immediately going to Harvard University to be a fellow at the institute of politics And I was teaching a class on countering violent extremism with undergraduates was predominantly undergraduates And I was explaining how important it was that all of us Understand that this is a problem fighting hate us versus them at its core that each person has a role to play And uh a young woman raises her hand and I called on her her name is Anisha And she said farah if you're going to explain this to our generation You need to say you're building dumbledore's army And this is a connection to for those of you who have not read hot harry potter. You really ought to But this idea that everybody has a wand Everybody can fight Everybody can stand up for what's right. Everybody can say I'm going to give give a chance to to my To my own particular environment, whether it's in a home or in a school, whether it's confronting someone on a day to day level To build resilience to make sure there is no us and them by building that dumbledore's army We will be able to defeat the the bad guys because there are more of us than there are of them So it's a great way to end. Um, I want to thank you all for joining. I want to thank you for a great conversation Let you all know that the book will be available outside for purchase And for those of you that are online, it's on amazon and all sorts of other platforms where books are sold Yeah, so please join me in a round of applause