Nuclear Terrorism Wednesday, Mar 5 2008
risks 12:01 pm
The threat of nuclear terrorism is real. If you’re still skeptical, read the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s 2006 report. Then donate to NTI.
For more on nuclear terrorism, see the Council on Foreign Relations.
March 5th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Unfortunately I don’t think there’s much that ordinary citizens can do in this matter, beyond registering an opinion. It really is down to governments, and we all know how benevolent they tend not to be. The proposals being made are really identical to those I heard used in the 1980s - arms reduction treaties, unilateral disarmament and trying to maximize the amount of time needed to make a decision about launching nuclear weapons.
When you ask the average guy or girl on the street whether nuclear weapons are needed a large majority of them will say “yes”, even though there is no longer any obvious enemy against which they’re supposed to be a defense. Possession of nukes is seen as a matter of national prestige and the ultimate deterrent against invasion by a hostile foreign power. Those countries who feel themselves to be threatened are under the greatest pressure to acquire nuclear weapons as soon as possible.
The only solution is for all nations to agree to give up nuclear weapons, but since this is unlikely to happen their eventual use by states or terrorist groups (or a combination of the two) is absolutely inevitable. To use the overworn phrase “it’s not a question of if but when”.
March 5th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
“even though there is no longer any obvious enemy against which they’re supposed to be a defense.”
Other countries with nukes = potential enemies. Strategic nuclear arsenals are supposed to protect the country from all threats, present and future, regardless of the political situation.
March 5th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Seriously, donate now, before you rationalize a reason why you shouldn’t.
Too late! I have to pay rent.
March 5th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Unfortunately I don’t think there’s much that ordinary citizens can do in this matter, beyond registering an opinion. It really is down to governments…
This is why human dignity is so important.
If you’re a farmer with a flock of chickens and a wolf is carrying off the chickens, what do you do? Try and shoot him, of course. But meanwhile, he nabs this one…he nabs that one…you treat such carnage as a temporary financial setback, not as a deplorable act of mass homicide. You just try to pop him before he grabs a fourth one, and if that doesn’t work, try to stop him from hauling off a fifth one.
And after it’s over, you do what you can get to more eggs laid.
Governments will handle the situation with greater urgency and with more respect for human life. IF we demand that they do. Otherwise, they’ll just proceed with phony disarmament talks so that terrorists are the only ones with nuclear weapons…terrorists and liars…oh, and they’ll insist that us dumb citizens walk around depending on outsiders to provide our defense against harm…without any firearms.
Just like chickens.
March 5th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
What the hell? I’m going to New York soon. You scared me.
March 5th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Bob,
Unfortunately I don’t think there’s much that ordinary citizens can do in this matter, beyond registering an opinion.
Not true at all, and maybe you’re underestimating the money/influence of some of the audience here. (The audience is not just the tiny minority of people that add comments.) And anyway, when citizens start to think of themselves as “ordinary” and powerless, that’s when they throw away all their ability to enact change.
The proposals being made are really identical to those I heard used in the 1980s.
No, the proposals and threats are different than in the 1980s. I suggest you look a bit closer at the NTI site and their proposals and past accomplishments.
You talk about how we’ll always have nuclear weapons, and that is true, but it’s a matter of keeping the material secured. Not to be snarky, but if you read the NTI site, you’d see that’s what the focus is… and no, it’s not a question of if but when, look how we’ve gone more than half a century with thousands of nuclear weapons and no terrorist has yet used one. They haven’t even used a dirty bomb yet, and those are way easier to make. So I believe your defeatist attitude is entirely unwarranted.
Nato,
Too late! I have to pay rent.
Of course, but do you see how it might discourage other people from donating when you say this?
Nick,
What the hell? I’m going to New York soon. You scared me.
Yeah, we have good reason to be scared.
March 5th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Hah. Awesome Michael.
Do what he says!
March 5th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
“They haven’t even used a dirty bomb yet, and those are way easier to make.”
So far as I know, there are no terrorist groups with A)., a base in the First World, or B)., brains. It would be fairly easy to do incredible amounts of damage to the US as it stands, even with a few hundred guys and Kalashnikovs.
March 5th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Yeah, I’ve been puzzled for years that there are so few terrorist attacks in the US, not even car bombs, especially given what terrorists are able to do in, say, Iraq and Israel.
From Charlie Stross: “Even with the September 11 attacks included in the count, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting) is about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reaction to peanuts.”
Governments scare me a hell of a lot more.
March 5th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
You’ll learn.
March 6th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Any group smart enough to build a nuke (or acquire and maintain one) would be too smart to use it.
Who’s going to do this exactly? Al Qaeda doesn’t have the know-how. The London franchise can’t make reliable bombs out of hair dye and flour, let alone handle plutonium.
It takes a state to be able to make a nuclear weapon. And since nuclear forensics is advanced enough to be able to trace the likely origin of the weapon from its radiological signature, any state which provided the weapon would risk a bigger nuclear reprisal.
The idea of terrorists getting hold of a Soviet “suitcase nuke” is a Hollywood fantasy. If these weapons ever even existed, they would need regular maintenance as the radiation degraded their components. So if Al Qaeda did get hold of one, then it probably wouldn’t go critical anyway.
The 9-11 plotters considered flying a plane into a nuclear plant, but decided that would be going too far even for them! AQ printed out some articles about nukes (including joke material) - that’s as far as their bomb programme went or ever will go.
I like how your argument about the importance of this issue is basically “Get scared! Don’t think too much!” A proven tactic, but something I hope we can leave behind if we do get a transhuman future.
March 6th, 2008 at 3:59 am
Small-scale nuclear terrorism is not a direct existential threat, so I’m not sure why the Lifeboat Foundation should consider it part of its scope.
March 6th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Ben,
I like how your argument about the importance of this issue is basically “Get scared! Don’t think too much!”
Not really… I see the risk as quite serious, is all, and know that most already agree with me, including a majority in the government and intelligence community. Since the Cold War, there’s been a debate, and the conclusion of the debate has been that the risk is quite serious. Only people who’ve just begun to look at the debate seriously very recently actually think the risk is low.
The experts agree it wouldn’t take a state to make a nuke. Maybe I’ll make a list in a future post.
Rolf,
Small-scale nuclear terrorism is not a direct existential threat, so I’m not sure why the Lifeboat Foundation should consider it part of its scope.
LF is helping prevent post-nuclear risk like serious bio- and nano-risk. The idea is to cover all bases. I’ll the remove the LF request in case anyone else doesn’t make the connection, though.
March 6th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s important that people are looking into it and developing better nuclear forensics and response plans.
I just don’t think that any terrorist group crazy enough to drop the bomb would ever be able to acquire one.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Well, you’re wrong. From the perspective of jihadists, dropping a nuclear bomb is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. You must realize they are seeking deaths to “balance” out the deaths caused in the Islamic world by wars with Israel/US since the 50s. Several million in the Islamic world have died from these wars, and they see it as their duty to inflict damage in kind. A value system you disagree with, no matter how violent, is not “crazy” from their perspective — only divine justice. So it has no bearing on their ability to acquire enriched uranium and build a bomb.
Their education is the only thing that matters. Not their “craziness”, which is primarily a matter of perspective. I use “crazy” to mean “mentally perturbed”, not “determined and brainwashed by religion to commit violent acts”.
March 7th, 2008 at 7:23 am
Michael is right, but empirically, it doesn’t seem that Islamic terrorists are all that smart or capable. When was the last successful attack on the US? (Not that the next one couldn’t be nuclear, but it’s pretty low on my list of worries.)
March 7th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Fear is a powerful tool for control. I see it is working well here. The boogie man is just out of reach, but don’t worry, just let us have a few of your liberties and freedoms, and we will protect you. Don’t worry about the decline of the dollar. Our monetary policies have nothing to do with that. I love how you armchair fascists discuss things of which you know nothing and take yourselves oh so serious. Keep stoking up the fear and hate. Eventually you will be consumed.
March 7th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
From the perspective of jihadists, dropping a nuclear bomb is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
Generally true. The idea that killing-by-nuclear-bomb is somehow a worse and more evil way to kill a million people than other ways of killing a million people is a recent Western idiosyncrasy; certainly it didn’t exist in 1945.
Several million in the Islamic world have died from these wars
This estimate seems high.