WASHINGTON, D.C. — They flew in from New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles to hole up in a windowless D.C. conference room for nearly five hours on Wednesday — representatives of the country’s top tech and entertainment companies brainstorming with U.S. counterterrorism officials to tackle one tough question: how to stop the spread of ISIS online.
The standoff between Apple and the FBI did not come up during the meeting, though the issues it involves are at the heart of the very things being discussed. As the role of technology in our lives continues its explosive growth, how will the balance between privacy and security play out in the new Silicon Valley-D.C. relationship?
Among the handful of Arab participants who took part in Wednesday’s event, the questions raised felt even greater.
“They wanted to figure out how to fight ISIS online, how to understand the psychology of those who support ISIS, and they invited almost no one who speaks for those of us in the Arab world, and from Arab communities, who have everything to lose from ISIS’s growing popularity,” said one Arab attendee, who estimated that less than 10% of the attendants were of Middle Eastern descent. “They don’t understand this community. That has been proven time and time again with their tone deaf messages. Why hold an event like this where there are ten white men outnumbering every Arab?”
The lack of voices from the Middle East at the event was raised repeatedly, with one attendee garnering applause when they asked why — in a discussion regarding ISIS’s appeal to young Arab-American Muslims — there was no one speaking to their appeal from within that community.
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