Swift, ruthless and deadly, the attack appeared to reflect an evolution of the terrorist threat that Mr. Obama and federal officials have long dreaded: homegrown, self-radicalized individuals operating undetected before striking one of many soft targets that can never be fully protected in a country as sprawling as the United States.
“We have moved to an entirely new phase in the global terrorist threat and in our homeland security efforts,” Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, said in an interview on Saturday. Terrorists have “in effect outsourced attempts to attack our homeland. We’ve seen this not just here but in other places. This requires a whole new approach, in my view.”…
John P. Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security, said in an interview on Saturday that the Islamic State was adapting. “It’s a different iteration of the threat,” he said. “Al Qaeda really put a premium on large-scale catastrophic attacks with large loss of life. I think ISIL is trying to explore this as well, but this tactic of small-scale attacks that might fail but still inspire terror” is relatively new for the group.
He added that homegrown terrorists were harder to spot, partly because they act with less preparation. “We used to have a long time from flash to bang because Al Qaeda would spend years planning,” he said. “Now we see a much shorter time from flash to bang.”
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