Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Steve Levitt wants you to get into the head of a terrorist!
Steve Levitt is asking an interesting question at the New York Times: If you were a terrorist, how would you attack? The basic premise is quite simply wisdom of crowds, I guess. If you had posed the same question back in 2001, chances are that someone would have come up the idea of flying planes into buildings and maybe, it would not have come as such a shock to the system.
Levitt himself comes up with an idea that I agree could potentially be devastating for the simple reason that unpredictable small acts of terror are far more terrorizing than huge acts of terror like 9/11. Anyone who lives in Israel or in Delhi during the 80's will probably agree strongly.
Given my past experience with overly sensitive readers, I ask you to actually read the Levitt piece and think about it before violently reacting to it, like some of the commenters on that blog have. For those who think this is a bad idea, I ask this: would you also consider not publishing a Tom Clancy or Frederick Forsyth novel, based on the assumption that it will give terrorists ideas?
Levitt himself comes up with an idea that I agree could potentially be devastating for the simple reason that unpredictable small acts of terror are far more terrorizing than huge acts of terror like 9/11. Anyone who lives in Israel or in Delhi during the 80's will probably agree strongly.
The best terrorist plan I have heard is one that my father thought up after the D.C. snipers created havoc in 2002. The basic idea is to arm 20 terrorists with rifles and cars, and arrange to have them begin shooting randomly at pre-set times all across the country. Big cities, little cities, suburbs, etc. Have them move around a lot. No one will know when and where the next attack will be. The chaos would be unbelievable, especially considering how few resources it would require of the terrorists. It would also be extremely hard to catch these guys. The damage wouldn’t be as extreme as detonating a nuclear bomb in New York City, of course; but it sure would be a lot easier to obtain a handful of guns than a nuclear weapon.As you can imagine, Levitt's piece has pissed off some of the usual flag-waving suspects, but some of the responses are rather intriguing and I bet Levitt will do a follow-up based on the feedback he's receiving. In the meanwhile, let's hope law enforcement authorities are looking at these ideas seriously since it may be the best way to prevent some of the ideas from coming to fruition just like reading Tom Clancy novels could have served as a warning before 9/11 or reading Forsyth could have served as warning on belt bomb wearing suicide bombers.
Given my past experience with overly sensitive readers, I ask you to actually read the Levitt piece and think about it before violently reacting to it, like some of the commenters on that blog have. For those who think this is a bad idea, I ask this: would you also consider not publishing a Tom Clancy or Frederick Forsyth novel, based on the assumption that it will give terrorists ideas?
