This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, June 20th, 2016. I'm Caleb Brown.

The Islamic State seeks more than terrorism. They seek to hold and govern territory.

And doing so requires money to pay fighters and carry out operations.

At a Cato Institute event in May, the Rand Corporation's Howard J Shats discussed what

he believes are the relevant metrics for understanding and ultimately

defeating the so-called Islamic State.

The group that calls itself the Islamic State really became known to most people in June 2014 when it conquered

Mosul. But it's been in Iraq and in the Middle East quite a long time and what I

want to do in my 25 minutes is give you first some background about the group so that

we all understand who these people are and what they've been doing.

I'll talk about how they've been operating for more than a decade with the same basic structure,

same philosophy, same goals, and really same bureaucracy and same management.

They've been rational about their administration, they've been

careful about their spending, they've been diversified in the revenue

sources. And we see they have this tremendous continuity and this tremendous ability to survive under great pressure

to remain and to regenerate as they have.

I'll do that too.

And then I'll talk to you about its current operations and its current

sustainability.

And in case anybody has to run out, I'll say that my view

is that without outside military pressure, so we're seeing some of that now, but without

outside military pressure, I think what they call the caliphate is sustainable for any period

...