ISIS’s Persistent Threat and Aggravating Factors for Radicalization Today

Joshua Geltzer  testified before the House Homeland Security Committee, which convened a hearing on the subject of “ISIS Post-Caliphate: Threat Implications for America and the West”:

ISIS’s purported caliphate in Iraq and Syria is shriveling, but it is not gone. That, in itself, poses a continuing threat to the United States, one worsened by the current administration’s inability to keep our key partner in the fight against ISIS. Moreover, even as ISIS faces increasing pressure in physical space, it retains a significant foothold in virtual space, and will utilize the global following that it has built through the Internet to continue to reach into the United States to recruit and radicalize followers. That threat is, unfortunately, also aggravated by factors of our own current leadership’s making, with both rhetoric and policies that are alienating key communities. Finally, ISIS could turn to new forms of attacks against American targets, including novel types of cyber operations, against which the United States appears to be lagging in its preparation.