← The Watch Floor with Sarah Adams
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Stop stressing@mushroomcouncil.com welcome to the watch floor. I'm Sarah Adams. Every once in a while a security alert goes out that has the right messaging, but it's not nuanced enough to have the most impact. In this case, the army put out a counterintelligence awareness bulletin where they're asking their personnel to look for and report terrorism. I'm going to read that for you verbatim right now. So it says report terrorism on the top and then it's indicators and behaviors is like the subheading and then it's numbered 1 through 11. So number one is advocating violence for terrorism. The second is advocating support for terrorism. The third is providing financial or other material support to terrorists. The fourth is procuring supplies and equipment to terrorists. Number five is having contact, association or connections to terrorists. Number six is expressing an obligation to engage in terroristic violence. Number seven is attempting to recruit personnel for terrorism. Number eight is collecting intelligence for terrorists. Number nine is family ties or other close associations to terrorists. Number 10 is visiting terrorist websites. Number 11 is expressing a hatred of American society, culture, government or principles of the US Constitution that implies support for or connection to an international terrorist organization. Then at the bottom it has three different ways they can report. There's an 800 number, a website and then a QR code. Now of course, course all of those items we want people to look for. But if you listen closely to the list and all 11 items, you realize there's a problem. The problem is at that point in the process, you are very close to a terrorist attack occurring. Right. It doesn't go steps and behaviors prior. Of course, by the time someone says you're going to carry an attack, you might be a little too late in the process. Process. And we want to be more detailed and nuanced in the way we look at terrorism prevention in the United States. Because if we're telling everyone, oh, here's what the final steps of the process are, and that's what we're training, and that's what we're watching for. And we don't teach them what the patterns are long before it, then we're really not preventing any anything. We're just spotting things right before they happen. And obviously that's not going to make anyone's lives better. And it's going to give the terrorists a lot more time to plan and prepare, because you're only looking for their final steps. I mean, a very simple concept, but unfortunately, this occurs all the time. Remember, terrorism does not occur suddenly. There's a whole chain of events involved, right? It can be like footprints or breadcrumbs. So we have ideology, we have networks, we have reinforcement, we have personal grievances, and then kind of this eventual moral justification of violence like this is a long process, and we can get into pieces within that process long before someone chooses then to. To commit an attack. Let me take a second and talk about something a lot of people put off. And trust me, I understand why it's life insurance. For me, this hits close to home. I've lost a number of friends overseas, and what stays with me after the fact is what their families have to go through. It's not just the loss, but the stress, the uncertainty, the questions about what do I do next? Remember, life insurance isn't about you. It's helping your family be able to put together all the pieces during the worst moments of their lives. Fabric by Gerbera Life is term life insurance that you can get done today. It's made for busy parents like you. It's all online on your schedule. You can do it right from your couch. 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And they've added useful features like free digital wills and tools to invest in your kid's future. I've seen the difference between having a plan, having and not having one. Join the thousands of parents who trust fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes@meetfabric.com watch meetfabric.com watch and use my link so they know I sent you. That's me E T fabric.com watch policies are issued by western social media Southern life Assurance company. Not available in certain areas. Prices are subject to underwriting and health questions. Today we're going to walk through this process step by step and we're going to talk about how it looks in the real world so we can get ahead of and hopefully see these indicators long before, you know, something goes boom. The first phase is very simple. It's this concept of there's like this shift in identity and worldview of someone. So this is well before a person ever even considers carrying out a terrorist attack. This is when they start to change how they view the world. Now this is of course, if you get radicalized a little later in life. You know, some people are raised in homes and they're taught this worldview the entire time. And we've discussed that previously. So this is, you know, later stage radicalization. You might be a late teen, early 20s. And it's kind of one of those things when they look at the world instead of in this nuanced or, you know, how like, oh, the world's black and white, but there's gray and they go and everything is completely rigid, right? It's only black or it's only white. They completely eliminate any of that middle ground. And they then have a lot of moral battles with themselves if they feel in some way that they're stuck or playing or the people in their lives are in that middle ground and they're not choosing kind of a side like they are. And when we talk about sides, kind of think of it like the world is divided. So you have believers versus enemies, you have the righteous versus the corrupt and then you have the oppressed versus the oppressors, right? So everything goes into a bucket and you're like dying on the hill now for the bucket, right, that you now have put yourself in. Then it kind of moves a Little on to these large sweeping claims, right? Everything happening globally is one large conspiracy. It's all because of one group. And it's one of those things like, I want to be clear for a minute now, when someone has very strong political or very strong religious beliefs, it does not mean that they're involved in terrorism or going to become terrorists, right? People debate this stuff all the time. It's perfectly normal. It's when the belief becomes so strong that they're willing to move forward and do more to back and support and push this belief that then we get down to these paths of extremism. So the warning signs usually next are they're so rigid and absolutionist and anything that goes against their beliefs is some conspiracy against them. And there is no way you can disagree or argue with them in any way. And they spend all their time only going and capturing pieces of information that back their worldview. This is something, if you watch these networks closely, you can see people adjust to this very quickly. Quickly. You even get these in a lot of like protest movements. You'll have parents that say, yeah, you know, they were backing this cause. And then they got to a point where it became their entire life, right? They quit their job, they left their spouse and kids. They went and did this full time, right? It was like this switch in radicalization occurred. So, you know, it's not just that this happens in the terrorist space. That's just what we're talking about today. Now, this is a really simple thing I want people to understand is terrorism isn't simply like this moment and you just become a terrorist. It's like this process of radicalization that can be slow and it's a trajectory. And the good thing about it being that way is you can see these changes and these occurrences and what is different or along this trajectory. This episode is brought to you by Dose for Cholesterol. One of the things we've been talking about more lately is how people are starting to pay closer attention to the habits they build into their daily routine, especially when it comes to things like cholesterol support. The reality is a lot of people hesitate when they're told they might have to start taking some something long term that they're not completely comfortable with. People feel like they want to have still some say over how to manage their own health and what they're putting into their body. 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So it's easy for people to work into their routine to support cholesterol habits. And it gets delivered right to your door, which makes it so much easier to stay consistent. New Customers can save 35% on their first first month subscription at DailyDose Co Watchfloor or by using Watchfloor at checkout. Again, that's DailyDose Co Watchfloor for 35% off your first month subscription. When we're talking now into the second stage, when you start feeling this way, you want reinforcement, you actually look for networks that will reinforce your views. And that's how radicalization usually occurs, right? It doesn't always occur alone. You go out, you find people that believe in the same thing, support your narrative, and then they help pull you in further. It's a very simple concept. You need that reinforcement by others. So the good part about this is now there is some sort of outreach to the outside. Lots of times these are like online movements, forums, et cetera. So you will usually see a person trying to reach out, gain access to one of these communities so they can be a part of it and learn in the way they want to learn now that they're kind of going down this more extremist path and want to understand it better, get some role models, get some guidance, and of course, if it's really just get a religious elder to be backing and reading, etc. So don't look at these networks as something like simply organic. They exist because they want to bring in these recruits, they want to help shape minds, they want to bring you kind of into their pathway. And then in some cases they want to move you further along from just believing this to maybe being involved in terrorism, getting Training, et cetera. Now, when we're talking about online, it's not like these people are going through this radicalization process and then they're reaching out to nobodies. In many cases, they're reaching out to two key bodies. One is kind of this non state support and one is state support. So non state support is just simply like a terrorist group. Like we're talking Al Qaeda, isis, maybe Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Shabaab, you know, name your flavor. Of course, Al Qaeda and ISIS have the most robust networks to help radicalize online. And so they're the ones most spoken about. But this doesn't just occur online. They put up propaganda videos, magazines, they do a bunch of other messaging. It could be in like youth programs or even sports programs, or in madrasas. They'll even broadcast things over the radio. So you have to think of it a little bigger. The terrorists obviously spend a lot of time on this. You know, we did a whole episode on how they focus on the recruitment of children and they phase it to do with the ages of the children, you know, as they indoctrinate them and bring them into this process and the process, they hope they that they'll be their ideology for life. It's a very concerning thing to get someone that young because that is their whole belief system that they grow up on. And it's very difficult to reverse that after the fact. People reach out to these communities, you know, for this simple concept. They want to normalize their beliefs. Now when we look at like Al Qaeda, for example, they have mastered this. There's this great documentary called Unredacted. It was first called Jihad Rehab.
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I had been 15 years in Guantanamo without any judge or without any sentence.
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I said if I left Guantanamo, I would kill Americans.
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Nine, eleven. You have two building, right? Yes, two building lots. We lost two country.
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But when you see the people jumping from the building is not, It's not victory. I feel shame about this. When they arrived to us, society would like to punish him. Okay, but how to deal with him after we already punished him?
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When I come here, he said, put it your anger towards the biber. I said, it's crazy how I put my anger in the bibar.
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We don't claim that we are 100% successful. All the people, they asked me how you got the jihad.
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Nobody asked me why you go what the documentarian does. She goes over and she talks to four terrorists in the Saudi Arabian government's terrorist rehabilitation program. And when she spends time with them, she actually realizes each has a different motivation. So there's four different motivations, but Al Qaeda was able to deliver on each, which is very interesting. So one's motivation was just the cause, right? I want to fight for Muslims. I want to fulfill my religious duty. The basic core kind of tenant of. When you train terrorists in a camp, this is what you tell them that they should want to be fighting for. This should be their goal. Those are the easiest recruits, probably for a terrorist group. The second one was economic necessity, and it was simply his need for employment. The interesting thing is when you watch the whole documentary and you kind of get to the end and he gets out of this program, you know, now he's this known terrorist. He's a foreigner in a strange land. It's very difficult for him to get a job. And he gets asked, you know, would you go back to Afghanistan, you know, if you had to do it again? He said, yes. Life was easier for me in Afghanistan, right? I had a salary, I had a job, I. I had a home. Because the terrorists put all this sustenance in around the program, right? They even provide money for your wife and children. They help you find a wife if you don't have one. It is this comfortable system to be in and you don't really have to go rely on anyone else. You know, the organization has you covered. The next is peer pressure. And in that case, it was really his brother. His brother's actually famous. He was Qassem Al Rimi. He became one of the key heads of Al in the Arabian Peninsula. He's now deceased. But, you know, his brother was, you know, this up and coming terrorist and he wanted to follow in his footsteps. He wanted to show, right, I can do this too. And that's why he joined. And then the last one is really just this sense of adventure. Lots of times, you know, in some of these countries, they finish school and there's not a lot of job prospects. We're seeing this right now, you know, really bad in Lebanon, we're seeing a little bit of it in Iran, et cetera. And so these individuals kind of get pulled into this idea of, you know, going abroad and joining this jihad and, you know, having kind of this future within the system. So it's easy to pull people into the system when they don't have kind of that economic stability around them, you know, when they're at a point where they're still young, but they don't see prospects for their future. That's why it's really easy for these terrorist groups to swoop in, you know, and recruit Them. Now we discussed how there's this non state support to recruiting extremists. And of course we focus on the terrorist groups. But of course then there's also state support. And this occurs all over the world and sometimes not even thought about. Of course, we know famously Iran does this, right? This is kind of the top of the food chain when we talk about state support. But over the years, Russia has used different kind of influence campaigns to do this. We have now terrorist groups that essentially run governments. So of course the Taliban, a really good example of the state that is now kind of recruiting and indoctrinating these individuals. And then of course we have the new Syrian regime. They're very involved. We've also seen other governments support some of these efforts. Turkey has had really big roles in this, the Tripoli government in Libya as well. So over time a lot of people have gotten into the game of helping move someone along the radicalization pipeline into some sort of training pipeline. Now we kind of get into a situation, right? You're becoming radicalized. You have a network, you've connected either with this non state or this state actor. Now you're actually a part of, of this echo chamber and you're going to hear everything you want to hear and you're going to be pulled in further, you know, to this ecosystem. And it's what you want. And it actually moves incredibly quickly once you're in this process because now it's like you have this calling card. And this is why so many people will quickly try to go to a terrorist camp or they'll start getting together some materials and at least practicing, right? What does it look like to make a bomb? Let me start researching how other terrorist attacks or even assassinations occurred and that curiosity gets going and then you have people there reinforcing your beliefs. This happened with the Boston. You know, it's very well known that they kind of fell into one of these communities and it just kept moving them along. But just remember, ideology alone doesn't produce terrorists. Of course there are other things that have to happen. And one of those things is you really need to have some sort of personal grievance of some form, because that's usually what these groups use as kind of like that carrot to get you to do something, to motivate you to do something, to tell you it is your duty to do something. And so we all have setbacks in life, right? We have job loss, social isolation, humiliation, legal troubles, relationship drama. Those are normal parts of life. But now if you start experiencing those things and then you're already in this ideological lens of conflict. You've moved down these pathways to radicalization. It starts kind of expounding on how you feel. We had this, of course, terrorist joint ISIS who committed the attack in New Orleans on New Year's Day, right? He lost his job, was having personal relationship problems. And that brings him more into the fold, right? It becomes where the world is hostile and violence now is justified because of all these impacts that have happened to them in some way. So look at it like this. Extremist movements do not create grievances, they weaponize them. So the next step then, as you can imagine, is you have to have some sort of terrorist recruiters in this system and in this process to then move you to the next stage. You can learn all you want online, but if you want to go overseas and attend a camp and become a real member of a group, you know, you get a slot in kind of a coordinated and planned attack. Someone has to trust you and someone has to bring you in. And they play this huge role of where they make these recruits feel like they're going to be heroes. And they're mostly going to be heroes because they're going to be martyrs. And they play on these beliefs a lot. Another thing they like to play on is, you know, it's your duty to honor all these other Muslims who have been impacted in some way. You know, maybe they're facing persecution in a certain country, maybe they're detained in a location. They love using things like Guantanamo, you know, maybe they died in a certain incident or battle, et cetera. And so all these get pulled on. And we talked, you know, several months back about how, you know, Al Qaeda in the Indo subcontinent put out a video that played, played on some of this and really said, what are you doing about this? You know, why are you living these Western lifestyles? Why aren't you coming back, you know, honoring your fall and fighting for them? It's, it's, it's a really smart thing and easy to do. And then this is where you get these terrorists now to kind of transition into this operational phase and want to be capable. So it goes past curiosity. And now they start actually maybe testing bombs or like I said, getting involved in a plot, committing to an act. And that's unfortunately then where we start looking for those indicators that I read to you early on. But do you see all the things that occur before they start pre attack surveillance or they start even recruiting others, right? Or till they start kind of being loud that they're gonna commit Some sort of violence. So what should the public actually watch for now that you understand that there is a trajectory involved? First off is, you know, you have to watch when people isolate themselves into this kind of extremist echo chamber and they really will change their entire worldview and then start doing activities to reinforce that new worldview. Another thing is this escalating language of violence. You know, violence is now, oh, I completely understand, it's justified. And actually now I think it's necessary. Right. That is a huge jump. Another is this curiosity about real world vulnerabilities. They start talking about targets, security problems at locations, how easy it would be to carry out attacks, how they would do it different. Again, you're not looking for one of these signals. You see this pattern of all these events. That's when you now have some real good indicators to say, hey, something is off here. I'm starting to recognize an issue. And that's where then you start being concerned that could this lead to a path of violence? And then, of course, sometimes this leads then to a path of terrorism. Regardless, we want to stop any sort of extremist act from occurring, no matter what you define it as. So this threat detection is really about understanding these trajectories. Patterns matter, Escalation matters, and then context matters. There's one concern people usually talk about when we say, look for these indicators of terrorism like we saw in the Army's posting. And it's like, well, I don't want to be stereotyped or be called racist for unfairly targeting certain communities. And if you heard everything I said today, counterterrorism isn't some identity. You know, we didn't say the Tarzan looks like X, Y or Z. We said, you will see these behaviors. It's just like you see people involved in criminal behaviors, right? You see a person maybe at night trying some doors of cars in your neighborhood. You know you're not being racist when you're like, hey, I think there might be robbing cars. I should probably call this in. So it's the same type of thing you're not feeling, focusing this on just some kind of religion or ethnicity or political belief. You're watching this escalation towards violence. The difference between stopping a terrorist attack and discovering one comes down to recognizing the patterns early enough to have an impact. So terrorist plots rarely appear out of thin air. You know, they develop quietly through small changes. There are signals, and these signals become obvious as you continue to connect the dots. We do not want you to be only looking at the final stages we want you to think through the entire trajectory going forward. Thanks for being here today on the watch floor.