Clarke's science fiction?

I am blogging about a recent article by Richard Clarke, who was the "national coordinator for security and counterterrorism for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush." So, this post is not about the sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke.

However, Richard Clarke's recent (January/February 2005) piece in The Atlantic (subscription required) may seem like science fiction to a lot of readers.

Clarke's article is fact-based fiction, written from the perspective of a speech delivered on September 11, 2011. In the address, Clarke's protaganist, Professor Roger McBride, outlines a decade of terrorist attacks against the US.

Most are relatively low-technology attacks by al Qaeda or Hizbollah: bombs in casinos, amusement parks, subways, and shopping malls, anti-aircraft missiles against passenger aircraft, viruses and worms against computer systems, etc.

Clarke is hanging out at Harvard these days, so I'm surprised he didn't imagine academic institutions as targets. Clarke discusses a feared nuclear attack that doesn't materialize, but does have terrorists strike US chemical plants (I just received a mailing like this one from the Sierra club with the same concern).

In any case, everyone who reads the piece is likely to experience a bit of anxiety, simply because many of the attacks are quite plausible. Indeed, Clarke includes dozens of footnotes to the piece, typically from news stories, policy shops, and government reports. He's not imagining worst-case scenarios, he's attempting to highlight known risks.

In Clarke's vision of the future, the US implements ever-more restrictive Patriot Act sequels, uses the military for domestic operations, adopts national identity cards, closely monitors visitors to malls, etc. The US also attacks Iran, fails to prevent the Saudi government from falling to extremists, and suffers very high oil prices.

In short, it's not a pleasant future...even if it does bring families closer together (because they stay home out of fear), reduce spam email and help a left-leaning civil libertarian political party capture some seats in Congress and other offices.

Could all this happen?

Maybe.

Is it likely?

I'd argue no. It has been three and a half years since 9/11 and these kinds of attacks have not been occurring on a regular basis in the US.

Perhaps there aren't as many terrorists as authorities fear? Perhaps the US does a good job of keeping likely terrorists out of the US? Perhaps few suicidal terrorists want to kill large numbers of Americans?

In sum, maybe the risk of terrorist attacks really isn't that high?

I agree with Clarke that domestic security should be accorded a higher priority, and that Iraq was a huge distraction of resources from the real war on terror, but I'm not sure opponents of the Bush administration ought to adopt these kinds of fear appeals to win their argument.

Some good news in the war on terror

Let me quickly update two stories I've been following in the so-called "war on terror."

First, some good news. As I've blogged before, US airliners are potentially under real threat of shoulder fired missiles. Several news reports, in fact, suggest that some of the recent intelligence (and "chatter") relates to this possibility, which is behind the elevated (orange) threat level in the US.

As the Chicago Tribune reported yesterday, airlines are about to test an anti-missile system. The system will cost about $1 million per plane, and with 6,800 planes potentially at risk, that means a cost of nearly $7 billion. This is consistent with what I wrote 3 months ago.

The story says that Homeland Security will begin funding tests very soon, it will use the data to make a decision, and defense systems could be deployed in two years.

Now, some more good news -- unless you think it would be good news if Iraq actually had weapons of mass destruction. Yesterday's Washington Post had a really long story by Barton Gellman detailing Iraq's lack of WMD.

There's lots of good stuff in the article. Much of the piece just brings together material we've all read before over the past six months -- but with added detail. For example, Gellman explains exactly why the original reports about finding mobile biological weapons facilities were so wrong. Iraq used a chemical process for inflating hydrogen weather balloons. And Iraq did have a military rationale for wanting to know the weather (wind conditions and temperature), as it improved missile targeting. But the trailers were actually for inflating weather balloons.

As I've noted before, one apparently important reason the US believed Iraq had WMD is that Saddam Hussein's scientists were lying to him to save their jobs (and lives). They deceived their boss, but that also had the effect of deceiving the rest of the world. But, in reality, they had almost no means of producing sophisticated biological weapons, and their nuclear program has been virtually inactive since the IAEA dismantled it years ago.

Hans Blix speculates that Iraq might have been using a defense strategy that my wife and I have actually promoted among our friends. When we go to house-warming parties for new homeowners, we typically take a "beware of dog" sign (when they have a pet). It's much cheaper than an electronic home security system and may work just as well as a deterrent. Blix says that Iraq may have been putting up a "beware of dog" sign without actually possessing a dog.

Fear of Flying

Since 9/11, the media have occasionally reported on the risk that a passenger aircraft might be downed by a terrorist armed with a shoulder-fired missile. The US sent such missiles to Afghanistan when it was trying to help expel the Soviets. The Pentagon (and CIA) are unable to account for all of them, though I've seen estimates suggesting that not many are missing.

The New York Times reported this week that an unknown number of these missiles might also be missing in Iraq. Over 300 have been turned in recently, and 100s more have been found by the military.

Incoming planes have apparently been targeted in recent weeks, and this is part of the rationale for keeping the Baghdad airport closed to civilian traffic.

Plus, they are easy to smuggle (they weight less than 30 pounds), 50,000 have been sold to developing countries in the past 15 years, and Jane's says that 30 insurgent and terrorist groups have them.

Swell.

I sat next to a commercial pilot who was a former military pilot last Thanksgiving, when there was the unsuccessful attack in Africa on the Israeli aircraft. I asked him about the threat and he said it was quite real and that there wasn't much that could be done about it short of spending some bucks on countermeasures.

Swell.

If 1 or 2 or 3 (imagine a coordinated attack) American planes were downed inside the US, air traffic would come to a stop. Who would fly? Airlines and government absolutely cannot secure against this threat from inside the airport or inside the aircraft. Attackers would position themselves near airports, far away from federal security personnel.

At my University, planes fly overhead all day at very close range. I'm confident that this is true all over the country for homes, businesses, schools, etc. Earlier this year, both the US and UK (as the BBC reported) warned against the threat from attacks. Roads near Heathrow in London were apparently closed and vehicles were searched. In 1998, rebels downed a Boeing 737 in the Congo.

In his last (September) visit to "Meet the Press," Vice President Cheney addressed a question about this very threat. He said, essentially, that it would be very costly to secure against these missiles:

Well, there are technologies available. They are extremely expensive if you’re going to put them on every airliner. You've got to make choices here about, you know, when you’re dealing with a risk, there may be certain aircraft flying into certain locales that are especially vulnerable that you may want to deal with. But I wouldn't automatically go to the assumption that we need to put the most sophisticated system on every single airplane.

I've seen estimates suggesting that it would cost $7-15 billion to outfit planes with the countermeasures that would mitigate the threat from these missiles. Israel apparently requires defense mechanisms (flares, essentially) on its planes.

If you want to be reassured, the Heritage Foundation's analysts say that a lot of special training is required to fire a missile (though reporters have found US Stinger training manuals on the web), pilots can be trained in evasion techniques, and effective law enforcement can find the missiles before attackers can use them. They also say some planes could get by with just $200 in countermeasures.

The Pentagon is getting serious about a system that costs $2 million per plane, and I'm pretty sure what kind of system I'd prefer while flying as a passenger.

The US has 6800 commercial airlines, and experts say costs could drop 50% if the devices were mass produced. That means nearly $7 billion for protection.

Senator Barbara Boxer (Calif.) is pushing this system.

At $7 billion, it would cost less than 10% of the last budget supplementary request for Iraq reconstruction. Where would you like to spend your anti-terror dollars?