US defense center chief: Nations should strengthen cybersecurity vs terror attacks

MANILA, Philippines — The region’s nations should enhance partnership and collaboration in the fight against violent extremism and in enhancing cybersecurity, according to the director of a US center that specializes in regional and global issues.

Rear Adm. (Ret.) Peter Gumataotao, director of the Daniel. K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, said several international and regional trends were identified during their security and extremism forum in Manila.

“How resilient are we as a region in attacking and countering violent extremism? How resilient are we if we have a natural disaster and we come and get there as a while of government,” Gumataotao said in an interview with reporters on the sideline of APCSS Workshop on Countering Violent Extremism: Recent Lessons and Urgent Priorities in Makati City.

Gumataotao said that one of the trends identified by the participants in the workshop was the return of terrorists to their home countries as the Islamic State group’s campaign in the Middle East crumbled.

There was also the risk of continuing radicalization, and one example given during the workshop was the spread of violent ideology among prisoners.

Gumataotao said that one radical foreign prisoner could spread radical views once he was shipped back to his home country.

This possibility, according to Gumataotao, should prod law enforcement agencies to share information and criminal databases with one another.

Vulnerable communities could also prove a fertile ground for extremist ideology, he said.

This is the reason why the local leadership, local government units and community and religious leaders should be involved and be made part of the solution since they know their environment better than anyone else, according to Gumataotao.

The role of women was also highlighted during the workshop, according to the APCSS director, as they could be a part of the solution or become enablers of terrorism.

Gumataotao also highlighted the need for countries to strengthen their cybersecurity especially today when many aspects of a person’s life were reliant on the internet and technology.

He said that social media and fake news were just a facet of the broader issue on cybersecurity which Gumataotao said could be attacked by terrorists.

“Can you imagine if somebody is really smart and say, ‘I’m gonna take all this digitized information?’ Can you imagine if somebody just going in there and manipulating that?” he said.

He also reminded countries that there was no single solution to the problem of extremism they were facing.

He said that Philippine experience in fighting terrorists in Marawi for five months had provided other nations lessons in dealing with the problem in their own local environments.

From May to October last year, Philippine security forces battled Islamic State-inspired militants after militant fighters tried to transform Marawi into the capital of their Southeast Asian province.

The city has been retaken, but billions of pesos is needed to rehabilitate the lakeside town whose center was shattered by the fighting.