“Terrorism Threat Persists,” Says DIA Chief in Worldwide Threat Assessment

Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, the director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), provided a “Worldwide Threat Assessment” statement for the record last week to the U.S. Senate’s Armed Services Committee, in which he noted “the terrorism threat persists” despite transnational terror groups having “suffered significant losses.” The Middle East remains tumultuous, Berrier commented, with civil conflict and insufficient economic opportunity compounding the terrorism situation. He also brought up Africa, where he noted terrorism presents a growing problem as demonstrated by the activities of groups like Boko Haram and al Shabaab. Berrier observed that al Qa’ida is unlikely to oversee mass attacks in the U.S. in 2021, but “online communication between [al Qa’ida] in the Arabian Peninsula and the 2019 Pensacola attacker underscores the relative ease of enabling attacks over the internet and its ability to capitalize on opportunities to target the U.S. homeland or other Western countries.” Read more at the DIA.