Terrorists and the Energy Infrastructure: What's the Risk?

In a brief paper published under the auspices of the Naval Postgraduate School, Dr. Michael Mihalka and Dr. David Anderson analyze the risk of catastrophic terrorism targeting the energy infrastructure. They argue that the risk is relatively slight when compared to other threats:

The threat from and effect of transnational terrorism [to the energy sector] is much less than many pundits have argued. In essence, the transnational terrorism poses a challenge well within the parameters of natural events and the ability of the current security system to handle.

Well, we must remember that the prime threat to the security of supply in the short-term perspective is not terrorism, or even politics. It's Mother Nature.

It's certainly true that a terrorist group would really have to "go big" to replicate the kind of disruption to the energy sector that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused.

Energy is one sector in which the ability to respond and recover can be a real deterrent. A primary goal of any direct attack on energy infrastructure would be economic. But if the economic damage is mitigated by resiliency in the sector, then there's less rationale for the attack.

A Useful Terrorist Profile

There still isn't one.

A new joint security alert from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI warns that terrorists are increasingly turning to women and teenagers to carry out suicide bombings.

The bulletin, obtained by CBS News, says “Female suicide bombers conducted more than twice as many attacks in Iraq in the first six months of 2008 than in all of 2007”.

US intelligence analysts also say Islamic radicals are enlisting greater numbers of teenagers for their deadliest missions.

It's not who they are; it's what they do.

Disrupting Terrorist Funding

One of the most productive ways to harm any organization is to drain its funding. Terrorist organizations are no different; they require significant funding to accomplish their aims. And the more ambitious their goals, the greater their need for money.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) published a recent study examining how terrorist organizations raise, use, and move money through financial systems, in both legal and illegal ways. There isn't much new information here, but some that bears repeating:

The literature on terrorist finance developed since 2001 has emphasised the great adaptability and opportunism that terrorists deploy in meeting their funding requirements. Indeed, the breadth of cases ... suggests that the answer to the question: “How do terrorists raise and move funds?” is:”Any way they can.”

Terrorists have shown adaptability and opportunism in meeting their funding requirements. Terrorist organisations raise funding from legitimate sources, including the abuse of charitable entities or legitimate businesses or self-financing by the terrorists themselves. Terrorists also derive funding from a variety of criminal activities ranging in scale and sophistication from low-level crime to organised fraud or narcotics smuggling, or from state sponsors and activities in failed states and other safe havens.

Terrorists use a wide variety of methods to move money within and between organisations, including the financial sector, the physical movement of cash by couriers, and the movement of goods through the trade system. Charities and alternative remittance systems have also been used to disguise terrorist movement of funds. The adaptability and opportunism shown by terrorist organisations suggests that all the methods that exist to move money around the globe are to some extent at risk.

What Terrorists Need Money For

When thinking about disrupting terrorist financing - regardless of the size or complexity of the organization - it is useful to examine the reasons why terrorists need money.

Terrorist financing requirements fall into two general areas: (1) funding specific terrorist operations, such as direct costs associated with specific operations and (2) broader organisational costs to develop and maintain an infrastructure of organisational support and to promote the ideology of a terrorist organisation.

The amount of money required to pull off a terrorist attack - even a fairly large-scale one - is relatively small. FATF examines the funds required to pull off some high-profile attacks of recent years. Amounts are in U.S. dollars:

$10,000: Madrid train bombings (2004)
$10,000: USS Cole attack (2000)
$16,000: London transport system (2005)
$30,000: Jakarta JW Marriot Hotel bombing (2003)
$40,000: Istanbul truck bomb attacks (2003)
$50,000: Bali bombings (2002)
$50,000: East Africa embassy bombings (1998)

Terrorists' greater financial need is typically for more mundane operating expenses:

Financially maintaining a terrorist network – or a specific cell – to provide for recruitment, planning and procurement between attacks represents the most significant drain on resources.

The take-away here is that when you're looking to disrupt terrorist financing, it's foolish to focus only on activities that are directly associated with an attack. The real money is needed for other activities, and those activities can also leave a trail.

Terrorists' Fundraising Means

FATF outlines the well-documented means that terrorists raise funds, including legitimate sources, charities, and crime.

Charities are an especially profitable fundraising mechanism for terrorists:

In developing the key financial standards to combat terrorism, the FATF has found that “the misuse of non-profit organisations for the financing of terrorism is coming to be recognised as a crucial weak point in the global struggle to stop such funding at its source”.

A greater vulnerability for terrorist groups - but also a greater opportunity - is in finding common cause with drug traffickers. Connections have grown:

The degree of reliance on drug trafficking as a source of terrorist funding has grown with the decline in state sponsorship of terror groups. This trend has increasingly blurred the distinction between terrorist and drug trafficking organisations.

Investigations and intelligence have revealed direct links between various terrorist and drug trafficking organisations that frequently work together out of necessity or convenience and mutual benefit.

Local law enforcement should also be aware of other illicit means of fundraising, such as credit card theft and extortion:

A North African terrorist funding group accumulated details of nearly 200 stolen cards and raised more than [$400,000] to fund the al-Qaeda terrorist network through international credit card fraud. Twenty to thirty 'runners' collected the names and credit card details of almost 200 different bank accounts from contacts working in service industries such as restaurants.

Supporters of terrorist and paramilitary groups exploit their presence within expatriate or diaspora communities to raise funds through extortion. A terrorist organisation would make use of its contacts to tax the diaspora on their earnings and savings. The extortion is generally targeted against their own communities where there is a high level of fear of retribution should anyone report anything to the authorities. They may also threaten harm to the relatives – located in the country of origin – of the victim, further frustrating any law enforcement action.

Moving Terrorist Funds

With the proliferation of global trade and finance, it is becoming harder to detect movement of terrorist funds. They are likely to use a variety of mechanisms to move money - ranging from sophisticated electronic transfers to human cash couriers.

There are three main methods by which to move money or transfer value:

• The financial system
• The physical movement of money (for example, through the use of cash couriers)
• The international trade system

The multiplicity of organisational structures employed by terror networks, the continuing evolution of techniques in response to international measures and the opportunistic nature of terrorist financing all make it difficult to identify a favoured or most common method of transmission.

Cases highlight how in many situations, the raising, moving and using of funds for terrorism can be especially challenging and almost indistinguishable from the financial activity associated with everyday life. The identification and the disruption of terrorist finance are naturally harder when authorities are confronted by “informal” support networks that do not operate as part of well structured organisations with clear roles and lines of accountability. In such circumstances, the links between financial activity and terrorist activity become more opaque and the targets for disruption harder to identify.

Disrupting Terrorist Finances

And yet, there are options for disrupting these practices. As indicated earlier, it is probably ineffective to focus on searching for sources of funding for attacks, which are relatively low-cost and may involve few or no activities that would set off financial triggers:

The disruption of specific attacks through the interdiction of specific transactions appears highly challenging. Recent attacks demonstrate that they can be orchestrated at low cost using legitimate funds and often without suspicious financial behaviour.

A better strategy is to focus on complicating the environment in which terrorists are forced to operate.

In large measure, terrorists require funds to create an enabling environment necessary to sustain their activities – not simply to stage specific attacks. Disrupting terrorist-linked funds creates a hostile environment for terrorism. Even the best efforts of authorities may fail to prevent specific attacks.

Nevertheless, when funds available to terrorists are constrained, their overall capabilities decline, limiting their reach and effect.

The key is for public and private financial entities to collaborate and share information:

National authorities can assist the financial sector in its efforts to identify and prevent terrorist financing by sharing intelligence. Financial information alone may not be sufficient to identify terrorist financing activity. However, when combined with counter-terrorist intelligence drawn from surveillance of the range of terrorist activities and networks, financial information can be leveraged to provide financial institutions with a concrete indication of possible terrorist activity, whether these use legitimate or criminal sources of funds.

Financial information is now used as part of the evidential case to hold criminals and terrorists to account. It also has a key intelligence role – for example by allowing law enforcement to:

• Look backwards, by piecing together how a criminal or terrorist conspiracy was developed and the timelines involved.
• Look sideways, by identifying or confirming associations between individuals and activities linked to conspiracies, even if overseas – often opening up new avenues for enquiry.
• Look forward, by identifying the warning signs of criminal or terrorist activity in preparation.

The creation of a hostile atmosphere can be effective in curtailing terrorist activity, because it undermines the group's sense of operational security. Even the suspicion that certain activities are not secure can serve as a deterrent.

Cat and Mouse

It's a few weeks old, but worth noting...this article in the Washington post discusses some of the ways terrorists have adapted to the attempts by law enforcement to sniff them out. They've become adept at evading some types of electronic surveillance, for example.

In an age of spy satellites, security cameras and an Internet that stores every keystroke, terrorism suspects are using simple, low-tech tricks to cloak their communications, making life difficult for authorities who had hoped technology would give them the upper hand.

Across Europe, al-Qaeda operatives and sympathizers are avoiding places that they assume are bugged or monitored, such as mosques and Islamic bookshops, counterterrorism experts said. In several cases, suspects have gone back to nature -- leaving the cities on camping trips or wilderness expeditions so they can discuss plots without fear of being overheard.

It's age-old stuff, really. Clandestine organizations have always used these tactics. But the rapid advance of technology has provided new options for evading detection:

Overall, terrorist cells around the world have become noticeably more skilled at avoiding detection, European counterterrorism officials and analysts said in interviews. For instance, operatives now commonly use Skype and other Internet telephone services, which are difficult to trace or bug.

At times, they have displayed a flair for creativity. Defendants convicted last April in a plot to blow up targets in London with fertilizer bombs communicated via chat rooms on Internet pornography sites in an effort to throw investigators off their trail, according to testimony.

Techniques run the gamut from advanced to rudimentary:

Often, suspects use simple, homemade codes in their exchanges. In a trial in the German city of Kiel, a Moroccan-German man charged in a separate case with recruiting suicide bombers to go to Iraq revealed in testimony in November some of the rudimentary ciphers that he and other cell members used in Internet chat forums.

"Taxi drivers," Redouane el Habab said, referred to suicide bombers; explosives were "dough." Anybody who had to go to "the hospital," he added, had been taken to jail, while those visiting "China" were really attending training camps in Sudan.

The bottom line is that, although these tactics make detection difficult, it is not impossible - and human intelligence is still critical:

"Unfortunately, the technology changes so quickly that we're always playing a catch-up game," the senior Italian official said. "The bottom line is that we'll have to work more and more with human sources."

Other Italian officials, however, said the trackers would always have one important advantage: Because conspirators must communicate, they will always be vulnerable to eavesdropping in some form.

"Many times I ask myself, how is it still possible to obtain important information if the suspects know we can do this?" said Spataro, the deputy chief public prosecutor in Milan.

The answer, he said, is that "as members of a criminal association, they have to speak, they have to communicate with each other, they have to make plans."

This sort of thing is why I've emphasized the recruiting process. Once a terrorist group - or any other criminal organization - is behind closed doors, its options for practicing deception increase. But when recruiting, they have to be more forthright with their communications. They are very cautious at the outset, of course, but eventually they have to show their hand.

Disrupting recruiting can also have the advantage of exploiting vulnerabilities in a pre-operational stage.

All Politics Is Global?

Here's an interesting paper out of Australia, arguing that terrorism has, in essence, reached the viral stage:

[W]e are not now dealing with some kind of well drilled, structured organisation where people are recruited into a hierarchy and they are trained and given high-level skills that allow them to pull off spectacular acts of terrorism. More and more, terrorists are amateurs. They may be relatively incompetent, but they are also unlikely to be part of a network. Such people are not recruited – they recruit themselves.

Hmm...yes and no.

There certainly are some self-recruited amateurs out there, but it's incorrect to assume that all potential terrorists are amateurs.

The paper's author, Waleed Aly, argues that Osama bin Laden understands the new nature of globalized terrorism. The evidence of his new understanding is his evolving mode of communication in his video and audio addresses:

[Bin Laden] is not dressed in military fatigues. He’s dressed in the golden robes of a statesman. He has carefully cultivated a more youthful, vital appearance. He is not, and for a long time, has not been issuing strategic advice or instructions. He is not identifying targets. He is not addressing somebody he knows personally and with details of the next operation and how it will be conducted. ... bin Laden’s mode of discourse is a motivational one. He is a motivational speaker now. He provides a political narrative for people, a narrative of inspiration, but he issues no direct instructions.

The upshot of this?

[T]errorists scarcely need to recruit anymore because we have entered a phase of self-radicalisation, of DIY terrorism.

We are not dealing with organisational structures. We are most truly dealing with a persuasion around which otherwise disconnected people can coalesce accidentally into a movement. These are people that often have wildly divergent ideologies, and often disagree vehemently with one another. They are not some uniform factory product. This is not some singular evil ideology, despite the now familiar insistence of various pundits and politicians. It is a persuasion that has converged on an expression of political violence at a given point in time.

Again, yes and no. Some plotters, such as the Fort Dix guys, are clearly beginners - DIY types. But it's naive to think that, because we're seeing some of these guys, that's all there is.

Organization is critical to marshaling forces and increasing capabilities. Terrorist organizations understand this as well as anyone, even if, for security reasons, they seek to establish small, self-contained operational groups.

Identity politics is central to forging, and fighting, such a persuasion. It is crucial to grasp this because it leads us to think of counterterrorism in new ways. Presently, the governmental focus is disproportionately on the pointy end of the terrorism process: finding people who are about to kill us and locking them up. And it is precisely because the more formative stages of this process are beyond the conventional gaze that the scope of the threat grows consistently.

A person might begin with deep local grievances, but quickly learn to give them a global meaning. This is the nature of liquid modernity, where space collapses and it is possible to plug into the grievances of antipodean communities, even virtual communities, instantly. With globalised information flows, I can now appropriate the grievances of Muslims from Europe, Asia or the Middle East as my own, and I can therefore construct an artificially unified story. The brilliance of demagogues like bin Laden is in their ability to exploit this; to impart upon people the tools to knit together global narratives of persecution out of their domestic grievances; to convince disconnected audiences that the frustration, exclusion and alienation they feel domestically is not merely a domestic problem, but is precisely the same oppression visited upon their co-religionists in Iraq, Israel, Chechnya or Kashmir, part of the same grand design.

No disagreement here. This is the danger of the metastasization of the terrorist threat - that the old adage "all politics is local" becomes turned on its head. (Or perhaps, more accurately, the newer adage, "Think global; act local" is expressed in malevolent ways.)

The implications for government policy are relatively clear. No longer can we maintain the convenient political fiction that it is possible to quarantine policy decisions, whether foreign or domestic, from issues such as the terror threat. It is clear that whatever actions we take, in whatever sphere we take them, can and do have an increasingly global resonance.

The reverse is also true. On the local level, we ought to understand how events in faraway places can have significant local impacts. In the battle of hearts and minds, we can engage this argument only when we see both the near and the far - how we affect and are affected by events around the corner and around the globe.

Terrorist Exploitation of Criminal Infrastructure

Douglas Farah reminds us of the nexus between criminal and terrorist activity, writing about this criminal case, in which "A Palestinian national and a former detective with the Colombian Department of Administrative Security (DAS) have pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and alien smuggling."

Farah writes:

What is interesting in the case is that criminal groups are willing to knowingly transport terrorist to the United States, and not simply using the “coyote” route through Central America and Mexico.

Rather, the criminal groups offered false passports from Spain with all the supporting documents, to those posing as terrorists seeking safe passage to the United States.

This highlights numerous points of overlap between criminal and terrorist groups that are necessary. Access to secure entry and exit points of a country, the need for legal travel documents and the supporting paperwork, the need for safe travel.

Terrorism can be thought of as a specialized form of organized crime. Unlike more common crimes, terrorism requires an infrastructure. The organization has to train its people; test its plans; move money, people, weapons or other dangerous agents; gain access to the target; etc. Generally speaking, the more dangerous and deadly the terrorist threat, the greater infrastructure that's required.

Partnerships with existing criminal networks can be an efficient way for terrorists to meet their needs by accessing existing infrastructure. However, this is both an asset and a potential liability for both partners.

When terrorists "outsource" some of their needs to criminal organizations, they can become exposed through this alliance, and vice versa. It is another form of vulnerability.

Viral Transmission of Information on Explosives

Here's another post from Douglas Farah that's well worth the time. The threat from terrorists is quickly evolving, allowing them to rapidly learn how to use deadly technologies more effectively.

One of the most alarming things about the new transnationalism among terrorist groups is the rapid ability to transfer knowledge and technology, both through the the Internet and through individual training.

A possible point of relevance: In a post last week I wondered if it's reasonable to conclude that travel overseas is necessary before a jihadist can become an operational threat. Farah's piece lends credence to the idea that, from a technological perspective, overseas in-person training is becoming less necessary.

In this case, the more significant reason for overseas travel seems to be to take the last steps toward ultimate allegiance to the cause - a finding which the recent NYPD report on the radicalization process also indicated.

Farah again:

[W]hat is making the current situation different is that, instead of having to travel and hold clandestine meetings to trade information and methods, much of the information can now be transferred in the blink of an eye or the touch of a computer key.

Military sources say that the switching from low tech Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) to high tech back to low tech is mirrored almost in real time between insurgents in Iraq and those fighting in Afghanistan.

What's becoming clear is that the operational information that permits someone to learn the terrorist trade is becoming commoditized:

With decentralized networks, sort of like Napster in the music world or Skype in the computer/telecommunications world, once a technology is invented to solve a certain problem, it is put out there with no strings attached. People can take it, improve it, merge it, and it belongs to no one and everyone.

In reality we are fighting a viral network that can be disrupted, hurt, but which has a regenerative capacity that is only limited by the number of people wanting to wage jihad against us.

Farah's last point is instructive. Strategic success in the war against jihadists is determined by the number of people wanting to wage jihad, because it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep a lid on the operational knowledge required to commit a terrorist act.

The operational knowledge for committing terrorism is becoming a commodity.

However, developing the motivation for committing terrorism is still entirely reliant on social networks. It is this aspect of the terrorist threat (and here I'm extending terrorism beyond jihadist terrorism) that provides a real vulnerability for the terrorist and a real opportunity for those seeking to prevent terrorism.

Final thought: Are we sharing information as well as the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Natural and Accidental Threats

With new reports that al Qaeda is re-energizing, it's tempting to focus - at least for the short-term - on intentional threats. But an all-hazards approach is really what we need, as evidenced by yesterday's earthquake in Japan - along with the cascading effect of damage to a nuclear power plant:

The world's largest nuclear power plant by output capacity remained closed Tuesday, after seismometers indicated the magnitude 6.7 earthquake that hit northwestern Japan Monday produced shocks that exceeded the reactors' design strength, according to media reports.

The seismic activity detected during Monday's quake was reportedly the strongest ever detected at a domestic nuclear reactor.

Japanese officials are investigating the possibility of a second radioactive leak from the plant, the BBC reported on its Web site.

Drums with low-level nuclear waste fell over during the tremors, and some of their lids were found open, the BBC reported.

So althought the damage is apparently limited, it could have been worse. When the shaking exceeds the design specs, you're in uncontrolled-experiment-land.

And sometimes we get reminders that accidental threats can be nasty, too. Like this train wreck and chemical spill in Ukraine:

A train carrying yellow phosphorus derailed in western Ukraine, releasing a cloud of toxic gas into the air over 14 villages. Twenty people were hospitalized and hundreds evacuated on Tuesday, officials said.

Rescuers extinguished a fire that broke out in the highly toxic substance, which can catch fire spontaneously on contact with air at temperatures higher than 104 degrees. It can cause liver damage if consumed.

The poison cloud produced by the fire contaminated 35 square miles, Krol said. Local residents were advised to stay inside, not to use water from wells, eat vegetables from their gardens or drink the milk produced by their cows.

If you're prepared to mitigate a release of radioactive and/or toxic materials, it doesn't matter if the source is natural, accidental, or intentional.

U.S. Taliban Trainees?

The Counterterrorism Blog has a brief item about an interview conducted with Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah the day before he died.

Dadullah claims the Taliban is training U.S. and British citizens for future attacks here.

If the claim is true - and it's best to assume it is, since other Americans have been trained in terrorist camps before, and al Qaeda hasn't lost its determination to fight the West - then it's worth remembering that if these jihadists successfully slip back into the U.S., the people in the best position to find them will be local police or other authorities. As William Bratton and George Kelling have pointed out:

The presence of police in our communities sensitizes them to anomalies and yields counterterrorist data valuable to other agencies.

"Only an effective local police establishment that has the confidence of citizens," former CIA director James Woolsey testified to Congress in 2004, "is going to be likely to hear from, say, a local merchant in a part of town containing a number of new immigrants that a group of young men from abroad have recently moved into a nearby apartment and are acting suspiciously."

Building a local network is critical.

Cross-posted in IPS Blogs at the Institute for Preventive Strategies.

UK Report on WMD Risk

More housecleaning:

In February the Chatham House (a UK think tank) published a report on the risk of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) terrorism. It's essentially a concise, well researched primer on these threats. First, a few notes on the overall CBRN threat:

It is appropriate to think of CBRN as a system, offering all that might be required for a range of terrorist groups from the largest to the smallest, from the almost casual to the most organized, and from the poorest to the best funded.

In the absence of the Cold War military imperative, not only has genuine interest mounted in the civilian applications of WMD-relevant technology, but the illegal proliferation of sensitive technology, materials and knowledge has proved both more tempting and more possible. In short, WMD technology has increasingly become something of a commodity since the end of the Cold War.

Next a few notes on each threat:

Chemical

First, the precursor chemicals for chemical weapons (CW) are widely distributed:

Many of the CW precursor chemicals are ‘dual use’ in that they have civil industrial applications: mustard gas requires ethyl alcohol, sodium sulphide and bleach; thiodiglycol is used for ball-point pen ink, but is also ‘only one chemical step removed’ from mustard gas; the chemical ingredients for tabun (GA) are used in pesticides, those for sarin (GB) in flame retardants, those for soman (GD) in dairy and food-processing equipment, and those for VX in pyrotechnics.

A so-called Improvised Nuclear Device (IND) could also be produced using much larger quantities of lower-grade, less enriched U-235. The device might then ‘fizzle’ rather than detonate its entire mass instantly and efficiently. But if the resulting explosion were to be equivalent to just one or a few kilotons of TNT rather than tens of kilotons, terrorists could still find this option attractive.But taking the next step - building a chemical-weapons capability and actually producing chemical weapons - is difficult, as demonstrated by the widely-cited example of Aum Shinrikyo, who launched the 1995 sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway:

According to some estimates, Aum Shinrikyo’s attempts to synthesize sarin cost as much as $30 million, involved as many as 80 scientists and other people with advanced laboratory facilities, and took a year or more to achieve.

To produce CW in large-scale quantities is challenging scientifically and technologically, and the handling and weaponizing of CW are generally understood to be very hazardous.

Chemical attacks are made more complicated by environmental factors:

In general, CW are dependent for their effect on ambient weather conditions, and particularly on the temperature, the intensity of sunlight, the strength and direction of wind, and rain (especially, of course, for those agents soluble in water).

For a terrorist group, simplicity may be preferred:

A rather more straightforward option, of course, would be to buy or steal a supply of toxic industrial chemicals, for simple release in a crowded area.

That's what al Qaeda is doing with chlorine in Iraq - simply acquiring whatever they can get and using it to supplement a more conventional attack, usually a truck bomb.

Biological

Biological threats seem relatively simple. All you have to do is acquire the desired biological agent, grow it, package it, and release the biological weapon (BW) as desired - right? But it's not nearly that simple:

BW production involves four stages – acquisition, production, weaponization and delivery – the first three of which are progressively more difficult:

1. Acquisition. It would not be easy to acquire the seed stock of a pathogen or a toxin-producing organism, but it would not be impossible either.
2. Production. The manufacturing of BW agents is not straightforward. Bulk production, in particular, would be demanding and dangerous.
3. Weaponization. Weaponizing a BW agent is yet more challenging, for two reasons. First, the health and safety of those involved in BW production could scarcely be more at risk. Second, it would not be a simple matter to produce a stable device with a predictable effect. BW agents are, in general, vulnerable to environmental and weather conditions.
4. Delivery. Once the first three stages have been passed through successfully, the delivery of a BW device would be a relatively simple matter.

More generally, it should always be borne in mind that BW use would inevitably be a complex undertaking, drawing upon many branches of science and technology, including microbiology, pathology, aerosol physics, aerobiology and meteorology.

And even if the high hurdles were passed, the effects are somewhat unpredictable. In some previous instances of civilian exposure to biological agents, casualties have not been catastrophic:

In 1979 an accident at a Russian military site led to some 65,000 people being exposed to anthrax spores. Of these, only 70 were reported to have been infected with anthrax, of whom 68 died. The anthrax attacks in the United States in late 2001 also had a very limited medical effect, albeit with widespread social and political impact.

Regarding biological weapons, the bigger threat might actually be something that we don't even know about yet. The report quotes G.L. Epstein as saying:

The rapidly increasing capability, market penetration, and geographic dissemination of relevant biotechnical disciplines will inevitably bring weapons capabilities within the reach of those who may wish to use them to do harm. If it takes close to a decade to develop and license a new therapeutic vaccine, it is not today’s threat but the threat a decade from now that we need to counter. And given how much easier it is to pose a threat than to counter one, the threat ten years out may not even materialize until eight or nine years out.

Especially as biotechnology advances, this threat will become increasingly complex.

Radiological

There is a wide variance to the severity of this threat. While the lower end is not hard to imagine, the upper end of the radiological weapons (RW) threat is somewhat unknown:

The ‘maximum credible event’ could be a device (explosive or other) designed to distribute tens or even hundreds of thousands of Curies of radioactive material. Little work has been done to model the effect of such an attack.

But the motivation is there:

‘Some of the major international terror groups, including al-Qaeda, have not only the resources to carry out such an attack, but also the willing martyrs, whose participation would significantly reduce the cost and complexity of any protective systems needed to allow the perpetrator to survive long enough to carry out the attack.’

And the materials are out there:

Radiological materials are used in a wide variety of circumstances: general industry, agriculture, medicine, communications and navigation. But not all radioactive isotopes would be suitable for RW use. Among the candidates, ‘only a few stand out as being highly suitable for radiological terror’: cobalt-60; strontium-90; yttrium-90; caesium-137, iridium-192, radium-226, plutonium-238, americium-241 and californium-252.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has estimated that one licensed US radioactive source is lost every day.

While the phrase "dirty bomb" has entered the lexicon, an explosive might not be the most attractive means for dispersing radioactive material:

Radioactive material can be distributed in a variety of ways; some isotopes can be dissolved in a solvent and poured or sprayed, others can be burned or vaporized. From the point of view of a terrorist group, non-explosive delivery might offer an advantage in that authorities might be slow to suspect and detect radiological release. In the delay, radioactive material might be ingested or inhaled by yet more people, and radioactive pollution allowed to spread still further.

The main effect of a radiological weapon would probably be economic (assuming that the radioactive materials contaminated an area of economic importance, such as the business district of a major city):

There appears to be a reasonably firm consensus in the literature that while the political and economic effects of a RW attack could be extreme, only the largest conceivable RW device could kill more than scores or hundreds of people.

Thus, a recent US Department of Defense study estimated that a 100 lb (45 kg) RW device carried in a backpack, containing radioactive material used for cancer treatment, detonated in a city centre, would kill no one through radiation. However, a truck-borne device using a similar amount of explosive but with about 100 lb (45 kg) of spent nuclear fuel rods could cause lethal doses of radiation within a half-mile radius.

Nuclear

This is the ultimate nightmare, of course. Fortunately, there are only two possible materials suitable for making a nuclear weapon:

Although various nuclear isotopes are used in the construction of a nuclear weapon, at the core of any device must be a mass of sub-critical fissile material – either highly enriched uranium-235 (HEU) or separated, ‘weapons-grade’ plutonium (Pu-239).

And while a terrorist group would need specialized knowledge and plenty of resources, it's not impossible to imagine that they could build a weapon:

Graham Allison, writing in late 2003, claimed that ‘given the right materials – a grapefruit- or soccer ball-sized amount of fissionable material is sufficient – several masters-level engineering students … with several hundred thousand dollars and the type of equipment you could purchase off the shelf at Radio Shack could make a device that would explode. The last time I checked, researchers at Los Alamos, trying to develop strategies to combat this threat, had come up with sixty-nine different workable designs for a nuclear device.’ Barnaby makes a similar point: ‘The difficulty of designing and fabricating a nuclear weapon … is often exaggerated. A competent group of nuclear physicists, and electronics and explosives engineers, given adequate resources and access to the literature, would have little difficulty in designing and constructing such a weapon from scratch. They would not need access to any classified literature.’

If that's not possible, another option exists:

Another alternative might be to eschew nuclear weapons development and delivery altogether, and instead ‘deliver’ an attack on a nuclear power station, using conventional means (such as a large proximate explosion or the direct impact of an aircraft)...

In 1981 a US study estimated that such an attack carried out with an explosive-laden aircraft could cause 130,000 deaths.

Perhaps most ominously, the study points out that, in the eyes of a terrorist group such as al Qaeda, the risk of destruction is not a limiting factor - though it may be a factor in the response of their target:

But the difficulty arises, of course, when traditional terrorism gives way to so-called ‘expressive terrorism’, and when the object of nuclear weapon use would be not to negotiate but simply to destroy. For terrorist individuals and groups driven by some religious, millennial or apocalyptic vision, the massive and hugely symbolic impact of a unilateral, ‘spectacular’ nuclear strike could be precisely their goal. Furthermore, the destruction of themselves and everything associated with them in the retaliatory attack which followed their nuclear attack might be a prospect to be accepted, if not welcomed. What, then, would be the point of launching a nuclear counterattack against such perpetrators, other than to provide for them the martyrdom they seek?

Quite apart from the massive human cost of such an attack, the rationale for a punitive nuclear response falls away when account is taken of the likely size and scale of the organization carrying out the attack; would a group of a few hundred people dispersed across a wide area, and perhaps even among several countries, really be a suitable target for a retaliatory nuclear strike? If not, and if the decision is taken instead to pursue the terrorists with conventional military means, then the terrorists will have gained whatever benefit they envisage from a nuclear attack, without a substantial change in their circumstances, since they would have expected to be pursued by conventional military forces in any case.

The prospect now begins to loom of a nuclear weapon state being self-deterred when contemplating the wisdom of a nuclear response to a limited nuclear attack. ... Surprisingly perhaps, the ‘post-modern’ terrorist begins to assume a good deal of initiative in this scenario; the rewards of nuclear use might be perceived as maximal, with the attendant risks minimal (or, at least, unchanged).

While this threat may be improbable, the risk is so great that it cannot be ignored:

[I]t might be improbable that a terrorist organization could either design and manufacture, or acquire a nuclear weapon, and then deliver it, but even the slightest possibility that this could happen would entail massively disproportionate consequences. In other words, the risk of terrorist use of nuclear weapons, as traditionally calculated, could scarcely be higher. For Western governments the risk is of such a magnitude that worst-case analysis seems not only unavoidable but also appropriate.

Another Chlorine Bomb Attack in Iraq

Al Qaeda continues to work on the "chlorine truck bomb" attack:

Insurgents with two chlorine truck bombs attacked a local government building in Falluja in western Iraq on Wednesday, the latest in a string of attacks using the poisonous gas, the U.S. military said.

It said 15 Iraqi and U.S. soldiers were wounded in the blasts and many more suffered chlorine poisoning.

"Numerous Iraqi soldiers and policemen are being treated for symptoms such as labored breathing, nausea, skin irritation and vomiting that are synonymous with chlorine inhalation," a U.S. statement said.

U.S. commanders and the Iraqi government have blamed al Qaeda militants for several recent attacks using chlorine gas in Anbar.

The U.S. military said it discovered an al Qaeda car bomb factory last month near Falluja with chlorine tanks.

Given the wide availability of chlorine in the U.S., a chlorine attack may be attractive to jihadists if and when they decide to attack the U.S. again. They wouldn't have to import anything - they could just use what's already here, just as they did on 9/11. The fact that they keep trying chlorine attacks in Iraq suggests that they see a strategic benefit from this type of attack, and they want to refine their methods. They also share information on tactics and methods over the Internet, so any successes in Iraq could be replicated elsewhere.

Here are a few questions for local homeland security professionals:

• Where are the stocks of chlorine or other dangerous chemicals in your area?
  
• What healthcare resources are available if an attack like this were to happen?
  
• Are first responders prepared for this type of event?

See this post and this post on the earlier chlorine attacks in Iraq.

Foiled Maritime Terrorism in Morocco

Reuters is reporting today that a group of 12 would-be bombers have been foiled in Morocco. Their targets were foreign ships - an indication that jihadists continue to view economic targets as desirable, including maritime targets.

At least 12 would-be suicide bombers planned to blow up foreign ships at the Casablanca port and other Moroccan landmarks, top security officials were quoted as saying on Thursday.

They said at least six of the suspected bombers were still on the run, but others were arrested after their presumed leader blew himself up on March 11 to stop police taking him alive.

Abdelfattah Raydi, the 23-year suspected leader of the group of bombers, walked into an Internet cafe in Casablanca's Sidi Moumen slum on March 11 with another suspected bomber.

Raydi, who had worn an explosives belt for four days to avoid police catching him alive, detonated the device when the cafe owner shut the door and called authorities after he saw him consulting a jihadist Web site, newspapers said.

"Investigations showed that 12 suicide bombers among 30 terrorists linked to March 11's Casablanca plot were prepared to attack economic and security targets including blowing up foreign ships at Casablanca port and tourism facilities in Marrakesh, Essaouira and Agadir," wrote al Ahdath al Maghribia daily.

It's being called a "lucky accident" that the plot was prevented, but I'd say it's a good example of civic engagement in anti-terrorism. The Internet cafe owner could just have easily looked the other way, but he recognized a potential threat and decided to intervene.

The bad news out of the incident is that it provides further evidence of jihadists' attraction to the idea of mixing chemicals or biological agents with their bombs, as demonstrated on a number of recent occasions in Iraq.

The [Moroccan] papers also quoted officials as saying the would-be bombers planned to use "poison" in their planned attacks, showing a change in the country's home-grown terror.

Al Ahdath said the "poison" was a byproduct of tetanus pathogenic bacteria ...

These guys do a good job of sharing information via the Internet. If a tactic seems to work in one place, it begins to pop up in other places. So information sharing has to go on here, too, regarding vulnerability and risk.

More Chlorine Attacks in Iraq

They did it again ... three times.

Three suicide bombers driving trucks rigged with tanks of toxic chlorine gas struck targets in heavily Sunni Anbar province including the office of a Sunni tribal leader opposed to al-Qaida. The attacks killed at least two people and sickened 350 Iraqi civilians and six U.S. troops, the U.S. military said Saturday.

The violence started about 4:11 p.m. Friday when a driver detonated explosives in a pickup truck carrying chlorine at a checkpoint northeast of the provincial capital of Ramadi, wounding one U.S. service member and one Iraqi civilian, the military said in a statement.

Two hours later a dump truck exploded in Amiriyah, south of Fallujah, killing two policemen and leaving as many as 100 residents with symptoms of chlorine exposure ranging from minor skin and lung irritations to vomiting, the military said.

Another suicide bomber detonated a dump truck containing a 200-gallon chlorine tank rigged with explosives at 7:13 p.m. three miles south of Fallujah in the Albu Issa tribal region, the military said. U.S. forces found about 250 local civilians, including seven children, suffering from symptoms related to chlorine exposure, according to the statement. Police said the bomb was targeting the reception center of a tribal sheik who has denounced al-Qaida.

Four other bombings have released chlorine gas since Jan. 28 ... The primary effect of the chlorine attacks has been to spread panic. Although chlorine gas can be fatal, the heat from the explosions can render the gas nontoxic. Victims in the recent chlorine blasts died from the explosions, and not the effects of the gas.

They haven't gotten big casualty counts out of these things - and when you use pickup trucks and dump trucks as your delivery vehicles, you're probably not going to get much. But the fact that they continue to use chlorine as a weapon may indicate a willingness to go through the learning curve.

It's worth noting that these three attacks took place in Anbar province, where al Qaeda has a well-documented presence. Also, two of the targets were al Qaeda opponents.

This is worth watching. (Also see this post.)

Cyberterror Risk

In January the Congressional Research Service reported that the risk of cyberterror may be growing:

Persistent Internet and computer security vulnerabilities, which have been widely publicized, may gradually encourage terrorists to continue to enhance their computer skills, or develop alliances with criminal organizations and consider attempting a cyberattack against the U.S. critical infrastructure.

Reports indicate that terrorists and extremists in the Middle East and South Asia may be increasingly collaborating with cybercriminals for the international movement of money, and for the smuggling of arms and illegal drugs.

To date, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reports that cyberattacks attributed to terrorists have largely been limited to unsophisticated efforts such as email bombing of ideological foes, or defacing of websites. However, it says their increasing technical competency is resulting in an emerging capability for network-based attacks. The FBI has predicted that terrorists will either develop or hire hackers for the purpose of complimenting large conventional attacks with cyberattacks.

The integration of physical attacks with cyberattacks is important to consider. If cyberterrorists were to take down a communication network as an isolated incident, it would be annoying and costly - but not earth-shattering. But on the other hand, if cyberterrorists were to take down the same communication network in conjunction with a physical attack, it could hinder the response and amplify the effects of the attack:

Many security experts also agree that a cyberattack would be most effective if it were used to amplify a conventional bombing or CBRN attack. Such a scenario might include attempting to disrupt 911 call centers simultaneous with the detonating of an explosives devices.

Terrorist recruiting also relies on the Internet:

The Internet is now used as a prime recruiting tool for insurgents in Iraq. Insurgents have created many Arabic-language websites that are said to contain coded plans for new attacks. Some reportedly give advice on how to build and operate weapons, and how to pass through border checkpoints.

There are also links between more common criminal activity and terrorism. Most notably, drug trafficking:

Officials of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), reported in 2003 that 14 of the 36 groups found on the U.S. State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations were involved in drug trafficking. ... Drug traffickers are reportedly among the most widespread users of computer messaging and encryption, and often have the financial clout to hire high level computer specialists capable of using steganography (writing hidden messages contained in digital photographs) and other means to make Internet messages hard or impossible to decipher.

Terrorists need money to fund their operations and often turn to illegal activities as sources of cash. This is an ongoing vulnerability for them.

Updated: Makeshift Chemical Attack in Iraq

In Iraq today, a chlorine tanker truck exploded in a makeshift chemical attack. Reuters reported:

A bomb destroyed a truck carrying chlorine north of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least five people and spewing out toxic fumes that left nearly 140 others sick, Iraqi police said.

It was not immediately clear if the chlorine truck blast was caused by a roadside bomb that hit the truck or if the vehicle itself was rigged with explosives as a makeshift chemical gas bomb.

One source at police headquarters said the truck was rigged with explosives ... A second police source also said the bomb was on the truck.

The bomb exploded near a restaurant at a rest stop on the main highway in Taji, 20 km (12 miles) north of Baghdad.

Insurgents and jihadists in Iraq have blown up gas trucks and gas stations before, but this is the first I've heard of anybody in Iraq using an IED to release deadly chemicals. If the bombs were in fact on the truck, then there's no question that their intent was to release the chlorine. Iraq is a real-world testing ground for terrorism, so it's worth noting whether this becomes a trend. It's not a good thing for terrorists to develop this capability.

Chlorine is nasty stuff, but it's used in water treatment, so it's loaded into railcars and tanker trucks that crisscross the U.S. every day. It's a vulnerability for sure. An oft-quoted study by the Naval Research Laboratory said that a worst-case chlorine leak from a railcar could kill up to 100,000 people in Washington D.C. (It's worth noting that TSA has proposed new rules for securing railcars, however.)

Update 2007-02-21: One day later, they did it again, with some success. Not good news:

Insurgents exploded a truck carrying chlorine gas canisters Wednesday — the second such "dirty" chemical attack in two days ... a pickup truck carrying chlorine gas cylinders was blown apart, killing at least five people and sending more than 55 to hospitals gasping for breath and rubbing stinging eyes, police said.

Some authorities believe militants could be trying to maximize the panic from their attacks by adding chlorine or other noxious substances.

"It is an indication of maliciousness, a desire to injure and kill innocent people in the vicinity," said [Lt. Col. Christopher] Garver, who also predicted militants may begin to launch similar attacks because of the widespread mayhem caused by this week's chlorine clouds.

Update 2007-03-02: Terrorism Focus looks closely at the trend of insurgent chemical attacks, suggesting that it's unclear if this trend is likely to continue, and that measures may be taken in Iraq to secure large supplies of chlorine:

Fortunately, the potential supply of chlorine suitable for such attacks will not allow groups to employ the agent in significant quantities indefinitely. Although there are numerous potential sources of chlorine in Iraq, future large-scale attacks can be kept at a minimum if bulk access points are kept under proper controls and distributions monitored.

The same precautions need to be ensured here, at all times, by local authorities. The threat of accidental or intentional chemical release is an issue for every community. A chlorine leak is a real possibility for any community that has a water treatment plant, and/or a highway or railroad running through it.

CRS Report on Maritime Security

In January, the Congressional Research Service released a report on the threat of maritime terrorism.

While noting that "fewer than 1% of all global terrorist attacks since 1997 have involved maritime targets," the report discusses a few of the particular threats. It's an exercise in threat recognition.

The CRS notes that there are particular challenges to launching a maritime attack:

One U.S. naval analyst has identified a number of specific challenges for terrorists in the maritime environment:

• Maritime targets are relatively more scarce than land targets;
• Surveillance at sea offers less cover and concealment than surveillance on land;
• Tides, currents, wind, sea state, visibility, and proximity to land must all be factored into a maritime terror operation;
• Maritime terror operations may require skills that are not quickly or easily acquired such as special training in navigation, coastal piloting, and ship handling;
• Testing weapons and practicing attack techniques, hallmarks of Al Qaeda’s typically meticulous preparation, are harder and more difficult to conceal at sea than on land;
• The generally singular nature of maritime targets, the low probability of damage and casualties secondary to the intended target, and the problems associated with filming attacks at sea for terrorist publicity may also reduce the desirability of maritime targets.

Despite these difficulties, al Qaeda and other terrorists have chosen maritime targets in the past, including the USS Cole bombing in 2000, the attack on the French oil tanker Limburg in 2002, and the 2004 attack on the Philippine Superferry 14.

A maritime attack does not need to cause many human casualties to have an effect:

If economic loss is the primary objective, terrorists may seek to carry out different types of attacks, with potentially few human casualties but significant impacts to critical infrastructure or commerce. The Limburg bombing may have been an attack of this type, threatening to disrupt the global oil trade and causing considerable consternation among tanker operators. Although the bombing killed only one member of the Limburg’s crew, it caused insurance rates among Yemeni shippers to rise 300% and reduced Yemeni port shipping volumes by 50% in the month after the attack.

The report comments on the relative risks of different types of maritime attacks, starting with the nuclear "bomb in a box" (i.e., shipping container) scenario:

Expert estimates of the probability of terrorists obtaining a nuclear device have ranged from 50% to less than 1%. Among other challenges to obtaining such a device, experts believe it unlikely that countries with nuclear weapons or materials would knowingly supply them to a terrorist group. It also may be technically difficult to successfully detonate such a nuclear device. North Korea experienced technical failures in conducting its 2006 nuclear weapons test, and this test took place under highly controlled conditions. Attempting to detonate a nuclear device in a maritime terror attack could pose even greater operational challenges.

The risk of a "dirty bomb" attack may be higher, especially if the primary objective is economic damage, though there are skeptics:

Terrorist attacks on U.S. ports with radiological dispersion devices (“dirty” bombs) is also considered among the gravest maritime terrorism scenarios. A 2003 simulation of a series of such attacks concluded that they “could cripple global trade and have a devastating impact on the nation’s economy.” Many terrorism analysts view such a dirty bomb attack as relatively likely.

Scientists have long questioned whether terrorists could actually build a dirty bomb with catastrophic potential since handling the necessary radioactive materials could cause severe burns and would likely expose the builders to lethal doses of radiation. Building and transporting such a bomb safely and to avoid detection would likely require so much shielding that it would be “nearly impossible” to move. Weaker dirty bombs made from less radioactive (and more common) materials would be easier to build and deploy, but would have a much smaller physical impact and would likely cause few human casualties.

Attacking a tanker or port facility that handles liquified natural gas (LNG) could create a major explosion, though it's not easy:

To date, no LNG tanker or land-based LNG facility in the world has been attacked by terrorists. However, similar natural gas and oil assets have been favored terror targets internationally. The attack on the Limburg, although an oil tanker, is often cited as an indication of LNG tanker vulnerability.

Former Director of Central Intelligence, James Woolsey, has stated his belief that a terrorist attack on an LNG tanker in U.S. waters would be unlikely because its potential impacts would not be great enough compared to other potential targets. LNG terminal operators which have conducted proprietary assessments of potential terrorist attacks against LNG tankers, have expressed similar views.

If terrorists are looking for human casualties, a ferry is a possible target:

A RAND study in 2006 argued that attacks on passenger ferries in the United States might be highly attractive to terrorists because such attacks are easy to execute, may kill many people, would likely draw significant media attention and could demonstrate a terrorist group’s salience and vibrancy. One U.S. Coast Guard risk analyst reportedly has stated that “in terms of the probability of something happening, the likelihood of it succeeding and the consequences of it occurring, ferries come out at the very high end.” Such attacks have occurred overseas. As noted earlier in this report, terrorists linked to Al Qaeda attacked and sank the Philippine vessel Superferry 14 in 2004.

After examining the details, the report comes to this rather bland conclusion:

It appears, therefore, that while maritime terrorist attacks against the United States may be more difficult to execute and, consequently, less likely to occur than other types of attacks, they remain a significant possibility and warrant continued policy attention.

The Risk Right Here

There was some interesting testimony at last week's hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Generally, there was a lot of old info, but some new info as well.

Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte discussed the likeliest threat:

Use of a conventional explosive continues to be the most probable al-Qa'ida attack scenario. … Nevertheless, we receive reports indicating that al-Qa'ida and other groups are attempting to acquire chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons or materials.

Lieutenant General Michael Maples, who's the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, provided more insight into probable WMD threats, as well as some of the more likely avenues of terrorist recruiting:

CBRN-related information is widely available, and if terrorists were to use unconventional materials in an attack, we believe they likely would use low-level biochemical agents such as ricin, botulinum toxin or toxic industrial chemicals such as cyanide. … We also judge that al Qaida and other terrorist groups have the capability and intent to develop and employ a radiological dispersal device.

Extremism throughout the West will continue to be spread primarily through radical clerics, the Internet, and in prisons.

Charlie Allen, the Chief Intelligence Officer at DHS, chimed in with some information on potential U.S. targets and additional info on terrorist recruiting:

We determine that transportation (particularly commercial aviation and mass transit) and commercial facilities remain the sectors most threatened by al-Qa'ida and its affiliates.

Our research indicates a variety of radicalizing influences, to include the role of charismatic extremist leaders, the spread of extremist propaganda through the Internet, the use of mass communication and multimedia, and more traditional person-to-person encounters, are among the key drivers that shape radicalization dynamics within the Homeland.

I thought the most interesting testimony was given by Phillip Mudd, who was appearing on behalf of Willie T. Hulon, the Executive Assistant Director of the FBI's National Security Branch (NSB). Mudd talked about the connections between terrorists and more ordinary criminal activities, the risk of homegrown terrorism, and the threat posed by Hezbollah:

Last year, we disrupted a homegrown Sunni Islamic extremist group in California known as the JIS, a.k.a. 'Assembly of Authentic Islam,' operating primarily in state prisons, without apparent connections or direction from outside the United States and no identifiable foreign nexus. Members of the JIS committed armed robberies in Los Angeles with the goal of financing terrorist attacks …

The radicalization of US Muslim converts is of particular concern. … converts appear to be more vulnerable and likely to be placed in situations that put them in a position to be influenced by Islamic extremists.

The Internet has facilitated the radicalization process, particularly in the United States, by providing access to a broad and constant stream of extremist Islamic propaganda, as well as experienced and possibly well connected operators via web forums and chat rooms.

US Hizballah associates and sympathizers primarily engage in a wide range of fundraising avenues in order to provide support to Hizballah to include criminal activities such as money laundering, credit card, immigration, food stamp, and bank fraud, as well as narcotics trafficking.

The UPI also reported on the hearing, adding some additional perspective from the participants on the use of the Internet to spread extremist ideologies. Mudd said:

The commonality we have (with Europe) is people who are using the Internet or talking among friends who are part of what I would characterize as a Pepsi jihad ... It's become popular among youth, and we have this phenomenon in the United States.

So that you have a kid in Georgia, a kid in California, a kid in Kansas, he may see the same images from Iraq, from Palestine, from Afghanistan, from Pakistan, that someone in Indonesia or Saudi Arabia sees, and he may be infected the same way with an ideology that says the use of violence against innocents is okay.

But, the UPI reported, others point out that there is a generally small risk of a group of young people becoming radicalized over the Internet and then launching a catastrophic attack, without any further connections or training:

"It's ridiculous to think that the U.S. or any other military would do its training over the Internet," said analyst and author Peter Bergen, arguing al-Qaida was just as professional in its approach. "Radicalization is one thing, having operational cells with the capacity to launch attacks is something else entirely.

"That basically means people who have been through one of the (terrorist training) camps."

Bergen said that the homegrown plots uncovered in the United States so far appeared to lack that thread back to al-Qaida central, which was one reason why he said they had been "pretty pathetic ... not much of a threat."

Most Likely WMD Scenario?

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) recently issued a report indicating that the most likely WMD terrorist threat involves a radioactive dispersal device, or "dirty bomb," the Globe and Mail reported.

The CSIS even goes so far as to say that it's surprising that no one has yet used this mode of attack:

Canada's spy agency says it is “quite surprising” that terrorists have not detonated a crude radioactive bomb, given the availability of materials and ease with which they could be made into a weapon.

But the CSIS study cautions that “a determined and resourceful terrorist group” could execute more elaborate forms of nuclear or radiological attack.

“The technical capability required to construct and use a simple RDD is practically trivial, compared to that of a nuclear explosive device or even most chemical or biological weapons,” the CSIS study says.

A homemade radiological weapon could consist of a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material commonly found at universities, medical and research laboratories or industrial sites.

The intelligence service points to the notion terrorist thinking has shifted from the desire to inflict mass casualties to “one of inflicting severe economic damage.”

It's not news that an RDD is a more likely mode of attack than a nuclear weapon. It's important to note, though, that the CSIS is seeing terrorists as pursuing economic aims rather than bodycounts. This has long been a key element of al Qaeda's strategy, as Brian Michael Jenkins pointed out in his excellent book, Unconquerable Nation:

Lest anyone misunderstand the purpose of jihad and consider it a form of spiritual calisthenics, bin Laden is explicit: “It is a religious-economic war,” he says. ... He argues that the United States can be brought down by destroying its economy.

Al Qaeda, in its view, brought down the Soviet Union by draining its economy through the Afghan war. It seeks to do the same thing to the United States.