Opening Remarks on Addressing Emerging Technology in the Realm of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism

Alastair, thank you for hosting us again here at Lancaster House. We are excited to be back here in London, and especially at this incredible venue.

Your government has been a great partner in our shared challenge of countering the threat of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism, or as we call it for short, “REMVE”. 

We still have a lot of work in front of us, but it is encouraging to know that we could not have better partners in this effort than your government, the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law (IIJ), and the committed professionals joining us here today.

I would also like to congratulate Steve and the IIJ for celebrating the IIJ’s 10^th anniversary just two weeks ago.  

The IIJ continues to serve as an invaluable international platform to strengthen civilian-led counterterrorism approaches, as evidenced by the great work they’re doing not just with respect to countering REMVE, but on a host of other really challenging issues.  

In partnership with the United States and UK, almost three years ago the IIJ developed the first-ever guide for criminal justice practitioners to counter REMVE, and they continue to build on and operationalize this work.

The guide highlights good practices on utilizing counterterrorism tools and legislation within the criminal justice sector to effectively tackle REMVE, including the risks and challenges posed by emerging technology. 

It also highlights the essential role that civil society and other relevant stakeholders play, and the importance of partnering with them as we work to build resilience in our communities and counter the REMVE threat in a comprehensive manner.

I encourage you all to read the guide if you haven’t already. 

We have seen how enthusiastically and creatively bad actors have adopted emerging technologies to achieve their violent and divisive goals, to attempt to sow chaos in our societies, and to avoid detection. 

Terrorists and violent extremists will only continue to manipulate, misuse, and exploit technological innovations to do harm.

Bad actors continue to use social media and online gaming platforms to recruit vulnerable individuals, particularly young people, and to ultimately mobilize them to violence. 

Often via encrypted methods, they fundraise,—including by using cryptocurrency— they share attack plans and training manuals, and they also share tactics on ways to bring about the most death and destruction possible.

According to the U.S. National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2040 report, “technological advances, including AI, biotechnology, and the ‘Internet of Things,’ may offer opportunities for terrorists to conduct high-profile attacks by developing new, more remote attack methods and to collaborate across borders.”

Terrorists and REMVE actors utilize AI and generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, to produce propaganda, create malware, and develop hacking skills. 

REMVE actors have become more adept at exploiting social media platforms, online gaming platforms, smaller websites with targeted audiences, and encrypted chat applications to recruit new followers, rally ideological support, and disseminate materials that mobilize followers to violence, including by amplifying attacks by sharing manifestos and livestreaming their horrific violence.

Unfortunately, we see this over and over when extremist manifestos are cited as sources of inspiration and reproduced by the latest REMVE perpetrator. 

For instance, just two weeks prior to the 2022 IIJ roundtable held here at Lancaster House, a REMVE actor carried out a shooting at a LGBTQI+ bar in Bratislava, Slovakia, which left two people dead and one injured.  

We understand that the perpetrator was radicalized to violence through communications he had with other REMVE actors on anonymized message boards including 4chan and 8kun, and on social media platforms such as Telegram.

He posted an online manifesto espousing antisemitic and homophobic views, which spread on multiple social media platforms, including mainstream platforms such as X, then known as Twitter.

His manifesto referenced how he was inspired by previous REMVE attacks, including the 2022 attack in Buffalo, NY and the 2019 attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand; Poway, California; and El Paso, Texas.

The white identity terrorist who killed 10 people and wounded three others on a Saturday afternoon in 2022 at a grocery store in Buffalo, too was radicalized to violence by content across several social media platforms, including on YouTube and Reddit.  

He livestreamed the attack across multiple social media platforms, including Twitch, Facebook, and YouTube, and released his manifesto on other platforms, including Discord, a platform which caters to online gaming.

And just two weeks ago, a 32-year-old man from Levittown, Pennsylvania, was charged with murder, accused of beheading his father, a federal employee.

The alleged perpetrator uploaded a video to YouTube, titled “Call to Arms for American Patriots,” in which he held up what he claimed was his father’s decapitated head, while railing against immigration, the “LGBT” community, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the “left wing woke” movement, calling for a revolt against the U.S. government. 

The YouTube video mirrored sentiments expressed in a 2020 manifesto he posted to the free online publishing site, “Booksie,” calling for a “bloody revolution.”  It was viewed more than 5,000 times before YouTube removed the video hours later.  It had already been shared on Telegram and linked to other online platforms such as X. 

The alleged perpetrator also reportedly tried unsuccessfully to start an anti-government militia on other online platforms, such as Reddit, as recently as last year. 

Throughout this roundtable, we will hear how governments and civil society organizations are working to address the complex challenges that emerging technologies present to our collective effort to address the threat from REMVE actors.

We will also discuss recommendations for governments and civil society to proactively address REMVE actors’ use of emerging technology.

As the IIJ guide outlines, this effort includes “investing significant investigative resources in monitoring and analyzing REMVE actors’ online activity, and building close relations with internet platforms and providers to obtain information on and counter those actors’ exploitation of the online environment.”

Addressing these issues—the exploitation of emerging technology, white identity terrorism, antisemitism, and REMVE more broadly—is a priority for the Biden-Harris Administration. 

The Administration’s first National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism in 2021, makes this clear. 

The Strategy discusses how the U.S. government is working with the private sector, including the tech sector to “facilitate more robust efforts outside the government to counter terrorists’ abuse of internet-based communications platforms to recruit others to engage in violence.”

The Strategy also highlights the United States’ commitment to the multistakeholder Christchurch Call to Action to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online, which addresses all forms of terrorism and violent extremism through government, private sector, and civil society collaboration—as does the multi-stakeholder Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, and Tech Against Terrorism.  

The strategy also emphasizes the need to address online terrorist recruitment and mobilization to violence by REMVE actors, both inside the United States and abroad; REMVE networks are transnational.

Just a few months ago, President Biden signed a new executive order on Artificial Intelligence, which establishes new standards for AI safety and security and aims to protect Americans from the potential risks of AI systems.

The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to working closely with foreign partners, private companies, multilateral organizations, and critically, with civil society to keep our communities safe from the harmful exploitation of AI and other emerging tech.

We will hear later during this roundtable from other U.S. government colleagues on this broader threat in the United States and how our law enforcement agencies are addressing it.

I would also like to highlight another important forum where governments and civil society are coming together to better understand and coordinate our efforts to counter transnational REMVE, including with respect to REMVE actors’ exploitation of emerging technology:  the Counterterrorism Law Enforcement Forum, which the Departments of State and Justice launched two years ago.

The forum, which has now convened twice, brings together law enforcement, criminal justice practitioners, financial regulators, security professionals, and policymakers from over 40 countries and multilateral organizations, including many of the governments and institutions here today.

At last year’s forum, co-hosted by the Government of Norway, we discussed how REMVE actors are getting younger, spending more time online, including by playing active roles in digital sub-cultures in online spaces where extremism and radicalization unfortunately seem to flourish.

Governments and civil society organizations highlighted the need to pay more attention to online manifestos and their role in the spread of REMVE ideology, and to increase our focus on how emerging technologies, such as drones, 3D printed weapons, and AI, are being used to broaden the reach of hateful ideology, and to increase the lethality of extremist violence.

We are looking forward to holding the third meeting of the forum this summer in The Hague, Netherlands, co-hosted by Europol.

Given how sophisticated REMVE actors are in their use of emerging technology, it is more important than ever for us to increase our sharing of information, to collaborate across the public and private sectors, and to ensure civil society is engaged with this effort at every possible step.

If we are to effectively counter the various manifestations of REMVE, including white identity terrorism, we must utilize all available existing law enforcement tools, and be very thoughtful about the opportunities for misuse of emerging technology by bad actors.

Simply put, we have to be more creative than the bad actors and build policies and legal frameworks that are nimble enough to address the threat created by those who exploit the innovation that is designed to improve our lives.  

This includes encouraging technology companies, such as those with us here today, to increase their collaboration with each other and share more information with each other, including on trends they identify as REMVE actors navigate and misuse multiple platforms for different nefarious purposes.

While we appreciate how complex a challenge this is, we must be mindful and ensure that our efforts don’t infringe upon the freedom all individuals have to express themselves. But we can work to build-in these safeguards from the moment of design, and continually reevaluate and adjust them as we detect the ways these new technologies are being misused.  

Additionally, increasing digital literacy while we innovate will also help us, for example, as we work to better identify synthetic content such as “deep fakes” online, which is a challenge we are already facing. 

The United States is fully committed to doing this hard work in front of us, in partnership with private industry, civil society, and our foreign partners.

Over the next two days, we will hear from law enforcement officials, policymakers, and think tank experts about how REMVE actors are using emerging technologies to recruit, raise funds, and radicalize others to violence.

We will also hear how governments are addressing the use of technology, including 3D printing of weapons, and how criminal justice practitioners are addressing the use of emerging technology in prosecuting REMVE cases.

I very much look forward to our discussions and to working with everyone here, and with other partners who are not here, to address the transnational REMVE threat of today and how it might manifest in the days ahead by exploiting new technology.  

That said. I am optimistic we can confront this threat.  Thank you.