Threat assessmentDomestic Violent Extremists’ Threat Has Increased Since 2015: Intelligence Chiefs
Last week, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines released to Congress an unclassified annual report – the IC’s 2021 Annual Threat Assessment. DNI Avril Haines, CIA director Bill Burns, and FBI director Christopher Wray testified before the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. “DVE [domestic violent extremists] is an increasingly complex threat that is growing in the United States …. These extremists often see themselves as part of a global movement and, in fact, a number of other countries are experiencing a rise in DVE,” Haines said.
Last week, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, in coordination with Intelligence Community IC) leaders, released to Congress an unclassified annual report – the IC’s 2021 Annual Threat Assessment.
DNI Avril Haines, CIA director Bill Burns, and FBI director Christopher Wray testified before the Senate and House Intelligence Committees.
Below are the main takeaways from their testimonies and the report, and Haines’s opening statement to the
Key takeaways
· ISIS and al-Qaeda “remain the greatest Sunni terrorist threats to U.S. interests overseas” and still want to conduct attacks on our home soil, but “U.S.-based lone actors and small cells with a broad range of ideological motivations pose a greater immediate domestic threat.”
· The domestic threat comes from homegrown violent extremists who may not go overseas to train with ISIS or al-Qaeda but are inspired to commit attacks on behalf of the terror groups, and from domestic violent extremists (DVE) motivated by a range of ideologies including white supremacy and anti-government movements.
· “DVE is an increasingly complex threat that is growing in the United States …. These extremists often see themselves as part of a global movement and, in fact, a number of other countries are experiencing a rise in DVE,” DNI Haines said. “For example, Australia, Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom consider white, racially, or ethnically motivated violent extremists, including neo-Nazi groups, to be the fastest growing terrorism threat they face today. And of course, regional conflicts continue to fuel humanitarian crisis, undermine stability, and threaten U.S. persons and interests.”
· “Violent extremists who espouse an often overlapping mix of white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and exclusionary cultural-nationalist beliefs” has “ebbed and flowed for decades but has increased since 2015.”
· “Violent extremists who promote the superiority of the white race have been responsible for at least 26 lethal attacks that killed more than 141 people and for dozens of disrupted plots in the West since 2015,” the report notes. “While these extremists often see themselves as part of a broader global movement, most attacks have been carried out by individuals or small, independent cells.”
· The targets of domestic violent extremists “have increasingly included large public gatherings, houses of worship, law enforcement and government facilities, and retail locations,” and lone actors are “increasingly choosing soft, familiar targets for their attacks, limiting law enforcement opportunities for detection and disruption.”
