Comey declared that the threat is “an order of magnitude greater than anything we’ve seen before.”
As a number of ISIS attacks have rocked Europe, it can be difficult to remember that the group is largely on the back foot.
“They are on the run,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said in an interview on CNN last week while addressing the spate of terror attacks by the group. “And I believe what we are seeing are the desperate actions of an entity that sees the noose closing around them.”
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However, as ISIS does steadily lose ground through conventional warfare in the Middle East, the group’s attacks against civilians around the world will only likely increase — at least for the time being.
“At some point there is going to be a terrorist diaspora out of Syria like we’ve never seen before,” explained FBI Director James B. Comey at a cybersecurity conference at Fordham University on Wednesday, the New York Times reports. “Not all of the Islamic State killers are going to die on the battlefield.”
As the terror group’s territory shrinks, dedicated fighters within the group will travel to find new locations to conduct their operations — most likely in hiding. Comey continued by saying that many of these core fighters would migrate to Western Europe as ISIS loses ground. And, there is always the risk that some of them would eventually reach the US.