As Israel battles the Hamas terror group following an Oct. 7 assault inside its borders, authorities in the U.S. are urging awareness over the risk of "lone wolf" terror attacks on American soil.
A decade ago, during the rise of the Islamic State group, lone wolf attacks became a shocking new trend that counter-terrorism investigators worked tirelessly to thwart in the U.S. and abroad.
As the Trump administration squashed ISIS overseas, American law enforcement tamped down on the problem at home, leading to a decline in such attacks, according to Paul Mauro, a former NYPD inspector.
ISIS' defeats and the thwarting of domestic terror plots killed the appeal for people who were vulnerable to manipulation under what he called the "loser-to-lion" system, he told Fox News Digital. Lone wolves with nothing going for them believed they could achieve martyrdom through acts of terror, he said.
"You didn’t have to take down the Brooklyn Bridge. You were a lion of Islam if you stabbed your neighbor because he was an apostate," he said.
Last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress "terror threats have elevated" amid protests and debate over the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas terror group.
"The reality is that the terrorism threat has been elevated throughout 2023, but the ongoing war in the Middle East has raised the threat of an attack against Americans in the United States to a whole other level," Wray said.
James J. Carafano, a homeland security expert and senior counselor to the president and E.W. Richardson fellow at the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C., said the government needs to prioritize law enforcement over politics.
Carafano has studied dozens of homegrown attacks following 9/11, including the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. He said thwarting them requires following well-established practices of modern policing without political interference.
Both Mauro and Carafano identified two issues that may make Americans less safe — a lack of political unity and the porous southern border.
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