“The same way it impacts all of our lives, it does impact some of the planning that we’re seeing people doing and the way they’re thinking about it,” Demers said. “Sometimes in conflicting ways: Some people are putting off plans, and other people are saying, ‘Well I’ve got to accelerate this because maybe all the borders will be shut down soon.’”
The Justice Department last week charged a Pakistani doctor with trying to help ISIS. The doctor, who was temporarily working in the U.S., initially planned to get to Syria by flying into Amman, Jordan. But, according to a DOJ press release, his plans changed when Jordan closed its borders because of the pandemic. He then decided to fly to Los Angeles and, from there, travel to Syria on a cargo ship. He was arrested at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on March 19.
Demers said the virus could also give terrorists new ways to attack.
“There are worries that people could try to weaponize their own illness by trying to infect other people,” he said.
Joshua Geltzer, a terrorism expert who previously worked in the National Security Division and is now at Georgetown Law, concurred that the virus may provoke threats in new ways.
Social distancing might raise the risk of homegrown radicalization, he noted, as isolated people with loads of free time get pulled down disinformation rabbit holes online.
“The idea that that can lead to particularly deranged interpretations of events and generate an extreme response, even violent action –– I think that threat gets magnified given the social isolation that we as a country are understandably adopting,” Geltzer said. „I feel like the past month and this virus have taken a dangerous information environment and really ratcheted up how lethal, how directly lethal it can be.“
Source: politico.com
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