[ISN] The Rise of Complex Terrorism

[InfoSec News]

http://www.petroleumworld.com/SuF040404.htm

By Thomas Homer-Dixon

Modern societies face a cruel paradox: Fast-paced technological and
economic innovations may deliver unrivalled prosperity, but they also
render rich nations vulnerable to crippling, unanticipated attacks. By
relying on intricate networks and concentrating vital assets in small
geographic clusters, advanced Western nations only amplify the
destructive power of terrorists—and the psychological and financial
damage they can inflict.

It's 4 a.m. on a sweltering summer night in July 2003. Across much of
the United States, power plants are working full tilt to generate
electricity for millions of air conditioners that are keeping a
ferocious heat wave at bay. The electricity grid in California has
repeatedly buckled under the strain, with rotating blackouts from San
Diego to Santa Rosa.

In different parts of the state, half a dozen small groups of men and
women gather. Each travels in a rented minivan to its prearranged
destination—for some, a location outside one of the hundreds of
electrical substations dotting the state; for others, a spot upwind
from key, high-voltage transmission lines. The groups unload their
equipment from the vans. Those outside the substations put together
simple mortars made from materials bought at local hardware stores,
while those near the transmission lines use helium to inflate weather
balloons with long silvery tails. At a precisely coordinated moment,
the homemade mortars are fired, sending showers of aluminum chaff over
the substations. The balloons are released and drift into the
transmission lines.

Simultaneously, other groups are doing the same thing along the
Eastern Seaboard and in the South and Southwest. A national electrical
system already under immense strain is massively short-circuited,
causing a cascade of power failures across the country. Traffic lights
shut off. Water and sewage systems are disabled. Communications
systems break down. The financial system and national economy come
screeching to a halt.

Sound far-fetched? Perhaps it would have before September 11, 2001,
but certainly not now. We've realized, belatedly, that our societies
are wide-open targets for terrorists. We're easy prey because of two
key trends: First, the growing technological capacity of small groups
and individuals to destroy things and people; and, second, the
increasing vulnerability of our economic and technological systems to
carefully aimed attacks. While commentators have devoted considerable
ink and airtime to the first of these trends, they've paid far less
attention to the second, and they've virtually ignored their combined
effect. Together, these two trends facilitate a new and sinister kind
of mass violence—a "complex terrorism" that threatens modern,
high-tech societies in the world's most developed nations.

Our fevered, Hollywood-conditioned imaginations encourage us to focus
on the sensational possibility of nuclear or biological
attacks—attacks that might kill tens of thousands of people in a
single strike. These threats certainly deserve attention, but not to
the neglect of the likelier and ultimately deadlier disruptions that
could result from the clever exploitation by terrorists of our
societies' new and growing complexities.


Weapons of Mass Disruption

The steady increase in the destructive capacity of small groups and
individuals is driven largely by three technological advances: more
powerful weapons, the dramatic progress in communications and
information processing, and more abundant opportunities to divert
non-weapon technologies to destructive ends.

Consider first the advances in weapons technology. Over the last
century, progress in materials engineering, the chemistry of
explosives, and miniaturization of electronics has brought steady
improvement in all key weapons characteristics, including accuracy,
destructive power, range, portability, ruggedness, ease-of-use, and
affordability. Improvements in light weapons are particularly relevant
to trends in terrorism and violence by small groups, where the devices
of choice include rocket-propelled grenade launchers, machine guns,
light mortars, land mines, and cheap assault rifles such as the famed
AK-47. The effects of improvements in these weapons are particularly
noticeable in developing countries. A few decades ago, a small band of
terrorists or insurgents attacking a rural village might have used
bolt-action rifles, which take precious time to reload. Today, cheap
assault rifles multiply the possible casualties resulting from such an
attack. As technological change makes it easier to kill, societies are
more likely to become locked into perpetual cycles of attack and
counterattack that render any normal trajectory of political and
economic development impossible.

Meanwhile, new communications technologies—from satellite phones to
the Internet—allow violent groups to marshal resources and coordinate
activities around the planet. Transnational terrorist organizations
can use the Internet to share information on weapons and recruiting
tactics, arrange surreptitious fund transfers across borders, and plan
attacks. These new technologies can also dramatically enhance the
reach and power of age-old procedures. Take the ancient hawala system
of moving money between countries, widely used in Middle Eastern and
Asian societies. The system, which relies on brokers linked together
by clan-based networks of trust, has become faster and more effective
through the use of the Internet.


The Rise of Complex Terrorism

Information-processing technologies have also boosted the power of
terrorists by allowing them to hide or encrypt their messages. The
power of a modern laptop computer today is comparable to the
computational power available in the entire U.S. Defense Department in
the mid-1960s. Terrorists can use this power to run widely available
state-of-the-art encryption software. Sometimes less advanced computer
technologies are just as effective. For instance, individuals can use
a method called steganography ("hidden writing") to embed messages
into digital photographs or music clips. Posted on publicly available
Web sites, the photos or clips are downloaded by collaborators as
necessary. (This technique was reportedly used by recently arrested
terrorists when they planned to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Paris.) At
latest count, 140 easy-to-use steganography tools were available on
the Internet. Many other off-the-shelf technologies—such as
"spread-spectrum" radios that randomly switch their broadcasting and
receiving signals—allow terrorists to obscure their messages and make
themselves invisible.

The Web also provides access to critical information. The September 11
terrorists could have found there all the details they needed about
the floor plans and design characteristics of the World Trade Center
and about how demolition experts use progressive collapse to destroy
large buildings. The Web also makes available sets of instructions—or
"technical ingenuity"—needed to combine readily available materials in
destructive ways. Practically anything an extremist wants to know
about kidnapping, bomb making, and assassination is now available
online. One somewhat facetious example: It's possible to convert
everyday materials into potentially destructive devices like the
"potato cannon." With a barrel and combustion chamber fashioned from
common plastic pipe, and with propane as an explosive propellant, a
well-made cannon can hurl a homely spud hundreds of meters—or throw
chaff onto electrical substations. A quick search of the Web reveals
dozens of sites giving instructions on how to make one.

Finally, modern, high-tech societies are filled with supercharged
devices packed with energy, combustibles, and poisons, giving
terrorists ample opportunities to divert such non-weapon technologies
to destructive ends. To cause horrendous damage, all terrorists must
do is figure out how to release this power and let it run wild or, as
they did on September 11, take control of this power and retarget it.  
Indeed, the assaults on New York City and the Pentagon were not
low-tech affairs, as is often argued. True, the terrorists used simple
box cutters to hijack the planes, but the box cutters were no more
than the "keys" that allowed the terrorists to convert a high-tech
means of transport into a high-tech weapon of mass destruction. Once
the hijackers had used these keys to access and turn on their weapon,
they were able to deliver a kiloton of explosive power into the World
Trade Center with deadly accuracy.

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