The Violent Extremist Threat to Critical Infrastructure in the United States
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2022
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last month, the George Washington University Program on Extremism published a report called, “Mayhem, Murder, and Misdirection: Violent Extremist Attack Plots Against Critical Infrastructure in the United States.” To talk through that report and a recent Lawfare article on the topic, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Ilana Krill, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism, and Seamus Hughes, the program's deputy director. They discussed the white supremacists and Salafi-jihadists who make up these movements, the encrypted channels through which propaganda and plans are spread, and what's to be done to protect critical infrastructure in the United States.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
| 0:04.0 | To access an ad-free version of the LawFair podcast, |
| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:14.0 | That's patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | Some of them have a very hard time putting together a plot. |
| 0:37.0 | They have the general idea of man, we should derail a train, |
| 0:41.0 | or we should take down a power grid. |
| 0:43.0 | But the actions don't usually reach up to this level of this mastermind Hollywood idea of a terrorist. |
| 0:49.0 | We've seen a number of cases where the FBI has interjected themselves in the process, |
| 0:55.0 | and it may have been the White supremacist's idea to attack an energy grid, |
| 0:59.0 | but there was some help along the way to get them to the point where they can't come to them. |
| 1:05.0 | We always think, are these masterminds planning this out? |
| 1:09.0 | And the short answer is usually not. |
| 1:11.0 | The downside is if it's such a large sector, critical image structure, |
| 1:15.0 | then the opportunities there are vast. |
| 1:19.0 | And because we rely on a system of systems, |
| 1:23.0 | there's not a huge level of backup on these things, right? |
| 1:27.0 | You take down one spot and it has any ramification. |
| 1:29.0 | And we saw that in COVID, right? |
| 1:31.0 | So we shut down certain areas, other things get affected. |
... |
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