Good morning or a good afternoon for our overseas viewers. On behalf of the US Institute of Peace and the Resolve Network, it's my pleasure to welcome our speakers and our viewers to our virtual conversation today, understanding career foreign fighters. I hope all of you all watching at home are safe and healthy and doing okay during this global pandemic. My name is Leanne Erdberg-Steadman, and I am USIP's director for violent extremism. Here at the Institute of Peace, we see violent extremism as a global centuries old problem. Despite the countless lives lost and trillions of dollars spent, violent extremism continues to evolve and spread and be a facet of our society. Addressing this complex global phenomenon with roots and local context continues to be a top priority for USIP. We believe that any real resolution of violent extremism requires a peace building approach. We see that peace building has a role to play in preventing individuals from finding common cause with violence. And we see that peace building has a role to play in enabling those who are currently part of violent groups to abandon those organizations and perhaps find a peaceful future that's not solely defined by their past. As part of our work at the Institute, we see that research is crucial to addressing violent extremism. It can uncover dynamics that drive people to join terrorist groups, it unpacks the numerous complex reasons for why people adhere to violence and violent groups, and it shines light on local and socio economical and political dynamics. Research from a multiplicity of focus areas, and that was that employee rigorous methods must be part of our game plan to offer workable insights on to violent extremism. It's why we're proud to house the resolve network here at the Institute and build upon our decades long legacy of deep engagement and conflict affected societies. Resolve for those of you who are new to our organization is a global consortium of researchers and research organizations and practitioners and policy experts who are all committed to our mission of better research informed practice and improve policy on violent extremism. Today's topic, understanding and addressing the foreign fighter phenomenon, particularly a wave of foreign fighters that joined violent extremist groups in Iraq and Syria has become a key policy priority in recent years. And while many policy discussions have sought to understand why individuals travel outside of their home countries to join armed groups, much less is known about those who do not return but instead go on to join new groups and start new wars. We're delighted to host this discussion today with the three authors of a recent resolved network report career foreign fighters expertise transmission across insurgencies. This report presents their pioneering original research that examines this phenomena of career foreign fighters, and I'm really excited to hear from all of them today to tell us exactly what the security threat that these individuals pose, and more about those who participate in violent extremism across multiple conflicts and groups. Today's conversation because it is virtual we're really encouraging you to actively engage with us on our YouTube channel on Twitter. So please during the event submit your questions for the speakers using the YouTube chat feature. You can also submit and join questions on Twitter with the hashtag career foreign fighters will collect questions throughout the duration of the event. So please send them in at any time to kick off today's discussion. I'm delighted to introduce our esteemed speakers and our moderator for today's event. Dr. Colin Clark, Dr Clark is a senior research fellow at the Sufran Center, an assistant teaching professor in the Institute for politics and strategy at Carnegie Mellon University, and a member resolves research advisor council. He is an associate fellow at the International Center for counter terrorism Hague, ICC T, a senior non resident fellow at the foreign policy research Institute fpr I, and a member the network of experts on the global initiative against transnational organized crime. Dr. Clark has over a decade of experience examining terrorism and insurgency and criminal networks, and in 2019 he published the book after the caliphate, the Islamic State and the future terrorist diaspora. Colin will moderate a conversation with the reports authors, starting with Chelsea Damon, a researcher and pursuing a PhD in justice law and criminology in the School of Public Affairs at American University. She is an associate fellow at the global network on extremism and technology, and the executive producer of the loop cast, a podcast on national security and information security. Next we have Jeanine DeRoy, Ben Beterzane, who is a researcher at the Institute of security and global affairs is GA of Lighting University, and also a research fellow at the International Center for counter terrorism, the Hague ICC T. Lastly we have Dr. David Mallett, who is an associate professor of public affairs at American University. Dr. Mallett is the author of foreign fighters transnational identity in civil conflicts, and the co editor of transnational transnational actors and war and peace militants activists and corporations and world politics affairs. And Dr. Mallett like Dr Clark is also a resolve research advisory council member. With that long introduction I'd like to thank everybody and it is my pleasure to hand this over to Colin. Thanks so much Leanne. Thank you everybody for joining us today and thanks so much to us IP and resolve. I mentioned I'm a member of the research advisory council, and it's been a real pleasure to get to work more closely with my colleagues at resolve over the past year and a half. We've been doing some really interesting work together and I look forward to doing more interesting work in the coming months and years. I'd like to also just give a special shout out to the authors of this paper. If you haven't read it yet. I urge you to. It's an excellent paper and there's some really interesting findings in their career foreign fighters expertise transmission across insurgency so a lot of interesting details packed into into this paper. It's a really important study, and it sheds lights on several important very old variables and factors, including, you know, who becomes a foreign fighter career foreign fighter and why. I think it's worth pointing out the attachment to current policy dilemmas right so if you're wrestling with and working on current policy issues this is the paper you want to read, not only in terms of reintegration but rehabilitation recidivism and repatriation so it kind of hits the mark across all these different areas and really informs what we're talking about. When we look at what's happening across the world, not only in Europe, but elsewhere. So that said, I'll get the discussion going and I'll kick things off and I'd like to ask David. My first question is just so we're all in the same level here and foundation. Can you explain to us, what is a career foreign fighter. And moreover, why did they matter. Well, thanks Colin and thanks Leanne also thank you everyone else for shooting in today. Career foreign fighters are a new category or a new distinction, but they really it's a continuation of things that we've been researching for a while. So just to get everybody on the same page with definitions, foreign fighters are individuals who travel to civil wars who traveled to conflicts and other countries where they had not been resident we're not perhaps perhaps a citizen before they've traveled to somewhere so it's not just international terrorists, people join insurgent groups and career foreign fighters are individuals who joined more than one, which is something that hasn't really been studied before. We found which we'll talk more about as we go along today but we found that there are people who joined as many as six different insurgencies and six different countries. Obviously, they're not usual. I can say just just quickly that career foreign fighters or foreign fighters in general are people who joined insurgencies joined rebel groups exclusively so we're not looking at people joined foreign legions for military volunteers. We're not looking at mercenaries specifically what we found is that there are people have been foreign fighters for different causes throughout history, you can think of volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. You can look at some of the fighters in Ukraine today as well. And a lot of times because they're joining rebel groups, they're, they don't have the resources to compensate and they tell them we in some cases we can't pay you upfront that you have to fight to defend your people. You're not you're not here for the money. Obviously in some cases there are there are types of rewards offered ISIS in particular was known for for paying you know well compared to other shahadi groups. But we don't really get into the questions of pay because it gets complicated groups that tell people we can't pay you still feed them. Still give them some form of compensation so we typically sidestep this question of, you know, you have to be paid to be considered a mercenary versus a foreign fighter. And what also the term at foreign terrorist fighter FTF has been used a lot over the last several years by practitioners in particular foreign fighters more of the academic research term. So, one question people might have is, is there a difference between foreign fighters and foreign terrorist fighters. So the purposes of this study know under international law you're an FTF if you're basically a member of Al Qaeda or the Islamic State and I think that pretty much everyone in our study happens to be a member happened to have been a member at some point, one of their affiliates so for the purposes of this study. That doesn't make much difference either. And we're only looking at jihadis people have been jihadi foreign fighters obviously I mean I in particular have looked at people who joined other groups as well.  So we're only looking at people who joined jihadi groups of foreign fighters since the 1980s. And this particular group I should say of course there are thousands of for jihadi foreign fighters since the 1980s. But in this particular study, we actually only ran across dozens who counted his career for in fighters. So it seems like a small group, but it turns out they have a really outsize influence. And, and I think that number would probably surprise people right but it's based on the parameters of what you laid out and so I think that's a really important distinction. I think it's also really important to differentiate between mercenaries and mercenaries are in the news a lot more recently if you look at the conflict in Libya. So I think it's a Wagner group and some of these other entities and at Carnegie Mellon, I'm lucky enough to teach a course called the future of warfare so we talk a lot about our range of violent non state actors figure into into conflicts. But I think it's really important to be precise in our definitions, as you were in this paper. The next question kind of dovetails on that and it's for Janine. Can you talk a little bit about the implications that foreign fighters have for conflicts. So specifically, they change the dynamics. I mean, why are we so interested in this phenomenon particular. I think that's a very important point. David already said it. They have an outsized impact on the conflict. And this is one of the main findings and main topics of our whole paper so we can also entity discusses but it comes down very simply to the fact that they're very experienced. So these are people that have already fallen conflicts. They have a particular legitimacy, but they also bring with them certain skills that they develop over the course of these conflicts. I can imagine it's very different if a first time foreign fighter for instance from the Netherlands or any other country comes to conflict without any experience. Usually these people don't even know how to hold a gun they might hold it the other way around. So, if these people have already a lot of experience in previous conflicts, they can kind of give a boost to new and emerging conflicts. Not only their battlefield skills, but another very important topic is of course also their ideological impact so they might have, well, they might have built these transnational networks, and they also build on certain doctrines they develop their thinking about conflicts so they bring in a lot of different expertise, both practical, ideological but also in terms of leadership skills. One of our findings is that a lot of these career foreign fighters actually rise through the ranks and every next conflict, some of them you see them rise through these ranks and they actually end up in more executive positions. So, if you look at the whole foreign fighter phenomenon and we see conflicts where a lot of these career foreign fighters go to that should be really a warning sign I think in terms of the potential impact they might have. I think that was one of the most interesting findings from the from the paper for me was the leadership aspect and that's something that, even if you have a hunch about that it's different than proving it empirically so I think that that's something that really piqued my interest when I read this paper for the first time. I want to just follow up on one thing you said in terms of the ideological impact that career foreign fighters can have. Can you explain a little bit about how they may, or I guess to just take a step back. Can for can career foreign fighters that bring a certain ideology switch or sway the kind of course or nature of a conflict. There's been a lot of discussion in the past about what impact foreign fighters had career foreign fighters might have had in Chechnya. I think maybe there are some myths that are out there that might be dispelled but just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the importance of ideology there. Thanks. It's a very good point. Well I think it can go both ways so I think we should also always be careful like not to overestimate the impacts. I think we clearly see that they have an impact, but as you also point out it's not. Given that when career foreign fighters enter, for instance, we always see that the tactics become more severe. So it's a bit of mixed evidence. We also discussed it in a literature review. There are some cases where we really see that once these well known fighters who also know more about targeting tactics for instance when they enter, they can give this boost to groups moving towards more extreme ideas and more extreme tactics. But in other cases, it might not. So indeed it's good to be a bit careful there and not say that it's only one directional effect. But yeah, of course they do bring in these expertise and this expertise and they do bring in the networks and they might have transnational links. So we clearly see in many conflicts that when these foreign fighters come in, and especially these experienced foreign fighters, they do lead to some kind of a more. Yeah, more more extreme ideology or more severe implications. Yeah. Yeah, that's an important clarification and I think there's probably still a little bit more work left to be done on that on that topic, you know, there's a number of questions that stem from that, which would be interesting for researchers and certainly graduate students to pursue and collect data on speaking of collecting data and case studies by my next question is for Chelsea. You know, in the course of the research I did for my book, one of the most exciting things is when you find something that might be counterintuitive or kind of cuts against conventional wisdom or just strikes you as strange or something that you didn't know. Was there anything about the case studies and the particular research that you did that was surprising that kind of caught you off guard or maybe was a bit unpredictable. That's a really great question and going through the multitude of sources including biographies accounts of individuals experiences in multiple conflicts. There are a lot of different stories that pop up. Of course in the report we show three different case studies of executive career foreign fighters as we're calling them. And each person has differences in what took place during their time in the theater of conflict as a career foreign fighter. I guess some of the interesting things that I found across multiple case studies was this idea of individuals, not just going from conflict to conflict and joining different groups. And that path and through their career as we're calling it, they actually tended to go home at periods of times between conflicts which I found really interesting, because a lot of us might think that if you are a foreign fighter fighting for a terrorist organization overseas you might want to avoid going back to your home country. But a lot of individuals actually went back, had a stint back home, and then entered another conflict. And each case study showed different reasonings for this. Some of it was taking a break from a theater of conflict. Other times it was also making connections back home. A handful of individuals in the data set that were Saudi and they used a lot of resources back home or individuals that had resources to the global jihadist movement elsewhere using Saudi as as a platform I guess to gain more skills or more conflict connections elsewhere. Another thing that was very interesting from some of the firsthand accounts was looking at how some of the career foreign fighters actually had a very hard time assimilating back into normal regular life so they had spent time in a number of conflicts. And this is something we also see with individuals that are veterans in militaries where because you're so used to being in a certain environment that is full of conflict, it can be very, very hard to go home and assimilate back into normal life. So some individuals actually really needed to go back to a theater of conflict which I think for policy implications that something very interesting to think of that we can look at issues that are veterans and veterans overseas as well in other countries face and also apply this to career foreign fighters. Fascinating while you were talking I was thinking of the exact same thing, actually, you know heading home for for a little R&R rest and recuperation for going out for the next tour deployment. The fact that career foreign fighters were able to return to their countries of origin, or their homes before heading out to the next conflict. Can you tell us anything about the ease with which foreign fighters can traverse international borders. Does it speak to a porosity of borders does it speak to connivance with with actual governments that are kind of agreeing to look the other way, or is it just really poor counterterror of defenses, maybe a little bit of all of those. I think that's also another difficult question to unpack in the sense that there are individuals in our data set that started their career as a Sunni jihadist in the 1980s so Afghanistan was a lot of their first experiences in the conflict and fighting the jihad. And if you look at that time period, foreign fighters weren't as much of a security concern as they are now with the conflict in Syria. So we have to take that into consideration when considering open borders and countries and trying people to come in and out, because it was a different time and we didn't have the same potentially security risks that we think of now when it relates to foreign fighters. I think on the other hand, there are certain countries that did not mind what was taking place in Afghanistan at the time. A lot of them also supported the idea of the jihad or spreading the idea of not spreading but the idea of protecting the Muslim community, the ummah. So it's a really hard question to unpack. Nowadays we of course see lots of security conversations and measures being taken to be put in place when it comes to foreign fighters especially with the Syrian conflict. So that question is, like I said, hard to unpack and it's also depending on the time and the current situation with the past situation. Yeah, and if anybody's had the pleasure of reading Heghammer's great new work, the caravan, you can see the difference in the way some foreign fighters were considered during the initial Soviet-Afghan war and today compared to Syria. It brings me to my next question, which I think is for anyone that wants to answer it within the group, which is now that foreign fighters are considered in such a different light, what have been local reactions to career foreign fighters? And what factors impact these kind of local reactions, whether it's North Africa, Southeast Asia, how do local communities and local governments think about it when career foreign fighters show up and attempt to kind of ingratiate themselves and what was previously a kind of parochial type conflict with local grievances. How does that change the equation? And feel free anyone to jump in and grab that. I can jump in and Janine or David can also jump in. So looking at the case studies, once again, it's a mixed bag. On the onset, some conflicts and individuals that went to the conflict and then the local community had positive responses initially when people were coming to help with their local conflict. There are other times when the longer foreign fighters were in the environment or more individuals were coming, that there became some tensions within the local community with these foreign fighters that joined their local insurgency. And this can be for a number of reasons, whether it's ideological or also there is that known fact that sometimes foreign fighters that enter a conflict do not have skills initially so they can actually hinder the conflict or be burdens to the locals that know the region know what they're fighting for. Another issue that came up was the ideological aspect. So you had Sunni jihadists coming into different conflicts and also traveling from conflict to conflict as a career foreign fighter. And with them, they did bring ideological leanings that might not have fit in with the local population. And that did create some tensions, which we did see. And there are also discussions in biographies of career foreign fighters that discussed this issue of trying to bring in the ideological aspect, but not maybe going so strong at first because it can hinder the relationship with the local community. So some really important points there and I think too often we almost assume that foreign fighters are forced multiplier and we don't think enough how they can actually be a burden on the conflict or on some of the primary groups fighting there. It's come up in some of the conversations I've had with other scholars where we've kind of done this, you know, thought exercise of well why, you know, given how active Irish Americans were in the conflict in Northern Ireland, why didn't we see foreign fighters in that conflicts, you know, and one of the strongest, you know, hypotheses is they weren't wanted, we'll take your money but you know you're going to kind of muck things up if you get involved. So thanks but no thanks, you know, you can stay over where you are instead of drawing more attention. I wanted to throw something out there again for anyone that wants to jump in on this but let's say that a new battlefront opened up and similar to Syria, you know, 2012 to 2014 ish, where it was really drawing legions of foreign fighters from across the globe. So if something happens in Libya, where that conflict goes in that direction where it's really beginning to pull in larger numbers, or, you know, pick your spot your hotspot West Africa, could be Afghanistan again, it'd be somewhere in Southeast Asia. What, what really draws or what determines career foreign fighters going to a certain spot so how are they linked to kind of different conflicts, and what would lead a career foreign fighter to, you know, pack up to Libya or to say, you know, I'll pass and I'll kind of wait for the next opportunity or their factors that drive career foreign fighters to go to a place when assumes it's not just looking for any conflict but there have to be certain factors that make it more or less attractive. Maybe I can say a few words about that and David you want to add to that then. So phrases which you've also seen in the past, in case of Afghanistan, a lot of these fighters when the Soviet Union had left the country they were really looking also for a new opportunity to fight their jihad so I think it's a mix of course, of what is going on in the place where they're still based, is there still a jihad a proper jihad they can fight, because we saw in Afghanistan it really escalated more into in fighting. So when in the early 1990s there was a new conflict in Bosnia erupting for a lot of these fighters it was also an opportunity to show that they were again doing kind of a real jihad, and they could relatively easily travel there so it also depends on the situation in the country where they're based now, of course in addition to whether or not a new conflict has certain elements that might attract it so it's also kind of opportunity based to some extent. Yeah, thank you. It's funny I'm actually I'm working on a study right now it's under review so I'm not going to, I'm not going to say too much about what conflict conditions there might be it might be the case that certain conflict conditions draw foreign fighters. More than others. But I think just to follow on what we've been saying. The networks matter. They matter not only for recruitment but also for the transit of foreign fighters from one location for another you don't see foreign fighters crop up in significant numbers in any conflict without the group infrastructure in place it's not just a case of individual self traveling and bringing friends and snowballing any of these cases so and a lot of it. I think it's a matter of they follow the they follow the leadership they follow the organization. And that's why some of the experienced individuals who have gained respect to gain these connections are particularly instrumental in getting other foreign fighters to follow them. One thing about the career for and fires that we've seen is that they are really revered for bringing what are seen as best practices right they in some cases go to train other groups, or they write manuals for them saying well here's the last war. So there's always a conflict right there's always a conflict between foreign fighters and locals who they're supposedly there to protect, no matter what happens. Ironically, right. There's always, I think there's some competitive edge that the experienced ones have a they have this cool appeal. Jasper Schwab is done his dissertation work on this, that there's a sort of this appeal that the sex appeal of the foreign fighters have their scenes being exotic and more effective, and maybe not corrupt like some local fighters are so people want to join them. And they can elbow aside the others and actually I think this ends up shaping our understanding of the value of foreign fighters as Jeanine said before there are some people who show up first timers who don't know which way to point the gun. That's not the people we're talking about most foreign fighters end up being uses cannon fodder. They don't survive it's it's the few that make it that somehow become respected that can show up in countries they've never set foot in before, and suddenly be accepted in some of these cases is the leaders of the organizations. And that happens because they actually do bring added value so you know as social scientists we like to have cause and effect before and fighters heard that they help. And it's much more nuanced than that most of them probably are burdens most of them do get into conflict. Some of them really have learned how to work the system, or have connections are too valuable for locals to pass up so they don't. And in those cases those individuals actually do assume the leadership roles and probably do direct other people where to go. So if we're talking about bleed out from Syria, you probably follow somebody you see as an experienced leaders experienced fighter and where they go probably likely or to draw others with them. And I think especially a very strong point that you've led with there, which is that networks matter. And you know if you've read some of Michael Kenny's great work on mojaroon and militants from the United Kingdom. Looked at some of the Sharia for networks in Europe these facilitation networks that help people get from one place to the other perhaps encourage them help provide funding to get from point eight to point B. Sharia is the most recent iteration of some of these conflicts. It may end up being a fairly watershed conflict that gives birth to career foreign fighters for the next decade or longer. I'd like to kind of flip my last question on its head and ask about how communities can avoid becoming the next location for career foreign fighters. So if I am a state that doesn't want to attract. these individuals either because I think that they're going to destabilize my state further, because they're going to link up with existing militant groups. And, and, you know, which leads to spill over violence and all sorts of other negative second order effects. What can I do outside of kind of, you know, these high level talking points that we often see of, you know, counter corruption, establish the rule of law promote good governance. Yeah, no kidding we know those are the things we should be doing, but how do we actually operationalize that at a policy level. And what would you say to to that end again for anyone that that wants to weigh in there. Right, I'll jump in on that. I mean the hard answer I guess is that I'm not sure how much. I'm not going, you know, with staying in the scope of this project and not sure how much local governments can do because once the conflict has already started. It seems like you know that the foreign fighter networks will show up in the most opportune places I mean one question that's interesting to me. You mentioned before why some cases like Northern Ireland why you don't get ethnic diasporas a lot of it. They're not very well established these groups recruit people, they say hey we can't pay you, but there's this really dire threat to your people, and you have to show up and do something. And I've already before that you maybe don't see that and a lot of ethnic conflicts because there isn't this credible threat of genocide against the group. The flip side of that is that when you do get oppression of civilian populations when you do get first counter terrorism tactics. It makes it easy for a lot of these groups to put out that propaganda and say look here's proof. They use gendering a lot so they say you know you have to be here are the women are suffering young guy like you has to do something about it. So, one thing is just, I guess, good public relations skills are, you know, go hand in hand with good governments. Don't create these narrative talking points for the radical groups now by by engaging in activities that they can point to as justification for the necessity to intervene. That's, that's just creating the selling points for the groups. When that happens. Beyond that they're obviously they're more basic governance state capacity issues that matter. When groups when groups challenge the state it sets the conditions for insurgencies for foreign fighters. But the question of which conflicts are going to be drawn. Drawing points I guess I should say for career foreign fighters. It's a little bit harder to answer I think this is one of the interesting things to me about this project is actually raises. And it raises some new questions one thing that I thought was interesting that we uncovered, we're only looking at people who joined multiple groups as foreign fighters not really looking at people who've been domestic militants before that. But what we did find was some people had been domestic militants before becoming career foreign fighters, and some people became terrorists after having been career foreign fighters, but these weren't the same groups. So the people who are causing trouble at home first it didn't seem like they were going abroad for training and then coming back. And the people who were taking up the cause, which makes sense if they were radicalized but why the ones who are active first didn't become them. Did they go off and do something else where they going to other conflicts instead of going home. This is one of the new questions I think this project raises that we need to look into as well. Fair enough and I think you know there's always when you're able to kind of sink your teeth in and conduct research over a large period of time looking at these really important issues it leads to follow up questions. You know that that you can explore which is always great for the field because we're learning more and at the same time it breeds new questions. I'm still thinking about kind of implications for the future here. And if anyone can talk to maybe we'll start with Chelsea, and then and then we'll go to Jeanine. What can we expect for the future, based on some of the trends in your research so help us help us out a little bit to look a little bit beyond the horizon, and and looking at what you found in this study. What should we be, what should we be cognizant of and looking for. I think the most important finding that we gain out of this report that we've done in the research is that the bottom line up front is that career foreign fighters versus individuals that have only engaged in one conflict so one off foreign fighters as we like to call them. They actually these career foreign fighters actually pose a greater security threat to the future. So if you think about that looking at current conflicts the longer individuals are allowed to stay in a conflict and then potentially transfer to the next conflict. They're gaining the skills they're gaining the connections, those connections also help the broader jihadist community so the global jihadist community, which, as a security concern, that's an important thing to think of. So for me, as far as policy implications that idea that the career foreign fighters that continue on have a much stronger effect to global jihad than the one off individuals so I think that's the main takeaway for me that I think for policy is very important to consider. Great. Jeanine, do you have anything to add. Yeah, maybe what is also very important now I think to realize is that now is kind of our window of opportunity to potentially affect or have some kind of fact of affect on the future career foreign fighters coming out of the current conflict in Syria. We've seen that not all conflicts produce as many career foreign fighters as others we have some nice grasp where we really see that some conflicts attract more career foreign fighters what is produced more. And I think now is really the time, especially for policymakers to think about how they might want to try to affect the opportunities for current foreign fighters in Syria. To become these new career foreign fighters and of course here we touch upon a very sensitive topic, which we all know which is the repatriation of current fighters still in camps in the area. And this is really something that needs to be taken into account in terms of these this policy discussion on whether we should take our foreign fighters back so we friends the Dutch foreign fighters that we have to repatriate them and prosecute them. Or if we decide as countries not to be involved in in that regard but then we have a way higher risk we think of these people becoming these career foreign fighters. We think about thousands of people held in these camps and now really is the moment to to see if they will become the next career foreign fighters or not something that is that is very crucial today. So I think it's a critical point it's one that's on everybody's mind I mean if anyone read Eric Schmidt's piece in the New York Times from yesterday he's talking about the kind of impending disaster in northeast Syria and some of these camps. I know that the Islamic State is poised to kind of continue pushing forward and potentially break out some of their fighters and their families from these prisons. So, just to close on this before we move over to the viewer question and answer. I'm a politician in Paris or Brussels or the Hague or or anywhere. Is this a good news story. Is this a bad news story, or even beyond kind of value judgments. What should I take away from this. If I've read your study, and I've maybe been reluctant on repatriation for political issues right that I don't want to be the one that takes somebody home and and something bad happens. But if I'm taking a step back from that and I'm being more responsible and looking at what's better for my country. What's the right thing to do does your research point to any kind of specific policy recommendations or approach for those people and if you have a chance to brief high level ministers. What do you tell them about your findings that could potentially inform decisions that they're coming to a, you know, a breaking point that they'll need to make very soon in the next couple of months before things maybe spin out of control. I think one thing as you're saying before calm, it's something that you can, you can suspect, but it's good to actually have the numbers.  And really, this is something we should have known for 20 years since a lot that there's a risk of not bringing people back. One of these numbers is that of people who are left out there or who are allowed to stay out there is perhaps another way to look at it, who joined multiple different groups. Now, foreign fighters are usually cannon fodder. Usually the guys that can't hold the rifle the right the right way, but the ones that say out there they evolve over time Brock Mendelsen talked about this before. And what we're seeing is that half of them assume leadership roles in a quarter of them become top leaders of organizations they're the ones who plan the attacks, they're the ones who direct the violence against civilians and civil war conditions. Of the career for the fighters in our data set of the 50 something that we have we have 911 hijackers we have you know members of the ruby plot. We have people who went and became fundraisers and recruiters elsewhere. So, it's a question of weighing risks. And is it the question of bringing back the guy who didn't know what to do with his gun for the few months he had it or is the question of worrying down the road about the individuals who have gained experience who have gained these connections over time. Again, we're looking at a few dozen individuals it's a small number, but if, if they're representative of what's out there, and this is what we're able to find that for looking for quite some time. Then it looks like the career for the ones who don't come home, end up posing the greater risk in the long run. It's remarkable as a finding because if you think about the time and energy and resources that states devote to targeting top leadership and kinetic strikes and elsewhere right. So concerned about putting together campaigns to go after these people. It would seem that if we acted earlier, they wouldn't have the potential to grow into what they later become. It would be easy trade off in terms of return on investment to intervene at this kind of a point instead of letting the issue metastasize and then being concerned over who takes over the leadership or of a group or who's a particular, particularly effective recruiter bomb maker, etc. So I think there's a number of really interesting implications. Chelsea, did you want to chime in before we moved over to the audience Q&A. So I wanted to sort of piggyback off of what David just said and looking at what our data set found. We did have individuals that after their time in multiple conflicts ended up being involved in some way or another in local plots. So I think for policy and especially considering what we're going through right now in Syria and the camps and so forth and all the prisoners is that governments and nations are going to need to consider that once again the longer someone is involved in conflicts, the more skills and connections they're going to make and potentially, I'm saying potentially because it's not everyone, they potentially could be a huge or security threat to that nation in the future. So this leads to questions of creating some sort of off ramp for individuals that have been involved in foreign fighting. So this is going to also be based on countries their laws, what they're comfortable with, but some sort of off ramp that provides access to getting off the foreign fighter, and then career foreign fighter train. And we are seeing a lot of negative thoughts towards countries from individuals that have fought for terrorist organizations in the Syrian conflict. So you need to consider that the longer individuals are not allowed to have an off ramp of some sort and I know this is a security risk so it is a touchy topic, but the longer someone is denied access to going back home and potentially facing the music and what they've done, the more negative feelings they may have towards their country, which potentially looking at the data we have could lead to being involved in plots later on towards their home country so I think, even though we don't know what any all individuals will do it's something to consider for the future and for the current situation that we're in. Yeah, absolutely it gives us a little bit more, you know, of a kind of grounding to work with the data that you guys have been able to collect and analyze so we're at the point right now, where we're going to shift from, you know, the kind of talk show to more of a Q&A from the audience and we've got a number of really important questions coming in from the audience. And I'll kind of work through some of these some will be directed to, to the panel writ large and anyone can jump in others will be directed to toward a specific researcher. I'll start with the first which seems really, really interesting and it's a question that is on my mind as well. And it's talking to prior experiences and the sample that you guys used, which is can the panel address the geography of the sample, and whether there are differences in how important or meaningful prior experiences, depending on where experiences gained or where the fighter is from. Does that tell you anything noteworthy. I'll jump to that. If you have a chance to look at the report itself we have some some lovely charts in it, including listing by conflict where you see career foreign fighters and, you know, this gets to a question that was asked earlier about certain conflicts, you know, mattering more than others and maybe counter terrorism approaches mattering more than others. What we found were a lot more career foreign fighters whose careers began in Afghanistan in the 80s to begin in Bosnia. And there are a couple of explanations for this right one is perhaps those conflicts just led to more career foreign fighters, perhaps, because there were not international approaches to stopping jihadis from traveling that it was easier to start your career. It's also possible that the people who, you know, their records about them that their biographies written about them are top leaders so they've just been around longer so it would make more sense that you would see people. His career started back in that time period and Syria. But what we're also seeing though is that we're seeing career foreign fighters in Syria tend to be people who joined multiple groups in Syria, because we're counting that as well. We're seeing an average of about two and a half conflicts which both two and a half conflicts and two and a half groups for, you know, our career foreign fighters. So we're not seeing as much travel out of Syria yet to elsewhere obviously it's happening, but not individuals who have had the opportunity to build themselves into top leaders elsewhere we've seen career foreign fighters in Syria who came in from caucuses or elsewhere. We're seeing effects like there are plenty of career foreign fighters in Southeast Asia, but it seems to be, you know, a lot of people are retiring to the beach, most of them didn't seem to start there. They've all ended up there in our data set. So, yeah, there are some conflicts that seem to lead to more of an outflow, more bleed out of foreign fighters than others. I think it's a strong argument to be made that approaches international approaches in the last five years or so, under international law stop requiring countries to stop their citizens from traveling and by the way to take them back and prosecute them that's that's our all everybody's international obligation. Probably has had a difference but we just haven't been able to see that yet. Can I just briefly add something to that with the other I think the other side of the question maybe but that is what I'm thinking is also where the people come from so not only where they go to but also where they come from. I think there one important element is again the policies of the particular home country to what extent they for instance allow people to return from conflicts. Because if you have a country where citizenship is revoked it's way more difficult of course for a person to come back to that country so in that sense it might be more likely that a person will go on to to another conflict so another element in this question is of course also can they return home are they allowed to and also can they build up their normal lives again or do they come from a country that might also be in a conflict so of course there's no list of country we can say okay if a person comes from this country there's a higher risk but I think we have to take all these elements into account including these policies at home. Yeah, I mean if you revoke someone citizenship and make them a stateless person or you almost condemning them to a fighter, right where they have very limited options. Have an interesting question again to anyone on the panel. And your, your study has been focused strictly on jihadi groups, the entire time as I'm reading it I'm wondering about about the generalizability to other foreign fighters potentially career foreign fighters and the white supremacist realm or potentially what we might see following Iran's involvement in Syria where they're cultivating this larger network of foreign fighters. This question comes in on state sponsorship so it's something I've worked on with Philip smith where we kind of have analyzed what what the Iranians are doing and growing this kind of broad network of of proxies and then foreign fighters if you will. So the question is, is there a relationship between external states and these career foreign fighters, whether it's a provision of training. Are they any in any way organized beyond the groups that they're joining so is there a hidden hand so to speak or in some cases maybe a not so hidden hand that alters the dynamics that we're seeing at play here. And if not is there a potential for kind of states to to maybe leverage or harness career foreign fighters for their own objectives. So one thing I think that you've seen not just with jihadis but throughout history you've seen state permissiveness is required to cross borders, you know people in large numbers and when for because of international pressure or conflict conditions states closer borders foreign fighter flows dry up right you have very committed people who still make it but the larger numbers tend to tend to dry up considerably. Yeah, state responses matter. United States sponsorship can matter as well by some counts. Again, depending on who you count as a foreign fighter. There were potentially more foreign Shia volunteers in Syria than there were all the Sunni groups combined. And so what happens to them, perhaps there's been less worried because there's a sense that they are under state direction from Iran, or throughout history you've had individuals who joined multiple groups who fought in Spain and Israel and, you know, by Afra and elsewhere. It's always sort of handfuls of individuals. But you do get one thing that something we debated including but and not for I think we talked about is we are aware that there are individuals who have gone from fighting against ISIS to fighting in Ukraine. YPG volunteers have ended up in Ukraine and elsewhere. So that's something that certainly bears study as well. Returnees from from that you know from that come from Ukraine elsewhere have become a concern ties you mentioned to Nazi groups. So there's you know I think there's a lot of work in this area to be done this idea that people might have influences is one thing I think is really interesting about study of foreign fighters right now there's been a lot of work into facilitation and other matters of getting people to go in recent years less I think less on states roles that you mentioned. But this idea that they can go do other things besides just fight in one place or go back home. It's something that we're going to have to be watching in the future because clearly there are these these networks, these diffusions to other places, and they bring things with them when they go. So jump in on that. So looking at the conflict in the Ukraine and speaking to individuals that have gone over and fought in the Ukraine. One of the incentives of the Ukrainian conflict versus say Syria is the idea that at least at the time so this things have changed a bit in the recent future but at the time individuals could actually have somewhat of a normal life if they were a foreign fighter in Ukraine versus Syria, they could have a girlfriend, they could have an apartment, and then when they wanted to, they could go to the conflict zone engage in fighting, and then go back and have their normal life so I think that's something for governments to consider if they have a conflict with foreign fighters involved. That's a really interesting point right suitability to maintaining some semblance of what your life was like before, rather than a far more austere version could be you know compelling reason for someone to join or not join. One of the things that kind of irks me when we read a lot about foreign fighters, particularly about foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria is this notion that it's foreign fighters, comma, and women and children, and they're just kind of lumped together in this big group and I think that that does a disservice to kind of learning more about them. And, and we've got a question here on on foreign fighters and their families which I think, you know too often get get dismissed or kind of marginalized in this broader question. And the question is, what are the challenges of foreign fighters who have taken their families with them. Has that changed the process of rehabilitation, or is there any evidence that they've taken their families with them. Is there is any demographic information on gender that that is telling. And how does this kind of all come together to help inform how we should be thinking about next steps in terms of policy. I think in terms of gender, there was quite a bit per country for instance the Netherlands has really high percentage of women who also joined the fight. And when we speak about children I think first of all it's important to stress that I think 80% of the children have been born in the conflict zone. And so we speak about very very young children so indeed it is, we shouldn't, on the one hand we shouldn't like bring them all together when we speak about foreign fighters think it is important to see their different groups. And with these women I think now in the camps, a lot of these women, they're just with their children a lot of men have died so I think, especially for the European ones, as far as I know. That kind of changes the whole dynamic. So it's mostly women and children who are now held in these camps the number of male for fighters from Europe is way lower than that all these women and children so I think that is a very different question in terms of rehabilitation. And of course then for the men, it's for the men we can quite easily prove that they have have joined a fighting group, whereas for women it's always harder like the question is, are they actually for fighters. In our paper we said okay, we didn't focus on on women but we said okay fighters are people who join a terrorist organization that is fighting, but it's way harder to want to prove what what these women have done in the conflict. I think there's also quite a large fear in the number of countries that these women might come home and not be not can be cannot be prosecuted at all. I think in recent years we have seen it has changed a bit and it's also easier now for prosecution services to just prove that these women have joined terrorist organizations. They might also end up in jail at least for a shorter period of time, but yeah it's a super complicated topic because again they have different roles in the conflict, but they also play the card themselves of being very naive, just follow their husbands and thinking you were going to an all inclusive in Turkey and suddenly ended up in Syria so yeah I think we we have to be very careful with these stories. But there's there's difference, it's just a very complicated. I don't have a real answer I'm just can just say it's very complicated in terms of rehabilitation. Children I think yeah we can quite easily reintegrate these very young children if we think that most of them are below the age of five and there's a lot of good research from psychologists, who have shown that these very young children. It is, it is not, it's not a given but it's there's a lot of opportunities to want to help them back into normal situation again. So yeah, so it's not an answer just complicating the question a bit more but now that it's it's honest I mean if these these issues were straightforward, you know we wouldn't be spending so much time researching them and I think, you know in my own experience briefing policymakers there's this desire for a silver bullet, you know what's the profile what's what's the typology, just tell me and then we can get to the heart of the matter. The truth they're far more complex and I think that's what your report really highlights is that this is an extremely complex issue there's a lot of nuance, and that's why relying on data and a rigorous research methodology really matters right because we want to know that we can have faith in the findings that we are able to to come to it also. One of the things you guys stress is that a career foreign fighter right he's he or she is going into multiple insurgencies right this isn't just a one off that's the point of hence a career foreign fighter. And we've got a really interesting question that speaks to that which is, can you share more about how career foreign fighters are received in the next group so when they go from one conflict to the next. When they receive that that next conflict are they lauded for their potential experience, are they looked at, you know with a wary eye because of what they may have done in their their previous conflict that maybe they're bringing more heat, or negative to the place they're going. Is there a kind of learning curve or almost like, you know, when when you show up to any new organization. What does that look like is there a kind of hazing right vetting process that goes along. You know, are they delegitimized or do they have certain bonus fetus if they came from a Syria versus Olivia. How does that that work can you talk a little bit about that at a level of granularity that we might not understand. I can jump in on that. So, I think it's important to consider just as you were mentioning Colin that there is no profile, every individuals reasonings for joining a foreign conflict are going to be different just like every individuals experience towards radicalization is different and I to that point. The individuals in the data set all had very different experiences some had similarities. I will say overall I think that's going to your question. Being able to provide skills and knowledge from a previous conflict was actually a very positive thing for the next conflict and the next group that our career foreign fighters joined. And this was for a number of reasons it could be technical tactical, even ideological, but a lot of them that skill and knowledge set was an asset to the next group and the next conflict. In fact, there are some caveats. One of our individuals that I actually wrote about in the bios discusses having a little bit of pushback, because one conflict ended and he was looking for the next theater to join. And he mentioned to some of his comrades about, I'm thinking of going to X, X country, and they weren't too thrilled with that they didn't think that ideologically that country was ready for what this individual could could provide. So, you know, there are these antidotes that are slightly funny when you read about them because you look at it and you have to remember that these are normal people that are going about their lives and and it's a different experience than you and I have, but for them they they grapple with these ideas of, Hmm, is it good to go to Chechnya next or what about Syria. So it's real life and it's real life experiences and it's real life decisions. So I think that's an interesting takeaway and to answer a bit of your question and I can pass it over to my other colleagues maybe they have some input that they'd like to add. Yeah, just briefly. I think what we also saw in the case of Bosnia was that a lot of these commander from the conflict in Afghanistan went there and they were kind of among the first to build up this new Mujahideen network in Bosnia. So I think it also depends on the timing when do they join, and especially I think if they join in the beginning of a conflict they might be able to need set up new networks new links, and then have a very large impact maybe if they decide to join later on when the conflict is already, the foreign fighter networks already established they might be less welcome so I guess it's also terms of timing are they the ones that are paving the way and then trying to attract other fighters from other countries, or are they trying to jump on something that is already ongoing and then trying to maybe tune it more towards what they want to do and that it might lead to maybe more tensions with the local, the local foreign fighter groups, I mean the fighter groups that have already been established and that forces these career foreign fighters. We usually see that they are, I think quite early in into a new conflict because they have this experience and they're often looking for new areas and new conflict zones to to develop themselves and usually among the first ones I think to, to make that move, and then usually they are quite in the beginning quite welcomed for building up these new networks and once they're there and they might resort to more extreme tactics. Then we see that this tension with population starts to rise, but usually we see in the beginning the local population might also be still quite happy because they maybe their fight is more internationalized there's more attention for what they're doing. And once they find out actually who came there and what what kind of tactics, this might change over time. So career foreign fighters can be the equivalent of Instagram influencers as well right, depending on what battle they choose to join that may sway others that are on the fence. Strange way to think about it maybe but, and even listening to some of the things Chelsea said it, there are a lot of parallels to the civilian world right when someone's coming out of college or graduate school and they're saying, talking to their friends hey I'm you know maybe go into Wall Street, and you kind of get the hmm, you know versus or I'm going to go work for nonprofit or I'm going to do do one or the other there's different impressions that people have. And so I think. So, there's a really good question on recruitment. And I've done a little bit of work on this or wrote a piece just a short piece with Charlie winter, the war on the rocks a while back where we looked at how ISIS recruited people with specific backgrounds in graphic design and media and propaganda right we know that's something that ISIS really valued. So the question is do insurgent groups try to recruit particular career foreign fighters. For example, which skill sets are in demand versus others that aren't. You guys have mentioned that a lot of times foreign fighters can be used as cannon fodder, but I think as warfare changes and certain skills are more valued than others, particularly as we look at social media, the impact that that can have. That's one that springs to mind. Is there a particular example of a career foreign fighter or a group that looks to. In an interview one time I unfortunately use the term you know they're similar to headhunters in the way that they recruit, but given the fact that it was ISIS that had a kind of double meaning that I wasn't going for. So, are there ways that insurgent groups recruit particular career foreign fighters. And if so, which ones, and also just based on your research. What might that tell us about the future right who's more valuable than someone else if I've got enough cannon fodder, who am I special, you know, whom I specially looking for. Well, one thing that was really unexpected that we found the numbers which is more towards the beginning of the story of them than what you're asking but I think it's relevant is that you know we weren't counting people's prior domestic activity as being a career foreign fighter we're only counting stints fighting broad, but what we saw is that a lot of people who rose up in the leadership had prior domestic Milton experience. So we worry a lot about blowback about about foreign fighters getting experience getting radicalized and then coming back and becoming terrorists. But it looks like there's a real possibility, the individuals who are already experienced domestic terrorists who are already radicalized and already have the connections are valued by foreign fighter groups, and are brought in. So again, if you're talking about international law about even Security Council resolutions that require every country to stop their citizens traveling. There are people in Western countries or some Arab states who are traveling to these war zones were probably exacerbating the conflict who have the skills already were particularly priced so countries should also be worrying. If we're worrying about, you know, keeping the peace in Syria we need to stop people from going to Syria who already have the tools to inflame the situation. So, clearly, there seems to be some evidence that groups headhunt that groups, you know, use some equivalent of LinkedIn to look for skills and try to find the people who are going to be most useful to them we know that, you know, there are people who show up and with nothing but I guess if you want calling good intentions, and no experience, and they're just okay great well you can you can go engage in a murder operation that would be the most helpful thing to do for us.  The ones who have those skills, you know, are conserved by these groups, the question of how that becomes known elsewhere how do you show up in some other country where you've never been and say yes I was a fighter here, or yes I have these yeah how do you do that without some evidence behind you is a really great question. I mean again I would point to the value of networks because there's no other way somebody could just walk in and be accepted in a leadership role in these groups without various people, testifying to what they had done, vouching for them, perhaps talking about their successes so we need to not just look at the career foreign fighters but as with all foreign fighters we need to look at the support networks. What you're saying is academics aren't the only ones that continuously need to justify their actions on their CV right show me what you've done lately. And it speaks to some of the intake forms that we've actually had the opportunity to see what are you good at whatever you're used for Chelsea you might want to pick up on that. And jumping on that is that in the case studies there are a handful of individuals that actually went to conflicts with what we could going back to your head hunter and job job hunting analogy. They actually showed up with letters of recommendation from their local group saying like I vouch for so and so take him into your conflict, which is great evidence a for this idea of wanting individuals that have some sort of background and be it's just it's just once again going back to that real life experience and real life connection that. Hey, you might need a letter of recommendation to enter the next theater of conflict. Internships are in high demand these days even amongst career foreign fighters. We've got time for maybe one or possibly two more questions. Here's one on further research, which is, is there any data analyzing the factors that separate your career foreign fighters from the one timers who go home and never participate in another conflict. And if the answer is no we can move on if it's a simple kind of yes or no if there's nothing. Jeanine. Yeah, no I think we just have to think about that. I think it's a great question but so what is the, yeah what is the difference between them. Well we don't know yet I think, as far as, as I know, we haven't really studied that in the report but it's it's a very it's, yeah it's again the $1 million question in that sense that we want to know like, who will continue to to join the fight, and who will leave. So again it has to do with can these people return home is there a new conflict that they want to go to but of course there's also personality factors. We also see fighters who might become disillusioned and want to return home and others they just really love the fighting and they just want to keep doing it everywhere. And I think these statements also in the 1980s again like Afghanistan to both the other people just said like jihad is now my life I just want to keep doing it I don't mind where. And if there's a new conflict where they can more easily go to that might also play a role, but yeah but it's a good question but we don't have any straightforward answers right now I think. Ending moments. So, just a short anecdote when I first joined Rand back in 2008 I was very lucky to work on studying counter insurgency. 2008 the budgets were big the projects were long the reports were long, and the findings were complicated. Over time, you know we kind of moved away from that and it moved a lot more toward. Explain this in one page right with some interesting infographics. We've, we've moved a lot more toward the bottom line up front explaining things to policymakers and manageable chunks. So if anyone everyone wants to go around the horn will go Chelsea Jeanine and then David. What's the one kind of key takeaway you want to reemphasize for those that are interested in the subject maybe haven't read the report and are juggling several things at the same time. Or maybe it's an opportunity to entice them to actually sink their teeth in and read the whole report. What do you want to leave us with that we have to know what's essential to learning about career foreign fighters why this whole concept matters. Why it's going to continue to matter in the future. I think once again the bottom line up front is this idea that career foreign fighters versus the one off foreign fighters do pose more of a security threat, whether that's to your home country or broadly because of the skills and knowledge and so forth connections that they provide to this global jihadist movement with also that being said I will mention that in in the data and in the individuals that we looked at especially more of the deep dive. Adela Azam's writings from the early days of the Afghan jihad are very still very prominent with the individuals that we have in our data set. So those concepts and those ideologies the ideology of protecting the global Muslim community that is still really strong and we see that in Syria as well. Definitely had had hammer has a great book on Abdullah Azam so you can do the deep dive by reading that. But I think thinking about that is very important, which of course is not going to necessarily apply to foreign fighters that are not from the Sunni jihadist community so the ones in Ukraine and so forth it's it's different concepts and different reasonings for going, but I think they're very important to keep in mind, and I'll pass it on to my co authors. Thank you. I've gushed a lot on social media about head cameras books and I'll spare you the continued but please. Yeah, okay, so to add to that. I think it's really important to emphasize again that really now is the moment to think about what to do with these fighters who are still in in the area of Syria and Iraq, because now might be the moment to affect the chances that they do become these career foreign fighters. And again of course this needs to be a policy assessment there I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. But I think this this kind of finds really should be taken into account when thinking about the implications your policies might have on either increasing or decreasing the chance that somebody might become a career foreign fighter. And again it's not just about their battlefield expertise it's not just about the fact that they might boost these local insurgencies, but also that they have a long term effect as Chelsea said on these transnational jihadi networks and it's really these people with these previous previous experience that really that really give long term kind of effects on these on these transnational jihadist movements so think beyond the moment of today think beyond the short term risk but also the long term risks, the ideological impact and the transnational jihadi movement in the future. I hope politicians and policymakers are listening to that. I guess I would just wrap up by number one by echoing that policymakers should really is genuine saying take this opportunity to engage in a very thorough cost benefit analysis not just on the sort of the axis of return versus not return, but what not return can mean. And also for for other practitioners involved directly in dealing with foreign fighters foreign terrorist fighters. You know one thing that I think we've learned from this project is that individuals who are executive leaders who the ones who joined several different groups are the ones who rise to become leaders places they've never been before after having been somewhere They're valued because they're bringing in connections but they're also bringing in doctrine and in the biographies that we're examining the case studies that we present. You have people who write manifestos who write training manuals specifically saying here are the best practices from the last conflict. So there are doctrines that seem to be transmitted repeatedly seems to be transmitted across decades, but it must be fairly standard in that regard because it's the same people were transmitting them using their own networks, using their shared experiences. So there, it's really important to learn what these doctrines are that the jihadi groups are using, because that's the best way you're going to be able to counter them is by teach understanding what they teach as best practices for being foreign fighters. I mean really just the time has kind of flown by here I wish I could keep you guys on for for another hour but this was really a spectacular event and so I want to thank all the panelists for taking the time to share their research. And for everybody at USIP and resolve for for making this event happen and then lastly, most importantly to all those who tuned in because we couldn't have done this without you. So I do hope you will go and read the paper if you haven't already and continue to follow these researchers who are the top. Some of the top minds in the field working on this issue which I guarantee will be important for years to come so thank you so much. We really appreciate your time and look forward to seeing you at a future event. Thank you.


I, from Las Vegas, Nevada, it's theCUBE. Covering IBM World of Watson 2016. Brought to you by IBM. Now, here are your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Hey, welcome back, everyone. We're here live at the Mandalay Bay and Congeniton Center in Las Vegas for IBM's World of Watson. This is SiliconANGLES theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier with my co-host, Dave Vellante, our next guest is Shannon Baller, who's the Professor of Philosophy at Santa Clara University. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you.  That's kind of like what companies and technology companies talk about, but a new dimension of social impact is really coming into play here. Social justice, we did a lot last week at Grace Hopper, Women in Technology and Computing Celebration. And that was really more social justice. But again, social impact, social justice, however you call it, a new dimension of thinking is needed. Not so much philosophy or sociology, but it really is kind of that combined with the realities of how the tech is going to impact our lives. And you gave a talk. So you give us a quick overview of what you talked about and... Sure. So I mean, as you said, we're looking at a kind of technology that's going to have a social impact that's like nothing we've ever seen before. People say that all the time about new technologies, but in this case, it really is the case that artificial intelligence technology will transform how we live, how we work, how we think, how we act. And it will enter into virtually every institution and practice in our lives, into education, into politics, into medicine, into transportation, into any sector you can think of. There are applications for this technology. And AI will transform the balance of power in a lot of institutions. It'll have winners and losers. There will be people in different groups who experience this technology differently, who get different things out of it, and we have to be able to think in advance about a kind of future that at this point, we cannot possibly predict. So there are a lot of people in the media making predictions about where AI will take us. And the truth is, we just don't know, and to some extent can't know, and we have to prepare for a lot of different possibilities. Okay, so I'll make a prediction. The prediction is there is no prediction. Yeah. Basically. That's a good prediction, you're safe. You're good. We're a media company, so we have to make a, and something has to be dead. So something has to die. So no, it's disruption. Okay, we can come back to disruption, but you mentioned something around we don't know. Being ready is a readiness opportunity from a society standpoint, because the impacts could be from mental health, health to industrial transformation analog to digital. IOT kind of impacts that as well. So, and everything in between. That's right. So how do we do it? What does readiness mean? Readiness means starting now to think about the possibilities and putting systems in place that can respond quickly to unprecedented phenomena. We have to make our institutions more flexible. We have to make them more resilient. We have to build in capability upfront to respond to surprises. There will be surprises. Like what would be a surprise that you could imagine? I mean, hypothetically speaking, just kind of brainstorming. What would be an example of something profound or impactful that would be, with a spring into action on? Sure. Well, I mean, imagine for example, if you have AI systems that are involved in critical security operations or critical systems in US infrastructure, right? Now imagine that you have a system that is doing something that you didn't expect. And we know that deep learning algorithms can be statistically extremely reliable, but will occasionally do things that seem outside of the bounds of expectation or don't make sense to us.  I'm prepared for what we're seeing. That's right. And then imagine if you have a system that has been developed without foresight about how a system might resist, not consciously, not because it wants to lock us out, right? But machine lockouts that might happen because systems are programmed to prevent interference in their operations, right? So how do you build a system that will keep hackers out but will let you in when you need to go in and regain control? So figuring out how to develop meaningful human control of AI systems is a huge issue.  I was at an event, I would say four or five years ago, an event like this, and the speaker who was in the automobile industry said up and said, we will have autonomous vehicles within 25 years. Yeah. Maybe sooner. Well, I mean, I said, wow, 25 years is kind of a long way up. They're shipping beer yesterday. I was just saying. We're here, right? So that was not that long ago, maybe even three or four years ago, and now we're seeing them today. But there are some things that we do know, and I wonder if we could sort of talk about that. Machines have always replaced humans. But for the first time, it's cognitive tasks that are happening. But we had Chris Penn on earlier, and I said, what can humans do that machines can't? He said nothing. Now, I don't know. I want to ask you the same question. I'll push back on that a little bit. Yeah, so there's a list. Now, maybe the list is getting shorter. Maybe a few years ago, machine couldn't climb stairs. That's starting to change. So one of the things that humans can do that machines can't negotiate, I mean, maybe, I don't know. What are your thoughts on that? So one thing, and this is something that I spoke about earlier today, the systems that we have for artificial intelligence are task-specific. They know how to operate very well at well-defined tasks in well-defined contexts. What we don't have is anything like what's called artificial general intelligence, or AGI. And most computer researchers that I talk to and work with, most AI researchers don't think we're anywhere near being able to develop artificial systems that can understand all of the different contexts in which humans operate and connect them all together. So for the foreseeable future, humans will be able to do sort of cross-disciplinary, cross-context analysis where they can look at what's happening, let's say, in a medical context and understand its implications for public health, for politics, for education, and see how these different contexts relate to each other. Humans are also the only systems that have genuine capacity for understanding and wisdom. AI systems can represent knowledge and they can emulate robust intelligence, but they don't have wisdom. They can't see the whole and understand its meaning. For the foreseeable future, only humans will have the wisdom to determine the difference between good implementations of AI and destructive harmful implementations of AI. It brings up a good point. There was an article that our advisor to our fellowship tech truth that we just started and kicked off last week at Grace Hopper, John Markoff, New York Times wrote an article on September 1st on tech giants coming together to devise a plan for real ethics in artificial intelligence. Right up your wheelhouse, I'm sure you were all over this. But the thing is, sources haven't been announced yet, but the sources are saying that industry is going to kind of create an AI group. So it brings up the question of industry. Should they be doing it? Should it be regulated? So the balance between policy and industry, and the quote here is, the intention is clear to ensure that AI benefits people, not hurting them. But you can look at AI and say, it was an article again, yesterday, another special report in the New York Times about the defense, the drones thing. So all that's kind of like the backdrop, but Stanford has a study out, the 100 year study. Right. Okay, so the concern is, what is the format? How are the brains in the industry, both in academic, industry, and maybe government, thinking about how to organize the first, I guess straw man, if you will, around this? Is it the transparency? Should industry be leading it? Cause some will say that their profit motive might play into it. And the same thing applies to gene sequencing that we're seeing coming out of the crypto stuff. And so, I kind of like, we kind of don't know what we're doing right now. We don't, and we're figuring it out as we go. And the problem is, is that the technology is advancing faster and growing faster than our efforts to catch up and figure out how to manage it. So what we need to do is we need to actually work along all possible lines of response. So should industry be thinking about ethics? Absolutely. And what I'm gratified by is increasingly, I'm seeing that happen, right? Five years ago in the valley, if I wanted to approach someone in industry and talk about ethics and software, I may or may not get a positive response. Today, they're ready to have that conversation. But you can't only have it. Well, they understand that that train is coming down the tracks right at them. I mean, self-driving cars, Facebook.br, AR stuff. So it's clearly happening. It's happening, and there's no getting around it. And the public recognition of the power of this technology will impose requirements on industry to show that they can be trusted to implement this kind of technology, right? So trust is the huge key here. Industry may want profit, but they can't profit if they don't have the public trust, if they don't have consumer trust. So they're going to have to take steps to show that that trust is warranted. Now, that requires, however, a certain degree of transparency. And what we're seeing a lot in industry now is a lot of AI ethics boards that are behind closed doors. For obvious reasons, right? You don't want to be discussing the ethical implications. Because they're kind of riffing on it, right? In real time, right? That's a work in process. You don't want to... That's right, exactly. They haven't even built a sausage factory yet. So they're making, they're slaughtering the meat right now, it's early days. That's right, but at some point, you have to open up those processes. Otherwise, they don't cultivate the kind of public trust that you need in order for this technology to be embraced. And government can help with that, but government can't do it all for a lot of reasons. It's a classic innovation dilemma. Do you get regulation up front set up, or are you foreclosing innovation with that? Or do you get organic play? I suggest we avoid false dilemmas, right? It doesn't have to be either or it doesn't have to be solutions of all one sort. We need smart regulation, but we don't need regulation that's excessively burdensome or premature. So we have to make smart decisions about what needs to be regulated now, what needs to be just studied and observed. And it depends on the context. When you're talking about life and death, context, right? You might need regulation sooner than in a context where you can afford to let things play out. So you need to be monitoring this big time. So step one is get the data, right? Tell the stories that need to be told, get the truth, the tech truth out of this. How do people get involved? I mean, this is like one thing I see this, I mean, we're hearing a lot of surround sound on this topic, glad you came on because we're constantly doing these cube events and talking to smart people at Stanford, MIT and other places. And there's a huge younger generation that really want to get involved. Absolutely. How would you, what's out there? What's the, where do they go? Do they go contact you? Do these are sites? Yeah, absolutely. So what's happening now is that everyone's sort of realizing more or less at the same time how important these issues are. And so you're seeing a lot of groups and a lot of organizations popping up in parallel in different parts of the world and different industries and different academic contexts. And so there's lots of places to go. There is no yet sort of central clearing house or organization that is responsible for coordinating all these efforts. Maybe that's not a bad thing, right, for now. Maybe we do need to sort of let a thousand flowers bloom and sort of see what happens. But there are organizations, for example, I'm on the executive board of a group called the Foundation for Responsible Robotics. It's a new nonprofit just launched this year, rooted in the Netherlands, but it's an international organization that seeks to bring ethicists together with roboticists and people in public policy to try to figure out how to develop new robotics technologies, many of which implement artificial intelligence in a way that's responsible. And so there are groups that are looking to make these kinds of new connections that haven't existed before. You know, it's interesting, we have the IBMers on and I want to look at your take on the show in a second as we kind of wrap up. They always talk about we're bringing Agile in, we're going to do a design-centric total customer experience design in the front end of the product, nothing gets released until it, that's cool, I get that, but now why not have an ethics impact? How would we integrate that concept because that would be an interesting innovation to say, okay, user experience is how they're going to be engaging with software, everyone's going to have software, now the impact on the social side becomes hugely interesting. Absolutely, and so I think what we have to do is get people outside of academia and even within academia, people outside of moral philosophy comfortable talking about ethics and understanding how to do it in a way that's constructive, that's practical, that doesn't get to a level of abstraction that's not really helpful.  That's right, yes. And it was kind of a show pony out front. Yes, that's right. To kind of like, no, we're ethical, there's no real impact there, because there's software. That's right. It's on a desktop, it's like shrink rack. That's right. Now it's changed completely. Does the impact of, we were talking about earlier, machines replacing humans, does the impact of employment bleed into your scope? Of course, that's a huge ethical issue. In public policy, might look at it as a zero sum game, as you were saying before. Yeah. Did you buy the sort of Bryn Jolson McAfee scenario that the middle is getting hollowed out, that the superstars are doing great, and the data supports that, and the low end is doing just fine, you know? Well, we talked a little bit earlier about what's left for humans to do as AI moves into cognitive tasks. And one of the things that's happening is the work that's going to be left for humans to do is going to require, for many people, a kind of technical education that right now, we don't have the capacity built up to provide to 100 million people, right? So if you think about all of the people in sort of that middle sector, and even people, I mean, think about all the truck drivers who are going to be unemployed. Think of all the people in the service industry who may be unemployed by the implementation of these technologies. The history says, okay, well, new jobs will be created, but those new jobs are going to require a level of skill that we're not prepared yet to meet with our workforce. So we have to start thinking about that challenge right now. We're creativity and the ability to combine knowledge of different disciplines is going to be the scarce commodity. Creativity, interdisciplinarity, social intelligence, and moral wisdom, these are the things that will be the most important skills in the market going forward. Well, education, I mean, what implications does that have for the way that we teach children, well, this came up at Grace Hopper too, also I'll add coding in there because there's an element of understanding coding, not being a software developer, but folks coming out of high school, no coding experience, but yet the younger generations, Rebecca's daughter, she's seven, she's hacking around with Python. Like, that's unbelievable. It's astonishing. You get them young coding. But in terms of education, I'm glad you brought that up because in a sense, if you look at what I just said, and then you look at what our education system is doing right now, we're doing it wrong. Yeah, it's a real mismatch. Yeah, so we gotta go back, I mean, so this kind of narrow education where we're teaching to the test and where we're not encouraging students to make connections between different areas of knowledge, we are setting up this generation to fail, and we need to go deep now into our institutions, and education I think is one of the most critical ones we have to think about. How do we make this education prepare this generation for the immense challenges that they are gonna face? And the immense opportunities. And digital is an opportunity too. It's not like we're just putting courseware online. It's really thinking differently around the digital assets that might be available for someone to learn. That's right. And integrating technical and social intelligence. And this is where public policy can play a role, although there's a lot of friction, you know? Yes. And right now, we don't have political institutions that are working particularly well in case anyone has noticed, right? And so trying to make these big changes to the way we prepare our young people to enter into the workforce, we right now aren't prepared to put those kinds of changes in place as quickly as we need to, and with the level of public cooperation and political cooperation that we need. And what I can only hope is that we will have a new phase of political and civic virtue that will recognize that the challenges ahead and the opportunities are too great to allow our differences to hold back the changes that need to happen.  Yes. And it's an opportunity that really can't be missed. Absolutely. Yeah, but without putting too much wet blanket on this engine of innovation. But tax policy and investment policy, education, I mean, there's a lot of things that. So this is one of the key points that I wanted to emphasize in the talk that I gave is that ethics and innovation are not antagonists. We have been using technologies, our inventions, to make better lives for ourselves since the dawn of humanity. There is no good life without technology and there is no good life without invention. Okay, so ethics is about the good life and the good life requires innovation. But not every innovation makes life better. The whole point is innovation that actually drives human flourishing rather than impoverishes us. And that's what the New York Times is kind of getting at in the middle of their story, is that, yeah, we get AI, it should help people. Yeah. But it might not. Yeah, so the point is to think about what's wise innovation? Wise that's just not clever but actually helps humans live better. The whole idea of technology is it supposed to create a better world? Well, let's ask the questions we need to ask to make sure that that's actually what's happening. This is a great tech truth topic, Dave. So we should have to drill down on this. Shannon, thanks so much for coming on. I want to get your final thoughts on, obviously we're at World of Watson IBM event. Watson is the poster child for, you know, this kind of encapsulating AI. And obviously the Jeopardy, everyone sees that, people who actually know what Jeopardy is, the younger generation might not watch TV, they cut the cord years ago. But it's a face, it's an individual benefit. Your thoughts on what IBM's doing here and some of the things you're seeing here. Yeah, absolutely. Let me just say that the thing that I appreciate most about IBM Watson and the way that they frame the power of Watson is that the context is presented as an amplification of human intelligence and wisdom, not a replacement for it, right? So IBM Watson talks a lot about what Watson is but also what Watson isn't. And that can sometimes get missed in the talk about AI and the hype about AI. So Watson is a technology that can help us think better, do better, think more, do more. Something that can help humans solve problems rather than take our problems away from us.  It's not a mutually exclusive scenario. And humans are problem solvers. This is how we develop our capacities. This is how we experience the world in a way that's rewarding and worth living. And we need to have technologies that help us solve problems. So you're an optimist into the day? I'm actually, I am, I have to be, right? Otherwise what's the point of doing it, right? Well, you have a good Joseph cynicism because you have to understand it. I'm a careful optimist. Yeah. Well, the human point about us being problem solvers is Mary Glacklin on, she's a Senior VP of Science, Forecasts and Weather Company. She goes way back into the field of weather and oceanology. And she was talking about the ozone's actually getting smaller. So with data, we're kind of solving that. It's like the world is going to crash. Now climate change is another one. With the right problem solving, that could be the betterment of the situation. Absolutely, and there's a tremendous potential for this technology to help us solve problems that were just too big and too complex for human cognitive bandwidth to handle. And we need to seize those opportunities to allow the flexibility of this technology to develop new kinds of solutions that humans simply couldn't have thought of. But it's up to us ultimately to validate those solutions, to decide that they're wise to implement, to look at the broader value context. And that's the job that we won't lose to AI. Shannon Valer, thanks so much for sharing your insight. Great perspective, great conversation we could have gotten in an hour on this. It's phenomenal, and I'm glad we got it and captured it live and also it'll be on YouTube. Professor of Philosophy at Santa Clara University. Shannon Valer.net is her website if you want to reach out and touch her. It's two N's and two L's. Shannon Valer.net, thanks for sharing. Thanks very much for having me. And we're going to hit you up in Silicon Valley because we want to definitely do a drill down on the tech truth here, so appreciate it. Outstanding. Okay, this is theCUBE, we're live at Mandalay Bay, getting ready for the big Gini Romney keynote at one. We're going to be bringing you live coverage up until then. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. Thanks for watching, right back.