Schneier on Security

Skeptical • February 8, 2015 2:33 PM

@Coyne: Existential, as used here, refers to a threat to existence. Let’s suppose that the U. S. suffered a terrorist attack that killed 3,000 every month: about 1,000 times in an average lifetime. A citizen would still have a 99% chance of never being involved in an attack. Less than 1% of the population would die, in 83 years.

Really I think we’d need to begin by clearly defining what we mean in this discussion when we talk about “threats”, but as I’ve said, I don’t think any current terrorist actors would qualify as what we likely mean by “existential threat.”

However, you’re demonstrating exactly the reasoning that I think is erroneous as applied to certain types of terrorism.

Attacks by an ITO determined to continue attacking you are more similar to attacks by a hostile state than to motor vehicle accidents. That is, assuming an ITO has the capability to do so, then absent any response on one’s part attacks will both continue and escalate. Nor will society treat deaths from those attacks as they would those from motor vehicle accidents.

You’re also simply counting deaths, and not taking into account other costs. In the case of 9/11, that means the evacuation of lower Manhattan and federal buildings in Washington DC, the grounding of all flights, the closing of financial markets, and so on.

Even assuming a constant death toll of 3k from 9/11 type events each month, no open society would survive as such if those circumstances were unremitting.

If AQ had the capability to mount one successful 9/11 attack per month, then they might indeed qualify as an existential threat, depending on how we use the term.

It is correct that there is a huge spectrum between “existential threat” and zero threat. My argument against the government is that it insists on using one endpoint of that spectrum (and not the zero end).

I’m really not sure what it means for the government to treat terrorist actors, much less “terrorism”, as an existential threat.

Meanwhile, it ignores risks of other kinds because fixing those risks would “cut into someone’s profit”. The 2014 Elk River chemical spill comes to mind: just bit more poisonous and 1-per-1000 deaths and that would have exceeded the deaths of the WTC attack. (Oh, wait, maybe it’s a slow death from cancer and they killed 1-in-1000 anyway.)

The US spends huge sums of money on other types of risks, much more than we spend on terrorism. It may not seem that way because most of the costs spent on other types of risks seem very normal to us.

So we don’t even notice the amount of money it may cost to build motor vehicles that satisfy US safety regulations, to construct buildings according an array of regulations ranging from fire protection to indoor air quality to structural integrity, and moreover for the processes used to make all of those things to themselves conform to safety regulations. It’s all baked into our economy.

In some ways the attitude is reflective of the airline passenger who scoffs at all the money we spend on the TSA when there are far more serious dangers associated with air travel. But of course that passenger forgets the amount of money spent on manufacturing airplanes, including of course all their component parts, to conform to safety regulations, the amount of money spent maintaining the planes according to additional regulations, the certifications necessary to work on the planes in the first place, and the qualifications required of pilots and flight crews.

It’s a bit empty to argue that we must assume a change in statistical risk based on an event that happened fourteen years ago or rely on evidence that isn’t. Even if, in 2001, we assumed that terrorist attacks would now be common, the following fourteen years have not borne that out: what about that statistic?

The hard part is that you have to use counterfactual reasoning about the last 14 years (and that’s assuming you had access to classified information on plots that existed and were prevented). In other words, what would the last 14 years have looked like if we had adopted a different approach to terrorist actors? It’s not an easy question to answer. And frankly, given events in the Middle East and elsewhere, the next 14 years don’t look particularly encouraging from a counterterrorist vantage.

And as for the evidence, when were we ever given any? The only evidence we’ve heard is, first of all, “Orange! Red! Orange! Red! Orange! Red! Orange! Red!” and, “We’ve caught a terrorist, that we recruited, wound up, supplied fake bombs, pointed him at a target, and laughed as we busted him,” and “Our [snake oil] saved you from approximately thousands…no, hundreds…no, wait, 57…no, hmmmm, sorry, we saved you from one cab driver who thought he was donating to a political party, in Somalia, and his two buddies!”

No, we saw very public attempts at failed airline bombings, we saw publicized arrests of individuals in the advanced stages of operations to bomb mass transit systems, and in the last 18 months we’ve learned of a large number of terrorist plots (here and abroad) that were thwarted which we simply don’t know the details about.

Nor do we lack for evidence of the continued intent of certain terrorist actors, which they express in a variety of ways.

We should think about all of these things critically, and not assume that any proposal is necessary the best approach, but it seems to me that you’ve adopted an extreme end of the spectrum yourself, on the point opposite the “existential threat” folks.

Skeptical • February 11, 2015 5:45 PM

@Dirk: AQ originated in Afghanistan with CIA dollars until they turned on the hand that fed them. ISIS is the result of overthrowing and destabilising the regimes of several countries this sore is now festering in, and sponsored by the same US allies that previously forked out monies to AQ and other terrorist organisations. So if there’s anything to fear from upcoming Charlies and Bravos, perhaps it would also be wise to look back at what actually caused the rise of Alpha and who funded them.

We can locate many causes that led to the existence of AQ. The Soviet invasion, funding from Saudi Arabia, funding of other (though related) groups by CIA, the funding of core ideologies supportive of AQ, the civil war in Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal, etc. But CIA funding never went to the groups that evolved into AQ.

What if the CIA never funded opposition to the Soviets? Who knows.

As to future terrorist threats… I’d say it’s going to be more of the same type for some time. In each case the hard part will not be naming the threat, but assessing the threat. Naming al Qaeda was always easy. Assessing it? Not so easy.

As to your points re surveillance programs, the fact that even those most critical of the NSA also agreed, after viewing classified intelligence, that collection under 702 provided very valuable intelligence, is persuasive. These would be the people with the greatest interest in denying such a proposition, and that they cannot tells us much.

@Wesley: It’s not relevant whether this or that group views borders or not. You made a specific claim, and I showed you counterexamples. The fact is that ITOs can, do, and have, operated consistently in multiple countries.

@Sancho: Rockets and drones are about winning conflicts. Winning a peace is equally important, and requires additional tools. However you still must sometimes win a conflict as well. Such is life.