

Causing Terror on the Cheap - Garbage
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/causing_terror.html

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epo
The broken window fallacy
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window> as a parable was
new to me. A good debunking of the justification that all this security
activity is a net economic benefit to the US.

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NeilCJames
I read that comment too, but I am not sure 'broken windows' truly applies
here. Although I believe there is net public harm from US post-9/11 "security"
policies, when you consider that: a.) the spending being done on security is
entirely public deficit spending not offset by tax increases or cuts in other
departments, b.) the economy has been well below full employment (~58-62%
employment-pop ratio during the period) and full capacity utilization (~68-81%
capacity utilization during the period), c.) no other expansion of public
employment and spending would have likely occurred in the past decade absent
the 9/11 attacks (arguable, but there really isn't a political consensus for
expanding the US welfare state), and posit that the 2000s growth rate would
have taken essentially the same path absent the 9/11 attacks, then it would
appear that much of the security theater policies have had a small medium-term
stimulative economic effect (small because it is largely offset by increased
consumer travelling expenses and time, dampening productivity). The three keys
I mention above violate the pretext of the broken window fallacy (at least in
the medium term, and probably in the long-term because of historically low
interest rates). In a full employment situation, there would be significant
deadweight loss, and in a balanced budget situation, there would be
significant economic impact due to either increased taxation or offsetting
spending cuts. But neither of those conditions applies to the recent US
situation. The BWF assumes that the money would have been spent doing
something else (more profitable), and I am pretty certain that will not be the
case until the debt needs to be paid, which is unlikely to ever occur (I think
the assumed future policy is to continue to roll the debt over until the
singularity).

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nir
John Robb has been writing about these kind of tactics for a while, he calls
it "Open Source Warfare":
[http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/11...](http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/11/note-
on-innovation-in-warfare.html)

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3pt14159
For a long time I've debated writing an article in a similar vein of this one
by Schneier. I studied structural engineering in University and you would not
believe how easy and cheap it is. With a solid iron pipe and the right
knowledge you can kill hundreds of people and delay hundreds of thousands.

~~~
daeken
For the longest time, I thought about terrorism from a security standpoint. If
you treat the US as a system to break, then you see a lot of weak points:
bridges, trains, malls, etc (in other words, the stuff you see on 24). If you
damage these, you could do a whole lot of damage to the US economy, kill a lot
of people, etc. But then I realized something: destroying bridges doesn't
cause fear in the same way that, say, flying a plane into a landmark building
does.

I used to think that the terrorists were idiots that couldn't pull off a
simple attack... now I realize just how good they are at what they do: causing
fear. The point of terrorism isn't to kill, it isn't to cause direct harm in
any way. Those are tools to make us scared, and we've all played right into
it. I'll never forget exactly where I was when I found out about the attacks
on 9/11, or any of the resulting protection mechanisms; they succeeded in
their goals, probably more than they ever thought they would.

~~~
hugh3
I think it's a mistake to lump all terrorists into one group. Different
terrorist groups have very differing goals, moral systems, and levels of
sanity.

The IRA, for instance, while an evil bunch of fuckers, would never attempt to
kill thousands of people in a single attack, because they had clear and fairly
realistic political goals and a strategy for pursuing them.

Islamic terrorists, on the other hand, for the most part appear to just like
killing -- it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that their goal is more
or less the genocide of every non-Muslim on the planet, and individually their
goal is to die for Allah. This gives them a very different set of priorities
to old-school terrorist groups like the IRA or ETA.

To summarize: the IRA wants to terrorise you to achieve a goal, but Al Qaeda
pretty much just wants to kill you.

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chc
Then why have their attacks so far had the primary effect of creating panic
when a couple dozen random bombs would both be easier to execute and cause
more destruction? Why continue to attack planes — the area in which our
paranoia is most concentrated — when legions of American-born madmen have
proven that just pulling out a gun in a public place and shooting people is
plenty effective?

It seems to me that they don't necessarily want us to die, at least not on any
particular schedule — just to be so afraid that we won't be able to oppose
them with any strength.

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InclinedPlane
Terrorism is just guerrilla warfare against civilians and infrastructure. The
goal is to get the most bang for the buck from cheap attacks.

