Last spring, Elizabeth Newman went on a trip for work.

I had been overseas at a conference with counterparts.

And something happened that changed the way she thought about her work.

It was also there with my State Department colleague.

Newman worked on counterterrorism and threat prevention

at the Department of Homeland Security.

And this conference was in Spain.

And the purpose was to talk about our progress in defeating ISIS

and how we were going to handle returning foreign terrorist fighters.

So as you can hear, the conference was supposed to be about defeating ISIS.

Which is why, when Elizabeth Newman heard what her counterparts from other countries were talking about,

she was surprised.

As we're doing introductions, everybody goes around.

It's like 80 countries are represented here.

You're going around the table.

Tell us what your top three issues are.

Our challenges, threats are within your country.

And I was stunned.

80% said some form of racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism.

They often talk about it in terms of right-wing extremism in other countries.

And very few people were talking about ISIS.

This is in March of 2019.

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