This week’s release of the Intelligence Community’s unclassified Worldwide Threat Assessment made clear which groups the IC believes pose the greatest terrorist threats to the U.S. in 2019.
The list of terrorist organizations includes: ISIS, Al Qaeda, Homegrown Violent Extremists (‘likely to present the most acute Sunni terrorist threat to the U.S.’) Shia Actors (including groups backed by Iran), Lebanese Hezbollah, and Violent Ethno-supremacist and Ultranationalist Groups.
The Cipher Brief posed four questions to former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Nicholas Rasmussen, who is currently the Senior Director of Counterterrorism Programs at the McCain Institute.
The Cipher Brief: Which groups pose the largest threat to the U.S. at home and abroad in 2019?
Rasmussen: The most significant international terrorist threat to the U.S. both at home and abroad, continues to come from ISIS and al-Qaeda, perhaps just as importantly, from the large number of followers/believers/adherents around the world that still maintain allegiance or an ideological connection to these two groups.
The recent policy debate over withdrawal from Syria once again brings to the surface, the familiar debate about what it means to “defeat” a terrorist organization, including whether that should even be articulated as an achievable objective.
In my view, we have made great strides in suppressing the terrorist threat, in mitigating the terrorist threat, in containing and perhaps reducing the terrorist threat, particularly here inside the United States. Eliminating the terrorist threat will remain an elusive, and perhaps, unachievable goal.
It’s worth stating clearly that our most proximate terrorism threat inside the United States at present is likely from domestic terrorists — individuals or small groups motivated by some hate-based set of beliefs, whether that’s white supremacy/nationalism or anti-Semitism or simply hatred focused on someone on the other side of the increasingly wide political divide we are experiencing in this country.
The Cipher Brief: Which groups, that may not be high on the radar right now, are best positioned to take advantage of global circumstances to gain the most strength in 2019?
Rasmussen: As ISIS inside Iraq and Syria continues to see its territorial hold weaken even further, and as ISIS adapts to that reality by acting more as a clandestine insurgency rather than as a port-state, I suspect we will see some of the ISIS-affiliated groups around the world seek to take on more responsibility for advancing the group’s global agenda. ISIS-Khorasan, operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan, would seem well positioned to take advantage of potential U.S. withdrawal or downsizing in Afghanistan.
The Cipher Brief: What are the tactics that the U.S. and its allies should be focused on to address these emerging terrorist threats?
Rasmussen: Terrorism analysts have long focused on the potential cyber capability of terrorist groups and yet this remains an area of largely untapped potential for groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda. I still cannot explain to my own satisfaction why terrorist groups, or individual terrorists, have not succeeded in carrying out a truly damaging or destructive cyberattack on (for example) critical infrastructure in a targeted country.
I suspect that at some point in the future, we will be confronted by this reality. Also, having seen state actors like Russia achieve success by manipulating the information environment in western democracies, one suspects that some number of forward-thinking terrorists are out there somewhere thinking about how best to weaponize information in support of their extremist objectives.
The Cipher Brief: Finally, a reality check: there hasn’t been a significant terrorist attack in the U.S. in quite some time, yet we’ve heard that organizations haven’t stopped actively plotting (for example, AQAP’s quest to bring down an airliner). Has that threat picture changed in your opinion, and what do you see as the next threat, if left without a countermeasure, that could cause the greatest damage within the U.S.?
Rasmussen: I’m certainly not privy to the latest intelligence, but speaking personally, I’m still a long way away from saying that we are out of the woods when it comes to aviation threats, both globally and potentially here in the United States. What better way for a terrorist group that is objectively “losing” on the battlefield to bolster its brand than to cripple the aviation sector and perhaps even the wider economy? It’s simply too tempting a proposition for terrorists.
At the same time, technology remains both our friend and our enemy when it comes to aviation threats. Terrorists will continue to find ever more creative ways to attack airplanes and we must work equally diligently, if not more so, to turn technology to our advantage in that competition.
Read also: The Threat Posed by Hezbollah
How to Kill Off a Withering Terrorist Organization
