Schneier on Security

Roger • June 9, 2006 2:23 AM

@erasmus:

don’t let preconceptions cloud your ability to take in what you read.

OK, thanks for the implied insult.

It took many, many attempts and a lot of practice to produce an effective dissemination mechanism in WW1.

Firstly, even if this was true, it does not speak to my point. The methods used in WWI have been public knowledge for decades, they used technology nearly a century old, and they worked. Lettice’s suggestion that it would be impossibly difficult for a terrorist group to come up with an effective dissemination method today, is clearly nonsense. Would it be a challenge? Maybe, maybe not. Would it be optimally efficient? Almost certainly not. But could it work quite well? Quite likely.

Secondly, you greatly exaggerate the difficulty had in development. It is true that there were difficulties and setbacks even quite late in the war; but on 22nd April 1915 the VERY FIRST attack with a lethal agent wiped out French resistance on a 7 km wide front. This attack used the most primitive dissemination method, and the least toxic lethal agent used during WW1, yet was the single most successful CW attack on the Western Front in that war, and possibly in history.

It was so successful for the simple reason that the French troops under attack had no defences at all. By the time the British and Canadians were attacked a few days later, they had at least been warned to cover their faces with urine-soaked handkerchiefs; not very effective, but quite a bit better than nothing. As masks and later respirators were introduced, an ever more complex arms struggle between defensive and offensive chemical warfare developed, in which CW never regained the devastating effects it had in April 1915. That status remains today:
* against prepared troops, CW is an area denial munition, capable of degrading operations and hampering movement but unlikely to cause more than light casualties; but
* against civilians or ill-equipped troops, CW is a weapon of mass destruction, capable of causing mass casualties indiscriminately across wide areas.

Spend a few weeks reading up on WW1 “Specials” – there was quite a lot written if you know

I have read an immense amount about chemical warfare, thank you. I have also studied the possibilities of chemical terrorism at length. There is surprisingly little overlap. I don’t propose to discuss the differences in detail, but two significant differences include:
* an agent for use in terrorism must either be very fast acting, or else insidious, since civilians can flee once they detect the gas (whereas against soldiers, flight would be considered a success); but
* a much higher LCt_50 is acceptable, in comparison to a military agent, since civilians congregate at much higher densities than do soldiers in combat.
From those two points alone at least one obvious choice is hydrogen cyanide — although largely rejected as a military agent [1].

In addition, while the lethality of hydrogen cyanide is no joke, it is manageable enough that any moderately competent lab tech should be able to prepare and deliver it without killing himself, thereby obviating the objections that terrorists would not be able to handle such extremely toxic (and percutaneous) materials as sarin.

Finally, sodium cyanide is fairly readily available in large quantities, especially in developing countries (in the Philippines, it is estimated that 150 tonnes per annum are used illegally for fishing), and the process of converting it to hydrogen cyanide is trivial and well known.

Despite being rejected as a military agent, guess what, HCN is OBL’s number one choice… Apparently, someone has been actually thinking about solving the “problem” instead of coming up with objections.

Certainly they would not be my preferred weapon of terror,

If I was remotely inclined to be a terrorist, which I am not, they most certainly would be mine.

They also happen to be OBL’s, but his organisation got all disrupted before they got any working.

Despite the dangers of underestimating your opponents, I do think that al-Qaeda had only a few deep thinkers. Back in the nineties they came up with a variety of innovative terrorist strategies. Since then their communications have been severed, or at least seriously degraded, and they are no longer able to effectively command the organisation. Since then, AQs tactics have almost completely lacked innovation, just doing the same things over and over. I suspect this is the main reason their chemical plots have stalled.

though I guess the printed media gets to sell more column inches on them.

I think you mean, “sell more papers”. Column inches get sold to advertisers, and wasted by journalists!

1. It was briefly experimented with in WW1, but found to be infeasible to generate effective concentrations on the battlefield. Iraq also used it, but probably only to murder dissident civilians, not against Iranian troops; and of course the Nazis used it to murder concentration camp prisoners. No other military has ever stockpiled it.