This week, in our first Speaker Series event of 2021, we kicked the year off by hosting Russ Travers, former acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, who spoke on the topic: “A Practitioner’s Perspective on the State of the Terrorist Threat.”
With Mr. Travers’ extensive experience, he gave fantastic feedback on the present state of terrorism, both foreign and domestic, as well as his views on what needs to occur in the future in order to further the United States Government’s ability not only to combat terrorism directly, but to prevent terrorism and radicalization.
The future approaches to counterterrorism and counter-extremism will be multifaceted and adaptive – i.e utilizing new technology in counterterrorism, approaching new ways of interlacing federal, state, and local assets, and being able to view security risks in multiple different lenses in order to assess both capability and reach.
More than anything, the US counterterrorism toolkit must be balanced. Mr. Travers emphasized the need to maintain balance both our kinetic counterterrorism capabilities, and our prevention tools for radicalization and countering violent extremism. This being said, while we must maintain our capabilities in counterterrorism, we must also pivot our focus to improving our capabilities in order to counter threats from state actors.
This GTTAC Speaker Series event was by far one of the best that we have had so far. This event in particular was our first exclusive event – meaning that there will be no recording uploaded at a later date. If you wish to keep updated on future events, please register for our listserv – here.
Thank you to everyone that participated in this amazing event, and a special thanks to Mr. Travers for taking the time to give this wonderful presentation.
Adam Blackwell 