ISIS may be losing ground in Middle East, but terror is far from defeated

WASHINGTON (SBG) - Losing ground in Syria and Iraq, ISIS and those inspired by the terror group are taking a toll elsewhere. The latest scare was in Los Angeles where the Federal Bureau of Investigation says a 26-year old army veteran who’d recently converted to Islam plotted to set off an explosion at white supremacist rallies.

Sometimes we get asked 'what keeps you up at night?'. This is a case that keeps us up at night," said FBI agent Ryan Young who helped work the case, resulting the arrest of Mark Steven Domingo.

The alleged motive: revenge for the deadly attacks on 2 mosques in New Zealand.

“There’s no question that the territorial defeat of the Islamic state such as it was, is a huge step forward, but talk of the Islamic state as a terror group being defeated is extremely premature,” points out Dr. Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Levitt said it’s not just ISIS that’s concerning. He laid out examples of a separate resurgence of sorts by al-Qaeda to grapple with also.

This comes on the heels of the deadly shooting at a California synagogue and a thwarted plot at National Harbor near Washington DC, where a man allegedly planned to drive this stolen van through a sidewalk of pedestrians.

Part of the problem, while now an old one is still overwhelming: social media and the internet--and their use to spread propaganda, recruit and inspire.

To many, this has become a broken record.

“Well, unfortunately what’s routine as a conversation piece doesn’t mean it’s something we’ve solved as a social or national security issue,” explained Levitt. “The fact is that terrorists are still able to exploit the use of the internet, they move from different platforms and they’re still able to communicate.”

And sharing material that could be instigating future acts. This week, there was a rare but recent appearance by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic state that many people thought was dead. The images, the FBI worries, could possibly inspire followers to act in the same the way Osama bin Laden would use videos, years into the Afghanistan war as a call to arms.