Tom Cotton Quotes

It is changing the face of terrorism. It is basically bringing it to the United States, to our great citizens. We know the terrorists are barbaric and murderers that attack innocent civilians, as they did in this case.

The Boston Marathon bombings in April 2013 remind us that the terrorist threat against the United States remains persistent. The threat from homegrown violent extremists is of particular concern. These individuals present unique challenges because they do not share a typical profile; their experiences and motives are often distinct and personal.

It's much harder to detect a lone wolf than it is somebody who's associated with a larger organization who's having planning meetings and making phone calls to people in the organization. And so that is really how the jihad has really developed in the United States.

The new age of terrorism isn't on the battlefield: it's in your own backyard. Whether it's at a concert in France or a restaurant in the United States, terrorism doesn't have to happen in a military installation by any stretch of the imagination.

The threat here focuses primarily on troubled souls in America who are being inspired or enabled online to do something violent for ISIL.

Criminal and terrorist threats are morphing beyond traditional actors and tactics. We still have to worry about things like an al-Qaida cell plotting a large-scale attack, but we also now have to worry increasingly about homegrown violent extremists radicalizing in the shadows.

Foreign terrorists are using technology to radicalize Americans at a troubling pace that continues to increase.

Terrorists in ungoverned spaces - both physical and cyber - readily disseminate propaganda and training materials to attract easily influenced individuals around the world to their cause. They motivate these individuals to act at home or encourage them to travel.

The threat has changed from simply worrying about foreigners coming here, to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens - raised here, born here, and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born.

I think the forms of terrorism are becoming very diverse, amongst them cyber-terrorism, for example.

Well, one thing's very clear, that terrorism isn't just a threat which is external to Western countries. It's not simply a foreign menace that comes from overseas to strike our cities. It can and it does, as we now know, come from within our own countries and from inside our own populations.

Al-Qa’ida members -- including some who are US citizens --have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.

The Internet has made it easier for those who want to attack the American way of life to identify like-minded individuals to carry out their terroristic plans

Every lethal terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11 has been carried out by an American citizen or a legal permanent resident, not by recent immigrants or by refugees. So tamping down immigration won't fix the real issue, which is 'homegrown' terrorism.

The only lethal terrorist to immigrate to the United States as an adult and conduct an attack shortly after arriving is Tashfeen Malik, who was born in Pakistan.

I'm over here with the French counterterrorism experts talking about the 'Charlie Hebdo' case, how we can stop foreign fighters from coming out of Iraq and Syria to Europe, but then we have this phenomenon in the United States where they can be activated by the Internet, and, really, terrorism has gone viral.

When ISIS and al Qaeda have attacked or plotted attacks in the West in the past decade or so, they have invariably used hydrogen peroxide-based bombs because acquiring military-grade explosives or dynamite is nearly impossible for would-be terrorists in Western countries.

Again and again since 9/11, terror attacks in the West have been carried out by second-generation Muslims who are citizens of the very country they are attacking.

It's one thing for someone to travel over to Syria and Iraq and come back. But, boy, it's a lot easier if they activate someone who's already here.

Today, few terrorist organizations still employ the 'al-Qaeda model' in which individuals travel to terrorist training camps overseas and then are deployed to the West to inflict atrocities.

We obviously know that terrorist groups have become very reliant on social media.

Nobody knows what self-radicalized means, and that's one of the weird things about the way that we talk about terrorism. We talk about radicalization as though it were a thing, as though you could sort of track it and identify it, and that's not the case.

Here's the reality: There is always a credible threat, and terror can strike at any time, anywhere, especially as lone wolf attacks backed up by Islamic ideology become more prevalent.

We need to do more to prevent radicalization, the inspiration of terrorism in this country.

ISIS uses traditional media platforms as well as widespread social media campaigns to propagate its ideology. With the broad distribution of social media, terrorists can spot, assess, recruit, and radicalize vulnerable persons of all ages in the U.S. either to travel to foreign lands or to conduct an attack on the homeland.