7 life lessons from 25 years in counterterrorism
Clint Watts on messing with terrorists and learning from the enemy
This episode of Brackets features Clint Watts, a security expert, former FBI special agent and Executive Officer of the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point.
In 2018, Clint Watts published “Messing with the Enemy,” a much needed guide to “surviving in a social media world of hackers, terrorists, Russians and fake news.”
In 2017, after damning evidence of Russian election interference, many of us, including US senators during intelligence hearings, turned to Watts to help make sense of the world. Outside of congressional testimonies, Watts was known by his “selected wisdom” blog on counterterrorism, which accumulated a massive readership, ranging from veteran journalists and regular Americans, to Omar Hammami, one of America’s most wanted terrorists.
I recently had the incredible honor to work and learn from Watts. He is humble and compassionate, and he exudes a great sense of humor and a calming wisdom that helps people find direction and purpose in times of uncertainty.
In celebration of Watts reviving his legendary “selected wisdom” blog onto Substack1, we sat down for an interview on Brackets to share some selected wisdom, including some timeless techniques he taught as an FBI trainer at Quantico, in seven pieces of counterterrorism advice also applicable to our daily lives.
#1
While testifying on Russian election interference in 2017, Watts famously told the House Intelligence Committee to “follow the trail of dead Russians.”
“I’ll tell you the secret, I made that up on the spot,” Watts confides. “I had never said that before, it was never part of the plan.” Knowing the string of deaths of senior Russian officials in 2017 were under suspicious circumstances, Watts, in a moment of eureka, thought “why not start the investigation there.”
Listening to Watts, I immediately recalled one of the first principles for open source investigators. When we’re stuck with investigating something or someone with nearly no social media footprint, there are two things that everyone on earth, even the most secretive of Russian spies, needs to attend — weddings and funerals.
Two years after Watts’ testimony, the perpetrator of one of the most famous assassinations of a former Russian officer, the “Skripal poisoner,” was identified from photos at a GRU commander’s family wedding.2
Advice #1:
Few things are better at revealing the truth than love and death.
#2
Watts has spent much of his career watching networks of extremists, and their contacts. “As terrorists flocked to social media,” Watts wrote in Messing with the Enemy, “analysts and researchers [...] no longer needed classified reporting to know what terrorists are up to. All we had to do was log on and watch them online.”
The problem with social media, however, is noise. Many times, and too often, we are distracted by the loudest voices in the room.
“Yes the number of tweets, and number of followers matter to a degree,” Watt says, “but the most valuable person to watch tweets three times, and gets replied thirty.”
Advice #2:
“Listen and watch the ones who speak the least and get replied to the most”
#3
Much is changing in counterterrorism — especially the social media platforms. In 2021, extremists and conspiracy theorists have repeatedly migrated digital homes, from Facebook and Twitter, to places like Parler, Gab, MeWe, CloutHub, Telegram.
Most recently, Watts observed several sanctioned Russian actors, including the oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, and Russian propagandist Alexander Malkevich, onto the new audio chat room app Clubhouse.
“If social media has illustrated anything since the dawn of YouTube in the mid-2000s, it is that when popular new services arise, bad actors follow soon after.”3
Instead of dedicating our time, energy, and technical resources to a single social media platform, Watts recommends focusing on the investigative techniques and strategies that will carry across platforms.
His insight reminds me of a conversation I had with legendary computer scientist Brian Kernighan, who told me that “it’s better for universities to focus on teaching the things that will stay valid and true in ten or twenty years, and what’s the web framework of the week is not one of those things.”
Advice #3
“Platforms change. Techniques are timeless.”
#4
Watts has been teaching counterterrorism for years, at West Point, the national academy of the FBI, and even the FBI training center at Quantico. One timeless technique he teaches is the association matrix.
The association matrix is a triangular diagram used to document relationships. “It’s the backbone of any social networking diagram,” Watts says.
In the 2010s, while researching the Somalia based Al Shabaab terrorist group, Watts was able to show splits within Al Shabaab by using an association matrix, where he inputted the frequencies people were talking about certain leaders and observed the differences.
This simple technique can be applied to better understand relationships within any community, whether it’s in counterterrorism, business connections, or friendships.
Advice #4: Try using an association matrix!
#5
On communicating, as an analyst, journalist, or in any role, Watts had one piece of advice — stay concise. From his experience in the military, generals rarely have the time to read verbose writing.
“Ask yourself,” Watts prompted, “if you can bring 1000 words down to 100, and 100 words down to one.”
Advice #5: Stay Concise.
#6
Nothing good has ever been achieved through passively reacting to problems.
Here’s a military analogy: in “information warfare”, if fake news is the “artillery,” then the attempts by Facebook, Twitter, and social media companies to remove fake news articles is akin to “catching artillery strikes”, or “putting out wildfires”. But the problem with putting out fires is that it’s always too late. There still was a fire.
Instead of only responding to fake messaging, we need to fight back with the truth.
This is especially critical to countering anti-vaccine and Covid disinformation. Instead of only reacting to disinformation, authorities need to conduct more messaging, and start reinforcing and supporting medical professionals, like Dr. Fauci, in making the truth appealing.
Advice #6: What comes after defend? Counterattack.
#7
“No matter what you do in all your life, whether it’s in sales or intelligence, everything ultimately comes down to messengers,” Watts tells me.
The secret to messaging is that “people ultimately want information from people that think and speak like them.”
Russians trolls will make “American” social media accounts and copy language, time zones, niche hashtags, and local slang when targeting Americans. Similarly, a Latino nurse and mother of three may be a more effective and trustworthy messenger on delivering Covid information to Latin-American communities than even the most acclaimed of medical experts.
The right messenger will make all the difference in conveying information. “Ask yourself who your audience is,” Watts says, and “think like them.”
“Also,” Watts adds, “if you’re going to a meeting and everyone is in suit and tie, wear a suit and tie.”
Advice #7: Everything in life comes down to the messengers. People want information from people that think and speak like them.
More selected wisdom
Want to read more from Watts? You can find more on his Selected Wisdom Substack or follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
https://clintwatts.substack.com/p/coming-soon
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/10/14/averyanov-chepiga/
https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/the-kremlins-propagandists-come-to-clubhouse-malign-influence-descends-on-silicon-valleys-newest-unicorn/
I like lesson #2. The person who tweets three times and gets the most replies.
In this day and age of social media influencers where our attention is drawn to people with numbers and who make a lot of noise, such a person is a really social media influencer! :-)