Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said Thursday that domestic terrorists represent the greatest threat to national security, CNN reports.
The intelligence chief told a Senate panel that homegrown terrorists are "the most frequent and unpredictable terrorist threat to the United States homeland."
He added that although ISIS lost territory in the Middle East, the group continues to inspire and direct attacks.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said in April that since 2013 there have been at minimum 37 "ISIS-linked plots to attack our country," according to The Washington Free Beacon.
"We've seen an unprecedented spike in homegrown terrorism," Kelly said at an address at George Washington University. "These are the cases we know about—homegrown terrorism is notoriously difficult to predict and control."
He added that terrorists in the U.S. are planning attacks "every single day," and "they try to carry out this mission each and every single day and no one can tell you how to stop it. No one."
Coats later said that North Korea is a "potentially existential threat" to the country, and that China "can play a significant role" in deterring its nuclear missile program. He also predicted that the situation in Afghanistan will "almost certainly deteriorate through 2018," in terms of politics and security.
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