[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]



 


 
 TRANSATLANTIC COOPERATION ON COUNTERING GLOBAL TERRORISM AND VIOLENT 
                               EXTREMISM

=======================================================================

                             JOINT HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

       SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, ENERGY, THE ENVIRONMENT AND CYBER

                                  and

                            SUBCOMMITTEE ON
         MIDDLE EAST, NORTH AFRICA, AND GLOBAL COUNTERTERRORISM

                                 OF THE

                      COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                           September 23, 2021

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-75

                               __________

        Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
        
        
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       Available:  http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/, http://
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                       or http://www.govinfo.gov
                       
                              ______

             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
 46-091 PDF            WASHINGTON : 2023 
                    
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                      COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

                  GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York, Chairman

BRAD SHERMAN, California             MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas, Ranking 
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey                  Member
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia         CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida          STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
KAREN BASS, California               SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania
WILLIAM R. KEATING, Massachusetts    DARRELL ISSA, California
DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island        ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois
AMI BERA, California                 LEE ZELDIN, New York
JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas                ANN WAGNER, Missouri
DINA TITUS, Nevada                   BRIAN MAST, Florida
TED LIEU, California                 BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania             KEN BUCK, Colorado
DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota             TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee
ILHAN OMAR, Minnesota                MARK GREEN, Tennessee
COLIN ALLRED, Texas                  ANDY BARR, Kentucky
ANDY LEVIN, Michigan                 GREG STEUBE, Florida
ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia         DAN MEUSER, Pennsylvania
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania       AUGUST PFLUGER, Texas
TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey           PETER MEIJER, Michigan
ANDY KIM, New Jersey                 NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS, New York
SARA JACOBS, California              RONNY JACKSON, Texas
KATHY MANNING, North Carolina        YOUNG KIM, California
JIM COSTA, California                MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida
JUAN VARGAS, California              JOE WILSON, South Carolina
VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas
BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois

                                     
                                     
                                      

                    Sophia LaFargue, Staff Director

               Brendan Shields, Republican Staff Director
                                 ------                                

        Subcommittee on Europe, Energy,the Environment and Cyber

              WILLIAM R. KEATING, Massachusetts, Chairman

SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania             BRIAN FITZPATRICK, 
ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia             Pennsylvania,Ranking Member
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey              ANN WAGNER, Missouri
THEODORE DEUTCH, Florida             ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois,
DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island        BRIAN MAST, Florida
DINA TITUS, Nevada                   DAN MEUSER, Pennsylvania
DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota             AUGUST PFLUGER, Texas
JIM COSTA, California                NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS, New York
VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas              PETER MEIJER, Michigan
BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois

                                     
                                                  

                      Leah Nodvin, Staff Director

                                 ------                                

 Subcommittee on Middle East, North Africa, and Global Counterterrorism

                 THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida, Chairman

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia         JOE WILSON, South Carolina, 
DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island            Ranking Member
TED LIEU, California                 SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania
COLIN ALLRED, Texas                  ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois
TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey           LEE ZELDIN, New York
KATHY MANNING, North Carolina        BRIAN MAST, Florida
WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts       TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee
BRAD SHERMAN, California             GREG STEUBE, Florida
JUAN VARGAS, California              RONNY JACKSON, Texas
BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois             MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida

                                     
                                     
                   Casey Kustin, Staff Director
                                            
                                            
                                            
                                            

  

                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

                               WITNESSES

Onidi, Olivier, Deputy Director-General, Directorate-General for 
  Migration and Home Affairs, European Commission................     8
Ramalingam, Vidhya, Founder & CEO, Moonshot......................    15
Pantucci, Raffaello, Senior Associate Fellow, Royal United 
  Services Institute (RUSI)......................................    21
Levitt, Dr. Matthew, Fromer-Wexler Fellow, Director, Jeanette and 
  Eli Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, The 
  Washington Institute for Near East Policy......................    29

                                APPENDIX

Hearing Notice...................................................    63
Hearing Minutes..................................................    65
Hearing Attendance...............................................    66


 TRANSATLANTIC COOPERATION ON COUNTERING GLOBAL TERRORISM AND VIOLENT 
                               EXTREMISM

                      Thursday, September 23, 2021

                          House of Representatives,
  Subcommittee on Europe, Energy, the Environment, 
                                         and Cyber,
       Committee on Foreign Affairs, joint with the
    Subcommittee on Middle East, North Africa, and 
                                   Global Terrorism
                                                    Washington, DC.

    The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:11 p.m., in 
room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. William R. 
Keating (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
    Mr. Keating. The House Foreign Affairs subcommittee will 
come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to 
declare recess of the committee at any point, and all members 
will have 5 days to submit statements, extraneous materials, 
and questions for the record, subject to the length and 
limitation of the rules.
    To insert something into the record, please have our staff 
email the previously mentioned address or contact full 
committee staff.
    Please keep your video function on at all times, even when 
you are not recognized by the chair. Members are responsible 
for muting and unmuting themselves, so please remember to mute 
yourself after you finish speaking. Consistent with House 
Resolution 965 and the accompanying regulations, staff will 
only mute members and witnesses as appropriate when they are 
not under recognition to eliminate background noise.
    I see that we have got a quorum. I now recognize myself for 
opening remarks pursuant to this notice. We are holding a 
hearing today entitled Transatlantic Cooperation on Countering 
Global Terrorism and Violent Extremism. I will now recognize 
myself for 5 minutes.
    This month, on the 20th anniversary of September 11, I 
attended a memorial service in my district to mourn the loss of 
all those who died that day, including 206 Massachusetts 
residents, and to honor the sacrifice made by others to prevent 
such an atrocious attack on our country from ever happening 
again.
    During the service, I was struck by how quickly 20 years 
can go by. It is truly remarkable how our global society is 
fundamentally altered in so many years and ways responsible as 
a result of this action which opened our eyes to the threat of 
Global Terrorism and Violent Extremism. At the same time, I 
realize how important our transatlantic alliance has been for 
keeping us all safe and decided to hold a hearing to explore 
what mechanism and what actions were taken to build in the year 
since 9/11. As such, this hearing will cover the successes, 
challenges, and opportunities of our transatlantic 
collaboration to counterterrorism and violent extremism.
    But before I make my opening statement, I would like to 
offer my sincere thanks to Chairman Deutch for his leadership 
and for holding this hearing. Your work highlighting 
multilateral counterterrorism efforts through the subcommittee 
on Middle East and North Africa, of which I have been a member, 
is vitally important, and I hope we can continue to work 
together to highlight transatlantic cooperation in this space.
    Let me turn to the topic we are here to discuss today. 
Since World War II, the United States and Europe has created 
the strongest military alliance the world has ever seen. 
Together, we have committed ourselves to our collective defense 
and made a promise to show up when needed. With that promise in 
place, after 9/11, our NATO partners did just that. With 
article V triggered, they came to our defense, and since, our 
allies have staunchly served alongside us in places like 
Afghanistan and Iraq, often making the greatest of sacrifices, 
just as our American soldiers have, to ensure the safety and 
security of all our citizens.
    Alongside our activities on the ground, the U.S.-EU 
cooperation importantly has also expanded our ability to share 
information and to share lessons learned. We built robust 
mechanisms meant to counter terrorism and violent extremism 
such as money laundering, trafficking in humans, drugs, nuclear 
and radiological substances, terrorist financing, repatriation, 
and judicial proceedings for foreign fighters, container 
security, and irregular migration, just to name a few.
    The EU and the U.S. have also simplified their extradition 
procedures and promoted mutual legal assistance. As a result, 
the U.S. is Europol's largest partner in terms of the number of 
joint cases conducted, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation 
is the U.S. agency that contributes the highest volume of 
information to the EU. Altogether, these agreements, 
institutions, and rules are vital for us to continue to live in 
relative piece, and achieve security and prosperity for all of 
our citizens.
    Now, in a time when we are reviewing the state of Global 
Terrorism and Violent Extremism, it is more important than ever 
to remember what we have created so far and recommit ourselves 
to those mechanisms that ensure our way of life which is 
grounded on the values of freedom, democracies, and human 
rights.
    The question now is how the United States and Europe can 
maintain this transatlantic bond that served as a bulwark 
against threats to our collective security.
    To answer this critical question, my colleagues and I have 
invited a group of incredibly knowledgeable experts with a 
diverse range of professional experiences. They include Deputy 
Director-General for Migration and Home Affairs at the European 
Commission, Olivier Onidi, founder and CEO of Moonshot, Vidhya 
Ramalingam. I hope I get that correctly. I apologize. I will 
get it before this hearing is over. The Royal United Services 
Institute, Raffaello Pantucci, and the Washington Institute's 
Dr. Matthew Levitt.
    As longstanding experts in the field of counterterrorism 
and preventing the spread of global violent extremism, you will 
be able to give concrete recommendations on the ways that the 
United States and the European Union can bolster cooperation in 
the areas such as data sharing, privacy, deradicalization and 
radicalization prevention initiatives, terrorism financing and 
sanctions, and irregular migration for foreign fighters. We 
thank you for being here today.
    President Biden highlighted the central lesson of the 
September 11 attacks when he said, we saw something all too 
rare, a true sense of national unity, unity and resilience, a 
capacity to recover and repair in the face of trauma. It is at 
our most vulnerable in the push and pull of all of this makes 
us human, that unites us, that gives us our greatest strength.
    I could not agree more with the sentiment and venture to 
expand it to encompass transatlantic unity as one of the top 
priorities of myself and our respective subcommittees. With 
that, I welcome an honest assessment today, and we have been 
here joining you at this critical time, a time when we need to 
grow in our mutual quest to counter the threat of terrorism and 
global violent extremism.
    I now will turn to Ranking Member Wilson for his opening 
statement.
    Mr. Wilson. Thank you for calling this hearing today. With 
the increasing invigoration, scope, and capability and funding 
of international terrorist organizations, cooperation and 
coordination with our friends and allies in Europe to combat 
and prevent terrorism have never been more critical, especially 
as Afghanistan has now become a safe haven for terrorist 
training. I am particularly hopeful for the United States' 
relationship with the EU and NATO partners to conduct 
counterterrorism operations and share critical information.
    Technology, sadly, has made recruiting and proliferation of 
extremist content cheap and easy which means we must recommit 
ourselves to solving this evolving problem. One area that we 
must close the gap with EU is in regard to the designation of 
terrorist groups who pose a threat to our mutual friend and 
ally, Israel, and the United States and European Union 
countries.
    Iranian-backed Islamic extremist terrorist groups like 
Hezbollah and Hamas pose an existential threat to Israeli 
families and seek to destabilize regional and normalization 
efforts, and yet, there is reluctance to name Hezbollah's 
political wing as a terrorist group.
    A week ago, it was reported that Hezbollah imported Iranian 
fuel into Lebanon through Syria, welcomed by banners blatantly 
reading, quote, thank you, Iran, thank you, Assad Syria, end of 
quote. There is no question that the Iranian regime seeks to 
export its draconian ideology as is evident by Hezbollah 
presence in Latin America.
    I was grateful to introduce a bipartisan bill this week in 
Congress to address this issue and identify authoritarian 
regimes working with the Iranian-backed terrorist groups in the 
western hemisphere.
    We appreciate our distinguished witnesses for their 
expertise, and I look forward to hearing from each of you, and 
I yield back.
    Mr. Keating. I now recognize Ranking Member Fitzpatrick for 
his opening statement.
    Mr. Fitzpatrick. Thank you, Chairman Keating, also to 
Chairman Deutch and Ranking Member Wilson----
    Mr. Keating. I believe you are muted.
    Mr. Fitzpatrick. Can you hear me, Chairman?
    Mr. Keating. I can hear you. I now recognize Ranking Member 
Fitzpatrick for his opening statement.
    Mr. Fitzpatrick. Thank you, Chairman Keating, and also to 
Chairman Deutch and Ranking Member Wilson for holding this 
important hearing and to our esteemed panel of witnesses for 
being with us here today.
    Twenty years ago, our Nation was galvanized into action by 
the horrific terror attacks on September 11 of 2001, and our 
response was swift, and it was comprehensive. The United States 
bolstered law enforcement and intelligence capabilities. We 
created the Department of Homeland Security, coordinated 
information sharing between agencies and our allies overseas, 
and our military was operationalized.
    In less than 24 hours after the attacks, the North Atlantic 
Council invoked article V, collective defense clause, for the 
first time in the alliance's history. We are forever grateful 
for how our NATO allies joined us in our time of need, 
sacrificing greatly alongside of our own Armed Forces.
    And as was the case in 2001, we are stronger when we work 
together. And for this reason, we continue to need our 
transatlantic allies to share the burden of what is required in 
the global play and the global war on terror. Therefore, it is 
my hope today that our witnesses can discuss how the U.S. can 
better coordinate our counterterrorist strategies with our 
closest allies.
    Today, the United States counterterrorism efforts have been 
tactically successful. Major attacks have been foiled, 
terrorist networks have been broken, and the United States 
Government's data base of known or suspected terrorists has 
grown substantially. While our capabilities have grown with 
experience, the threat posed by terrorism is far from 
eradicated.
    Our campaign to eliminate Global Terrorism and Violent 
Extremism has revealed ugly truths about the origins of this 
phenomenon. Terrorism is fueled by local drivers and respects 
no borders.
    Therefore, to stop radicalization, attention to good 
governance, support for the rule of law, economic stability, 
and public health must all be tools used to address this 
worldwide issue.
    It is my hope today that Dr. Levitt can expand on the 
points he made in his written testimony about utilizing soft 
power solutions to bolster civilian counterterrorism capacity 
and establishing preventive methods to get ahead of the 
radicalization curve. Soft power developments offer 
sustainable, long-term solutions to counterterrorism and must 
be sync'd with the strategies of our allies.
    As a former FBI special agent myself, I would also be 
remiss not to mention that Dr. Levitt worked as a 
counterintelligence analyst at the FBI in the wake of September 
11. I would like to thank you, sir, for your service to our 
country, and I look forward to hearing from you and our other 
witnesses this afternoon. I yield back, Chairman.
    Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative Fitzpatrick.
    I would now like to recognize and turn the gavel over to 
the chairman, Chairman Deutch, who will conduct the hearing, 
and then I am sure introduce his opening statement. Chairman 
Deutch.
    Mr. Deutch. Thanks very much, Chairman Keating. I am so 
glad to join you today for this really important and timely 
hearing on transatlantic cooperation and countering violent 
extremism. We are here--and I appreciate your leadership 
bringing us together.
    We are here today 20 years after the events of September 11 
which profoundly changed the global approach to 
counterterrorism. We are here after 20 years of war in 
Afghanistan which our NATO partners stood side by side with our 
troops, and we are here less than a month after that war now 
has come to a close. What happens next is certainly a question 
on everyone's mind. And there is no doubt that our withdrawal 
from Afghanistan, while the right thing to do, gave some of our 
transatlantic partners pause.
    Twenty years ago, the collective belief was that violent 
radical Islamic terrorism posed the greatest threat to our 
homeland and our interests. In the aftermath of 9/11, the U.S. 
and European partners worked together to track suspects, 
funding streams, and collect intelligence in order to thwart 
future attacks.
    Certainly, even as Al Qaeda and Afghanistan was being 
decimated, Al Qaeda affiliates in the Arabian peninsula, across 
Africa, and elsewhere continued to pose dangerous threats. The 
formation of ISIS and its affiliates changed the terror 
landscape as Americans and Europeans were threatened, 
kidnapped, and killed.
    Since 2014, horrific ISIS-inspired attacks in France, the 
UK, the Netherlands, and Belgium have forced the EU to grapple 
with a new wave of terror and the political consequences of 
balancing freedom and human rights with security. Although 
ISIS' territory may be depleted, we know that its propaganda 
machine continues to actively recruit and inspire new 
followers.
    In recent years, we have also seen the global rise of 
violent while nationalism and far right terrorism, and that 
terrorism that disproportionately affected the United States 
and many European Nations. In the U.S., our deadliest attacks, 
be it the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, the 
Charleston AME Church massacre, those were carried out by white 
nationalists.
    With the rise of social media and online propaganda, we 
face a new challenging of lone wolf attackers, those 
radicalized online and inspired to commit deadly acts without 
the planning and backing of any specific terror group. We have 
seen Iranian-backed terror threaten the U.S. and our interests 
abroad, even launch attacks on European soil like the 2012 
bombing in Burgas, Bulgaria. So Hezbollah continues to actively 
fund raise across Europe which is why many of us have worked 
hard to encourage the EU to designate Hezbollah in its entirety 
a terrorist organization.
    As we sit here today with 20 years of the war on terror 
behind us, and as we chart a new path of cooperation forward on 
counterterrorism in Afghanistan, it is time to reassess our 
counterterrorism strategy and our global partnerships. Our 
alliances are what keep us strong in the great power 
competition with China and Russia. We have some rebuilding to 
do after the past several years, and I am aware that many of 
our transatlantic partners need to see actionable assurances 
from the United States that we remain committed to these vital 
partnerships. That is why President Biden continues to reaffirm 
the importance of alliances as he did just this week at the 
U.N. General Assembly.
    Today we will examine the mechanisms and frameworks in 
place for the U.S. and our European partners to jointly counter 
violent extremism. We will also look at what has worked and 
what hasn't worked and how we can adjust our approaches for the 
types of threats that we currently face. I am grateful to the 
witnesses for appearing today and sharing their expertise.
    I thank Chair Keating again, and I look forward to a 
productive discussion and continuing to affirm our commitment 
to the transatlantic partnership.
    With that, Chairman Keating has introduced the witnesses, 
so I will now recognize the witnesses for 5 minutes each. 
Without objection, your prepared written statement will be made 
part of the record.
    Mr. Onidi, you are now recognized for your comments.

     STATEMENT OF OLIVIER ONIDI, DEPUTY DIRECTOR-GENERAL, 
 DIRECTORATE-GENERAL FOR MIGRATION AND HOME AFFAIRS, EUROPEAN 
                           COMMISSION

    Mr. Onidi. Thank you. Thank you very much, Chair, for this 
invitation. Thank you also to the ranking members and all 
honorable members, actually, of both of your subcommittees. It 
is a great pleasure and honor to be with you in a position to 
testify on the current, actually, efforts on both sides of the 
Atlantic to continue in the quest of reinforcing the fight 
against terrorism.
    The subject is important. September 11, you said it, sent 
shock waves, really, as to the dimension terrorism had taken. 
But we have seen throughout years, 20 years now, how close both 
the United States and the European Union and its member States 
have actually come in setting in place the response to fight 
global terrorism. We have joined forces abroad to defeat 
international terrorism organizations, and we should continue 
doing this with a renewed commitment of the United States to 
remain active in the main parts at risk. For example, is a very 
important testimony to this engagement to continue of having 
our military forces engaged abroad for that cause.
    We have learned also progressively to set up policy 
responses that were mutually reinforcing. When we talk about 
the fight against terrorism financing, there is no better 
example than the terrorist financial tracking program that has 
been instrumental in cutting the finance resources to organized 
terrorism groupings.
    Advance passenger information, passenger name records have 
also been tools which we haven't only developed in our own 
jurisdiction but which we are also developing across the world 
in different countries. Information systems being used by our 
border guards and also the information that is actively being 
pushed in those systems is another, I guess, example of how 
much we have done together.
    We have brought our agencies, our operational entities to 
actively work together. There is no better example than Europol 
being the hub in Europe of cross border, transatlantic 
cooperation with all relevant agencies being represented and 
being closely associated to the work of Europol on our side in 
terms of facilitating the exchange of information, providing 
support to investigations, but also then looking at prosecution 
and the judiciary angle of the cases.
    How to best understand what actually leads an individual to 
commit a terrorist act, sir, prevents this to happen. Also, we 
rehabilitate individuals. This has become the prime focus of 
our joint work because we have realized that most of the 
attacks these days actually committed on our soil by homegrown 
domestic residents of our countries, and we have done a lot of 
progress in actually helping out in anticipation of such acts. 
And I would be very happy to discuss in more details the type 
of cooperations we set up on that.
    And then, finally, the last point I wanted to highlight in 
this introduction, the online world, which has also been a 
recognition that most of the incitement, the recruitment of 
individuals led to commit terrorist attacks is actually 
happening online. In every attack over the last years in 
Europe, there is an important factor of online radicalization.
    This is where we have seen us shouldering our efforts 
toward the internet world, pushing through the companies the 
obligations to do more in order to identify and suppress 
terrorism incitement material and also helping us in 
identifying those groupings which were actually very active 
online.
    Afghanistan, you said it, is another reminder of how 
important it is to continue this fight together and certainly 
not lower our guards in this field.
    Thank you very much for your attention.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Onidi follows:]
    
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    Mr. Deutch. Thank you very much, Mr. Onidi.
    Ms. Ramalingam, you are now recognized for your opening 
statement.

    STATEMENT OF VIDHYA RAMALINGAM, FOUNDER & CEO, MOONSHOT

    Ms. Ramalingam. Thank you. Chair Keating, Chair Deutch, 
Ranking Member Fitzpatrick, Ranking Member Wilson, and members 
of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to speak 
with you today. I appreciate your leadership to ensure better 
international cooperation on countering global violent 
extremism.
    Throughout my career, I have worked to design and deliver 
terrorism prevention and deradicalization models globally. 10 
years ago when a white supremacist terrorist murdered 77 people 
in Norway, I led the EU's first intergovernmental initiative on 
white nationalist terrorism and extremism.
    I worked with hundreds of policymakers, practitioners, 
social workers, and former extremists across ten EU countries 
to gather evidence and design policy and programs on what 
worked in prevention of this form of terrorism.
    Today, I have taken this fight online as founder of 
Moonshot, an organization working with U.S. and European 
governments to build online prevention mechanisms fit for the 
21st century. Our work has been delivered with partners such as 
the U.S. Department of State across administrations and the 
Global Coalition Against Daesh with which we worked across over 
80 coalition partners on online efforts to degrade terrorist 
recruitment.
    The last 20 years have seen considerable investment across 
Europe in terrorism prevention models, but what actually works? 
Based on my research and what research shows, the following 
components of various European prevention models have proven to 
be effective: One. They involve behavioral health methods. 
There is a vast evidence base demonstrating its efficacy, 
particularly counseling, which helps to adequately address 
underlying drivers and vulnerabilities and can facilitate 
referrals to other services. This has become the cornerstone of 
most European programs.
    2. They are multi-disciplinary and involve multi-agency 
systems which can achieve better case management, drawing on 
expertise and preexisting capabilities across social services, 
education, healthcare systems, and law enforcement.
    3. They are locally established and run with substantive 
involvement from communities where they are deployed.
    4. They need not be ideology focused but, rather, span the 
ideological spectrum. Licensed practitioners, including 
psychologists, counselors, social workers, and others involved 
in these programs do require training to engage ideology when 
it arises, but ideology does not need to be addressed first and 
foremost.
    In fact, evidence shows sometimes this is 
counterproductive. Many longstanding European prevention 
programs engage individuals across the ideological spectrum at 
risk of Salafi Jihadism, neo-Nazism, violent end cells, and 
potential mass shooters alike.
    5. They offer off ramps for those looking to leave violent 
extremism. Off ramping and exit programs such as those in 
Sweden, Finland, and Germany demonstrate high case loads and 
low recidivism rates and have served as the model for life 
after hate here in the United States.
    And, finally, these programs tend to be more effective and 
credible when they are independent of government but have 
stable government funding. Accountability is critical, but a 
bit of independence gives programs, especially exit programs, 
greater authority with those who are looking to leave violent 
extremism.
    But perhaps the greatest challenge for these efforts is how 
to bring these prevention models into the 21st century. Social 
media creates new opportunities for perpetrators to reach 
vulnerable audiences and has supercharged the spread of violent 
extremist content. In 2021, every terrorism prevention model 
needs a robust digital component. Moonshot has spent 6 years 
working with governments to design and implement digital 
complements to offline terrorism prevention infrastructures. 
This must be done safely, ethically, and responsibly.
    First, the entire suite of prevention services needs to be 
adopted for online delivery, including risk assessment 
frameworks and counseling services. Second, we need to 
adequately signpost terrorism prevention services such as 
hotlines, counseling, and exit offers online. Third, online 
prevention frameworks must be designed with user privacy at its 
heart.
    Evidence shows us that this works. In Moonshot's recent 
studies, audiences at risk of Jihadism were 47 percent more 
likely than the general public to take up offers of 
psychosocial support services online. Neo-Nazis were 48 percent 
more likely.
    And this year alone, Moonshot has channeled over 100 
individuals at risk of violent extremism across the United 
States into text messaging counseling sessions via online 
engagement.
    We need to acknowledge that the tech companies are not 
doing enough in this fight. As we continue to hold these 
companies to account, we do have an obligation to adopt our 
terrorism prevention infrastructures to this new reality. We 
must both learn from the past and look to the future in our 
fight against global terrorism. Thank you for your time today. 
I look forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Ramalingam follows:]
    
  [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
  

   
    Mr. Keating. Thank you, Ms. Ramalingam.
    The chair recognizes Mr. Raffaello Pantucci for your 
opening statement.

STATEMENT OF RAFFAELLO PANTUCCI, SENIOR ASSOCIATE FELLOW, ROYAL 
                UNITED SERVICES INSTITUTE (RUSI)

    Mr. Pantucci. Thank you very much. Chairs Keating and 
Deutch, Ranking Member Fitzpatrick and Wilson, distinguished 
committee members, and fellow speakers, thank you for the 
invitation to come and speak to you today.
    A lot of what I am going to talk about has been touched on 
already by some of the earlier speakers, and I am conscious 
that this is a space where there is a lot of thinking and work 
going on.
    And I recognize I will repeat some points, but what I want 
to do is I want to talk a little bit about two very specific 
parts of the current terrorist threat that is faced by the 
transatlantic alliance.
    Counterterrorism, of course remains a major threat and in 
many ways has become infinitely more complicated than it was 2 
decades ago. There is a wide range of threats out there, and to 
cover them all in the time available would be an exercise in 
futility.
    So I will focus on two slightly disparate areas that I 
think merit particular priority attention at the moment, lone 
actor terrorism and the fallout from Afghanistan, both issues 
that I think we have already had speakers talking about 
already.
    The lone actor threat is repeatedly identified by senior 
security officials in both Europe and North America as the 
biggest and most complicated problem that they currently face. 
The most recent annual Europol report highlighted these 
becoming the most frequent and regular attacks that Europe was 
facing, and they noted they were becoming ever harder to 
detect.
    This is all not to say that terrorist groups do not have 
the desire and ambition to launch large scale terrorist plots, 
but it is a testament to our successful security capabilities 
that we have been able in essentially such a difficult 
environment for them to try to launch the attacks that the only 
ones that we are actually seeing able to get through are these 
lone actor ones. But that does also emphasize why this is an 
area that we really need to focus more attention on in trying 
to respond.
    And, second, Afghanistan I want to highlight in particular 
as that particular threat has, of course, come to our attention 
once again. It is not particularly a new problem or threat, but 
it has, of course, been brought into sharper focus due to 
recent events, and it has shifted the dial on the particular 
problem and requires us to think a little bit more carefully 
about how to manage some of the consequences and problems that 
might emanate from it.
    And I want to offer three specific areas for potential 
cooperation going forward on these two broad areas of 
terrorism.
    To start with the lone actor side of the threat, as has 
been already discussed, the lone actor threat really is 
becoming the sharp end of the threat picture that we see, but 
it is becoming increasingly confusing, and we see that the 
ideologies that individuals who are committing lone actor 
terrorist attacks are becoming increasingly idiosyncratic. They 
are becoming an odd mix of left, right Islamists, all getting 
muddled up into individual cases. And, increasingly, these 
ideologies are getting muddledback and forth across the 
Atlantic, generated sometimes in our very own communities in 
the United States or in Europe, in part, an extension of the 
very polarized political conversation that we increasingly see 
in our respective countries.
    This makes them very difficult to manage because when you 
look at some of these threats and the ideologies that are 
supporting them, you are looking at things that are sitting on 
the edge of the mainstream political discourse which makes it 
very hard to try to craft a specific response to crack down on 
these and to get legislation that will deal with this 
effectively, the problem being, of course, that we have 
different perspectives on where the law should lie with 
particular ideologies.
    But I think greater coordination is clearly needed and a 
greater conversation to try and understand where we both see 
these threats lie and understanding how different, you know, 
hyper ideologies in one--in Europe or North America will have a 
very direct impact on the threat picture on the other side, and 
particularly on the lone actor side of the threat.
    The second one is on the tactical side. A lot of this 
problem is happening online, as has been highlighted by 
previous speakers. And, clearly, the United States has a far 
superior capability in many ways of conducting preventive 
actions and very aggressive counterterrorism activity in the 
online space.
    Greater coordination and cooperation within the space 
clearly is going to be essential, but ensuring that these tools 
are being used in a proportionate amount, and ensuring, as the 
previous speaker mentioned, the social media companies are 
being particularly focused on in trying to ensure that they are 
addressing their side of the equation.
    And then, finally, on the preventive side. As was also 
already highlighted, on the preventive side of the coin, you 
are looking at an issue which is becoming very individualized, 
and you are looking at trying to respond to lone actor threats 
that are being dealt with by a wide range of different actors 
from social services through to hard security actors.
    Ensuring that these people are communicating and sharing 
best practices across the Atlantic I think will be critical 
because I think it is no longer going to be the case that a 
single answer to this problem exists. It never really did 
anyway, but I think that is becoming even more realistic. So 
learning from each other's experience within the space will be 
increasingly critical.
    To look very briefly at Afghanistan, conscious that I am 
coming up against time, I want to talk about three specific 
aspects. First, we are talking about this an awful lot within 
the context of how the threats from Afghanistan may come home, 
and yet, the real problems are more likely happening in 
Afghanistan's neighborhoods.
    Understanding how the transatlantic alliance can manage the 
threats that are most likely to spawn, most likely to appear in 
Afghanistan or in Pakistan or in central Asia is, I think, 
where we should be really focusing our attention in the short 
to medium term.
    Second, geopolitics. The transatlantic alliance was clearly 
pulled by the issues that we saw, but I think we need to be 
careful not to overstate this. And I think, instead, we need to 
start to think about focusing where it is that actually, the 
United States and European allies can focus their attention.
    The U.K., for example, has a deep experience in Pakistan, 
focusing attention there for the U.K. Or in central Asia, 
Germany has a very strong relationship with Uzbekistan. France 
has a particular relationship with Tajikistan. Establishing 
these new sort of alliances to deal with the over the horizon 
threats that we may see emanating from Afghanistan I think will 
be a critical thing to focus on going forwards.
    And then absolutely finally, I think we really need to try 
to find ways of extricating Afghanistan from the great power 
conflict lens that it is increasingly being seen within. In 
focusing on Afghanistan through this lens, we are going to do 
ourselves a disservice and potentially find stymied our ability 
to respond to the very real potential terrorist threats that 
are likely to emerge, and I will cede the floor there.
    Thank you very much, and I look forward to your comments 
and questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Pantucci follows:]
    
    
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    Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Pantucci. And now the chair 
recognizes Dr. Matthew Levitt for 5 minutes for your opening 
remarks.

    STATEMENT OF DR. MATTHEW LEVITT, FROMER-WEXLER FELLOW, 
DIRECTOR, JEANETTE AND ELI REINHARD PROGRAM ON COUNTERTERRORISM 
AND INTELLIGENCE, THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY

    Dr. Levitt. Thank you very much, Chairs and Ranking 
Members. It is a pleasure to be here. I thank you for the 
opportunity to appear before you today, and I have to say, it 
is a real pleasure to appear alongside Vidhya, Raf, and 
Olivier, each of whom is a friend and an exceptional analyst.
    Over the past 2 decades, the United States built a 
counterterrorism bureaucracy to manage, resource, and 
operationalize the Nation's response to the threat posed by Al 
Qaeda in particular and terrorism more broadly. This 
counterterrorism enterprise has been remarkably successful from 
a tactical perspective, foiling attacks and disrupting 
terrorist networks. Terrorists today are far less likely to be 
able to carry out a spectacular attack like 9/11.
    But from a strategic vantage point, our 20-year struggle 
against terrorism has been far less successful. Many more 
people today are radicalized to violent extremism than in 2001, 
representing a more ideologically diversified and globally 
dispersed terrorist threat. Consider the 2 decades after 9/11, 
the U.S. Government's data base of known or suspected 
terrorists has grown by almost a factor of 20. Turning the 
corner on this larger problem set, getting ahead of the 
radicalization curve demands two interrelated changes to the 
now 2-decade old U.S. approach to countering terrorism.
    First, we must invest in our own and our allies' civilian 
counterterrorism capabilities and ways that to date we have 
only done in the realm of kinetic military counterterrorism 
tool sets. This should involve a particular focus and 
investment in extremism prevention which, at its core, is not a 
mission for counterterrorism agencies but is rather the product 
of good governance, of rule of law, equitable and well-
functioning societies, and healthy communities.
    To get ahead of the terrorism problem will require seeing 
clinical social workers and local government as frontline 
responders to address violent extremism. Violent extremism is a 
global problem that has at its core very local drivers which 
require local responses. Therefore, as underscored in the 2020 
strategy to prevent conflict and promote stability, U.S. 
interagency plans submitted to Congress as required under the 
Global Fragility Act of 2019, military force should be only one 
and an increasingly small part of the solution.
    While generating support for preventive or crisis 
management efforts can be difficult, such initiatives are 
especially important to break the cycle of fragility and should 
be prioritized in areas where today's strategic investment can 
mitigate tomorrow's overwhelming crisis. Small amounts of 
financial support today can mean significant and meaningful 
security and justice sector reform, enhanced provision of 
essential services, reduce corruption, enfranchise disengaged 
sectors of society such as women, children, and minorities and 
make a difference.
    Second, we must recognize that we cannot do everything on 
our own, nor should we be expected to shoulder the bulk of the 
cost in blood or in treasure for countering violent extremism 
around the world on our own. As the Biden administration's 
interim national security strategic guidance States, recent 
events show all too clearly that many of the biggest threats we 
face respect no borders or walls and must be met with 
collective action.
    While critical, this will be no easy lift. U.S. 
counterterrorism agencies have developed very close working 
relationships with their counterparts for broadening U.S. 
efforts to work by, with, and through allies and local partners 
around the world on military missions and even on diplomatic 
missions will be easier said than done given America's recent 
track record of abandoning allies and local partners on short 
notice.
    More broadly, convincing partner Nations to form burden 
sharing alliances with the United States to address threats 
closer to their borders than ours will be possible only once 
the United States has taken tangible action to restore its 
credibility as a reliable long-term partner and does more to 
tackle domestic violence extremism within its own borders.
    At the end of the day, one European official explained to 
me all Europeans want a strong security partnership with the 
U.S. The question is whether this cooperation will be limited 
to the core missions, identifying and sharing information about 
terrorist networks, for example, or if we can move beyond this 
and together address the breeding grounds of terrorism and 
stabilization missions in places like Syria, Iraq, and the 
Sahel.
    The key to making the latter development more likely may 
come down to the U.S. revisiting its traditional reluctance to 
share decisionmaking with its European partners. We need to be 
better listeners, and European partners revisiting their 
traditional discomfort over burden sharing.
    Two final but important points. Ideological fluidity and 
blending of ideologies is what we see over and over here in the 
U.S. and in Europe. Typically, we see people wanting a sense of 
purpose, of community, of belonging. These are the key 
motivators to radicalization, not ideology. Ideology comes in 
later as the factor that then mobilizes people to action. This 
means that countering global violent extremism cannot focus on 
any one type of ideology. Islamist extremism still poses 
terrorist threats that we will have to take seriously, no 
doubt, but here in the United States, domestic violent 
extremists, white supremacists, anti-government, Neo-Nazis, and 
more present an even greater threat.
    Second, there will always be areas of disagreement in the 
transatlantic relationship, and these will need to be navigated 
carefully. Some examples include Europe will have to do better 
in repatriation of foreign terrorist fighter nationals. The 
situations in camps like Al-Hawl in Syria is simply untenable.
    America is going to have to come to terms with the dangers 
posed by the spread of hate speech, disinformation, and 
terrorist content online and find ways to address this 
challenge within our First Amendment limits. We are going to 
have to find ways to think about the threat level and the 
appropriate response to extremist actors such as Lebanese 
Hezbollah, Iraq, and other Shia militants. And to do that, we 
are going to need creative solutions.
    So while, for example, pressing the European Union to 
designate all of Hezbollah as important and should continue, 
Congress could do a lot of good in this regard by working with 
national level parliaments in Europe, many of which are 
animated on this subject as well.
    I thank you again for the opportunity to testify before 
you, and I look forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Levitt follows:]
    
    
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    Mr. Keating. I would like to thank all our witnesses for 
their statements, both the comprehensive nature of dealing just 
with the tactical issues and the strategic issues that are 
involved, and I am sure they will be parts of the questions 
that go forward.
    I am going to recognize members sometimes out of order of 
seniority given the fact that we are in the midst of so many 
roll calls and because of that virtual format. I will do it in 
a basis of Democrat, then Republican, alternating back and 
forth when that is possible, and we will continue doing this 
hopefully to the conclusion of the hearing without 
interruption.
    Each member, if you miss your turn, let our staff know. We 
will circle back to you, and if you seek recognition, you have 
got to unmute your microphone and address the chair verbally 
for those that might be wandering into this room, the few that 
they may be.
    So I would like to now recognize Representative Kathy 
Manning for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Manning. Thank you, Chairman Keating. Can you hear me 
okay? All right.
    I am proud to co-lead H.Res. 359, a bipartisan resolution I 
introduced with my colleague, Chairman Ted Deutch, urging the 
European Union to fully designate Hezbollah in its entirety as 
a terrorist organization.
    Mr. Levitt, you are an expert on the terrorist group 
Hezbollah. Do you believe any distinction can or should be made 
by any of our European allies between the so-called political 
and military wings of a terrorist group like Hezbollah?
    Dr. Levitt. Thank you for your question. The simple way to 
answer it is not to ask me but to ask Hezbollah leaders 
themselves who have been very, very clear in the fact that 
there is no distinction to be made between the various wings of 
their organization. Even Europol's latest terrorism situation 
and threat report makes this clear, that the distinction that 
was made in 2013 undermines their ability to carry out 
investigations.
    There is a political issue going on here that is primarily 
driven by France, but that does not mean on the one hand that 
while we continue to pursue this issue with our colleagues that 
we cannot do other things. There has been some significant 
progress at national levels with different European countries 
doing different things. Some have passed designation 
authorities.
    Some that do not have them have used immigration 
authorities or authorities that enabled them to ban certain 
symbols, and in each of these instances, what has driven these 
domestic actions has been, in part, actions within their 
parliaments.
    And I think therefore, that U.S. Congress engagement not 
only at the EU level but at national European parliamentary 
levels could be very effective in this regard.
    Ms. Manning. Thank you.
    Mr. Pantucci, there are many ways for us to work with our 
European allies and partners to exchange best practices to 
counter violent extremism and white supremacy. Can you talk to 
us about which has proven to be the most effective forum for us 
to cooperate to counter the global threat of white supremacy?
    Mr. Pantucci. Thank you for the question. I think at the 
moment, the problem of white supremacy is one--or the extreme 
right wing is one that I think we are still trying to work out 
exactly where the best forums to deal with this are, in part 
because we are still trying to understand the exact parameters 
of the problem.
    I think traditionally, it has been something that has been 
the respite, the remit of police forces. And I think police 
forces have traditionally been the ones on the front line 
dealing with this. Increasingly, we have seen intelligence 
agencies moving into this space as well, and that, you know, 
enhanced cooperation at that level is probably quite effective.
    But if I think about these groups and how they play out on 
the ground, I think trying to engage, frankly, at a policing 
level is probably a very good place to start because they are 
really--you know, these groups are quite diffuse. They are very 
much within our communities. They haven't necessarily got the 
same sort of international links that you get from, you know, 
groups or other ones. They also are developing some online 
communications, but it really is something that I think police 
forces seem to be the ones who are dealing with most 
effectively so far. That is my sense. Thank you.
    Ms. Manning. Thank you. Okay.
    Mr. Onidi, the transatlantic alliance has faced significant 
challenges in recent years and more recently than that. 
However, our countries share a common challenge when it comes 
to combating misinformation online, especially social media. 
How can we work better together to counter the rapid spread of 
online extremist propaganda?
    Mr. Onidi. Thank you. I would argue that a lot of progress 
has actually been achieved on this very aspect. We concentrated 
a few years ago on our differences. The fact that we had, you 
know, different constitution model, different approach, we 
would in the EU rather pursue a path toward hard legislation, 
and the U.S., rather voluntary efforts, but all this was the 
past.
    What I have seen over the last months, I believe, is a 
very, very strong recognition of the absolute and vitally 
importance of requesting more from the different online 
platform and us as well being able to develop better tools to 
support them, to better understand also the type of ideological 
that was online and also have better channels of information 
with them in order to notify of terrorist-related material, but 
also, as Vidhya said, not only identifying material that should 
be withdrawn but work with the actors in order to identify 
people behind this sort of content and also work more with them 
in order to promote counter messaging, to promote actual 
material that would help individuals to see things in more 
objective ways.
    So I think we are on a good path, slightly different 
approach, and still we have hard legislation on this, but we 
see that together, we speak with a very strong voice toward the 
platforms.
    Ms. Manning. Thank you, and thank you to all of our 
witnesses. And thank you to our chairman for holding such an 
important hearing, and I yield back.
    Mr. Deutch. Thank you, Representative manning.
    The chair now recognizes Vice Ranking Member Joe Wilson 
from South Carolina for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would like to 
thank the witnesses. And, Chairman, thank you for your 
leadership. Bill Keating does a good job trying to keep us in 
line.
    And so, Dr. Levitt, last week, the CIA deputy director 
acknowledged early reports of foreign fighters traveling to 
join Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Are we at risk of another outflow 
of foreign terrorist fighters from Europe? How can we work with 
our European partners to address this threat?
    Dr. Levitt. Thank you, sir, for the question. I think it is 
important to note that while I am very, very concerned about 
the situation in Afghanistan, the withdrawal, how the 
withdrawal happened, I think we need to recognize that 
Afghanistan in 2021 is not Afghanistan in 2001 and that the 
counterterrorism measures that our European colleagues have put 
in place, border security, biometrics, et cetera, today are 
infinitely better than they were back then.
    I do not anticipate Afghanistan being a significant draw 
for western foreign fighters, in part, because there are 
already more attractive places to go in Syria and Iraq and 
other places. But we are going to have to keep a close eye, 
maybe not on huge numbers but on small numbers, and we are 
going to have to be worried about terrorist groups not limited 
to Al Qaeda being able to enjoy safe haven.
    There are two issues in Afghanistan. One is the groups like 
Al Qaeda and the Haqqani network that will be able to operate 
in areas under Taliban control because they are close to the 
Taliban. But the vacuum created by the withdrawal is larger 
than the Taliban can fill, and therefore, groups like Islamic 
State khorasan ISK will be able to operate in those areas that 
are beyond Taliban control. So we are going to have a new 
problem set different than the one we have had before in 
Afghanistan, and we won't have the luxury of having the type of 
intelligence collection that we have relied on in Afghanistan 
for the past 20 years.
    Mr. Wilson. And, Dr. Levitt, also on--sadly, with the 
reopening of training schools in Afghanistan for rogue suicide 
bombers, is the U.S. at risk of an attack of equal impact to 9/
11, whether at homeland or abroad, and if so, what type of 
attack would you anticipate?
    Dr. Levitt. I think the likelihood of a terrorist 
spectacular attack like we saw for 9/11 is much, much smaller 
now, again, in part because of all of the different systems we 
have put in place. The counterterrorism infrastructure we have 
today is just so much different and better than it was 20 years 
ago and also because we have put in place the ability to 
collect information to be able to forecast and anticipate.
    We cannot do that quite as well as we want to yet in 
Afghanistan because we are not on the ground, but I think that 
the most immediate threats will be in Afghanistan and in the 
region around Afghanistan before it will come to our shores or 
to our interests abroad. Over the medium to long term, there is 
that possibility, but we have time to mitigate that threat.
    Mr. Wilson. And with your expertise and background on 
Hezbollah, what is the current threat that Hezbollah poses to 
Europe?
    Dr. Levitt. Hezbollah primarily poses a logistics and 
financing threat in Europe. But as the State Department 
revealed just a few months ago, Hezbollah has been moving 
ammonium nitrate material to be used to put together explosives 
through several European countries over the past few years. And 
as you saw in Burgas, Bulgaria, the successful attack, and in 
Cyprus, two thwarted attacks, Hezbollah is not shy about 
operating in Europe when it suits its interests.
    To the extent that we recognize that ideology is not the 
issue we should be dealing with primarily, we should be dealing 
with extremism across ideologies, that means we should not be 
limited to Sunni extremism. We should be covering Shia 
extremism. We should not be limiting ourselves to Islamic 
extremism. We certainly need to be focusing on white 
supremacists and other types of domestic violence extremism.
    Mr. Wilson. And I really am back again on a risk at home. I 
am very, very concerned about a rogue suicide bomber coming to, 
say, a football stadium and the panic that would occur where 
they do not have to kill that many people, but the panic would 
be incredibly horrific. And then, sadly, to me, the development 
of drones as we saw with the swarm of drones that Iran provided 
against the oil refinery in Saudi Arabia. It is so easy to 
purchase at a convenience store drones. How do we address that, 
attacking public buildings, legislative buildings within the 
United States?
    Dr. Levitt. These are both excellent questions. I think 
that the issue of suicide attacks in the United States is 
increasingly one, like other types of attacks, that is more 
likely to happen by homegrown violent extremists, including 
people who are not even foreign directed.
    The issue of drones is beyond my expertise right here and 
now. Leave it--suffice it to say that the issue of dealing with 
terrorist acts, just the simple technologies that they are able 
to exploit to tremendous benefit is of real concern to many 
different parts of the U.S. Government, though most of the 
drones that can be bought at Walmart are not the type that can 
cause significant damage, for example, to Congress. It is a 
huge problem.
    Mr. Wilson. Well, thank you very much for all of your 
participation. I am honored again to be here with Chairman 
Keating. Thank you.
    Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative.
    The chair now recognizes Representative Dean Phillips of 
Minnesota for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Phillips. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Greetings to our 
witnesses and gratitude for being with us.
    I think it is fair to say that the United States and 
European nations take different approaches to protected speech 
and to regulating online content, but we clearly are all facing 
the challenge of hate, disinformation, and misinformation 
spread online.
    So, Ms. Ramalingam, if you could start by sharing with us 
how you would characterize the most urgent needs for 
transatlantic cooperation relative to countering the spread of 
propaganda and radicalizing messages and content online.
    Ms. Ramalingam. Thank you for your question, Congressman.
    And, you know, as an organization that operates both in 
Europe and in the United States, we obviously firmly believe in 
and safeguard First Amendment protections, but, of course, the 
regulations in Europe are different and, you know, the tech 
companies' obligations to moderate content are very different 
based on the country that you are in.
    As an organization that operates across that Transatlantic 
divide, our approach is not necessarily focused on removal of 
content but ensuring that there are safer alternatives online. 
So this is not about cooperation and accountability for the 
tech companies. It is not just about that. It is about ensuring 
that we are using these digital platforms to their full 
advantage to assign posts to individuals who are at risk for 
demonstrating their vulnerabilities online that there are there 
options for them to exit.
    There is a raft of evidence that has been growing over the 
last several years demonstrating that if you engage these 
individuals online, if you start conversations with them, if 
you seek to channel them into support programs, they are 
actually disproportionately likely to engage with those offers 
as compared to the general public.
    So there is more work that we need to do to take the 
offline terrorist prevention infrastructures that we have built 
and ensure that those same practitioners have the digital 
literacy and the capability to begin to engage online, and that 
means everything from, you know, ensuring that we can assess 
risk online and that we translate the way that we assess 
vulnerability offline into the online space, but also ensuring 
that we can kind of manage that channelling of individuals from 
the online space into offline support programs.
    Mr. Phillips. So it is your argument and belief that that 
is the mechanism that we should be looking to and you are 
convinced that it will work and is working?
    Ms. Ramalingam. I am convinced that in the 2lst century 
there cannot be any offline terrorism prevention program that 
does not have that engagement online. There is no longer a 
divide between the offline and online space. We all live our 
lives in both worlds, and so if we are going to be effective in 
our fight against terrorism, we have to be reaching out to 
those communities online. It cannot just be about removing 
content. You remove the post, you remove the account, but that 
person still exists and still poses a threat to our 
communities.
    Mr. Phillips. So good old fashion intervention. I 
understand.
    Mr. Levitt, similar question to you. How can governments on 
both sides of the Atlantic play a more intentional and 
energetic role for defeating the appetite for radicalization 
and extremist messages?
    Dr. Levitt. Thank you for the question.
    I think that the way to deal with this, the only way to 
deal with this is to be very local and to recognize that to 
stop people from having a cognitive opening to dangerous ideas 
means to make sure that they are a part of a functioning 
society, and I do not mean on a huge--I mean, in a 
neighborhood. I mean in their community. Can they access 
services? Do they feel like they belong to something? Do they 
feel that they are contributing to something?
    Ultimately, some of the most important, some of the most 
critical things that we can do to reduce extremism are not 
going to be part of the security realm and shouldn't be 
securitized, to borrow a phrase that our European allies have 
been using for a long time. We should be doing those things for 
the right reason because good governance is really important, 
because rule of law is really important, because anticorruption 
is really important, and we should realize doing those will 
have tremendous security benefits.
    But that means that when we step back and say how much do 
we stop the terrorist threat, a lot of our dollars should be 
going into clinical social workers, community programs because 
that will, not today, not tomorrow, and it will be difficult, 
therefore, for your metrics and valuation programs, but they 
will over time contribute to a healthier society that is not as 
amenable to, is not looking for more radical answers to 
complicated questions.
    Mr. Phillips. Are there some examples of governments 
already collaborating to that end?
    Dr. Levitt. There are many examples. There are many 
examples where governments have started programs like this and 
then politicians got wind of them and shut them down because 
politicians tend to want to know how is the money I am 
investing going to be spent to show me it is going to work. And 
I have to tell you, we in the United States do not have much of 
a culture of trial and error.
    That is seen as political risk. And I give our European 
colleagues, even when they have failed, tremendous credit for 
trying and failing. People tend to put----
    Mr. Phillips. Thank you.
    Dr. Levitt. I will stop there. Thank you.
    Mr. Phillips. Yes, I am sorry. My time has expired, and I 
want to afford it to my colleagues.
    Thank you, Mr. Levitt, Dr. Levitt, and to all of our 
witnesses. I yield back.
    Mr. Deutch. I thank Mr. Phillips.
    Mr. Pfluger, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Pfluger. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Mr. 
Chairman, thanks for organizing this.
    Everything I learned about counterterrorism I learned from 
Dr. Matthew Levitt as a former colleague at the Washington 
Institute. I will focus my questions on a couple of things that 
you mentioned. And thank you to all the--the entire panel for 
talking about this important issue.
    But, Matt, when it comes to the relationships, you kind of 
mentioned some of the fallout from the relationships that we 
have transatlantic partnerships and relationships to prevent 
terrorism. I mean, if you could name, you know, two or three 
that we really should focus on, where do you think the impact 
of the Afghanistan withdrawal is going to hurt us the most? 
Which relationships should we focus on the most in the short 
term that have the biggest impact on counterterrorism?
    Dr. Levitt. First of all, I cannot tell you how much 
pleasure it gives me to refer to you, sir, as Congressman 
Pfluger. It was a real honor to have you here as a military 
fellow at the Washington Institute before you took a turn to 
politics. Great to see you. I, however, take no responsibility 
for whatever you know about terrorism.
    I think the Afghanistan bit has to be divided into two 
baskets that both come down to renewing our reliability as a 
partner, and when I think of partnerships, I think of 
partnerships with allies, so alliances, EU, European member 
States and others around, and I think of partnerships, the way 
we had partners on the ground in Afghanistan, the way we have 
partners on the ground in Iraq, the way we have partners on the 
ground in Syria.
    If I were a U.S. partner on the ground, say, in the Kurdish 
areas of Iraq or in northeast Syria, I would be really worried 
today about the staying power of the United States. I would be 
worried about whether I needed to have some type of backup 
plan.
    And whether you are in favor of the U.S. having withdrawn 
from Afghanistan or not, whether you think the way it was done 
was good or not, I think this is something we can all agree on: 
The reality is those types of partners are raising eyebrows, 
and I have had conversations with people like that. This is 
happening.
    And the second one is with our allies. It wasn't just the 
United States that found itself struggling to get its people 
and its allies out, and U.S. military and intelligence agencies 
did herculean efforts getting people out in a small amount of 
space, but we left our allies in the exact same position, very 
suddenly, and it wasn't the first time.
    I was in the European capital that December when President 
Trump first Tweeted out, We are out of Syria. And they were 
really worried and really scared. They had people deployed with 
Syria, forward deployed with us based on the ability to rely on 
our presence, and they got no forewarning, and we need to do 
better in terms of communicating with our allies. As a former 
U.S. official, I know we tend to walk into a room and tell 
people how it is and how we want it to be. We need to start 
walking into a room and start asking, How do you see the 
threat? How do you see the problem? And we will get to how we 
see it and trying to bridge those gaps where they exist, but I 
think we need to be better listeners.
    Mr. Pfluger. Well, thank you for that.
    Let me switch gears just a little bit and ask you a 
question about one of the things that I believe I learned in my 
fellowship, which was kind of the way that the Iranian 
government, whether it is IRGD Quds Force, or other aspects of 
it, will react.
    When it comes to Qasem Soleimani, what sort of retaliation 
should we be expecting? Has that threat increased? Where--I 
mean, if you had the crystal ball, you know, where should we be 
looking and how should we be focusing our attentions to prevent 
some sort of really bad retaliatory attack?
    Dr. Levitt. I lack that crystal ball, but I will say this. 
I do think that, while very aggressive, taking out Qasem 
Soleimani ultimately led to greater international security. I 
think that it is telling that the Shi extremists, Iranian 
operatives, and Iran's proxies haven't responded in a massive 
international terrorist attack. By the way, of course, they 
shot rockets at our soldiers, which is no small matter, but 
they also have a very long memory, and I think they are 
patient.
    The primary thing they want more than anything else as a 
legacy of Qasem Soleimani is to kick us out of the region, out 
of Iraq in particular. But I do think that we have to be very, 
very careful. The same way Lebanese Hezbollah has not forgotten 
the operation that took out arch terrorist Imad Mughniyeh in 
2008, the Iranians are not going to soon forget the loss of 
Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, his Iraqi deputy.
    And so I think it is safe to say that the U.S. intelligence 
security communities have been focused on it for quite some 
time.
    Mr. Pfluger. Thank you.
    I think my time has expired. Please pass my very best to 
the entire Washington Institute. Thank you for your time here 
and all the panelists.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Deutch. I thank Mr. Pfluger.
    Mr. Schneider, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Schneider. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And to all of the 
witnesses, thank you for sharing your perspectives here.
    Like Mr. Pfluger, I will echo that much of what I learned, 
if not all of what I have learned, is from Matt Levitt and in 
support of the Washington Institute as well.
    But, Dr. Levitt, I want to turn to you with--I have a 
couple of questions. The first one deals with Hezbollah. We 
have talked a lot. In your written testimony, you talk about 
Hezbollah offering a kit in point and navigating complicated 
matters across borders. Seven years ago we worked together in 
drafting the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Act. 
It has had great effect in limiting Hezbollah's reach, but they 
have been working to get around it.
    What would you suggest as specific actions we might take 
alone in the U.S., in connection with our partners, to update, 
to do more to block Hezbollah and their efforts?
    Dr. Levitt. Thank you for the question.
    And tremendous pressure, everybody is saying, putting it 
all on me. But, look, HIFPA did a lot of things that a lot of 
people do not understand. The Lebanese Central Bank issued a 
circular after the Hizballah International Financing Prevention 
Act was passed instructing banks that they had to follow these 
regulations. It had a real impact on Hezbollah's ability to 
bank. Hezbollah started storing money, more of the money that 
he used to store in Lebanon elsewhere, but it didn't change 
Hezbollah's overall financial position in Lebanon. And, in 
fact, while Hezbollah is not solely to blame by any stretch of 
the imagination for the financial and political implosion in 
Lebanon, it is one responsible actor. And one of the issues is 
the illicit financial activities that Hezbollah was engaged in 
through the banks.
    My colleague, Penian Radaurd, just wrote a piece that was 
published yesterday arguing that one of the things we need to 
do is work more closely with the private sector and the NGO 
sector in Lebanon. As the political business and finance 
sectors are collapsing in Lebanon, we cannot allow the one last 
standing actor by default because it gets so much money from 
Iran to be Hezbollah at a time when ironically Hezbollah's 
political standing is actually falling.
    So Lebanon presents a very, very difficult problem; but I 
think one of the areas where we and the Europeans disagree is 
would a designation mean that Europeans wouldn't be able to of 
have political influence and sway in Lebanon. And I think the 
fact that United States has designated all of Hezbollah for a 
long time and we clearly have a lot of influence and sway in 
Lebanon means that you can.
    Mr. Schneider. Great. Thank you for that. I agree we have 
to do more, and we will.
    Shifting gears a little bit, also in your written testimony 
you say, finally, America must address its domestic terrorism 
problem, which the FBI director was on the Hill this week 
talking about the significant growth we have seen in that. We 
have legislation that I have introduced with colleagues, the 
Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act that would speak to that.
    But I was hoping you could touch on the importance of 
bolstering our domestic efforts, law enforcement intelligence, 
et cetera, but also coordinating with our international allies 
and working with them to ensure that the U.S. isn't a net 
exporter of domestic terrorism, like White supremacist 
ideologists.
    Dr. Levitt. I think we first need to recognize from many of 
our allies abroad, they really do feel we have become an 
exporter of violent White supremacist extremism, and we need to 
get on top of that.
    There are lots of ways to do that, and I do not have a 
particular this is exactly how to do it. I do think that we 
need to have some type of legislation that makes it clear to 
everybody that Neo-Nazi or White supremacists or antigovernment 
militia, when they carry out acts that are the definition of 
terrorism, that is terrorism. So that, for example, Muslim 
Americans do not say, well, when someone from our community 
does this act, it is terrorism; but when someone from another 
community does the exact same act, it is not. We need to fix 
that.
    But if you even just want to use kind of State or existing 
Federal regulations, we have lots of regulations to deal with 
almost all types of terrorist activity, with the glaring, 
glaring exception of mass shooter attacks, which cannot be, for 
technical legal reasons, described as an act of terrorism right 
now. And I do think that we need to do a lot more within Second 
Amendment protections to address the fact that guns make 
terrorism more dangerous in this country.
    Mr. Schneider. Thank you. You make an important point. We 
do have the statutes on the books to tackle terrorism on the 
one hand, but I believe we need to, as the DTPA, Domestic 
Terrorism Prevention Act, does, enhance our law enforcement 
working with, in this case, the Department of Justice, FBI, and 
Department of Homeland Security.
    And with that, I am running out of time, so I will yield 
back. Thank you all again. This is an issue we have to address 
with urgency but also across borders working with our allies. I 
thank the witnesses.
    I yield back the balance of my time.
    Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative Schneider.
    The chair now recognizes Representative Meijer from 
Michigan for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Meijer. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our 
panelists who are here today.
    I think this is a really important topic for us to be 
discussing, and so I really appreciate that we are taking time 
to better understand that transatlantic component on our global 
terrorism and just global security mindset here.
    So I guess, Mr. Levitt, I have a question for you. You 
know, you mentioned that the way in which the U.S. has been 
disengaging from our conflicts--and we have seen this in 
Afghanistan--how that is really offering opportunities for 
global jihadist elements to seize upon the propaganda victory 
and boost their own morale.
    As we look to rebalance and focus more on great power 
conflicts away from the post 9/11 conflicts, how in your mind 
do we end those engagements in ways that do not offer a strong 
upside for Jihada settlements?
    Dr. Levitt. Thank you, sir, for the question.
    A lot of it has to do with the how, not the what. And I 
think we need to recognize that, by the way, it is not just 
Sunni extremists, it is Shi extremists, and it is not just 
Islamic extremists, it is White supremacists that are looking 
at--if you follow them online, looking at the way things went 
down in Afghanistan and saying, look, maybe America is a paper 
tiger and you just got to wait them out and we can do this. And 
this has been a boon, a shot in the arm for the wide array of 
ideologies.
    I think the most important thing, which is the core of this 
hearing, is how we go about working with allies to do this. 
When our allies are deployed with us, when they are at risk, 
when they are putting themselves at risk, we need to keep them 
completely in the loop, maybe even ask their opinions on how to 
go about doing it rather than leave them in a situation where 
they are kind of left holding the hot potato. And we have done 
this now several times over at least, let's say, two 
administrations. If we are going to ask our allies to step up 
and put themselves in harm's way, then we have to treat them as 
full partners when it comes to making big decisions that are 
going to affect their security.
    Mr. Meijer. And speaking of that, and I know there has 
obviously been a recent rift with France over some procurement 
in the Australia, U.K., U.S. alliance that was formed. But also 
recently President Macron had mentioned concerns about the ease 
of access that especially Middle Eastern based terrorists 
moving into the Shenzhen zone and France very much being a 
magnet for many of those attacks for a variety of reasons; but 
he expressed that concern and that the European Union and 
members of the Shenzhen zone may need to undertake and bolster 
their border monitoring and other components.
    Do you see the U.S. as having a role in that type of 
monitoring in those transnational flows, speaking on the 
alliance front? And in general, I am curious your thoughts on 
how you see our European allies trying to better bolster their 
own domestic security?
    Dr. Levitt. Well, sir, I am going to be the last, quote/
unquote, expert in Washington to tell you where his expertise 
ends, and my ends at submarines, so I won't comment on the 
current flare-up between the U.S. and France.
    But I do think that one area where the U.S. and our 
European allies, partners have had tremendous cooperation. And 
Olivier can speak to this firsthand. This is--one of his many 
areas of expertise is on this very issue, whether it is 
biometrics or information sharing, whether it is pairing up FBI 
not only with Interpol but specifically with Europol, the 
things that they have been able to do together and specific 
investigations of all different types and in shoring up the 
borders has been really tremendous. I do think they are going 
to have to find ways to backfill behind the types of 
intelligence we used to have coming out of Afghanistan that we 
are not going to have anymore.
    We are not going to go dark. We are going to go dark gray, 
and they will find ways to fill that in. But I think that is 
something actually that is a success story and that will 
continue.
    Mr. Meijer. Thank you. I appreciate those responses.
    And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative.
    The chair now recognizes Representative Cicilline from 
Rhode Island for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Cicilline. Thank you, Chairman Deutch and Chairman 
Keating and our ranking members, Wilson and Fitzpatrick for 
this really important hearing. And thank you to our witnesses 
for your testimony.
    As you all know, less than 2 weeks ago we commemorated the 
anniversary of September 11, and it is a reminder of our 
ongoing responsibility to protect our country from acts of 
terrorism.
    And I think, you know we have learned a lot. I think we all 
recognize that terrorism continues to present itself in 
increasingly complicated ways and in new places, and the 
digital in particular has allowed us all to be more 
interconnected than ever, but also led to great global 
cooperation and economic relationships, but it has also in many 
ways tested our counterterrorism capabilities as we have seen 
that misinformation can quickly lead to radicalization online.
    And so, Ms. Ramalingam, you mentioned five or six 
components of various European models in combating 
radicalization extremism. I assume that there is no reason to 
conclude that these same elements ought to be present in models 
that we create here in the United States? And in addition to 
that, are there any other lessons that we should take from 
those examples?
    Ms. Ramalingam. Thank you, Congressman.
    I do believe that all of those points apply here in the 
United States. In particular, our terrorism prevention 
mechanisms need to be locally driven, and this is the case 
whether we are talking about the Jihadist threat or whether we 
are talking about White nationalism. It needs to be locally 
driven, locally based. It needs to have Federal support but 
also local government support.
    And, in particular, we need to draw on the existing suite 
of practitioners, licensed practitioners who have the 
capabilities to have conversations with people at risk.
    This is not necessarily about setting up dedicated programs 
to counter Jihadism or to counter White supremacy. We need to 
be building on those existing State frameworks and resources. 
There is going to be some training, some capacity building that 
needs to be done for those practitioners to get comfortable 
with dealing with cases, you know, with individuals who are 
presenting these kinds of ideologies.
    But as I have mentioned and others on the panel have 
mentioned, this isn't necessarily an ideological battle. This 
is fundamentally about dealing with those underlying drivers, 
and the solution is going to be local.
    So if there is one takeaway from those messages that I 
shared in my earlier testimony, it is about supporting at the 
local level the development of these kinds of prevention 
infrastructures.
    Mr. Cicilline. Thank you.
    And with respect to the role of the social media platforms, 
which we see, you know, kind of what has changed, how quickly, 
you know, millions of people can be reached with completely 
false information that can assist in accelerating 
radicalization, are there specific actions that social media 
platforms can or should take to counteract those issue online? 
What are those? And then, second, are there specific actions we 
should take as the government to help regulate the spread of 
misinformation on radicalization on social media platforms, 
like Facebook and Twitter?
    And if you could start, Ms. Ramalingam, and then I would 
like to hear from Mr. Onidi, could he also respond to that.
    Ms. Ramalingam. Sure. Happy to start.
    So we know that deplatforming works. There is a huge amount 
of evidence to show that. An example, Jihadists operating 
online have really struggled to rebuild their networks after 
the 2019 telegram takedown. There is many other cases here. So 
deplatforming works, and the tech companies need to be doing 
more of that.
    But in order to effectively deal with terrorist abuse on 
these platforms and abuse by disinformation actors, we need to 
accept that there will always be content that falls into the 
gray zone and will not be liable for removal, and there will 
always be some spaces on these platforms that are not liable 
for moderation.
    So with these cases, in addition to moderation efforts--and 
I cannot emphasize enough that tech companies need to do better 
on moderation, but in addition to that, the tech companies are 
in a unique position to offer safer alternatives to users who 
might be at risk of getting involved. This is a model that 
those companies regularly adopt in the suicide prevention 
space, in the child sexual exploitation space. They should be 
adopting similar safeguarding measures with audiences at risk 
of violent extremism and disinformation.
    And I will hand over to Olivier.
    Mr. Onidi. Thank you very much.
    Consistent with this analysis, I think the first important 
point was for all of us, American actors and European actors, 
to actually get all of these platforms to recognize that there 
was a problem, to recognize that they had a responsibility in 
this problem, and also to recognize that some of the choices 
they make, some of their commercial choices, but also some of 
the technical choices, those actually sometimes lead to 
dreadful negative effect.
    I take a few examples. The first one, this quest for 
introducing systematic and to end encryption. This is very 
challenging. Of course, we want to protect the privacy of 
private communications; but if encryption does lead for law 
enforcement's end or others to be blind in the actual 
communications that is being spread across networks, this is 
the limit of what can be accepted, and then this is a major 
challenge we are now dealing with in the European Union.
    The second example is the type of commercially oriented 
algorithms that are being used. There is also there quite a 
number of dreadful negative effects in the way those algorithms 
amplify the quest and the access to negative and dreadful 
material. And these are some of the work that we are conducting 
with them in order for them to be better at self-correcting 
some of the mistakes they are doing.
    And then, finally, I think ultimately it is also for us 
public authorities to progressively set obligations on the 
platforms, obligations to be good citizens, obligations to 
recognize that because of the very negative effect some 
contents can have, they should also be part of providing some 
corrective measures.
    Thank you.
    Mr. Cicilline. Thank you so much.
    My time has expired. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative.
    The chair now recognizes Representative Wild from 
Pennsylvania for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Wild. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    My question is for Mr. Onidi. And specifically, following 
the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, where I am right now, 
all of us are, and we know that an individual in France 
transferred something like $500,000 in Bitcoin to one of the 
extremists who was involved in the insurrection before then 
dying by suicide, the person who transferred the Bitcoin.
    Has there been any investigation by the EU into that 
transfer? And can you tell us about it?
    Mr. Onidi. I do not know about this case in particular, but 
I can tell you that what happened came as a shock to all of us. 
It did also confirm very much that work we had initiated across 
the Atlantic to actually broaden the kind of understanding of 
different motivations, different forms of ideologies being 
spread in order to insight violent extremism behavior was 
actually the right way to pursue.
    And given the very intrinsic cooperation between 
investigators on both sides, I am sure that if this transfer 
has been monitored, that this is being examined now by the 
relevant law enforcement agencies on both sides.
    Ms. Wild. But you do not know any details about that?
    Mr. Onidi. This particular case, no. I really apologize.
    Ms. Wild. Okay. No. That is quite all right.
    But following up on what you just said, what can you tell 
us about the parallels or the interconnectedness between the 
White supremacists, the Neo-Nazis, other extreme organizations 
on both sides of the Atlantic and how we can work together to 
best combat it?
    Mr. Onidi. This is at the heart of what we are working on 
for the moment. We are trying--the difficulty with these 
individuals are that they do not necessarily--they are not 
necessarily very outspoken as to the type of organizations they 
are members of. They use also extremely sophisticated ways of 
communication.
    So the first endeavor we are confronted with is to try to 
identify beyond the individuals the type of networks, the type 
of organizations they are members of and from that try to see 
to what extent those organizations have actually international 
connections. In a number of cases, we have seen the physical 
travel pattern, communication patterns between the different 
organizations known under different names as well, which, 
again, incites us to work even more on this because what we 
would like to be able to do is, as we have done with known 
terrorism groupings ultimately, is to identify those 
organizations, designate those organizations as terrorist 
organizations in order then to be able to also apply all of the 
sanctions that are associated and that are at our disposal from 
our legislative framework, so access to violence, deny access 
to violence and deny access to traveling, and so on.
    It is challenging because those are really new forms of 
working together, but it is really at the heart of what they 
are doing for the moment.
    Ms. Wild. Thank you.
    Mr. Chairman, I cannot see the clock. I assume I am out of 
time.
    Mr. Keating. Another minute if you would like.
    Ms. Wild. All right. Well, then I will followup, Mr. Onidi. 
You know, one of the concerns that I have about what is 
happening here in the United States is and actually there is a 
parallel in Europe as well, and that is increasing public 
discourse by elected officials that I believe feeds into this 
kind of domestic terrorism, whether it is here in the United 
States or in the EU.
    Can you comment on that and what the role is of these kinds 
of public statements by people who should be leading by example 
but are not?
    Mr. Onidi. Well, I mean, we are very attached also to 
freedom of speech on these facts, so I think we have somewhat 
of the same very strong values in terms of protecting freedom 
of expressions. What we are trying to do is try to demonstrate 
what kind of behavior, what kind of incitement coming from 
whoever, is it from a political individual, is it in the 
context of other individuals, so that we can actually take 
action because we have ways, also criminal ways to pursue when 
we have evidence of incitement for hatred, and so on.
    It is a very, very difficult field. But, again, it is a lot 
of research trying to understand where this incitement comes 
from, whether it is from an organization, from the public, also 
opinion leaders. Many opinion leaders are also inciting to 
conduct a number of arrests, so in spite of the work, we are 
doing in order to better understand the different factors and 
manifestations of this.
    Ms. Wild. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Keating. Thank you for your questions.
    The chair recognizes Representative Ted Lieu from 
California for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Lieu. Thank you, Chairman Keating. I want to thank 
Chairman Deutch as well for holding this important joint 
hearing, and I want to thank all of the witnesses.
    I have a question for Mr. Levitt first about governmental 
programs you thought could help with terrorism. Now, I am a 
Democrat. I support governmental programs--[inaudible] Come out 
of Skid Row in Los Angeles.
    Mr. Keating. I think we lost him for a second.
    Mr. Lieu. We have got lots of Latinos and African 
Americans. It is not like you are seeing a surge of terrorists 
coming from the--[inaudible]
    Mr. Keating. Representative Lieu, I think we are having 
some technical problems. Let's pause, and you can take back 
some of your time. See if they correct themselves, otherwise we 
can come back. Let's give it another try.
    Representative Lieu.
    We will come back to Mr. Lieu and work out the technical 
problems.
    In the meantime, the chair recognizes for 5 minutes the 
chair of the Transatlantic Legislators' Dialogue, 
Representative Jim Costa from California.
    Mr. Costa. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for holding 
an important subcommittee hearing on issues that are affecting 
all of us both in the United States and Europe.
    I would like to address my first question to Mr. Pantucci. 
The European Commissioner Breton said yesterday that there is a 
growing feeling in Europe that something is broken in our 
transatlantic relations. As the chair of the Transatlantic 
Legislators' Dialogue, I work with Chairman Keating and many 
other members.
    We meet regularly between ourselves and the European Union, 
and we are concerned. Obviously, it has been a tough last 4 
years when the President came to Europe in June and said we 
are. The recent U.S., U.K. Australia agreement known as AUKUS 
has obviously been very disturbing to our longtime ally France, 
a critical transatlantic partner.
    What effect, if any, do we expect this agreement will have 
on our joint U.S.-EU ability to counter new and rising 
counterterrorism? Is this something that we can--I know there 
was a conversation with President Macron and President Biden 
yesterday, but I would like your assessment of it.
    Mr. Pantucci?
    Mr. Pantucci. Okay. Yes. I thought it was directed to me. I 
wasn't sure. Thank you for that question, Chair.
    I think my response would be that I think we are seeing a 
moment in transatlantic relations wherein, particularly in 
France, you have had a lot of anger in response to the 
agreement between Australia, the U.S., and the U.K. It was a 
very big deal from that perspective.
    The announcement of this agreement landed the day before 
the European Commission was launching its own Indo-Pacific 
strategy. So it landed at a particularly bad moment for 
Brussels, and it landed at a particularly bad moment for France 
in particular who was ultimately the sort of the biggest loser 
from this particular engagement.
    Mr. Costa. So what do we need to do to repair things? I 
have said--and, you know, the partnership goes back post World 
War II is now, I think, a reflection, this relationship, of the 
longest peace time in Europe in over 1,000 years. You know, 
trust takes awhile to develop. I think we have developed it. 
But certainly in the last 4 years, there has been a lot of my 
European friends are wondering, you know, can we still count on 
America.
    Mr. Pantucci. I think, as was pointed out by other 
speakers, the key is the United States needs to telegraph its 
messaging a little bit more clearly. I think maybe in 
Washington this was felt to be understood, but, obviously, it 
wasn't understood in Europe. I think at the end of the day, 
rebuilding the relationship is saying will just take 
communication and time. I think fundamentally the Transatlantic 
Alliance remains for both sides and is sort of the bedrock of 
their strategic security outlooks.
    Mr. Costa. I agree.
    Mr. Pantucci. And in time it will come together.
    Mr. Costa. All right. I would like Ms. Ramalingam--I do not 
know that I have pronounced that properly, but your copy on 
Moonshot I was interested in. You have done a lot in terms of 
intergovernmental project on far right terrorism in Europe. 
Recently we have seen a situation in a number of European 
countries, including Portugal, where the Chega party won nearly 
12 percent of the vote in 2021.
    How does the U.S. and the EU work together to counteract 
right wing terrorism, social media, and all the impacts that 
are undermining, I think, our basic western democracies or 
attempting to undermine them?
    Ms. Ramalingam. Thank you, Congressman. And your 
pronunciation was just fine. Thank you.
    The U.S. has a lot to learn actually from our European 
partners around prevention of right wing terrorism, White 
nationalist terrorism. This is a threat and a problem set that 
European governments have been dealing with since prior to 9/
11. And so many of the infrastructures that were developed deal 
with White supremacy in Europe have now well over 20 years of 
an evidence base around methods of prevention that are going to 
be most effective.
    Mr. Costa. In Germany and Denmark and a number of 
countries, yes.
    Ms. Ramalingam. Absolutely, yes. Germany and Sweden in 
particular had some of the largest volumes of Neo-Nazis dating 
back to the 1990's, and so there is evidence around programs 
that were set up by both law enforcement, governments and by 
NGO's which we can build on in our own terrorism prevention 
mechanism.
    So I think one of our main priorities here needs to be 
learning, listening to, you know, what has been effective in 
Europe and looking at how those models might apply here in the 
United States.
    Mr. Costa. Do you believe that is being done now?
    Ms. Ramalingam. I believe that is being started. I believe 
we have just started listening and we have started that process 
of recognition that we can learn, that America can learn and 
does not necessarily need to be trialing new methods but 
learning from the past. I think that recognition is there, but 
there is far more that needs to be done.
    Mr. Costa. Well, my time has expired. But, Mr. Chairman, in 
our next TLD meeting in December, we should maybe make this 
part of the agenda, and I am hoping we are going to be able to 
work our schedules so we can make that work.
    But thank you again, thank the witnesses, and thank you, 
Mr. Chairman, for this important hearing.
    Mr. Deutch. Thank you, Mr. Costa.
    Mr. Lieu, you are recognized if the technology permits.
    Mr. Lieu. Chairman Deutch, can you are hear me?
    Mr. Deutch. Yes, we can.
    Mr. Lieu. Okay. Thank you.
    Thank you, Chairman Deutch and Chairman Keating, for 
holding this important hearing.
    I have a question first for Mr. Levitt. You earlier had 
mentioned about governmental programs that could help connect 
people to their community and help reduce the threat of 
terrorism. I am a Democrat. I support governmental programs. 
But what I see is, you know, we have, for example, Skid Row, a 
lot of poor homeless folks, but we do not see a surge of 
terrorism from folks coming out of Skid Row. We also have high 
poverty rates across America particularly among Latino African 
Americans, but we are not seeing a surge of terrorists who are 
African American Latinos.
    I am just curious, what governmental programs are you 
referring to? And have they been shown to work?
    Dr. Levitt. Thank you for the question, Congressman Lieu.
    You are absolutely right, we should take a step back and 
note that this is not a problem that is affecting the vast 
majority of society. Terrorism is an outsized problem because 
very, very few cases of radicalization can lead to very, very 
outsized outcomes. And it is not the case that you will have 
everything is fine in one community, but there are problems in 
another. Every community will have people, because we are all 
individuals, we are all human, who even in the same 
circumstances, very parallel circumstances will respond 
differently.
    What we need to do, I believe, is make sure that everybody 
in that community is able to access the things we need to get 
by, not only food and education and housing, but purpose and 
belonging, and that is going to be different for every 
different person. I think, for example, now that there are 
going to be some significant military drawdowns as we rethink 
the U.S. counterterrorism posture, specifically the military 
posture, we should anticipate that we are going to have lots of 
servicemen, lots of servicewomen coming home. The vast majority 
are going to reintegrate into society fairly easily, some are 
going to need some help, and some are going to be looking for 
that camaraderie and that purpose, and they are going to find 
it with an extremist milieu.
    So the type of programs I am talking about, I cannot point 
you to a specific program. I think it has to be local 
government. It should not be a Federal effort. federally we 
need to come up with moneys to be able to empower programs at a 
local level to make sure that they are not communities that are 
disenfranchised.
    In Minneapolis we realized that at some point within 
segments, not the whole, but within segments of the Somali-
American community, there were pockets of extremism because 
they lack these types of belonging and purpose. When we had 
three different pilot projects in Minneapolis and L.A. And 
Boston, they found very, very different phenomena in each of 
those locations around the United States.
    So we need to be very locally driven.
    Mr. Lieu. Thank you.
    And then my next question is for the panel. I am curious 
what you think about the impact of race on terrorism. When you 
look at January 6, the folks there, based on a Washington Post 
study, showed that they were there--the greatest predictor was 
based on the rate of change in their county, if it was 
declining in the White population. And if that was happening, 
then they would more likely show up on January 6. And I am just 
very of curious what folks see in terms of is race playing a 
bigger role now than it used to be in terms of terrorism?
    Mr. Pantucci. I think it was suggested to the whole panel, 
so maybe I will offer my 2 cents.
    I think race is clearly a major driver of the kind of 
extreme right threat that we see that has become more prominent 
recently. But I would say is there has always been an issue 
actually on both sides of the coin. And if I think back to the 
United Kingdom, if you think about questions of race and you 
look at some of the early individuals who were joining al-Qaeda 
and who were going to training camps in Afghanistan--and this 
was in the 1990's and early 2000's--a lot of them were reports 
and experience, you know, the South Asian Britains living in 
the United Kingdom, race was an issue that was sort of 
aggravating them and making them feel disenfranchised to their 
community and making them look to some sort of vexation, some 
sort of group that would give them a sense of membership that 
then would lead them ultimately to in some cases join al-Qaeda.
    So I think the question of race is many times constant, in 
many ways a crossover. It is really about people feeling 
alienated from their environment, and that is something which 
clearly generates problems.
    So, yes, it is really about social fabric and social 
tensions. And if social tensions are very high, then the fabric 
of society gets very aggravated and torn, and that is what 
ultimately leads people to look for some extremist groups to 
help them understand the world and then to get them to train to 
react to it within.
    So I think it is really about the social fabric intentions 
that really--you know, that race is clearly one of the major 
issues that they get picked at.
    Mr. Lieu. Thank you.
    And I cannot actually see the time. Do I have any time 
left?
    Mr. Keating. Well, I think you--why do not you take another 
20 or 30 seconds, Representative, because I was so slow with 
the switch.
    Mr. Lieu. Okay. So thank you.
    Again, for the panel, I just want to push back a little bit 
on folks who said our allies are surprised by what the U.S. 
did. I just have to say the former President campaigned on 
getting us out of endless wars, on getting us out of Syria, 
getting us out of Afghanistan. No one should be surprised. 
Biden also campaigned on that. So I do not know why our allies 
were surprised. Joe Biden was simply executing the withdrawal 
agreement that Trump signed last year. Trump reduced our troops 
from a high of over 15,000 down to 2,500. Biden completed the 
withdrawal. None of our allies should be surprised. The U.S. is 
simply not going to go engage in 20 years and fight a war 
merely for the purpose of trying to eliminate some terrorism. 
We are not going to do that anymore. No one should be surprised 
by that.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative Lieu.
    I will now recognize Chairman Deutch who has been terrific, 
who somehow pulled this off, if he could coordinate some of our 
strategies as well as he overcame some of the challenges of 
this hearing, we would be in great shape. But thank you again 
for your leadership and for chairing this with our 
subcommittee.
    And I now recognize Chairman Ted Deutch.
    Mr. Deutch. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    First, Ms. Ramalingam, the transatlantic relationship, the 
alliance has experienced significant challenges, and we have 
talked a lot about that. Though many members are currently, and 
common throughout so many of the members is the experience of 
internal struggles related to hate and extremism and the social 
media misinformation that fuels it. How, from a transatlantic 
perspective, how would you characterize the most urgent needs 
for transatlantic cooperation to counter the rapid spread of 
online radicalization and extremist propaganda?
    Ms. Ramalingam. Thank you, Chairman.
    There is a lot of work ongoing, international cooperation, 
which I would call really soft diplomacy efforts, to try and 
nudge the tech companies in the right direction. So the best 
example of that is the global internet forum to 
counterterrorism, and a lot of the initiatives following 
Christchurch.
    That sail, from my experience, the tech companies are most 
willing to respond in, you know, being very frank, in moments 
of tragic. So we saw, you know, after Christchurch and after 
January 6 that the tech companies will launch a knee-jerk 
reaction or they are willing to respond when governments impose 
legal and commercial imperatives to act. Essentially these type 
of knee-jerk reactions, inconsistent application of rules and 
regulations is very reactive rather than proactive.
    I do think that there is hope for America to look to what 
has been done internationally in terms of European governments 
placing restrictions on the tech companies and looking at the 
efficacy of that when it comes to, in fact, fund terrorism 
prevention and modernization efforts. You know, I look forward 
to seeing the impacts of the soft diplomacy efforts, but, you 
know, bearing in mind my own understanding of how the tech 
companies are, when the tech companies are most compelled to 
act, it tends to be when those legal and commercial imperatives 
take precedence.
    Mr. Deutch. Okay. So let me followup. If they are good at 
responding in the aftermath of tragedy and they respond to 
pressure, what is the right way to get them to pay attention to 
this before there is another tragedy?
    Ms. Ramalingam. So while I am not an expert on big tech, 
you know, big tech regulation efforts, from my experience, you 
know, governmental pressure does have an impact. You know, the 
tech companies are looking at, for example, the designation 
lists by the U.S. Government. They look at the FTO lists. They 
look at the STGT lists. They are looking at government 
regulations, and we can use those kinds of mechanisms to push 
the tech companies in the right direction and to ensure that 
there is consistent application of their modernization efforts 
across different forms of extremism. This is where one of the 
greatest gaps has emerged in the last several years. Obviously, 
the efforts to designate White supremacist organizations have 
really only just been given the attention that they deserve, 
but there are some efforts that I think government can take to 
push companies in the right direction using those kinds of 
levers.
    Mr. Deutch. I appreciate that.
    Let me just put a question out to the panel. When we are 
looking at the current threat landscape, as we try to address 
the ways to counter it, where are we seeing the greatest 
similarities between the threats facing the U.S. and the 
threats facing Europe? And how do we--and can we confirm that 
there are, in fact, those shared threats and prioritize them 
accordingly?
    I will open that up to anyone on the panel.
    Mr. Onidi perhaps?
    Mr. Onidi. Well, thank you very much.
    I think the closest in terms of the manifestation of what 
is going on both in the U.S. and in the European Union is the 
fact that we do have an increased number of individuals 
radicalizing and being led to commit violent acts, and this for 
very different idealogical reasons.
    And then I think it was extremely well explained by all of 
the members of the panel that at the end of the day, the 
idealogical thought was just the excuse so to say, the 
packaging of why the individual would actually do and commit 
such a violent act; but intrinsically the motivations behind 
the reasons, the real reasons behind an individual being led to 
commit such dreadful acts are exactly the same on both sides.
    We are also trying to deploy similar responses, local 
responses, responses that use a multitude of expertise, from 
the medical side to the actual police side as well. They are 
all important in order to better detect and better prevent such 
phenomenon. But this is really the essence of what we both are 
trying to find merely because these are the most recent and 
also the most numerous attacks we have been facing over the 
last years.
    Mr. Deutch. Okay. I appreciate it. Thanks to all the 
witnesses for your participation today.
    And thanks again to you, Chairman Keating, and I yield 
back.
    Mr. Keating. Thank you again, Chairman, for extraordinary 
flexibility in coordinating this, and I want to thank our 
witnesses again.
    Usually I am in a position where I would be the first to 
ask questions, but I now realize, you know, it is always a 
difficult task ending things up as well. But, you know, the 
title of today's hearing is ``Transatlantic Cooperation on 
Countering Global Terrorism and Violent Extremism.'' And as we 
have heard through this hearing and the testimony of the 
witnesses, this is--you know, it is not a homogenous, you know, 
type of discussion because it is very distinctive and dynamic 
in many ways.
    The types of challenges we face are diverse, and the 
threats posed are similarly diverse. There is domestic 
terrorism. There is individuals and groups engaged in 
grievance-based violence. There are those that are inspired. 
They are online or through activities within groups to get 
involved and engage in this activity. And then around the world 
there are so many different types of terrorist organizations. I 
mean, you cannot name them all. We are focused so much now on 
Islamic States, but we are not looking, you know, 
comprehensively sometimes on the challenges we have. There is 
Boca Hiram in Africa, Gaza Strip, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. 
You know, I could go on and on with the number of different 
groups.
    So my question is to the panel as a whole, but I would like 
particularly Ms. Ramalingam to deal with this because part of 
it is preventative and deradicalizing people. But how can we 
tailor, you know, the kind of actions? And to the whole group 
as well, you know, in terms of our resources, in terms of 
curbing the violence and deterring, but also in programs of 
deradicalization, how can we tailor that or how much can we 
tailor that to specific groups and, importantly, by engaging 
specific groups in, you know, trying to thwart this activity?
    Ms. Ramalingam. Thank you, Chairman. I am happy to start 
off and then hand over to the rest of the panel.
    My firm belief and based on my experience delivering this 
work across Europe is that we do not necessarily need programs 
focused on any one particular form of extremism. Yes, there are 
going to be cases that arise where idealogy does need to be 
addressed, but actually the underlying skills which are 
required to deliver this work haven'thing to do with the 
idealogy itself.
    That said, the most effective programs do pair individuals 
at risk with someone who is likely to be credible and trusted 
with them. Oftentimes many of the European programs that 
operate in the space use former extremists in that space 
because, you know, they will have credibility with those 
individuals. So that is the area in which those sorts of 
programs need to be tailored, and offering that credibility, 
credibility will obviously look very different for a White 
supremacist than it will be for someone who is at risk for 
Jihadism. But, broadly speaking, the underlying skills required 
by those practitioners are really behavioral health 
methodologies, you know, the skill sets that are required 
within the behavioral health field, whether that is psychology, 
counseling, social work, or youth work. And fundamentally that 
is going to be the basis for any effective program even here in 
the United States.
    Mr. Keating. Yes. There are some studies, I believe, that 
actually mention the value and the multiplier effect and the 
effectiveness, the efficacy of issues of this nature more in 
the hands in the involvement of women, particularly mothers. 
They are often the first educators of their children. They are 
often the first people who can spot some of the signs of 
radicalization themselves.
    How important is it to engage women particularly and 
empower women in this effort?
    Ms. Ramalingam. Is your question directed at me, Chairman?
    Mr. Keating. It would be.
    Ms. Ramalingam. I can take it if----
    Mr. Keating. But others can chime in, but particularly you, 
yes.
    Ms. Ramalingam. Great. Great. I am happy to start.
    You are absolutely right that family members in particular, 
they play a crucial role here, and many of the programs that 
were set up in Europe and which are now starting to develop in 
the U.S. are actually family counseling programs. These are 
programs for, you know, the fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers 
of people who are at risk who are likely to be the first ones 
to spot the signs. So those are very important nodes which can 
help us pull people back who are at risk.
    Women play an important role in that. I would also want to 
mention that we tend to focus our prevention efforts on men. I 
think there is an assumption here that men are the ones that 
are at greatest risk. We have increasing evidence to show that 
women are also involved in these movements, sometimes at high 
volumes. In particular, some of Moonshot's research has found 
that in the United States 25 percent of people who are engaged 
in White supremacy content online are women, who self-identify 
as women. So, you know, we cannot ignore women in our 
prevention programs, and we do need to ensure we are building 
programs that are fit to serve women. And I just want to make 
that point as well.
    Mr. Keating. Okay. One last thought and then we will 
conclude. You know, the European Union and India discussed 
multiple ways to evaluate security and strategic partnerships 
recently. They included sanctions as a part of this as well. 
Just any quick comments from our panel regarding how the U.S. 
or the U.S. and our transatlantic allies together can engage 
more regional partners outside our own coalition, and what 
financial tools do we have to try and thwart this?
    Dr. Levitt. I will just jump in as the former Treasury 
official on the panel to say we have great financial tools at 
our disposal. My concern is that they tend to be seen as a 
panacea. And the past few years, they have been used on their 
own when they were always meant to be used in tandem with other 
tools.
    Diplomatic counterterrorism is a real thing, and we need to 
be doing a lot more of it. If we do more of it, we will be able 
to bring in more regional allies, and we will be able to work 
with them and our other allies, including the Europeans, on 
issues including, but not limited to the use of sanctions and 
other financial tools.
    The only other thing I would like to say answering the 
previous question is, you know, the panel hears about 
countering global violent extremism. Throughout the panel, we 
have basically broken it down, but we haven't made it clear. 
There is CVE at home, and then there is addressing the 
conflicts driving extremism abroad.
    I am reminded, and I just looked it up. In 2017, the Office 
of the Director of National Intelligence wrote one its global 
trends reports. And what it was talking about, what would 
significantly impact the future direction of the terrorist 
threat, it said, the resolution or continuation of the many 
intra and interState conflicts currently underway, most 
importantly, the Syrian war, but also the conflicts in 
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, the Sahel, Somalia, Yemen, and 
elsewhere will determine the intensity and geography of future 
violence.
    Our transatlantic cooperation and helping each other 
counter violent extremism within one another's borders is that 
really good. It is not so great, and it needs improvement on 
working together to solve big problems abroad.
    Mr. Keating. Thank you. On that note, I think it just 
underscores one of the fundamental lessons we learned today 
through this hearing is that this is a dynamic problem, and it 
requires a dynamic approach.
    Merely, as you mentioned, throwing sanctions at the issue, 
it could be one tool in the toolbox, but it is certainly not 
something to accomplish the goals that we want.
    Prevention, involvement, understanding, how this happens, 
the fact that this is ideological in so many instances, and we 
have to be aware of that, and be aware of how to effectively 
deal with that are all things you brought up in your testimony 
today as well as the overarching theme that we have a 
tremendous advantage here in the U.S. of having a coalition, an 
historic coalition, particularly with our European allies and 
our trans1rpatlantic partners to deal with this.
    So thank you for your participation. I think it was 
extraordinarily important, and the perspective was correct, so 
I appreciate your involvement here today.
    I will advise the members they have 5 days to submit 
statements and extraneous material and questions for the record 
subject to the length limitations on the rules.
    I want to thank the members who participated during such a 
difficult time of having concurrent votes for their interest 
and their questions. And with that, I call this hearing 
adjourned. Thank you all.
    [Whereupon, at 4:09 p.m., the subcommittees were 
adjourned.]

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