← The Watch Floor with Sarah Adams
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When you finally find your thing, you want the whole world to know about that thing. So you use a thing called Canva to make it an even bigger and better thing. Whether you want to create flyers for that thing, make presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing. You can do anything so people can see your thing, feel your thing, love your thing. The next thing you know, it's a thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now@bloomberg.com welcome to the Watch Floor.
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I'm Sarah Adams. After 16 months, we finally got a counterterrorism strategy out of the new regime. We've been waiting on it. We've been told it's being drafted for well over a year by Trump's counterterrorism czar, Sebastian Gorka. So it was recently released. There's not a lot of strategic pieces in it. It doesn't lay out what we're going to do against the enemy. There's a lot of politics in it. I think Biden's mentioned a ton more in, like Al Qaeda, for example. I was in the foothill foot, excuse
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me, in the foothills of the Himalayas
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with Xi Jinping, and it's missing some key threat areas. So instead I want to talk through, you know, what we should be focused on. Because in this strategy there was some alarming things that showed, hey, the administration isn't exactly clear what's going on on the ground. And instead of taking the time to understand it, they're instead putting out at times misin formation. A really great example is just the second paragraph of the entire report under kind of a note from the president, which he clearly didn't write this. It says the US Government got the mastermind of the Abbey Gate attack. Of course, that is not true at all. We did capture an Islamic State Khorasan Province operative that had been involved in like 30 different terrorist attacks in Afghanistan. Very, very bad. Terrorists should be locked up for life. But he wasn't the mastermind, he wasn't the bomber. Of course the bomber died in the attack. So we just had Director Kash Patel on a podcast saying, we got the bomber. It's like the bomber blew up. And even then they had seven backup bombers. They're all perfectly free, right? So we didn't catch any of those. But it is a frustrating thing to see in there, because just weeks before this was released, I heard information out of Afghanistan that a member of the US Administration promised the Taliban that they would continue lying, that they got the mastermind of Abby Gates. So I kind of just blew it off thinking, oh, it's probably Zalmen making these promises to the Taliban. He always has these backroom deals. But then to read it with President Trump's name signed under it, it was a very concerning thing to see. So, honestly, they should probably scrap this strategy and put it back out because it has so many inaccuracies in it. Another thing is it makes the assumption that terrorists haven't established bases in Africa, and we're gonna stop them from doing it. So very, very strange language. The whole section on Al Shabaab is completely incorrect. Another thing that's incredibly concerning is Al Qaeda has reestablished its base in Afghanistan. There's over 30 terrorist groups operating there. It is the central spot for terrorism for the entire world. And it's not even mentioned. They don't even really mention Pakistan and Afghanistan at all. Besides, you know, the little bit they put on Islamic State, Khorasan Province, and even then, it's like they don't understand that there's also an Islamic State Central Asian branch that's actually bigger right now than iskp, and it's run by someone much more concerning. So the head of ISKP is Sana Ula Ghafari, who is one of the masterminds of Abigail. And we definitely want to put him on the X, bring him to justice. But the head of the Central Asian branch has way more battlefield experience. You know, as Gulmorod Kolamov, he used to run the Tajikistan Special Forces. Overshadows completely Ghafari in not only his skill, his experience, but the fact that there are terrorists all over the world that are coming just so they can work for him. Right. He is kind of viewed as one of these kingpins of terrorism. It's just like if you wanted to go, you know, in the past, right, and go into a camp being run by Osama bin Laden, you know, it's the same concept. There are these individuals who really are viewed as kind of like the godfathers of some of these movements, and he is one of them. So what I want to focus on is at least how the paper is laid out. It talks about three kind of key threat areas. It says narco terrorists, foreign terrorists, and then domestic terrorists. Now, even in the Domestic terrorist section. It's very strange the way we should handle domestic terrorism. Remember, not many groups are actually designated as domestic terrorists. Luckily, like antifa is and I do think they're probably the number one threat. But if individuals cause terrorism on US soil, they get charged as terrorists. It doesn't matter if you're right wing, if you're left wing, what your political ideology is, you commit terrorism, you're a terrorist. And so it's very strange. It's like the last administration only focused on right wing terrorism. This administration is like, we're going to ignore it completely. But you wouldn't. Why would you, like you're not going to ignore a group like terror Graham. We're not going to ignore like neo Nazis. Like you can't ignore all terrorism on the right. I mean, it's just foolish thing. So again, there's some very odd language in this and there's language that really has nothing to do with the definition of terrorism. So if our government is planning to call other individuals and other groups terrorists, well, they need to designate it before they say they're gonna do that in a strategy. Because you cannot use terrorism laws and permissions against a group that hasn't been defined as a terrorist group. So there is a huge disconnect too between what's been designated, what's the law, what tools you can use and who you can use them against. So again, the strategy is a little strange, but at the end of the day, we have to have a strategy, right? We have to have a plan to deal with the terrorism problem both abroad and especially here at home. When I started building the Watch floor, you know, people see the finished product now, but not actually what it took to get there. Like any new endeavor, you're trying to figure out the analytics, the branding, the scheduling, the platform, the outreach, the production, all while trying to, of course, create something that's worth people's time. That's why having the right tools matter for millions of businesses. That tool is Shopify. Shopify gives you one place to run everything from selling products to managing payments to analytics and customer research. They have built in AI tools that help you with product descriptions, marketing and even content creation, which saves a huge amount of time when you already have a full workload. If you're trying to build something from the ground up, visibility matters. Shopify helps businesses reach people through email and social media campaigns without needing that massive marketing team behind you. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing. Sign up for your $1 a month trial today at shopify.com watch. That's shopify.com watch again, shopify.com watch when we talk about those three buckets, let's just start with the foreign terrorist organization. So in the strategy it lists like these are the five top threats. So the first. So it's like Al Qaeda. It's not exactly ranks, it's like five threats. So it's Al Qaeda and then it's specifically Al Qaeda's Yemen branch, aqap, then it's the Islamic State and then specifically iskp, and then it's the Muslim Brotherhood. Well, this is what's very, very interesting. Okay, so you make the Muslim Brotherhood one of the top five threats for foreign terrorists. I'm perfectly fine with that. But our policy doesn't align with that at all. We have only designated four branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as even being terrorist organizations. I mean, think about that. It's a huge organization. So if you only designate four, you're ignoring the rest. So the four we designated is Egypt, where it's already banned Jordan, where it's already banned, Lebanon, where of course they're definitely still operating and have angle into militant pieces as well. And then we just a little over a month ago designated the Sudan branch of it. But as you know, when we say those, we're missing some key branches. Of course, we're missing, as you can imagine, Turkey. Right. It's not saying we're banning any activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey. We don't have Tunisia in there. The Anada movement, Right. They're very, very powerful. We don't have the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. They just put an entire government run by Al Qaeda. We don't have the Yemen Muslim Brotherhood. You know, I am a little upset that we don't have the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood. So we're saying Muslim Brotherhood is one of the top five terrorism threats to our government, but we're only going to look at little branches of it. So it's like saying, well, Al Qaeda is a number one threat, but we're only going to designate Al Qaeda in the Indo subcontinent and Al Qaeda in the Arab peninsula and we're just ignore the rest of their branches. I mean, it's absurd. So if we're going to have a policy and we're going to have a strategy, we have to have everything aligned. So every branch of the Muslim Brotherhood needs to be designated as a terrorist organization. If it's the top five, one of the top five terrorist threats to the United States, I mean, it's just that simple. So there's all these, like, inaccuracies in here that don't align with real life is the best way to put it. So when we talk about foreign terrorist organizations, I think we got now to the era where we can't bucket groups anymore. I've already explained that in the past on a previous episode, that one of the sons of Saad bin Laden died fighting with ISIS in Syria. Right. Al Qaeda works with isis. So if we start lumping and only looking at Al Qaeda, we only look at isis, we only look at Muslim Brotherhood, we only look at Hamas, we only look at Hezbollah. We are missing the convergence across the groups. And the convergence is the space we can work in. It's a space we can play them off of each other. And it's a space we can win in if we start handling this a different way. So if we talk about the top three foreign terrorism threats to the United States, it's the Islamic Resistance Council, right? So this is the council that was put together by the sons of Osama bin Laden, and it was actually his idea many years ago, but they've now put it into place. And it brings Sunni and Shia terrorist groups together for a multitude of reasons, to help with training, financing, shared plotting. But the real reason is, hey, strategically, the way we do a strategic surprise against the United States, like 9, 11, we have to do something different. We have to change something. What will they not expect? A Sunni, Shia alliance. So when they do attack us the next time, some terrorists will be from Sunni groups, some terrorists will be from Shia groups. And we're never going to find them in advance because their cells are mixed. A cell of eight terrorists has eight terrorists from eight different groups, Right? So it's a very, very smart thought. The terrorists have evolved and we have not caught up with them. And we're going to be in a bad situation if we don't start kind of aligning our targeting and our collection and our operational efforts in the way that they're planning and plotting against us. Now, a lot of people don't know what the Islamic Resistance Council is because it's only been in place for a couple years. It's that new. So the first head of it was Hamza Al Ghamdi. He was a former bodyguard of Osama bin Laden. He's now ahead of Al Qaeda's military commission and likely soon moving to be Al Qaeda's head of the Sahel. And then we have Saif Al, who's actually leading this commission. But I want to walk through, through the Groups that have signed up for this. I want you to hear what groups said, hey, we want to work together for a greater cause. And that greater cause is taking it to the United States and of course, other places like Israel and Europe. Specifically, places like France, the uk, Sweden, Norway, Germany. So when we talk about the groups, it's Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network, the tricky Taliban, Pakistan. Right. The Pakistani Taliban. Jaishu Mohammed. Right. Pakistani terrorist group, Lashkar e Taiba, Al Badr Mujahideen, all three Pakistani terrorist groups in Central Asia. We have the Tajikistan Taliban movement. We have Tajikistan's Ansarula. We have Etim, Right. The East Turkestan Islamic Movement. We have in Syria, hts, who we spent a lot of time talking about. That's where Abu Mohammed al Jelani came from. Harris Al Din in Levant. We have Hamas, Hezbollah. The larger Islamic resistance has signed on. And in global players, we have the Islamic State. So these are the founding members of the Islamic Resistance Council. Right. This is an Islamic army. And we are not fighting them as an Islamic army, but they're sitting down monthly and planning as an Islamic army. Right. We're in a bad spot. Now. That's the number one threat from foreign terrorist organizations, United States Islamic Resistance Council, who, easier said, the Islamic Army. And it's really made after the army of Imam Mahdi. It goes back to historic preachings, those type of things. The number two threat is the axis of resistance. A lot of this is because we're in a war with Iran. But of course it's also because a number of these groups have also joined the Islamic Resistance Council. And for many years they are really who our troops fought on the ground when they're in the Middle East, a constant threat. And they want still, as you can imagine, revenge for our operations there. When we talk about the access resistance, of course the main player is Iran, but most importantly irgc. Then we have Hezbollah and Hamas, again, like on the resistance council. We have Palestinian Islamic Jihad. We have the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. And then Iraq, we have Haricot Hezbollah, Al Najabi. We have Kaitab Hezbollah. We have Badr Organization, the Iraq one. We have the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, Ansar Allah over in Yemen, the Houthis. Oh, back we had the popular mobilization forces in Iraq. In Syria, there's a number of individuals. The interesting thing in the past, it was the former Assad regime that was in the axis of resistance. And that's now changing some. So that's going to be interesting to watch. And then Kind of in the Afghanistan, Iran, Syria area, we have Liwa fethiyouin, or what we call the fethiyouin brigade. Then we also have the zanibuin brigade, same type of thing. So a lot of actors come into play and they're all working together in concert and supporting each other. So, number one, the Islamic Resistance Council. Number two, we have the axis of resistance. Number three is, of course, the Muslim Brotherhood. So we already kind of covered them, so I don't want to go in depth into them now. But of course, Muslim Brotherhood is the backbone of international terrorism. You can't deal with like, one body part and ignore the rest. Right. It's like if you're going to the gym and you're only doing legs, if you only ever do legs, what's going to happen to the rest of you? So you have to think about that. And the U.S. government doesn't handle this issue as a whole, and that's why we keep failing against it. Now, besides dealing with foreign terrorist organizations at kind of the broader structural level, and then where they converge, we have a similar problem when we talk about narco terrorism. We've had the government redefine that these cartels fall into terrorist organizations, and that was a lot to move money and resources around. Do all really fall under the definition of terrorism? Not exactly. But what matters, again, like with the foreign terrorist organizations, is the convergence. How does a narco terrorist organization enable, effect, amplify the efforts of foreign terrorist organization? That is a space where we could be making the most effects. So traditionally, we deal with them separate, just like we deal with the terrorist groups separate. We say, hey, there's these ideological terrorist organizations, these transnational criminal or drug organizations, and everything is worked separately. But when you actually look at the systems, they have smuggling and logistics networks that overlap. They have financial intermediaries, they share. They share document fraud and identity systems together. They operate together where there's weak governance. They are constantly working together and enabling each other. And we're not fighting them that way. And we need to. We need to start looking at them first from a financial strategy. We have to deal with all them as a whole. We have to fuse the efforts against foreign terrorist organizations and the narco terrorists and figure out where they overlap, where they're benefiting each other the most, so we know exactly where to target. Why would you not want to target an institution that benefits Al Qaeda, it benefits Hezbollah, and it also benefits the Sinaloa cartel? Why would you not want to take that organization? Would that not be a better Use of your time. That's the way we have to start looking at it. Another thing is this focusing on facilitation networks. So we have all these cartel members moving terrorists into this country, weapons into this country. They know more than if you just recruit a random Al Qaeda guy in Pakistan. They're watching these things come over the border. They're trusted to move them. They know where they're going, they know who they were in contact with. I mean, it's this insane thing that we're not taking advantage of this piece of the pie. And it's something we really need a strategy of and we need to look. Another thing is we have to focus on these conversion zones, right, where these actors have to cross over. Great example being in the Sahel. We long ignore the Sahel, but that is where you do get kind of the narco terrorists crossing over with regular terrorists and they have to work together to move supplies and et cetera. Of course, we have the Afghanistan and Pakistan border region. Anyone telling you opium's over have lost their mind. The opium market out of Afghanistan is stronger than it's ever been, stronger than it was five years ago. We also have the Iraq, Syria corridor where a lot of this convergence is occurring. And then of course, Latin America. But the strange thing with Latin America, we're not spending any time on the convergence. You once in a while hear, oh, Hezbollahs in Latin America. But we're not hearing any efforts to cross over. You know how these organizations are working with in Al Qaeda, working with, in isis, et cetera. Heck, working with the Muslim Brotherhood. You don't hear that at all. Another thing we have to look at is kind of how recruitment occurring and expanding these pipelines really do affect one another. And recruitment can be very similar in some cases. And as I brought up, they will use the same fraudulent document makers. Well, that's really interesting. If I can wrap up a guy who made 100 fake Mexican passports for Sinaloa cartel, but he also made another 100 for Al Qaeda, right? That is like a gold mine. And we're just not even trying to do that. Another thing is we need kind of this network based targeting model, right? We need to map the relationships between these actors, the money, the logistics, you know, what nodes really make this come together. Who are the bridge actors? What can we affect? And then we need some strategic communications. If everyone says, well, narco terrorists are just in it for money and then they're backing these terrorist groups that have a lot different of an aim, right? A lot different of a Lifestyle. Why are we not putting it out there that that's happening? Why are we not undercutting these criminal organizations who are benefiting from the terrorists and supporting the terrorists? The threat landscape isn't just described by certain categories, right. It's not just like foreign terrorism, organized crime, narco terrorism. There is a convergence among all of them. And an effective counterterrorism strategy should shift from focusing on just entities to actually disrupting these networks, because that's the bigger bang for our buck. These systems and the way the groups are coming together is adaptive. It's this convergence where it's combining ideology, criminality and, and logistics into a single system and we're missing it entirely. Now, when we talk about domestic terrorism, it is a slightly different issue. But of course, if the counterterrorism strategy is going to cover everything, it has to have this piece in it. And we still have the problem. We put in buckets, but we put it in political buckets. Right, left, right religious. And it's really a affecting the way in which we deal with this problem. Because depending on the administration that comes in, okay, so if it's a left administration come in, they're going to ignore left wing terrorism. If it's a right administration that comes in, they're going to ignore right wing terrorism. That is not the way to deal with terrorism. It can't be a decision based on politics. And we're seeing it again and again and again. And we're hoping with a new administration coming in that it would just be black and white, right? You commit terrorism, we're going after you. And now we're being told again, well, we're going to move this bucket of terrorism aside and not focus on them because we think this should have been focused on. And I think it's a frustrating thing when you just want the job to be done right and you just want people to go after all threats and all obstacles. You know, if we're on the local level and let's say something occurs in your town, you hear down at the local town center, there's a man with a gun and he's shooting people. It's like an active shooter. Well, when that's happening, you're dealing with that threat in front of you. Nobody as he's shooting is like, oh, is this Al Qaeda? Is this a white supremacist? Is this a transgender shooter? Oh, it's just some crazy guy off his meds, right? You are dealing with the thing, threat in front of you. So why. Well, before that situation, do you say well, you have to go in this bucket, and you're not as important if you're in this bucket or we're not going to prioritize you in that bucket, or, oh, if you're this affiliate of Al Qaeda, you're not that much of a threat to us. We're only looking at this one. And it's this very strange act of not actually dealing with a problem, not actually dealing with the enemy, but choosing who you want to be your enemy at a given time and ignoring, like I said earlier, the fact that the enemy gets a vote. A more effective strategy is a lot simpler and it really should be consistent across the board. You focus on behavior, you focus on intent, you focus on capability. They have to be able to do what they say they can do, and you focus on the enabling environment around them that might help them get to that point. Right? There's no labels at first. So the goal is to identify and disrupt the pathways to violence right before the intent and the capability fully converge into action. That's how you deal with domestic terrorism. You don't just say, oh, our priority now is left wing. Our priority is protecting the US Homeland from any threat. I don't care what flag you wave. If you're going to harm someone in my community, I'm going to go after you. And we need a strong strategy that says that we don't want to tell a huge chunk of people, oh, you're politically protected right now. Do what you want, nobody's going to go after you. Hell with that, right? You cause a problem in this country, you're going to prison. I don't care what bucket you're in. I don't care what label you have. I don't care who you vote for. If you harm Americans, we're coming after you. So I hope that was a really good view of what a strategy should look like. I really do hope our government kind of goes back to the drawing table and puts together like a real strategy, because these are very capable enemies. And if we don't have a proper plan to go after them, they are the ones on the offense. You never want to be on the defense. Our job is to stay on the offense, to never give them the opportunity to hit us again like they did on 9 11. And right now we're failing at that objective and something needs to change. So push your members of Congress, you know, contacts you have in the administration. Make it clear we want to effectively do counterterrorism in a way that wins, period. Thanks for being here today on the watch floor.
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