The Future of Terrorism

The July issue of Discover Magazine has an excellent article on The Future of Terrorism. You should readthe whole thing, online or in hardcopy. Here are some choice quotes by people interviewed for the article:

"The war on terrorism is really a proxy for saying what is really a war on militant Islam. If we can't confront the ideology, if you're not willing to take on the ideology and try to develop a reformist, moderate Islam that makes militant Islam a fringe element, we haven't much hope to stamp it out."

Andrew C. McCarthy, former federal prosecutor who led the case against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman.

"A nuclear terrorism attack is inevitable if we continue on the autopilot path we're on." The odds of a nuclear attack on U.S. soil in the next five years are "51-49."

Graham Allison, assistant secretary of defense in the first Clinton administration and now director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University

"I'm less worried about terrorists becoming biologists than biologists becoming terrorists"

Gerald Epstein, senior fellow at the Homeland Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

"It's easy to go around whipping up hysteria. I'm not a terrorism expert, but they seem to favor things that blow up and make loud noises rather than subtle increases in deaths from infectious agents."

Biologist Craig Venter, who is skeptical of the bioterrorism threat.

"The current leadership of the terrorist organizations are of a generation that doesn't trust cyber means of attack. Once we see a new generation of leadership that is more comfortable with technology, we're going to see more of this."

Mike Skroch, Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

"You can never get a fingerprint online, but you can get a writeprint." If there is a new message, I can tell you if it's from Bin Laden or his lieutenant."

Hsinchun Chen, designer of the Dark Web Project

"Do I think we'll ever stop it? Could we get it to a manageable level? I think we can do that."

Howard Safir, former New York City police commissioner

"We know from the basis of past periods of terrorism that they don't last forever. This is a phenomenon, as troubling as it is, that will turn out to have a beginning, middle, and end."

Michael Barkun, political scientist at the Maxwell School in Syracuse, New York

The most advanced technology that terrorists have at their disposal is television. "Essentially, it's an image war. PR is everything in terrorism. Why? Look at what the terrorists are trying to achieve: political or ideological change. And if people don't buy into a doctrine, the terrorists can't succeed."

Graham Dillon, heads the financial-crime advisory service of the London branch of the accounting firm KPMG

"There would be such enormous pressure for an immediate and devastating political response. Three Algerians from Paris blow up a bomb in Washington; we vaporize Tehran and get rid of everybody we don't like: anyone who's strategically culpable, whom we believe either supports terrorism [or] sponsors it directly or indirectly. If that happens, the world would be as different a place as after World War II."

Scott Atran, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan and at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris

"You can do preventative things. And you can make people safer. You can't make people safe. You are never safe, because in an open and free society you're always vulnerable to people who are extreme."

Howard Safir