WASHINGTON: US law enforcement and security agencies believe domestic extremists, notably white supremacists, pose a violent threat in the United States similar to that of the militant Islamic State group, top US security officials told Congress on Wednesday.

Concern about racially motivated domestic extremists had prompted the FBI to elevate the threat to a level equal with that posed by the Islamist militants, said Timothy Langan, the assistant director who heads the counterintelligence division.

Langan told a House Intelligence subcommittee the Federal Bureau of Investigation had detected a significant increase in the threat of violence from domestic extremists over the last 18 months.

He said the bureau was conducting around 2,700 investigations related to domestic violent extremism, and there had been 18 lethal attacks targeting US religious institutions in which 70 people had died in recent years.

The FBI has engaged with tech companies regarding their role in fueling extremism, has successfully disrupted planned acts of violence and will continue to “try to close the gap” on its inability to legally decode encryptions on mobile phones.

Published in Dawn, November 4th, 2021