US still facing risk from terrorism, former National Counterterrorism Center [NCTC] acting Dir Russell Travers
"We still have a lot of work to do" he told @mvhaydencenter Wednesday night, citing "diverse and diffuse" threats from range of actors
#ISIS - "They were very much on their back foot to be sure a year and a half ago - not so much anymore" per former NCTC acting director Russell Travers "They have something like two dozen branches and networks around the globe"
"We see [al] #Shabaab killing Americans in East #Africa. They're attempting to utilize aircraft for plotting" per Travers "We see them working on command and control coordination"
Ability of terror groups to use/adapt technology for deep fakes to weapons of mass destruction - "things that we're going to have to consider here in the next 4 or 5 years" per Travers
"The threat is in some ways offsetting some of those tremendous gains that we've made, and we're going to be thinking about this very carefully particularly as we start to draw down forces overseas" Travers warned
"We need to be a little bit on the humble side" when thinking about counterterror, per Travers "We need to think, I believe, fairly holistically about the nature of this threat because it can evolve very quickly"
"By far the greatest concern is right-wing white supremacists" per former NCTC acting director Russ Travers "In point of fact, this is not really domestic terrorism. It's a bit of an int'l movement"
"They all reference one another. They they sort of take energy from one another"
Right-wing, white supremacist groups - "we see some traveling back and forth, training overseas, but I don't think we fully understand the nature of these connections yet" per former NCTC acting director Travers "We don't actually, I think, understand the number of incidents..."
Terrorists "tend to be early practitioners of using technology in lots of innovative ways. And almost always their ability to use technology outpaces our ability to develop the kind of legal and policy to deal interact with that technology" per Travers
Terrorists and WMD? "This is probably one of the greatest concerns that I've got in that there are a lot of directions on how to build this stuff floating around on the Web" per Travers "...it would not surprise me at all to see poison gases"
"There's less focus on #terrorism, there's certainly far less interest in it downtown" per former NCTC acting Dir Russell Travers to @mvhaydencenter
"We don't have the kinds of meetings that we had. We don't have the sort of expertise and high level sort of significant counterterrorism experts at though at the White House that we used to have" per Travers
"I have no personal insight into exactly why I was fired" per former acting NCTC Dir Russell Travers "I went into the meeting as the acting director and I was told I was no longer"
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin 'Attash & Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi were charged in June 2008 & then again in May 2012 for their alleged roles in planning the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on #NewYork's World Trade Center & the Pentagon
JUST IN: US issues new National Counterintelligence Strategy
Updated strategy, signed by @POTUS Thursday, based on 3 pillars, per @NCSCgov:
-outmaneuver/constrain foreign intelligence entities
-protect US strategic advantages
-invest in the future
"Foreign intelligence and security services & their proxies persist in seeking to acquire our most
sensitive information, technology, and intellectual property" per @POTUS in the just-released strategy
"Non-state actors are following suit"
Foreign intelligence entities "also seeking to take advantage of the proliferation of commercially available tools to conduct surveillance; collect vast amounts of previously unavailable personal data;
& position themselves to disrupt our infrastructure..." per @POTUS
Some nuggets from @FBI Dir. Christopher Wray's appearance Tuesday before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies...
#ArtificialIntelligence & #Election2024-"We are, of course, seeing & I've been warning about this for some time, the role of AI to enhance efforts that our foreign adversaries have already been engaged in" per @FBI's Wray
"It's not that it [#ArtificialIntelligence] changes fundamentally what it is our adversaries want to do...it allows them to amplify to do it, to make it more sophisticated, more deceptive, cheaper, faster" per @FBI's Wray
HAPPENING NOW - US intelligence chiefs testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee:
@ODNIgov Dir Avril Haines
@CIA Dir William Burns
@FBI Dir Christoper Wray
@NSAGov Dir Gen Timothy Haugh
@DefenseIntel Dir LtGen Jeffrey Krause
@StateDept Asst Sec for Intel Brett Holmgren
Noting that the current era is as challenging as ever, with a wide variety of threats, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair @MarkWarner calls for "redefining what we think of" when it comes to national security
@MarkWarner "We are no even seeing the possibility of foreign adversaries weaponizing space" in ways that could be detrimental to US way of life, per @MarkWarner
NEW: @FBI joins White House, Senate intelligence committee chair in sounding alarm about foreign interference in #Election2024
"This election cycle, the US will face more adversaries, moving at a faster pace & enabled by new technology
per Dir Christopher Wray at @INSAlliance
#ArtificialIntelligence advances "lowering the barrier to entry-making it easier for both more & less-sophisticated foreign adversaries to engage in malign influence" per @FBI's Wray
"Making foreign influence efforts by players old and&new more realistic & difficult to detect"
@FBI Where are US adversaries focused?
“The attack surface for the bad guys is the private sector” per @FBI's Wray "The intelligence that we need is in the hands of the private sector, often”