FBI Director Kash Patel said on Tuesday that he believes “the greatest single security threat” to the United States “is the perpetration of violence through the online space.” 

Patel made the comments after being asked by Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing what he sees as the top domestic security threat facing the country. The FBI director argued that the “greatest domestic threats” were emanating online and resulting in attacks against children, public figures and synagogues. 

“The mechanism of the threat is the cyber landscape,” Patel said. “The greatest single security threat is the perpetration of violence through the online space, be it upon our institutions of worship, or be it upon our elected leadership like we saw at the UFC 250 event, or like we saw in the synagogues in Sen. [Amy] Klobuchar’s (D-MN) jurisdiction.”

The FBI director appeared to be referring to the attack on Temple Israel in Michigan earlier this year, which he confused with Minnesota. 

Regarding the threats to children, Patel expressed concern about “the child predators that are using the online space to lure adolescents and toddlers into chat rooms that we can’t police, and then turning them into sexual assault victims, and also exploiting their images at the ages of 10, 12 and 14 for their criminal deviant purposes.”

“Those are some of the greatest domestic threats, and we just need more partnerships at the state and local level to be able to police those,” he said. 

Pressed by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) on his firing of a dozen members of the FBI’s counterintelligence team tasked with tracking Iranian threats, Patel defended terminating those agents and staff members and touted the bureau’s handling of espionage matters emanating from Iran. 

“Individuals that have been removed were removed for reasons that — they basically failed to meet the standards of the FBI,” Patel said. “When it comes to Iran, we’ve arrested 55% more spies from Iran than any FBI in the history of the United States of America. We’ve seen an 100% increase when it involves specific threats to the homeland based out of Iran.”

Patel was also asked in the hearing by Blumenthal if the bureau was investigating “potential intelligence compromises” caused by a Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin who had financed part of Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding celebration in May. The FBI director sparred with Blumenthal after noting that he was not aware of the public reporting on the subject, which concluded with Patel defending the FBI’s record of counterespionage arrests under his tenure.

“The counterespionage arrests by this FBI are up 53%, including from Russia. We’ve arrested more espionage actors in these last 18 months than any team up here in the FBI’s history, and we’ll continue to investigate,” Patel said. “What we are going to continue to do is what we’ve done in the counterintelligence and espionage division, which is arrest more spies than any FBI in history from Russia, China, Iran and [the] DPRK.”