WASHINGTON – Terrorism is a greater threat to the U.S. now than ever before because of terrorist groups’ increased use of technology and social media, FBI Director Christopher Wray as well as the heads of the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center told a congressional hearing Thursday.
“These terrorists’ use of social media and encryption technology has made it harder to find their messages of destruction as they leave fewer footsteps and dots for us to connect,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told the House Homeland Security Committee.
Wray, Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke and National Counterterrorism Center Director Nicholas J Rasmussen stressed that the greatest threat comes from terror organizations’ effective recruitment strategies through social media.
“[ISIS’s] ability to spread their message of fear and hatred and recruit from all over the world is larger scale than Al Qaeda,” Rasmussen said.
Citing the terror attack in New York last month, Wray said groups like ISIS are able to use social media to recruit followers, inspiring them to conduct attacks with crude but effective weapons.
“These attacks may be smaller in scale,” he said, “but they are greater in volume.”
Because of terrorist groups’ increasing use of social media, it is urgent that the U.S. quickly and regularly update the informational toolkits to identify them, Wray said.
Rasmussen agreed.
“We must expand our investment and terrorist prevention, doing what we can to prevent the recruitment of American youth,” he said.