[1] CEP was formally launched on 22 September 2014, by former senior government officials, including former the Homeland Security adviser Frances Townsend, former Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman and Mark Wallace, a former U.S.

[2] The mission of the organization is to fight global extremism, with an initial goal of disrupting the financing and online recruitment and propaganda of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).

[6] CEP launched its "Digital Disruption Campaign" to remove accounts associated with ISIS from social media networks in order to deny them popular platforms to incite violence, spread their ideas and recruit members.

[7] ISIS has made extensive use of social media, especially Twitter, to recruit fighters and to distribute propaganda videos, including clips that show the decapitation of American journalists and a British foreign aid official.

[3] A study released by CEP in July 2018, determined that while YouTube had made a great deal of progress towards removing extremist content, terrorists still had a large audience on the site.

[9] In December 2022, Farid submitted an amicus curiae brief in the case Gonzalez v. Google LLC, which dealt with the question of whether recommender systems are covered by liability exemptions in dealing with terrorism-related content hosted on their servers.

In support of the petitioners, CEP argued that Google prioritised revenues on its platforms, including YouTube, knowingly allowing extreme content to be promoted by its algorithms as a result.

[10] On 28 September 2015, CEP co-hosted the first Global Youth Summit Against Violent Extremism with the U.S. Department of State and Search for Common Ground at The Roosevelt Hotel in New York City.

[14] In June 2016, CEP unveiled a software tool for use by Internet and social media companies to "quickly find and eliminate extremist content used to spread and incite violence and attacks".

It functions similarly to PhotoDNA, a system that uses robust hashing technology that Farid worked on developing with Microsoft, which is "now widely used by Internet companies to stop the spread of content showing sexual exploitation or pornography involving children".

One such initiative is the "Alternative Pathways" rehabilitation and reintegration program, developed with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to fill the gap in formal in-prison recidivism reduction and post-release support for individuals with extremism-related convictions in the United States.

Through partnerships with various stakeholders, including law enforcement, mental health providers, and religious leaders, the 4R Network promotes discussions, shares knowledge, and fosters collaborations to address the needs of reintegrating extremism-related offenders.

By strengthening the capacity of stakeholders to provide psychosocial support to families of foreign terrorist fighters, the project aims to promote long-term recovery and resilience while addressing root causes of radicalization.

[22] In the U.S., CEP coordinates and chairs the counter-financing working group of the Eradicate Hate Summit, bringing together U.S. research institutes and the financial industry to stems the flow of money to American extremists.

[30][31] The claimed leaks revealed that in January 2015, Frances Townsend wrote an email to Otaiba for arranging meeting with the UAE President, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.