On Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence stood before the Global Chiefs of Mission Conference at the State Department and told U.S. diplomats that ISIS had been destroyed.
"The caliphate has crumbled," he said, "and ISIS has been defeated."
This was a strange thing to say, considering Pence was told hours beforehand that a terrorist attack by the Islamic State had killed four Americans.
Officials said a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest as the Americans - two service members, a Pentagon civilian, and a U.S. contractor - met with local military officials at a restaurant in the city of Manbij, Syria. Three additional U.S. service members were wounded.
And that's not all.
Last week, ISIS militants wounded two British soldiers with a rocket attack. And in November, they killed or captured dozens of Kurds working alongside the U.S. to combat the Assad regime in Syria.
So clearly, ISIS hasn't been defeated or destroyed.
It may not be as strong as it once was, but it's still there, lurking in the shadows.
And it wants you to know something...
It's got drones.
A few weeks ago, the terrorist organization began circulating this image on social media:
It's a drone carrying what's presumably a bomb over New York City, with the caption "Sender: The Islamic State."
Is it just bluster? Propaganda intended to scare the American public?
Probably.
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But that doesn't mean it's something to dismiss, either.
The fact is, ISIS deployed a lot of drones when it was defending its would-be Caliphate in Syria and Iraq.
Obviously the group can't match the firepower deployed by major states, especially the United States. But it's more than capable of strapping a bomb to a drone and sending it off on a suicide mission of its own, sparing the life of a jihadist.
Here's what that looks like, if you're wondering...
On January 10, a similar device, a UAV armed with explosives, detonated above a group of senior Yemeni officers near the city of Aden.
As you may know, Iran-backed rebels have been locked in a bloody conflict with the Saudi- (and U.S.-) backed leadership there. It appears that drone was from Iran's Ababil-II family of UAVs.
So this kind of thing isn't out of the ordinary.
And the threat from ISIS was serious enough that the NYPD took specific countermeasures to secure the New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square. The department deployed surveillance drones of its own, as well as unspecified "counter-drone" technology.
And those are just a few of the new drone technologies the NYPD rolled out late last year. In addition to surveillance, the department is also deploying drones for crime scene documentation, HAZMAT incidents, and hostage situations.
This is a trend I've been following closely for my Wealth Warrior investment advisory, which monitors the latest in military and security technology as well as global crises ongoing in places like Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
If you want to know more about that service and get access to the three best drone stocks on the market today, just click here.
Fight on,
Jason Simpkins
Jason Simpkins is Assistant Managing Editor of the Outsider Club and Investment Director of The Wealth Warrior, a financial advisory focused on security companies and defense contractors. For more on Jason, check out his editor's page.