Transnational terrorists and criminals may collaborate, appropriate shared tactics, and otherwise benefit from interaction, resulting in bolstered capabilities, enhanced organizational infrastructure, improved access to resources, and expanded geographic reach. Historical examples also indicate that terrorist and transnational criminal groups may evolve, converge, transform, or otherwise alter their ideological motivations and organizational composition to appear similar. Although information on the extent and nature of criminal-terrorist relationships, including their impact on U.S. national security, remains anecdotal, many view the potential confluence of criminal and terrorist actors, skills, resources, and violent tactics as a cause for concern. Such enhancements may in turn lengthen the duration of insurgencies, extend the longevity and capabilities of criminal and terrorist organizations, and undermine the ability of fragile governments to exert full control of their territory. Some analysts have identified a series of potentially disturbing patterns that has hastened the expansion of relationships between terrorist and transnational crime groups. First, criminal syndicates appear to be growing in size, scope, and ambition. Globalization has extended their transnational reach, while major developments in technology, trade, and the financial industry have provided them with opportunities to exploit vulnerabilities in emerging criminal sectors, such as cybercrime. Many now maintain a transnational footprint and a flexible and networked membership roster that can adapt more readily to new market niches and establish more fluid alliances with external individuals and groups. Second, the nature and activities of terrorist organizations appear to have also changed. Terrorist groups today, particularly those that most threaten U.S. global interests, appear to be motivated primarily by religious rather than nationalist and ethnic separatist imperatives that were common in the 1960s and 1970s. This shift has resulted in extremist movements that elicit sympathy well beyond a specific country or geographic region. Further, terrorist groups appear to have become more resilient, due to a combination of continued state sponsorship or support, as well as entrepreneurial expansion into profitable criminal activities. Combined, these trends may suggest an increase in geographic overlap where criminals and terrorists could operate and interact. These patterns may also suggest greater blurring of distinctions between one group and the other, the adoption of activities often attributed to the other, or the ad hoc evolution of a group's objectives based on the security challenges they encounter. Key nodes, where interaction is most likely, include prisons; cyberspace, particularly online opportunities for social networking; and ungoverned or difficult-to-govern spaces, which include regions plagued by endemic corruption, conflict or post-conflict zones where legitimate governance has yet to take root, border regions, free trade zones, and urban mega cities where pockets of poverty, violence, criminality, and impunity from national law prevails. Overlap may also be facilitated by the involvement of negligent or hostile governments and kleptocratic or criminal states that may consider sponsorship or support of criminal or terrorist activity of strategic value. The U.S. government has asserted that terrorism, insurgency, and crime interact in varied and significant ways, to the detriment of U.S. national security interests. In January 2012, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) reported to Congress that transnational organized crime and its links to international terrorism was among the nation's most pressing national security concerns, specifically identifying the following areas of concern for crime-terrorism interaction: Nuclear proliferation: "We are aware of the potential for criminal service providers to play an important role in proliferating nuclear-applicable materials and facilitating terrorism." Kidnapping for ransom: "Kidnapping for ransom is increasing in many regions worldwide and generates new and deep income streams for transnational criminal networks ... and terrorist networks." Human smuggling: "Those who smuggle humans illegally have access to sophisticated, forged travel papers and the ability to constantly change their smuggling routes—routes that may span multiple continents before reaching their destinations. Smugglers undermine state sovereignty and sometimes facilitate the terrorist threat." Illicit finance: "Terrorists and insurgents will increasingly turn to crime and criminal networks for funding and logistics, in part because of U.S. and Western success in attacking other sources of funding. Criminal connections and activities of both Hizballah and AQIM [Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb] illustrate this trend." DNI James R. Clapper's testimony to Congress in 2012 reiterated the findings of the U.S. intelligence community's 2010 review of threats posed by transnational organized crime. In that review, the first of its kind in 15 years, the intelligence community ultimately concluded that such illicit networks have "dramatically" increased in size, scope, and influence internationally. A public summary of the assessment identified a "threatening crime-terror nexus" as one of five key threats to U.S. national security: Terrorists and insurgents increasingly will turn to crime to generate funding and will acquire logistical support from criminals, in part because of successes by U.S. agencies and partner nations in attacking other sources of their funding. In some instances, terrorists and insurgents prefer to conduct criminal activities themselves; when they cannot do so, they turn to outside individuals and facilitators. Proceeds from the drug trade are critical to the continued funding of such terrorist groups as the Taliban and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Terrorist organizations such as al-Shabaab and drug trafficking organizations such as the cartels based in Mexico are turning to criminal activities such as kidnapping for ransom to generate funding to continue their operations. Some criminals could have the capability to provide weapons of mass destruction (WMD) material to other terrorist groups, such as Hizballah and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, though the strength of these drug links and support remain unclear. U.S. intelligence, law enforcement, and military services have reported that more than 40 foreign terrorist organizations have links to the drug trade. Some criminal organizations have adopted extreme and widespread violence in an overt effort to intimidate governments at various levels. DNI Clapper's testimony to Congress in 2013 additionally noted that the U.S. intelligence community is "monitoring the expanding scope and diversity of 'facilitation networks,' which include semi-legitimate travel experts, attorneys, and other types of professionals, as well as corrupt officials, who provide support services to criminal and terrorist groups." Other U.S. government documents characterize the confluence of transnational organized crime and international terrorism as a growing phenomenon. Whereas in previous decades criminal and terrorism links occasionally occurred, such connections appear to be taking place with greater frequency today and may be evolving into more of a matter of practice rather than convenience. According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), recent investigations suggest that international organized criminals are willing to provide logistical and other support to terrorists. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), 19 of 49 (39%) State Department-designated foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) have "confirmed links to the drug trade" as of November 2011. In 2003, DEA reported that 14 of 36 (39%) FTOs were involved "to some degree" in illicit narcotics activity. For FY2010, DOJ reported that 29 of the top 63 international drug syndicates, identified as such on the consolidated priority organization target (CPOT) list, were associated with terrorists. The State Department's 2012 Country Reports on Terrorism describes more than 20 FTOs as having financially profited from criminal activity to sustain their terrorist operations (see the Appendix ). Such listed FTOs include Al Shabaab, Army of Islam (AOI), Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), Continuity Irish Republican Army (CIRA), Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), Revolution People's Liberation Party (DHKP/C), National Liberation Army (ELN), Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM), Hamas, Hezbollah, Haqqani Network (HQN), Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT), Jemaah Islamiya (JI), Lashkar I Jhangvi (LJ), Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Shining Path (SL), and Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Such government studies reinforce assessments from the late 1990s that predicted an increase in crime-terrorism interactions. For example, in 1997, a U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) task force study on transnational threats concluded that terrorists groups, religious extremists, anti-government militias, narcotics traffickers, and global criminals were "increasingly linked in new and more cooperative ways." In 2000, a U.S. interagency assessment of international crime threats further highlighted growing crime-terrorism interactions. The assessment identified the end of the Cold War as a major contributor to this development. As certain insurgent and extremist groups were no longer able to rely on Soviet-affiliated state sponsors for aid, some increasingly turned to crime as an alternative source of funds. The assessment also concluded that most crime-terrorism interactions were often fleeting, or based on symbiotic arrangements that were nevertheless strained and marked by suspicion. Some groups, however, viewed criminal activity as not only a lucrative source of funding, but also an effective means to advance their political or ideological objectives. Other groups, meanwhile, underwent transformations in which their primary organization motivations would shift from political to (illicit) profit-driven. To combat this apparent criminal-terrorist connection, recent Administrations have issued several key strategic documents to guide U.S. government efforts and approach the issue from the perspectives of national security, counterterrorism, anti-crime, and intelligence.