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In this episode of INTELLIGENCE MATTERS, President Biden's deputy homeland security adviser at the National Security Council, Russ Travers, speaks with host Michael Morell about the varied and diffuse array of terrorist threats to the United States. A career intelligence officer and former acting and deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Travers offers a history of Islamist terrorism and describes how splintered, geographically dispersed networks tied to ISIS and al Qaeda continue to pose a threat to the U.S.. Travers and Morell also discuss the increase in racially and ethnically motivated attacks by domestic groups, and why preventing them poses a complex set of challenges for U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities. Travers also shares thoughts on how to responsibly move resources away from counterterrorism toward Great Power competition. Editor's note: This conversation was taped before a decision was made by the Biden Administration on troop levels in Afghanistan.

INTELLIGENCE MATTERS is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever podcasts are available.

Excerpts from the latest episode:

• Rise of domestic violent extremism: “[U]nfortunately, the broad view of the community is that it's likely to get worse. I think there's the general concern that biases against minorities and perceived government overreach is going to continue to drive domestic extremism, radicalization and eventually the mobilization of violence. And then we've got all the kind of newer sociopolitical developments, the narrative surrounding election fraud and the breach of the Capitol, conditions related to COVID and various conspiracy theories that promote violence. Almost certainly they're going to make matters worse.”

• Evolving threat from Islamist terrorism: “Several years ago, we started referring to the threat as diverse and diffuse. I think that is a completely accurate characterization, has been really now for a number of years. And it does mean that we've got a very broad but very different threat landscape than we had 20 years ago.”

• Shifting resources from counterterrorism: “We are going to move collection resources away from CT [counterterrorism] to support other national security threats. I think that's perfectly appropriate. But I also think that we need to have a very candid conversation about risk. And invariably, if we know less about a problem, we are accepting some additional degree of risk. And it just needs to be done with open eyes, as it's a difficult proposition in terms of comparing and contrasting the risk posed by Country X or Y or function X or Y against terrorism. But that's the kind of work that I think that we're going to have to do to ensure that – the prime directive for me is that we don't go back to some of the maladies that affected us before 9/11.”

Follow Michael Morell on Twitter at @MichaelJMorell and Intelligence Matters at @IntelMattersPod. Discover more CBS News podcasts at CBSAudio.com/podcasts.

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