February 21, 2021 • 20 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explored the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday,
and it's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,
(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week huge space news. On Thursday, as the new
Mars rover Perseverance landed successfully on the Martian surface, everything
had to be perfect for this mission to be a success.
The entry, descent, and landing required a heat shield, a parachute,
rocket thrusters, and a skycrane that lowered the rover onto
(00:50):
the Martian surface. The whole ordeal and what everybody was
waiting for, was called seven minutes of Terror. Before the
successful Mars landing, we spoke to Christian Davenport, space reporter
at the Washington Post for how these seven minutes of
terror we're going to play out and what the mission
is going to be. But before that, let's hear what
it sounded like when Perseverance landed on Mars. We started
(01:12):
our constant losty accordion, which means we're conducting the skycrane
about to contact the shy crane maneuver. We've lost direct earth.
Tone has expected, has expected, sky maneuver has started. About
twenty office service cut sound confirmed, very sinking. Then of
(01:42):
top life. It's a big deal, and you're right, it
is seven minutes of terror. Of course they're set communications
delay of about eleven minutes or so, so they're just
sitting there waiting and getting the signals back from the spacecraft.
But everything they're finding out it's already happened. But there's Mars.
It doesn't have a thick atmosphere like we have here
(02:02):
on Earth, but it has just enough of an atmosphere
that it can cause a problem. So it actually they
meet still a heat shield because as it's going through
it really really fast, like twelve thousand miles per hour,
that is going to generate a lot of heat. And
then there is enough though for it to deploy the
parachute and touch down, but they still have to fire
(02:23):
those retro rockets the slowed the spacecraft down propulsively. And
then if you remember from they used the same thing
in Curiosity. They call it the skycrane, where there's a
sort of spacecraft above the rover that lowers the rover
down with these cables onto the surface of Mars. And
it's just crazy if you if you think about it,
the Earth is moving in orbit around the Sun, Mars
(02:46):
is moving in orbit around the Sun. The spacecraft it's
going to travel like three hundred million miles to hit
a target in this crater that's four point eight miles wide.
And my colleague did the map and basically calculated that
that's the equivalent of if you threw a dart from Washington,
d C. And we're aiming at a bull's eye that
(03:09):
is about an inch in diameter, the dart would travel
from d C to hit the bull's eye in Dallas.
That's how precise you would have to be. I always
love these comparisons, you know. One of the people you
spoke to said that we're basically watching the spacecraft disassemble
itself as it's hurtling towards the ground. And you describe
some of these moments from the parachutes slowing it down,
(03:31):
the little rockets keeping it in space and then being
lowered down by the crane. We've done this before with Mars.
You know, obviously we have a rover out there and
everything already. But what's different about this mission. There's a
couple of different major differences for it. So it's going
to a place on Mars called Jezero Crater, which is
fascinating because if you look at the images of it,
(03:52):
I mean even as a light person, you look at
and you're like, this clear there was water there. I mean,
it looks like in my backyard the way after a
big rainstorm you can see where the water sort of
runs through the surface of the Earth and leaves those
current marks and they're sort of a delta there, and
that is a great place to go to look for
signs of path of ancient microbial life. So it's going
(04:15):
to do that. It also, and this is pretty cool,
it's gonna have a microphone, so scientists will actually be
able to listen to Mars. I mean, clearly, the other
rovers have taken lots of pictures of Mars. We have
a sense of what it looks like, what the topography
is like. We've got a lot of orbiters imaging Mars
as well. This will be the first time we'll be
able to listen to it. And there's something super cool
(04:37):
that Perseverance has tucked under its belly. It's got this
tiny little helicopter called Ingenuity that's going to try to
do a powered flight on Mars. It truly is like
a Right Brothers moment on another planet. Would be the
first powered flight on Mars, so that would be really
cool too. And that's a detective demo that we've never
(04:57):
seen before. You mentioned how the topography of the whole
thing and you know, craters and cliffs and all that.
I mean, obviously that adds to the difficulty of landing
since it's all being done remotely, but it's also using
this new system. It has a bunch of artificial intelligence
on it, basically scoping out the terrain so it could
help pick the right place to land. So, as I said,
(05:19):
it's so much that goes into it. This is just
another layer of difficulty. It's doing that totally autonomously. It's
not like there's somebody they're flying it remotely. I mean,
they just can't do that. Given the great, great distance
the spacecraft has to be able to do that on
its own. I mean, one of the analogies we use
in our coverage of this is when Neil Armstrong was
(05:40):
landing the Lunar module on the Moon's surface, the landing
site where they wanted to put it down, Initially they
realized there were too many craters and rocks, and Neil
Armstrong had to fly the spacecraft to find a better
spot that was safer for landing, and it was like
famously running out of fuel in those final minutes, wasn't
going to be able to find a clear spot? Well,
here there is no Neil Armstrong or the Neil Armstrong.
(06:02):
It's a spacecraft itself that's going to be doing that sensing.
But the technology has come a long way in that regard.
And now for the actual mission, I mean, these are
just the difficulties of it landing. What the actual mission is.
It's going to collect samples. This could be part of
a three mission campaign to return those samples, soil samples
back to Earth. That in and of itself is another difficulty.
(06:25):
So what is it going to be doing while it's there?
That you know, could be a really cool part of
the mission if it's able to land successfully and fingers
crossed that it does, and it's able to take these
samples from Mars and then essentially catch them store them
on places on the surface where then on a previous mission,
a spacecraft could come and retrieve them and bring that back. Now,
(06:45):
that wouldn't happen for many years to come, and there
were you know, there's going to have to be a
whole other program design for that sample return mission. But
that could be a really big deal for scientists to
actually get those artifacts back. Today, when we talk about
the Apollo program, there are scientists who are studying the
rocks and regulars that were brought back from the Moon,
(07:06):
you know in the late sixties and the seventies. That's
provided a lot of science. Imagine for how many years,
how many decades scientists would be studying those samples from Mars.
That would be incredible. Yeah, I mean those second missions,
second and third missions would have to be crazy because
you need something else to go pick it up from
the rover and go back into orbit, and then something
else would have to come into that orbit to pick
(07:29):
it up and bring it back. So I mean there's
a lot of planning. I guess those missions haven't even
been authorized just yet, and the last wrinkle to all
of this is that it's a crowded scene there. The
United States is not the only game in town. China
and the United Arab Emirates also are in the neighborhood
right now. Yeah, I mean, it's like there's a traffic
jam right now around Mars. And that's caused because Mars
(07:53):
and Earth are on the same side of the Sun
once every twenty six months or so, so that's when
the orbits lineup that you could get to Mars quickly
and efficiently, and we had that window this past summer.
That's when a lot of these missions were launched. So
you've got the China mission and the U A mission.
Is really fascinating me. This is the first time an
(08:14):
Arab country has sent a spacecraft into deep space into Mars,
and that's going to orbit Mars and study the atmosphere.
The Chinese mission is also in orbit around Mars. It
will eventually descend a rover onto the Martian Service sometime
in the spring. Initially they were talking April nouns. Maybe
(08:34):
maybe we don't know exactly when that would happen, but
that's a big step for China, which, as you remember
a couple of years ago landed a spacecraft on the
far side of the Moon, which had never been done before.
So they've got a lot of ambitions as well. So yeah,
a lot of missions going to Mars right about now.
Christian Davenport, space reporter at the Washington Post and author
of the Space Barons, thank you very much for joining us.
(08:57):
Thanks for having me. Finally for this week, the Department
of Homeland Security, which was founded in response to nine eleven,
is beginning a pivot from focusing on foreign threats to
a growing concern in the United States domestic terrorism. While
the FBI usually looks into terrorism and extremists, the latest
threat assessments from the DHS have pointed to an increased
(09:19):
activity by these groups and needs to reorient itself to
these current threats. As always, there are concerns of civil
liberty violations and politicization of the department. For more on this,
will speak to Nick Mirov, reporter for the Washington Post.
This is something that has been building for quite some time,
you know, As you know, the perceived threat from al
Qaeda and even ISIS started to fade over the last
(09:42):
few years. We had a series of very horrific high
profile domestic incidents. I'm thinking of the Las Vegas shooting,
the attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue, and then
came Neo Passo shooting, which was the deadliest attack on
Hispanic Americans in modern US his three and a very
obvious example of a white supremacist carrying out an act
(10:05):
of targeted violence and real, frankly terrorism. And so this
had started to really awaken folks I think at DHS
towards this threat, and there was also pressure coming from
some lawmakers, particularly Democrats, saying well, what is the biggest
threat that faces the homeland today and it's these domestic
violent extremists and white supremacists. Now, that effort, which was
(10:27):
already starting to make some progress at DHS kind of
as an agency but not necessarily getting picked up, but
with a lot of attention at the White House under Trump,
that was really thrown into overdrive by the attack on
the Capitol in January six and since then what we've
seen are even louder calls for DHS to really make
a hard pivot toward these groups and see what can
(10:50):
this big internal security agency do to better protect Americans.
The problem is that the path ahead is not entirely clear.
The purview of you know, monitoring extremist groups, terrorism, all
that stuff usually fell under the FBI. So what kind
of infrastructure does DHS have Does the FBI have to
(11:11):
do this now? Because I know, you know, in reading
through your piece, a lot of this also has to do.
You know, we need good coordination with our state and
local officials too, because this is where this is brewing up.
So the big agencies need to coordinate with them. But
so what does the infrastructure look like right now? So
that's a great question because a lot of people have
this sort of false impression, maybe from television, you know,
(11:31):
that there are such things as a kind of standing
contingent of homeland security officers ready to spring into action,
when the reality is not that. You're right, the FBI
is going to remain the primary investigative and prostratorial arm,
you know, of the Justice Department to really monitor criminal
terrorists and arrest them and go after them. What DHS
(11:53):
can do is both more limited but also has the
potential for more expansion because DHS is so big, It's
got nearly ten times as many employees overall. If you
add up all of DHS as different agencies. The main
things that DHS can do, one would be through this
new office that's been specifically set up to look at
(12:13):
this challenge. It's called the Office of Targeted Violence and
Terrorism Prevention, and its work is primarily preventative. It's started
to hire regional coordinators around the country who are supposed
to work with state and local officials to identify kind
of at risk individuals or groups and try to stage
interventions with them, but also to collect information and distribute
(12:37):
it to state and local authorities. And as you said,
that is one of dhss biggest assets that it's forged,
all these relationships around the country with state and local
police departments to help be vigilant against foreign terrorist threats. Well,
now it could potentially apply some of those relationships in
a more domestic space. The other big thing is the
(12:58):
Office of Intelligence and now Assist, which is kind of
the DHS intelligence arm. It has had a number of
stumbles in recent years, and when it was gathering intelligence
on the sort of on the threat from radical anarchist
groups and others in Portland, it was binged a little bit,
especially by Democrats, and kind of stepped back. But there's
going to be. I think we're going to see more
(13:19):
pressure on that agency to be a more active player
in the intelligence space. And then lastly, I would just
say DHS does have the Immigration and Customs Enforcements Homeland
Security Investigations Arm, which was created after nine eleven to
be kind of like another FBI, you know, an armed
um investigative body, and what they've done primarily until now
(13:40):
has gone after drug traffickers and human smugglers and so forth.
But they have thousands of agents of HSI agents around
the country who, if oriented more towards this type of threat,
could potentially play a role. Balance is always a very
important thing, and there's concerns. So one concern is the
splitting of attention the Department of Homeland Security. People are concerned,
(14:01):
you know, you shouldn't completely turn away from foreign threats,
that's one. And then to just concerns about civil liberties.
You know, now we're looking more into people here in
our own homeland, and so there's always groups that are
concerned about surveillance and different things like that. I mean,
you think about, you know, some of the anxieties that
came with the creation of this thing, with this kind
(14:23):
of Orwellian name right. The Department of Homeland Security, and
it's focused until now, has been almost entirely on exterior threats.
And what DHS is especially good at is finding out
who is trying to enter the country, who they are,
what their story is, and potentially stopping them. So the
idea that this very large and potentially powerful security agency
(14:46):
that has access to so much information could potentially plan
more active role monitoring Americans is going to be, you know,
a major issue going forward. That said, when we've had
several we've seen several hearings since the January six attack,
and it's notable that there is seems to be real
bipartisan energy behind some kind of new domestic terrorism authorities
(15:08):
that would potentially, you know, give both the Department of
Justice more latitude to charge people. But also I think
you'll see DHS taking a more active role in this space.
There are other folks, particularly who are part of the
early days of the Department Homeland Security and its founding
and are highly aware of its founding mission, who say,
you know, don't take your eye off the ball. It's
(15:30):
very important for DHS to remain focused on external trends.
But I do think that that's something that DHS, given
its size and its broad mandate, would have the ability
to do. It's not like U S. Customs and Border Protection,
which is very focused on you know, who's trying to
enter the country. It's not like they're necessarily going to
play a big role in in this new space. But
there are other DHS components that could um potentially do more.
(15:54):
Here's Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro my Archi is
talking about domestic terrorism on an end. The threat is persistent. Uh,
it was exemplified, it was illustrated horrifically by the events
of January six. What we in the Department of Homeland
Security do is we gather intelligence, We gather information, We
(16:16):
share that with our state, local, tribal, and territorial partners
as we collectively in an all of government effort, not
just the federal government, but all of government across the
country combat hate and the violence that accompanies it. Now,
obviously there's a big government agency. How does politics play
(16:36):
into this? What do lawmakers want to do and how
do they want to punish these people? I saw, I
mentioned I saw in the article you mentioned something about
you know, sanctions, things like that, for people that provide
support to these types of groups. So how are lawmakers
getting involved in in this kind of pivot for the
Department of Homeland Security. Well, I think that's where some
of the controversy will start to come in. You know.
(16:57):
I think we're still in this phase where people remain
shot and disgusted by what happened on January six, and
they want to do something. They want to do something
in a bipartisan spirit. One of the things they have
talked about are, and you know, enhancing some of these
laws so that, for example, providing material to support to
domestic terrorists and white supremacists who commit violent acts that
could be a crime. But once we get into the
(17:18):
kind of nitty or gridy of how these agencies will
function and what potentially expanded roles they'll take on, I
do think we'll start to see some pushback, particularly from
Republicans right now, who are worried about this idea that
these agencies could be used to disproportionately spy on the
party that's not in power, or by naming white supremacists
and domestic extremists, that these federal agents will become somewhat
(17:42):
skewed towards groups with a certain ideology. That said, all
of the statistics show and when DHS produced its first
Homeland Threat assessment last October, the numbers clearly show that
more Americans have been killed by white supremacists and domestic
extremists than foreign actors, and most of those are right
(18:02):
wing leaning groups. And obviously those numbers are very skewed
by the tragedy and passive. As you mentioned, you know,
some of these reports and threat assessments that have been
put out by DHS point to this being kind of
the emerging threat for US at least here domestically. But
still it would take maybe five to ten years or
something for the DHS to really build out this effort
(18:23):
a little bit more. One thing that we could potentially
imagine is that the DHS will and this would be potensive,
like the one of the safer things they could do
would be to really go big into this space of
prevention and try to build out their network of regional
coordinators who would work closely with local police departments and
state police to both help monitor at risk individuals or
(18:46):
extremist groups, but also stage interventions. And one of the
things that the literature and the and the research really
points to is that people at times of great insecurity
and hardship, particularly during something like this pandemic, are subject
to radicalization and recruitment by extremist groups. And so, you know,
this past year has left so many Americans distressed, and
(19:08):
it's it's created a ripe environment for this type of recruitment.
And so, you know, I think going forward that that
types of research could potentially inform the way DHS takes
on a growing role in this in the domestic terrorism space.
Nick Merov, reporter at the Washington Post covering the Department
of Homeland Security. Thank you very much for joining us.
(19:28):
My pleasure ask for thank you. That's it for this weekend.
Be sure to check out The Daily Dive every Monday
through Friday. Join us on social media at Daily Dive
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us a comment, give us a rating, and tell us
the stories that you're interested in. Although The Daily Dive
and I Heart Radio or subscribe wherever you get your podcast.
(19:51):
This episode of The Daily Dive has been engineered by
Tony Sorrentina. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles and this
was your Daily Dive weekend dish Fa
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explored the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday,
and it's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,
(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week huge space news. On Thursday, as the new
Mars rover Perseverance landed successfully on the Martian surface, everything
had to be perfect for this mission to be a success.
The entry, descent, and landing required a heat shield, a parachute,
rocket thrusters, and a skycrane that lowered the rover onto
(00:50):
the Martian surface. The whole ordeal and what everybody was
waiting for, was called seven minutes of Terror. Before the
successful Mars landing, we spoke to Christian Davenport, space reporter
at the Washington Post for how these seven minutes of
terror we're going to play out and what the mission
is going to be. But before that, let's hear what
it sounded like when Perseverance landed on Mars. We started
(01:12):
our constant losty accordion, which means we're conducting the skycrane
about to contact the shy crane maneuver. We've lost direct earth.
Tone has expected, has expected, sky maneuver has started. About
twenty office service cut sound confirmed, very sinking. Then of
(01:42):
top life. It's a big deal, and you're right, it
is seven minutes of terror. Of course they're set communications
delay of about eleven minutes or so, so they're just
sitting there waiting and getting the signals back from the spacecraft.
But everything they're finding out it's already happened. But there's Mars.
It doesn't have a thick atmosphere like we have here
(02:02):
on Earth, but it has just enough of an atmosphere
that it can cause a problem. So it actually they
meet still a heat shield because as it's going through
it really really fast, like twelve thousand miles per hour,
that is going to generate a lot of heat. And
then there is enough though for it to deploy the
parachute and touch down, but they still have to fire
(02:23):
those retro rockets the slowed the spacecraft down propulsively. And
then if you remember from they used the same thing
in Curiosity. They call it the skycrane, where there's a
sort of spacecraft above the rover that lowers the rover
down with these cables onto the surface of Mars. And
it's just crazy if you if you think about it,
the Earth is moving in orbit around the Sun, Mars
(02:46):
is moving in orbit around the Sun. The spacecraft it's
going to travel like three hundred million miles to hit
a target in this crater that's four point eight miles wide.
And my colleague did the map and basically calculated that
that's the equivalent of if you threw a dart from Washington,
d C. And we're aiming at a bull's eye that
(03:09):
is about an inch in diameter, the dart would travel
from d C to hit the bull's eye in Dallas.
That's how precise you would have to be. I always
love these comparisons, you know. One of the people you
spoke to said that we're basically watching the spacecraft disassemble
itself as it's hurtling towards the ground. And you describe
some of these moments from the parachutes slowing it down,
(03:31):
the little rockets keeping it in space and then being
lowered down by the crane. We've done this before with Mars.
You know, obviously we have a rover out there and
everything already. But what's different about this mission. There's a
couple of different major differences for it. So it's going
to a place on Mars called Jezero Crater, which is
fascinating because if you look at the images of it,
(03:52):
I mean even as a light person, you look at
and you're like, this clear there was water there. I mean,
it looks like in my backyard the way after a
big rainstorm you can see where the water sort of
runs through the surface of the Earth and leaves those
current marks and they're sort of a delta there, and
that is a great place to go to look for
signs of path of ancient microbial life. So it's going
(04:15):
to do that. It also, and this is pretty cool,
it's gonna have a microphone, so scientists will actually be
able to listen to Mars. I mean, clearly, the other
rovers have taken lots of pictures of Mars. We have
a sense of what it looks like, what the topography
is like. We've got a lot of orbiters imaging Mars
as well. This will be the first time we'll be
able to listen to it. And there's something super cool
(04:37):
that Perseverance has tucked under its belly. It's got this
tiny little helicopter called Ingenuity that's going to try to
do a powered flight on Mars. It truly is like
a Right Brothers moment on another planet. Would be the
first powered flight on Mars, so that would be really
cool too. And that's a detective demo that we've never
(04:57):
seen before. You mentioned how the topography of the whole
thing and you know, craters and cliffs and all that.
I mean, obviously that adds to the difficulty of landing
since it's all being done remotely, but it's also using
this new system. It has a bunch of artificial intelligence
on it, basically scoping out the terrain so it could
help pick the right place to land. So, as I said,
(05:19):
it's so much that goes into it. This is just
another layer of difficulty. It's doing that totally autonomously. It's
not like there's somebody they're flying it remotely. I mean,
they just can't do that. Given the great, great distance
the spacecraft has to be able to do that on
its own. I mean, one of the analogies we use
in our coverage of this is when Neil Armstrong was
(05:40):
landing the Lunar module on the Moon's surface, the landing
site where they wanted to put it down, Initially they
realized there were too many craters and rocks, and Neil
Armstrong had to fly the spacecraft to find a better
spot that was safer for landing, and it was like
famously running out of fuel in those final minutes, wasn't
going to be able to find a clear spot? Well,
here there is no Neil Armstrong or the Neil Armstrong.
(06:02):
It's a spacecraft itself that's going to be doing that sensing.
But the technology has come a long way in that regard.
And now for the actual mission, I mean, these are
just the difficulties of it landing. What the actual mission is.
It's going to collect samples. This could be part of
a three mission campaign to return those samples, soil samples
back to Earth. That in and of itself is another difficulty.
(06:25):
So what is it going to be doing while it's there?
That you know, could be a really cool part of
the mission if it's able to land successfully and fingers
crossed that it does, and it's able to take these
samples from Mars and then essentially catch them store them
on places on the surface where then on a previous mission,
a spacecraft could come and retrieve them and bring that back. Now,
(06:45):
that wouldn't happen for many years to come, and there
were you know, there's going to have to be a
whole other program design for that sample return mission. But
that could be a really big deal for scientists to
actually get those artifacts back. Today, when we talk about
the Apollo program, there are scientists who are studying the
rocks and regulars that were brought back from the Moon,
(07:06):
you know in the late sixties and the seventies. That's
provided a lot of science. Imagine for how many years,
how many decades scientists would be studying those samples from Mars.
That would be incredible. Yeah, I mean those second missions,
second and third missions would have to be crazy because
you need something else to go pick it up from
the rover and go back into orbit, and then something
else would have to come into that orbit to pick
(07:29):
it up and bring it back. So I mean there's
a lot of planning. I guess those missions haven't even
been authorized just yet, and the last wrinkle to all
of this is that it's a crowded scene there. The
United States is not the only game in town. China
and the United Arab Emirates also are in the neighborhood
right now. Yeah, I mean, it's like there's a traffic
jam right now around Mars. And that's caused because Mars
(07:53):
and Earth are on the same side of the Sun
once every twenty six months or so, so that's when
the orbits lineup that you could get to Mars quickly
and efficiently, and we had that window this past summer.
That's when a lot of these missions were launched. So
you've got the China mission and the U A mission.
Is really fascinating me. This is the first time an
(08:14):
Arab country has sent a spacecraft into deep space into Mars,
and that's going to orbit Mars and study the atmosphere.
The Chinese mission is also in orbit around Mars. It
will eventually descend a rover onto the Martian Service sometime
in the spring. Initially they were talking April nouns. Maybe
(08:34):
maybe we don't know exactly when that would happen, but
that's a big step for China, which, as you remember
a couple of years ago landed a spacecraft on the
far side of the Moon, which had never been done before.
So they've got a lot of ambitions as well. So yeah,
a lot of missions going to Mars right about now.
Christian Davenport, space reporter at the Washington Post and author
of the Space Barons, thank you very much for joining us.
(08:57):
Thanks for having me. Finally for this week, the Department
of Homeland Security, which was founded in response to nine eleven,
is beginning a pivot from focusing on foreign threats to
a growing concern in the United States domestic terrorism. While
the FBI usually looks into terrorism and extremists, the latest
threat assessments from the DHS have pointed to an increased
(09:19):
activity by these groups and needs to reorient itself to
these current threats. As always, there are concerns of civil
liberty violations and politicization of the department. For more on this,
will speak to Nick Mirov, reporter for the Washington Post.
This is something that has been building for quite some time,
you know, As you know, the perceived threat from al
Qaeda and even ISIS started to fade over the last
(09:42):
few years. We had a series of very horrific high
profile domestic incidents. I'm thinking of the Las Vegas shooting,
the attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue, and then
came Neo Passo shooting, which was the deadliest attack on
Hispanic Americans in modern US his three and a very
obvious example of a white supremacist carrying out an act
(10:05):
of targeted violence and real, frankly terrorism. And so this
had started to really awaken folks I think at DHS
towards this threat, and there was also pressure coming from
some lawmakers, particularly Democrats, saying well, what is the biggest
threat that faces the homeland today and it's these domestic
violent extremists and white supremacists. Now, that effort, which was
(10:27):
already starting to make some progress at DHS kind of
as an agency but not necessarily getting picked up, but
with a lot of attention at the White House under Trump,
that was really thrown into overdrive by the attack on
the Capitol in January six and since then what we've
seen are even louder calls for DHS to really make
a hard pivot toward these groups and see what can
(10:50):
this big internal security agency do to better protect Americans.
The problem is that the path ahead is not entirely clear.
The purview of you know, monitoring extremist groups, terrorism, all
that stuff usually fell under the FBI. So what kind
of infrastructure does DHS have Does the FBI have to
(11:11):
do this now? Because I know, you know, in reading
through your piece, a lot of this also has to do.
You know, we need good coordination with our state and
local officials too, because this is where this is brewing up.
So the big agencies need to coordinate with them. But
so what does the infrastructure look like right now? So
that's a great question because a lot of people have
this sort of false impression, maybe from television, you know,
(11:31):
that there are such things as a kind of standing
contingent of homeland security officers ready to spring into action,
when the reality is not that. You're right, the FBI
is going to remain the primary investigative and prostratorial arm,
you know, of the Justice Department to really monitor criminal
terrorists and arrest them and go after them. What DHS
(11:53):
can do is both more limited but also has the
potential for more expansion because DHS is so big, It's
got nearly ten times as many employees overall. If you
add up all of DHS as different agencies. The main
things that DHS can do, one would be through this
new office that's been specifically set up to look at
(12:13):
this challenge. It's called the Office of Targeted Violence and
Terrorism Prevention, and its work is primarily preventative. It's started
to hire regional coordinators around the country who are supposed
to work with state and local officials to identify kind
of at risk individuals or groups and try to stage
interventions with them, but also to collect information and distribute
(12:37):
it to state and local authorities. And as you said,
that is one of dhss biggest assets that it's forged,
all these relationships around the country with state and local
police departments to help be vigilant against foreign terrorist threats. Well,
now it could potentially apply some of those relationships in
a more domestic space. The other big thing is the
(12:58):
Office of Intelligence and now Assist, which is kind of
the DHS intelligence arm. It has had a number of
stumbles in recent years, and when it was gathering intelligence
on the sort of on the threat from radical anarchist
groups and others in Portland, it was binged a little bit,
especially by Democrats, and kind of stepped back. But there's
going to be. I think we're going to see more
(13:19):
pressure on that agency to be a more active player
in the intelligence space. And then lastly, I would just
say DHS does have the Immigration and Customs Enforcements Homeland
Security Investigations Arm, which was created after nine eleven to
be kind of like another FBI, you know, an armed
um investigative body, and what they've done primarily until now
(13:40):
has gone after drug traffickers and human smugglers and so forth.
But they have thousands of agents of HSI agents around
the country who, if oriented more towards this type of threat,
could potentially play a role. Balance is always a very
important thing, and there's concerns. So one concern is the
splitting of attention the Department of Homeland Security. People are concerned,
(14:01):
you know, you shouldn't completely turn away from foreign threats,
that's one. And then to just concerns about civil liberties.
You know, now we're looking more into people here in
our own homeland, and so there's always groups that are
concerned about surveillance and different things like that. I mean,
you think about, you know, some of the anxieties that
came with the creation of this thing, with this kind
(14:23):
of Orwellian name right. The Department of Homeland Security, and
it's focused until now, has been almost entirely on exterior threats.
And what DHS is especially good at is finding out
who is trying to enter the country, who they are,
what their story is, and potentially stopping them. So the
idea that this very large and potentially powerful security agency
(14:46):
that has access to so much information could potentially plan
more active role monitoring Americans is going to be, you know,
a major issue going forward. That said, when we've had
several we've seen several hearings since the January six attack,
and it's notable that there is seems to be real
bipartisan energy behind some kind of new domestic terrorism authorities
(15:08):
that would potentially, you know, give both the Department of
Justice more latitude to charge people. But also I think
you'll see DHS taking a more active role in this space.
There are other folks, particularly who are part of the
early days of the Department Homeland Security and its founding
and are highly aware of its founding mission, who say,
you know, don't take your eye off the ball. It's
(15:30):
very important for DHS to remain focused on external trends.
But I do think that that's something that DHS, given
its size and its broad mandate, would have the ability
to do. It's not like U S. Customs and Border Protection,
which is very focused on you know, who's trying to
enter the country. It's not like they're necessarily going to
play a big role in in this new space. But
there are other DHS components that could um potentially do more.
(15:54):
Here's Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro my Archi is
talking about domestic terrorism on an end. The threat is persistent. Uh,
it was exemplified, it was illustrated horrifically by the events
of January six. What we in the Department of Homeland
Security do is we gather intelligence, We gather information, We
(16:16):
share that with our state, local, tribal, and territorial partners
as we collectively in an all of government effort, not
just the federal government, but all of government across the
country combat hate and the violence that accompanies it. Now,
obviously there's a big government agency. How does politics play
(16:36):
into this? What do lawmakers want to do and how
do they want to punish these people? I saw, I
mentioned I saw in the article you mentioned something about
you know, sanctions, things like that, for people that provide
support to these types of groups. So how are lawmakers
getting involved in in this kind of pivot for the
Department of Homeland Security. Well, I think that's where some
of the controversy will start to come in. You know.
(16:57):
I think we're still in this phase where people remain
shot and disgusted by what happened on January six, and
they want to do something. They want to do something
in a bipartisan spirit. One of the things they have
talked about are, and you know, enhancing some of these
laws so that, for example, providing material to support to
domestic terrorists and white supremacists who commit violent acts that
could be a crime. But once we get into the
(17:18):
kind of nitty or gridy of how these agencies will
function and what potentially expanded roles they'll take on, I
do think we'll start to see some pushback, particularly from
Republicans right now, who are worried about this idea that
these agencies could be used to disproportionately spy on the
party that's not in power, or by naming white supremacists
and domestic extremists, that these federal agents will become somewhat
(17:42):
skewed towards groups with a certain ideology. That said, all
of the statistics show and when DHS produced its first
Homeland Threat assessment last October, the numbers clearly show that
more Americans have been killed by white supremacists and domestic
extremists than foreign actors, and most of those are right
(18:02):
wing leaning groups. And obviously those numbers are very skewed
by the tragedy and passive. As you mentioned, you know,
some of these reports and threat assessments that have been
put out by DHS point to this being kind of
the emerging threat for US at least here domestically. But
still it would take maybe five to ten years or
something for the DHS to really build out this effort
(18:23):
a little bit more. One thing that we could potentially
imagine is that the DHS will and this would be potensive,
like the one of the safer things they could do
would be to really go big into this space of
prevention and try to build out their network of regional
coordinators who would work closely with local police departments and
state police to both help monitor at risk individuals or
(18:46):
extremist groups, but also stage interventions. And one of the
things that the literature and the and the research really
points to is that people at times of great insecurity
and hardship, particularly during something like this pandemic, are subject
to radicalization and recruitment by extremist groups. And so, you know,
this past year has left so many Americans distressed, and
(19:08):
it's it's created a ripe environment for this type of recruitment.
And so, you know, I think going forward that that
types of research could potentially inform the way DHS takes
on a growing role in this in the domestic terrorism space.
Nick Merov, reporter at the Washington Post covering the Department
of Homeland Security. Thank you very much for joining us.
(19:28):
My pleasure ask for thank you. That's it for this weekend.
Be sure to check out The Daily Dive every Monday
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(19:51):
This episode of The Daily Dive has been engineered by
Tony Sorrentina. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles and this
was your Daily Dive weekend dish Fa
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