Jane DOE: The following podcast was released in 2021 on a separate platform. IC leadership, thought leadership, titles, current events, and technology may have changed and evolved since its original release.

John Cohen: The primary terrorism-related threat facing the US, today, comes from individuals, or small groups of individuals, who self-connect with typically a blend of extremist ideologies and a blend of extremist ideologies and personal grievances. They come to these beliefs primarily through the consumption of online content. And then they use these beliefs to as the source of motivation to go out and conduct a mass casualty attack …

Jane DOE: The opinions and views expressed in the following podcast do not represent the views of NIU or any other U.S. Government entity. They are solely the opinions and views of Jane DOE and her guests. A mention of organizations, publications, or products not owned or operated by the U.S. Government is not a statement of support and does not constitute U.S. Government endorsement.

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Welcome back to the Intelligence Jumpstart. I am your host Jane DOE. For today's episode, we're going to explore domestic violent extremism, the threat landscape, and its evolution over time. We are honored to host our guest today who is an extremely busy leader and expert, who has more than three decades of experience in law enforcement, counterintelligence, and Homeland Security.

Mr. John Cohen currently serves as the coordinator for counterterrorism and the senior official performing the duties of the undersecretary for intelligence and analysis for the United States Department of Homeland Security.

To lead this discussion my cohost is Manolis Priniotakis, who is the Vice President of Research and Infrastructure at the National Intelligence University. Prior to joining NIU Manolis, served as the Chief of Staff at the Department of Energy's Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, and the Chief of Staff of the President's Daily Brief Staff, under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Manolis Priniotakis: John Cohen, thank you for being with us, we greatly appreciate it. Welcome to Intelligence Jumpstart.

John Cohen: My pleasure. It's nice to be with you.

Manolis Priniotakis: Before we dive into the topic of the debate for the day - domestic terrorism - I did want to actually give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about your role. I think you have one of the more complicated positions in intelligence leadership, but perhaps also one that's not that well understood. So, I was wondering if you can spend a little time talking about your role within the Department of Homeland Security, in general, but also a bit about how INA is evolved and its role within the department as well.

John Cohen: Sure, great. So, I wear two hats at the department. As the counterterrorism coordinator for the department, I am responsible for organizing and overseeing the department's operational responses to emerging terrorism-related threats and terrorism-related incidents. So, under those responsibilities, I work with all the departments - components of the FBI, the intelligence community, state, and local law enforcement, private sector organizations, foreign governments … to design, plan, and execute counterterrorism-related operations that involve the operational equities of the department.

As the Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Undersecretary of Intelligence and Analysis, I'm essentially the acting undersecretary. I lead the Department's Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A), which is a component of the intelligence community. As the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, we engage in collection activities and analytic activities. We’re responsible for gathering information from state and local organizations, from our operational components, and blending it together with IC reporting. And we then disseminate the results of that analysis to the rest of the intelligence community, to federal law enforcement organizations, to state and local organizations, as well as private sector organizations. So, in a sense, we're a conduit for information gathering and dissemination that blends or integrates federal efforts, state and local efforts, as well as private sector efforts.

In that position, as the acting undersecretary, I also am responsible for what is known as the DHS intelligence enterprise. Each of our operational components have intelligence organizations, and I'm responsible for making sure that all of those organizations work in a cohesive and coordinated manner. And then finally, I serve as the department's chief counterintelligence officer. So, I'm responsible for not only mitigating counterintelligence-related threats targeting the department but also organizing the department's broader efforts to protect the nation from the activities of foreign intelligence services, whether it's collection or covert actions.

Manolis Priniotakis: So, it is quite a number of hats, at any given time that you're, you're juggling.

John Cohen: I get about 12 minutes asleep every day, so….

Manolis Priniotakis: Well, I joined the intelligence community around about the same time that DHS was standing up and I&A was, was being created. And so, we're looking 17,18 years … and at the same time that you know, FBI was going through a fairly dramatic transformation to be more of an intelligence … have more of intelligence function as well. So, but it still feels new 17, 18 years later to have this domestic function, but the same time that I used to topic we're talking about domestic terrorism has been with us for almost, you know … maybe even to the founding of the republic, with some of the things that happen early days could probably fall under the category of domestic terrorism. Although in the past year, we've got our first national strategy for countering domestic terrorism. What was the significance of moving that forward and developing that approach?

John Cohen: I mean, I think it was an important step. As a result of the attacks of September 11, the intelligence community, the federal government, and I would actually argue, our entire national system … which includes federal, state, local, tribal, territorial governments … we had to rethink the way we assess those threats that potentially can impact the nation. I mean, if you think about it, after September 11, we refocused that massive aircraft carrier of the intelligence community, to focus more on foreign terrorist organizations. We created the Department of Homeland Security to take the efforts of the intelligence community and apply that intelligence to domestic efforts, to improve our ability to detect, prevent, respond to, and recover from acts of terrorism by Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).

We were focused primarily on a threat that originated abroad, that involved Foreign Terrorist Organizations … recruiting, training, preparing, deploying, equipping, and overseeing the actions of operatives who sought to enter the United States to conduct attacks. And we developed a robust and extensive counterterrorism capability that focused on identifying these organizations, identifying the leadership and operational elements of these organizations, and neutralize them … whether through covert actions, military operations, or international law enforcement. I would actually argue the threat we face today is significant, not only significantly different than the threat that I just described, and the threat that the department was initially designed to address. And I would actually also argue … to be a little bit provocative … that the robust counterterrorism capability that we, that was responsible for protecting this nation for years, may not be the best-suited approach to dealing with the threat that we currently are experiencing here in the homeland.

Manolis Priniotakis: Well, can you expand on that? How so?

John Cohen: Well, we, you know, look at it from an intelligence perspective Our primary objective in dealing with the threat, post-September 11, was to leverage our collection capabilities, our analytic capabilities, to mitigate the risk posed by Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The primary terrorism-related threat facing the US, today, comes from individuals, or small groups of individuals, who self-connect with typically a blend of extremist ideologies and a blend of extremist ideologies and personal grievances. They come to these beliefs primarily through the consumption of online content. And then they use these beliefs to as the source of motivation to go out and conduct a mass casualty attack … almost exclusively, without any further communication with other members of a foreign terrorist group or a domestic terrorist group. Very often, with very little, pre-preparation timing. Very often without engaging in any activities in the physical world that we have looked to in the past as pre-incident indicators.

So, it's a very individualized threat. It's a threat that manifests itself both in the physical and digital environments. And it's a threat that is fueled in large part by online content. And what's really interesting about it, from my perspective, is this online content is placed into the digital ecosystem by a broad range of threat actors. So, it includes foreign intelligence services, international terrorist groups, and domestic extremist thought leaders. They literally are using a similar playbook to post content online for the purposes of influencing violent behavior, potentially, within the domestic environment.

So as robust as our intelligence collection capabilities are, and as robust as our operational activities are abroad … we’re dealing with a threat, in the domestic environment, that falls outside of the areas of focus and the capabilities of those intelligence collections and operational resources.

Manolis Priniotakis: That’s interesting. I can … I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. And I remember in the 80’s … ’90s, literally seeing Aryan nation, and other groups, recruiting on the streets of Portland, Oregon … handing out flyers on street corners. And I guess, what you're describing is a domestic threat landscape that has evolved dramatically over the last 20 to 30 years. In large part driven by … what you're describing is concerns about the online platforms and the ability to operate in digital space.

John Cohen: Yeah, no, that's a really interesting point. I mean … so yes. Do domestic extremist groups still exist? Absolutely. And do they still seek to recruit people to join their ranks? Yeah, absolutely. And do they still run around in the woods training for that day that they're going to, you know, in a self-proclaimed manner take on the federal government? Yep, that's absolutely correct.

But if you look at lethal attacks in the US, particularly over the last several years, it hasn't come from members of these groups. These lethal attacks have been conducted, as I pointed out, by individuals who self-connect with these ideologies. And typically, it's a blend of ideologies, which further complicates our analytic and investigative efforts. And they, they come to these beliefs through the consumption of online content, which again, is purposely placed there by foreign and domestic threat actors. And then they respond to that content through violence.

So, what makes this complicated for an analyst or an investigator? One, very often the individuals who come to our attention, their beliefs do not typically fall within a clear-cut definitional category that we so often crave in our profession, to help us categorize a potential threat. In fact, those individuals who have whose attacks have either been disrupted, or who have been successful, typically blend these ideologies together … maybe a little white supremacy, blended with anarchist beliefs, blended with anti-government beliefs, and a little Incel, involuntary celibate, thrown in there.

And that makes it very difficult for an analyst who's sitting there looking at the potential … trying to assess the risk of an individual, and using sort of predetermined definitions of, of ideology as part of that process. The other thing that makes this complicated is what we have found, as we have done the analysis on these, these individuals who conduct these attacks, is they all tend to have very consistent behavioral health conditions. Meaning these are typically people who are socially disconnected. They're seeking a sense of life meaning. They're seeking some sense of social connection. They find that social connection through the consumption of online content … whether it's placed there by an al Qaeda, or ISIS affiliate media operation, or the Russian GRU, Russia's GRU. They self-connect, they'll blend these together.

And then there's an element of personal grievance. And this is really important from an investigative perspective, because when someone comes to the attention of a Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), for example. And then the FBI does an initial look, if there's not a clear-cut connection with a terrorist ideology or terrorist organization, it is very difficult for that JTTF to justify using its resources to investigate an individual who may not meet the threshold for JTTF investigation.

So, this is really requiring us to think differently about intelligence. It's causing us to think differently about how we investigate individuals who may not neatly fit into a predetermined definitional category but may be based on their behavior be assessed as posing a higher risk of violence. And, you know, so part of part of the challenge we face today is not only making sure that we have the right analysis to support these operational decisions, in the field, but also changing the culture a little bit.

And one last thing I'd say, is that when it comes to intelligence from an intelligence perspective, you know, we in our in the community have typically, you know, placed greater credibility on intelligence and information acquired through covert collection techniques. Right. You know, the more sensitive the platform, the more credible the information is. What we have learned in the current threat environment is that important intelligence that may provide insight into an evolving threat may be available publicly. It may be available by looking at online content posted on social media platforms like Tick Tock, Telegram, Gab, Twitter, Facebook … and again, that requires a change in thinking. Because as we learn from January 6th, there was a lot of information that was available by analyzing publicly available information. It was, what we're finding is that from an analytic perspective, some of our collectors and analysts didn't place a lot of credibility on it, on that information, because it was available publicly.

Manolis Priniotakis (14:40): Are you taking new approaches for analysts to better understand the online narrative, and really to be able to now analyze some of the new indicators that may provide some sort of indication of … of an impending threat. Is there a new analytic tradecraft? Is there a new training approach?

John Cohen: Yeah, absolutely. And it's such a good question. So, what is this requiring us to do at the department … we're working closely with the FBI and other members of the IC, as we think this through … and I don't want to suggest that we've got it all figured out yet. One, we are … we are making sure that our collectors … our folks who look at online content, for example … they have a good understanding of the threat. And they have a good understanding of how different threat actors, who in the past perhaps we saw as separate lines of effort, may be commingled.

So, for example, if we know that, as part of Russia's influence … or active measures program or information warfare efforts, which is a critical part of their hybrid warfare techniques in their military doctrine. If we know that part of those efforts includes understanding social issues in this country that represent fracture points and exploiting those by either amplifying or … or introducing online content intended to exploit those fractures … and we know that, for example, some of the narratives they may promote have to do with undermining credibility in the government … calling into question the US response to COVID … may seek to exploit issues of racial tension or immigration.

Then when we see that content being posted on multiple platforms, in particular platforms associated with those intelligence operations by those hostile foreign powers … that brings together two different areas of activity. Right. Brings together those who usually focus on counterintelligence and the actions of the covert actions of a foreign intelligence service, as well as our analysts who are working in the domestic terrorism space potentially. So, it requires cross-fertilization, in a sense, between our analysts and collectors who are working in different threat actor areas, to make sure that we are sharing information and understanding about the tactics and techniques, and narratives being promoted by these different foreign and domestic threat actors.

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Manolis Priniotakis: I’m Manolis Priniotakis, NIU’s Vice President for Research & Infrastructure and this is this episode’s Manolis Minute.

In the next episode, you’ll hear me talking to Anna Puglisi of Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. We discuss China’s insatiable hunger for technology developments and the establishment of a culture of innovation … if indeed that is happening.

In US history, innovation is central to the American ethos of industriousness and achievement.
As a former boss of mine used to frequently point out … there’s a reason the Framers put IP protections in the Constitution. In fact, they specifically gave Congress the power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.

In this era of cyber espionage, global digital and technology diffusion, intellectual property rights are more challenged than ever.

To assist companies protect themselves, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center has published several documents with warnings, tips, and advice on how to avoid being a victim,
most notably Safeguarding our Future, a series of bulletins for the public on how to mitigate intelligence threats.

Thanks again for listening to Intelligence Jumpstart. For more information on NIU, please visit our website, www.ni-u.edu.

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John Cohen: The other thing that we're doing is we're training our analysts how to distinguish between constitutionally protected activity … because it's not our job to police thought, and people in this country, particularly people who are operating domestically, have the right to post, you know, and think and say, a lot of stuff, even things that may anger others, and others may find repugnant. But what they don't have the right to do is engage in violence. So, what we train our collectors on our analysts to do is to try to distinguish between First Amendment protected activities, and threat-related activities, our effort, our focus is to prevent violence.

So, we have to understand how narratives, for example, whether they be introduced by a foreign or domestic threat actor … can influence the threat environment … can influence act of violence, or violent actions by individuals … and then making sure our collectors and our analysts understand that and are able to distinguish. And we do that in close partnership, working in close partnership with our privacy office, our civil rights and civil liberties office, and our Office of General Counsel. Because we are committed, at the department, to achieving two critical objectives. One, protect the nation from acts of violence, and secondly, protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.

Manolis Priniotakis: You beat me to my next line of questions, which was about that sort of fundamental tension you … you between … well, maybe it's not if … maybe I shouldn't say that's a fundamental tension … this sort of challenge of, of respecting and acknowledging civil liberties and doing the kind of work that's necessary to … to counter … to counter-violence. It comes clear in the national strategy for countering domestic terrorism testimony that you've given, and your colleagues at the FBI and DOJ have given that respect for civil liberties comes through and as a repeated part of every discussion on this topic. But it does still seem like a fundamentally … I don't want to say a difficult thing to do … but it's an important differentiator, in some ways, between what maybe happens on the foreign intelligence side, where we're really focused on trying to understand the role of foreign actors, both public and otherwise, and what happens here. So, can you just expand a bit on that … about just how much of a challenge is it? And what kind of training, I guess beyond, what you've described earlier do people get to be able to navigate that line?

John Cohen: It's a huge challenge. And it's not, you know, and it’s never clear cut, right? I mean … I can actually give you a very sort of granular example. In the weeks preceding September 18, of this past year of 2021, we began to observe on a number of public platforms that are associated … that have in the past … violent extremist narratives and content. We began to see calls for a demonstration in Washington DC, … to demonstrate support for those arrested on January 6th. And in the initial information that came to our attention, there were explicit calls for people to behave peacefully and to ensure that it was a peaceful demonstration and expression of their constitutionally protected rights.

And while there was a significant level of effort by local agencies to prepare to address the public safety implications of a potentially large-scale demonstration … we did not collect on those demonstrations and on that content. And we didn't disseminate any products associated with those demonstrations until we began to observe threads woven into this … these online conversations that started calling for specific acts of violence. Threads that were referring specifically to going to the Capitol the night before, and kidnapping members of Congress, and placing them on trial. Threads focusing on targeting, “liberal churches,” in the Washington DC area. Threads beginning to talk about … calling for attacks, directed at Jewish facilities in the DC area.

We also began to see calls for counter-protests. And within those calls, we observe people reflecting upon the need to engage violently with those who are coming to Washington to show support for those who are arrested on January 6th. So, when we began seeing those threads, that's when we began collecting and disseminating and using that information as part of regional planning efforts. So, we share that information with locals, we receive additional information from locals that they were seeing regarding these incidents … we put together a more holistic threat picture. And that threat picture helped to inform operational activities.

Now, what was interesting … I'm not trying to get too wonky, but I know that some of the folks listening to this are analysts … what we began to see is that as our planning efforts became more public, and as our awareness of the potential threat became more public … because there were media articles about it, and we began to talk about it publicly on purpose … we found reflections on those same extremist platforms that they were tracking what we were saying, and they were tracking our planning. And it actually served as a deterrent effect, because we saw people who were saying they were coming to Washington to do violent things … all of a sudden begin saying it's a trap, don't go to Washington, we'll wait and fight another day.

So, the underlying issues that, you know, are fueling the current threat environment … those are way outside of, you know, our, our ability to address those. We can hold the line. And the way we can hold the line is by doing effective collection, effective analysis, and then using that analysis to in a very public way, inform security measures that … publicly facing security measures, which in themselves can act as a deterrent. Now, everything I just described, we do in partnership with the Office of Civil Liberties and Civil Rights and the privacy office.

So, the collection activities we're engaged in … we have we make sure with them that we are not, you know, straying into inappropriate collection against US persons. The dissemination and the retention of that information … we do it in a way that that's informed by very explicit guidelines that have been put together by our Office of General Counsel, our intelligence oversight office, as well as our privacy, and civil rights and civil liberties office. And we go through the process of … they are providing oversight and insight into any products we produce, as well as we're subject to audits and reviews.

So, we not only train our collectors and analysts about what's appropriate and what's not, but we're providing them increasingly, more and more explicit guidelines. And we are providing them access to .. to support from our lawyers, our civil rights and civil liberties experts, and our privacy experts. And we're doing that in addition to more training. And the challenge here, though, is that … it's a thread that evolves literally on a daily basis. So, the guidelines we wrote six months ago, likely have to be updated to help address some of the nuances of what we're seeing today.

Manolis Priniotakis: In the strategy … talks about … it talks about a whole of government approach. And I know, I've seen you and at a department level talk about DHS having more of a whole of society approach or the discussion of a whole of society approach to address violent extreme … domestic violent extremism. Can you describe just a bit more and what that means in practice?

John Cohen: Absolutely, I kind of referenced it in the beginning. But this is a good … your question represents a good opportunity to sort of go in more detail. So, as I mentioned, it's a very individualized threat. Threat actors very often will connect with a blend of ideological beliefs. And it's typically a blend of ideology and personal grievance that's fueling their motivation to engage in violence. There have been several examples in the past … and I expect we're going to see multiple examples in the future … where individuals who came to the attention of a JTTF, or a local law enforcement, didn't meet the threshold for a terrorism or even a criminal investigation.

There is an investigative approach that has been used by the Secret Service, and the FBI, and state and local law enforcement for years … which focus on evaluating the threat and the risk of violence posed by an individual … even an individual who has not necessarily committed a criminal act at that point. It's called a threat assessment investigation. There is a protocol that has been used by the Secret Service for decades to deal with assassins, potential assassins, and the Behavioral Analysis Unit at the FBI to deal with other areas of criminality … and increasingly by state and locals to manage the risk posed by the threat posed by high-risk individuals. And that's called threat management strategies.

So, the idea here is that the individual comes to the attention of local law enforcement or JTTF. An initial evaluation determines that they don't meet the threshold for a counterterrorism investigation. A threat assessment investigation, which usually involves specially trained law enforcement and mental health professionals, assesses that person to be high risk. Then the local jurisdiction working with relevant disciplines … mental health, education, faith leaders, social service providers … can develop a multidisciplinary threat management plan, which reduces the risk of violence.

Let me give you an example of how that would work. A high school in Bethesda, 2019, I believe December 2019 … an expelled student begins posting on his Instagram page … posts suggesting that he was going to conduct an attack at his school, his former high school where he had been expelled. Students at that school saw the Instagram post, went to the school resource officer, showed those posts to the school resource officer … school resource officer turn those posts over to the threat management unit of the Montgomery County police department. They conducted a threat assessment investigation and based on the behavioral characteristics of that individual, they determined that the individual was high risk. He just acquired firearms, ammunition, and they believe that he was a risk of engaging in violent activity. They're able to work with the courts, mental health professionals, and others to take steps to reduce the risk posed by that individual. That became the threat management strategy.

So how does this tie into the analytic work that the intelligence community does or that the analytic community does? Well, one, we have to understand the behavioral indicators that are associated with those who engage in lethal acts of violence, because that's what operators in the field will leverage as they are evaluating the activity of the behaviors of an individual that comes to their attention. What do we also have to know? We have to know how content that's posted online, can potentially influence violent behavior.

So, there are some narratives, I would argue, that have demonstrated … because they have been demonstrated a resonance with those who may be predisposed to violence. An example, The Great Replacement theory, which presupposes that immigration … immigration activities that are that are organized by the global Jewish community are actually an effort to displace the superiority of the white race in Western cultures … because it causes a dilution of that white race in those countries. We know that that narrative has specifically influenced individuals to violence in Christchurch, New Zealand … in Poway, California, in Pittsburgh … both of those last two instances were gunmen walking into synagogues and shooting people who are in engaged in prayer … and influence the actions of an individual or were stated as the motive for an individual … who walked into a Walmart in El Paso and engaged in a mass casualty attack targeting people he viewed as immigrants. So, we know that through analysis, there are some narratives that are high … that have a higher likelihood of influencing violence behavior than others.

So, from an analytical and collection perspective, what would we look for? We would look at threat actor platforms. Right? Whether there are platforms associated with Russian intelligence, Iranian intelligence operations, China, or other hostile foreign powers … we'll look at platforms associated with terrorist organizations, whether they be domestic and foreign. And we'll look to see the introduction of these narratives. And then we look to see whether these are narratives … we look to assess whether these are narratives that may influence violent behavior. And then we look to see how fast they're migrating across platforms. So, you know, are they being introduced in a very discreet form and staying there? Or are they being introduced into a discrete form becoming amplified and spreading across the ecosystem? Because we know that part of the playbook involves spreading these narratives far and wide and seeking to influence behavior by those who are vulnerable to being influenced by them.

That's the analytic process we're going through at the department for understanding … what are the narratives being promoted by threat actors to influence acts of violence. We're looking for when those narratives are being introduced on a different form. We're watching the spread of those narratives, and we're then taking that information and incorporating it into our operational planning.

Manolis Priniotakis: It’s such a remarkably complex environment. As you've been talking, I've been taking notes on possible areas of research for our community, here at NIU, and I think I've got about 15 or 16, just from the last answer. But you've spent time in academia. So, as we're closing … just wondering if you have any advice for students or faculty who are looking to study or who may be studying domestic violence, extremism, or domestic terrorism … on areas of research, you think would be fruitful … or just some general advice on how to tackle the subject?

John Cohen: I think understanding the current threat environment and, you know … we've talked about it primarily within the context of violent extremism or terrorism. But what I described from the standpoint of the utilization of influence operations, and the exploitation of online technologies, artificial intelligence, and advanced computing … I think there's a … we could have additional calls talking about how that influences transnational organized criminal behavior … how it empowers foreign intelligence services, who are seeking to sow discord, undermine credibility in the government, disrupt our relationship with our allies, our Western European allies.

There's virtually no threat area that falls under the responsibilities of the department, and I would say, probably, you could further state that the intelligence community … that isn't that isn't somehow impacted by the use of these technologies and these capabilities and these communication strategies by threat actors.

I think understanding it requires not only an understanding of the threat environment … what are the objectives of the adversary? What are their … how do they use active measure programs? What's their playbook? You need to also understand the technology. They've been able to exploit advances in computing. They've been able to exploit artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities resident within social media and other, you know, online commercial platforms. We need to do a better job in leveraging what those companies have learned in their research into our analytic processes.

Companies like Jigsaw, for example, have done tremendous work on narrative toxicity and resonance … whether something is going to influence malign behavior, or whether that narrative is going to spread across platforms. We can leverage that in our analytic and academic … and I'd like to see that more of a focus. I will say one other thing … and this is one of the things I really like about NIU, and I've tried to bring this into my academic work … and I continue to … is I find students are better prepared when they graduate or complete an academic program when they're exposed both to the theoretical, which is typically what's resident within the academic community, and practical information.

So, the classes I've always taught, and I continue to teach are from the perspective of a practitioner. And I will typically look at issues that are the source of curriculum, on a broad range of what I'll say theoretic representation by the academic community, and I try to complement what they teach with the perspectives on those issues from a practical perspective and operational issue. What have we seen, as we've done the actual intelligence or developed operational plans against terrorist groups, foreign intelligence services, and other threat actors? So that to me is, you know, when we provide an academic experience to an individual, particularly individuals, we hope to either come into the national security world or continue employment in that world. It's exposing them to both the academic, the academic and theoretical, and the practical.

Manolis Priniotakis: Great. Well, John Cohen, thank you so much for being … first of all, thank you for your service previous in government, and again, upon your return. And thank you for being part of NIU’s Intelligence Jumpstart.

John Cohen: Thanks for having me on. It was great talking to you.

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Jane DOE: Thank you for listening to the Intelligence Jumpstart podcast. We'd love to hear from you about what you liked and what you'd like to hear more of. If you would like to hear more about a specific topic or issue, send us a note at NIPress@niu.odni.gov. To learn more about NIU visit our website at NI-U.edu.