Senator Collins Questions Intelligence Community Leaders on Global Threats

Her questioning focused on countering terrorist threats, preventing online radicalization, and protecting critical infrastructure.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Susan Collins today questioned Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard and FBI Director Kash Patel at a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) to review the Intelligence Community's annual global threat assessment. Her questioning focused on various threats to our homeland, including terrorist recruitment, potential attacks on critical infrastructure, and the Intelligence Community's efforts to detect and prevent emerging threats from foreign adversaries and extremist groups.

Q&A on Countering Terrorism Threats to the Homeland

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Sen. Collins: Director Gabbard, you just testified that ISIS and Al Qaeda are significantly weaker, and reflecting that view, you have devoted declining budgets, personnel, and emphasis on countering terrorism. Yet the fact is that ISIS is growing and operating in Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, and Iraq. Al Qaeda is surging in Afghanistan, the Arabian Peninsula, and throughout Central Africa. The Houthis in Yemen and the rest of the Iranian proxies remain a serious threat. Focusing, as you have done, on great power competitors seems to have diverted resources from the fight against terrorism, a fight that's very much still going on. As I have said repeatedly, it is terrorists who want and can kill Americans today--we've just seen the terrorists in Michigan attacking the synagogue. In addition, it appears that a more stove piped effort in the Intelligence Committee has returned. How are you ensuring that Americans are safe and that you are countering counterterrorism threats to our homeland and to US citizens abroad?

DNI Gabbard: Thank you, Senator Collins, for your question and the opportunity to clarify the comments in my opening statement. My reference to the size of ISIS and Al Qaeda organizationally is smaller and weaker than it was during its peak over a decade ago. However, I completely concur with your remarks about the threat of ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other Islamist terrorist groups around the world, and the threat that they pose to U.S. interests, service members, and directly to the homeland. Our ODNI National Counterterrorism Center has been at the forefront of ramping up, and I believe, is more active today than it has been, certainly in a long time. We are dedicating every resource that they ask for, as well as the counterterrorism elements across the IC to make sure that we are never taking our eye off of this persistent threat to the American people. The change in tactics based on the current environment is something we continue to be most concerned about. Increasingly, we are seeing less indicators of large-scale, organized, complex threats or attacks, and instead, efforts focused on individuals, either who have been radicalized by Islamist propaganda and may not have ever had contact with ISIS or Al Qaeda, for example, and others who have had contact, of which we are able to have more indications of. This remains, and as we come to present our budgets to you, a foremost and primary priority. The integration across the Intelligence Community on the counterterrorism threat occurs every single day, with our teams working very effectively together to thwart terrorist attacks, as we have over the last year.

Q&A on Countering Terrorism Recruitment

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Sen. Collins: Director Patel, I'm going to follow up on this issue with you. ISIS targets potential recruits online through social media, gaming platforms, and encrypted messaging apps. ISIS even facilitated a network online to smuggle illegal immigrants into the United States. Since April 2021, there have been more than 52 jihadist inspired cases across 30 states. What measures is the FBI taking to prevent foreign terrorist organizations from recruiting or influencing Americans, while also ensuring the protection of individual's right to privacy?

FBI Director Patel: Thank you, Senator-and I think you said it best. They have transferred their capabilities in terms of personal recruitments to online recruitments, which makes any terrorist organization, including ISIS, all the more powerful. What we have done is extended and expanded resources to environments like the Threat Screening Center, which allows us to collect biometric capabilities from all over the world. We've had a double-digit increase in that, and a double-digit increase in intelligence production. But what we've also done in the CT space specifically is expand the number of agents and intel analysts that go online and detect based on our biometric capabilities and intelligence that we have from the interagency. And what that leads us to is what we saw in December of last year, Senator, where we at the FBI stopped four terrorist attacks, four: in California, Texas, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, three of which were ISIS-inspired. We were able to detect these individuals, both online and in-person, using our covert platforms, and we shuttered a bombing campaign in Southern California and two mass casualty events for New Year's Eve.

Q&A on Protecting Critical U.S. Infrastructure

Click HERE to watch and HERE to download

Sen. Collins: Director Gabbard, the Intelligence Community did not detect an extremely serious breach affecting our telecommunications industry due to the Chinese Salt Typhoon incursions for a very long time. In addition, the Chinese Volt Typhoon threat poses a terrible threat to U.S. critical infrastructure. Specific sectors throughout the United States have been overlooked and under-protected. What are you doing to deal with the threat to critical infrastructure, our electric grid, our communication systems, given this huge mess by our talented Intelligence Community.

DNI Gabbard: Thank you, Senator Collins, for the question. You know, working with our partners at NSA and others to detect these threats and how they may be evolved or developing is something we're continuing to work on. Building strong partnerships with the private sector, whether it be in the telecom industry, the financial sector, the healthcare sector, the energy sector, is something that I'm rebuilding. We've seen some of these ongoing relationships falter over previous years. I've personally been astounded by some of the conversations I've had with leaders from these industries who are just as concerned as we are about these threats to our critical infrastructure, and yet, don't feel that they have the connectivity or the information to be able to secure their own infrastructure. So, in short, building those stronger partnerships, integrating and being able to share information intelligence where we can, is critical for us to be able to secure our country from these threats.

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