Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be asked to attend a summit on countering violent extremism through the Internet by the Concordia Summit in New York and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Hats off to both organizations for putting together a terrific and thought provoking panel as well as all the participants for their deep thinking around a very complex set of issues. It’s needed and welcome.
While I can’t go into details on the discussion, I can say that the problem of violent extremism (what we typically think of as terrorism) is deep, widespread and not going away. Terrorists have been using the Internet as a weapon, maintaining an ability to control content, messaging and outreach. Traditional methods for countering the extremism are not enough. To really combat this effort it is going to take a multitude of players, not just the government.
It was a great honor to be asked to join this conversation with Concordia. Created in the midst of the 10th anniversary of 9/11 to discuss the importance of partnerships in combating extremism, the organization has since grown towards a belief and vision that public-private partnerships are a fundamental tool to addressing many societal challenges. Concordia recognizes that cross-sector collaboration is fundamental.
This opportunity also speaks to my role as CEO of RL Leaders, which combines creativity, technology and defense expertise to work on national security challenges. RL Leaders has hosted numerous strategic thought charettes over the years on such issues. At Capstone, I’m integrating this expertise into new approaches that help our current clients in their public affairs efforts.
For more background on Capstone’s CEO, John C. Rogers, click here for his bio at Capstone or here for his Wikipedia entry.
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The views in this blog post represent the viewpoints of individual team members, not Capstone National Partners as a whole.
