Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke recently met with foreign leaders in the United Kingdom and at a G7 meeting in Italy to advance collaborative efforts to fight terrorism.
Duke first traveled to London where she met with UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd and other top officials from the UK Home Office. The leaders agreed to engage with technology companies involved in digital fight against terrorism and to conduct joint threat assessments and briefings to assist non-governmental partners working to counter terrorist activities.
They also agreed to work to improve global aviation security through additional measures to detect explosive threats, defend against insider attacks, identify known or suspected terrorist travel and improve cargo security.
Duke then traveled to Ischia, Italy, for a G7 Interior Ministers’ Meeting. Discussions centered on information sharing, foreign fighters and terrorist recruitment and radicalization online.
Representatives from top technology companies, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, also participated in the meeting. They discussed with the representatives of the G7 nations their recently formed Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), which seeks to counter terrorist activity on their platforms.
“Our enemies are moving at the speed of a tweet, so we have to counter them just as quickly…” Duke said. “While there is no doubt [they] are adapting, terrorist groups should know this: they are no match for the alliances you see here today. We will destroy their safe havens. We will break their networks. And we will expose their hateful ideology for what it really is.”