Washington, DC [US], September 15 : The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a report that domestic and foreign terrorism are among the top threats in the country, reported The Hill.
The DHS published a detailed report in its annual threat assessment.
Although the threat of terrorism are largely unchanged, but officials warned lone actors and small groups still creates the greatest risk to the public in the upcoming year, according to The Hill.
“Terrorists both foreign and domestic remain a top threat to the homeland. During the next year, we assess that the threat of violence from individuals radicalized in the United States will remain high but largely unchanged from the assessment made throughout … the last year,” a senior DHS official said.
“And this threat is marked by lone offenders and small groups seeking to conduct attacks with little to no warning," the official added.
Moreover, according to the report notes, domestic violent extremists have conducted three fatal attacks since January 2022 which are responsible for as many as 21 deaths, reported The Hill.
The annual report came after the hearings dedicated to reviewing of varying threats against the US.
It further noted that the critical infrastructure will always be a potential target of terrorist attacks. They believed that this would allow them to be the most disruptive of American's daily way of life, be it through launching cyber or physical attacks, reported The Hill.
Moreover, the assessment also reviewed migration patterns and noted that the record number of arrivals at the border has complicated security.
According to The Hill, migration has also led to the increase in the number of people flagged as having possible terrorist ties.
“Record encounters of migrants arriving from a growing number of countries have complicated border and immigration security. We’ve encountered a growing number of individuals in the terrorist screening dataset, also known as the watch list,” the official said.
DHS noted that inclusion on the list could mean being an associate of an individual connected to terrorism, as well as those “directly engaged in terrorist activity."
The DHS report also agrees to the changes made by the Biden administration to restrict the number of people from permitting to enter the country.
However, despite declines after the May policy changes, “overall encounters for the fiscal year are on pace to nearly match 2022’s record high total.”
Moreover, “[Artificial intelligence] enables the rapid creation of an endless supply of higher quality, more idiomatically correct text, providing influence actors the ability to expand their messaging and give it a greater aura of credibility,” the report added.
The report also highlighted the DHS plans to alert the public about potential threats, according to The Hill.
"In the future, the issuance of NTAS bulletins will be reserved for situations where we need to alert the public about a specific or imminent terrorist threat or about a change in the terrorism threat level,” report added.
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