FBI Director Kash Patel has outlined the масштаб of the security operation being put in place ahead of the World Cup, which starts next week.
With the tournament due to get underway on June 11, an estimated three million soccer fans are expected to travel across the US during the competition.
That kind of crowds-and-travel surge requires extensive coordination across agencies, with security planning taking center stage as host cities prepare for packed venues and busy public spaces.
Patel described the scope of the work in an interview with Fox News, emphasizing that it stretches from everyday policing to broader intelligence gathering.
“It’s everything from traditional cop work going out to the streets, talking to communities and saying, ‘Hey, do you guys know of any bad actors? Have you heard of anyone that might want to do harm to people or venues?” he told the outlet.
“That’s our big security goal for us at the FBI.”
He also pointed to lone-actor threats as a key concern from a national security perspective.
Patel added: “Separate and apart from that, [those] who are doing similar activities, or the disparate actors, the lone wolves that are out there, whether it’s in the cyber realm or the violent crime realm.
“So we are heavily relying on the community and state locals and asking them over and over again, ‘What are you seeing in the online spaces? What are you seeing in the chat groups?”
Beyond threats on the ground and online, the FBI has also flagged drones as a potential issue during the World Cup, noting that they can be flown from locations that are difficult to identify quickly.
“The critical component that we at the FBI have been focusing down on is teaching our state and local partners how we handle drones and how they can handle drones with us,” Patel continued to Fox News.
“And then collectively, it’s a force multiplier to have thousands of people out there, tens of thousands of police officers out there looking at the drone threat that’s coming in as it comes in, because it’s so quick and dynamic.”
According to the FBI, technology has been developed that can disable drones while they are in the air, and that capability has since been shared with local agencies involved in World Cup security.
A dedicated special operations center is also being used during the tournament, with the goal of consolidating information and responding quickly to potential incidents.
Patel added: “When we’re talking about cyber actors, those [are ones] that come in and hack our infrastructure and hold data hostage for monetary payments. So we are taking all of that information to one place and centralizing, at least for us at the FBI, at our headquarters component.”