Political Extremism Among Veterans

Todd Helmus

Todd Helmus is a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation and a nationally recognized expert on disinformation and violent extremism. He specializes in the use of data and evidence-based strategies to understand and counter disinformation and extremism. He has studied the disinformation threat posed by deepfakes, Russian-led propaganda campaigns targeting the United States and Europe, and the use of social media by violent extremist groups. He has also led research on the effectiveness of online interventions to prevent radicalization. In addition to his research, Helmus has served as a consultant to the U.S. Departments of Defense, State, and Homeland Security and as a deployed analyst supporting U.S. military commands in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Wayne State University.

Seamus Hughes

Seamus Hughes is a member of the senior research faculty at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. Previously the deputy director of the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University, he is the author of an extensive body of work on extremism in the United States, including the critically acclaimed Homegrown: ISIS in America, and has testified before Congress on his findings. In addition to his academic pursuits, Hughes is a New York Times research journalist where he was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on law enforcement in America. Hughes was previously a lead staffer on national terrorism prevention at the National Counterterrorism Center. There, he created a groundbreaking interagency intervention program to help steer individuals away from violence through non–law enforcement means. A former senior counterterrorism adviser to the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he has authored numerous legislative bills, including sections of the 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act and the Special Agent Samuel Hicks Families of Fallen Heroes Act.

Kristofer Goldsmith

Kristofer Goldsmith is the CEO of the not-for-profit Task Force Butler Institute, which seeks to impose legal, social, and economic costs on those who seek to undermine democratic processes. As the chief investigator and associate director for policy and government affairs for Vietnam Veterans of America, he authored The Troll Report, which exposed the tactics of foreign actors who target service members, veterans, and their families online. Goldsmith earned a degree in political science with honors from Columbia University in 2020. He founded Task Force Butler to train and engage veterans in working to document, expose, and hold accountable extremists who target vulnerable groups with hate and violence. TFB bases its long-form reports on the successful Sines v. Kessler lawsuit, providing courtroom-ready evidence and analysis for use by government, journalists, and other not-for-profit organizations.

Nikki Wentling

Nikki Wentling is an award-winning reporter with Military Times, where she covers disinformation and extremism in veteran and military communities as part of a fellowship through Military Veterans in Journalism. She has reported on veterans, service members, and military families for nearly a decade, first with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock and later in Washington, D.C., as a national reporter with Stars and Stripes. She came to Military Times from the Denver Business Journal, where she reported on the technology industry. Wentling has a B.S. in journalism from the University of Kansas.

Rajeev Ramchand

Rajeev Ramchand is codirector of the RAND Epstein Family Veterans Policy Research Institute and a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation. He studies the prevalence, prevention, and treatment of mental health and substance use disorders in adolescents, service members and veterans, and minority populations. He has conducted many studies on suicide and suicide prevention, firearm policies, and the root causes of violent extremism, and he has developed tools to help organizations evaluate their own suicide and violent extremism prevention programs. Other current areas of research include lessons from the field of substance use disorder prevention and treatment for addressing violent extremism; military and veteran caregivers; associations between firearm availability, storage, and policies and suicide rates; and the impact of disasters on community health. He has Ph.D. in psychiatric epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.