ANN ARBOR, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – FBI Director Christopher Wray was in Ann Arbor on Friday, December 2nd for a speech and Q&A session. It was part of a Josh Rosenthal Education Fund Lecture Series at the Ford School and he appeared in front of students, faculty and staff at the Weill Hall Annenberg Auditorium.
The family and friends of Josh Rosenthal, who was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, gave a gift to the University of Michigan for the Josh Rosenthal Memorial Lecture to “promote understanding of international relations, human rights, security and conflict resolution in our post 9/11 world.”
Wray, who became the eighth Director of the FBI in 2017 has served as the Director under both former President Trump and President Biden. Trump nominated Wray to be the FBI Director and to replace fired FBI Director James Comey and was confirmed with bipartisan support.
During his prepared remarks, Wray talked at length about September 11th and how he was a new appointee, getting the lay of the land. He discussed spending most of the day in a “jam-packed command center in FBI Headquarters” where he said, “Everyone was trying to help, while at the same time struggling to comprehend the horrific reality of what was unfolding.”
He talked about remembering the urgency they all felt on that day and the feelings that came up after that day when there was an unresponsive plane in the sky or someone received an envelope with white powder. He talked about how that urgency translated into “unity and action” and a “fierce determination to work tirelessly to prevent something like that from every happening again” and how he wanted to help the Bureau continue on that path.
He talked about his “commitment to the pursuit of justice” for every American as long as it takes. He said, “That’s the kind of work the FBI’s 38,000 men and women are doing every day, in communities all over the country and around the world.”
After his prepared marks, Wray took questions from the faculty who expressed, along with the moderator, that they had received questions and concerns from students that they were going to discuss,
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Wray was asked about combating gun violence in light of the recent mass shootings. The Director said the shootings were a “direct assault on the feeling of safety that people in communities have which is fundamentally what law enforcement is designed to try to help address.”
In addition to working with state and local authorities, Wray discussed how the FBI plays an important and unique roll working to address violent crimes and active shooter situations by doing investigations and leading task forces in different states and localities. He also talked about using NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) which is a service that the FBI owns. He said they process about 40 million firearms purchases in a year and denied about 150K of them in the past year. He also said the FBI puts out reports about active shooter incidents and response and works with local agencies, schools and others in communities doing outreach and training. He added that the number of active shooter incidents have been higher now than in the past 20 years.
When asked by Associate Professor of Practice, Javed Ali, about the domestic terrorism threat from racially motivated violent extremist and anti-government extremists, Wray said that “Protecting Americans from terrorist attack, both domestic and international, remains the FBI’s number one priority.”
Wray said that they had elevated domestic terrorism as a national threat priority back in the summer of 2019 and that racially motivated violent extremism mostly concerned people who are “advocating the superiority of the white race.”
Wray also discussed how the growth of domestic terrorism during his first three years advanced significantly and said that “anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism is now at a national highest level threat priority on the same footing as something like ISIS.”
He noted the difference with the domestic terrorism threat to September 11th by saying that instead of a larger more complicated threat, the domestic terrorism threats are usually about lone actors or maybe a few people who are focusing on soft targets, people living their everyday lives, instead of planning a big spectacular event.
These domestic terrorists are using easily accessible weapons like a gun, knife, car or crude IED and they are radicalizing online. Wray said the challenge is connecting the dots because the terrorists “go from radicalization and mobilization not over years but in weeks” and it’s harder to connect the dots with the limited time they have to do it. In addition to “see something, say something” Wray said that the public needs to call law enforcement about people – behavior that Americans see online or in person that raises concerns.
Other threats that Wray discussed were cybersecurity attacks from Russia and China and the how they are working with cyber criminals in a blended threat to steal data from governments, businesses, universities and others to gain a military or financial edge. In response to the cybersecurity threats, Wray said the FBI is being proactive, not only trying to identify and stop the threats, but also going after their infrastructure to degrade or dismantle their servers as well as going after their money and cryptocurrency.
In an effort to recruit talent at U of M, Wray told the students, in a joking but also serious way, that if they joined the FBI, they would be able to go after bad actors LEGALLY through the FBI where in other instances it would be illegal to do what they were being asked to do.
Joy Rohde, Associate Professor of Public Policy, asked Wray about TikTok’s threat to national security and Wray said the FBI has national security concerns about the app because the parent company is controlled by the Chinese government. Wray said that control gives the Chinese government the potential to “leverage the app in ways that I think should concern us.” Those concerns including changing algorithms, manipulating content, stealing user data, getting access to the software and devices of millions of users and engaging in espionage operations.
When asked about the agency being biased or involved in politics, Wray said, “We base our cases on the facts and the law” and said there is a difference between people who are unhappy about or angry about the result about something they do vs. the way in which they get there. He said, “Our job, our mission, my message to our people is that we are going to follow the facts wherever they lead no matter who likes it.”
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