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I can't help but wonder...
Press reports use the word "sophisticated." And it seems cavalier to trivialize what appears to have been a major and serious danger. And I hardly know any facts about the event. But the more I hear about the plot, the more I wonder. 24 guys arrested, according to some 50 guys involved. A whole bunch of them seem to spill all the beans right away and rat on each other in great numbers. Um...a British sports drink (which one?). I guess in theory you can trigger a liquid explosive with a flash camera. The Internet certainly says you can. How much practice did they have igniting actual explosions? How much mid-air assembly of the procedure is required, and at what point do the scheming Pakistanis start to look suspicious? Do the passengers just stand around and watch?
Of course if only one of the plots had succeeded it would have been terrible terrible terrible. But, um, was this really a well-developed idea for a terror attack? Just askin', as they say...
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 10, 2006 at 08:45 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
If you want to know what the explosive sounds like to this non-chemist, google for "TATP" (but beware the NSA vaccuuming the tubes).
I believe the general point holds, though - the sturm und drang ("bigger than 9/11") seems awfully more like politics than security. (That's not to knock the people who took these loons down - just an observation about the reactions.)
And you will know that the airline response is pure theater if it doesn't stop being so absurdly restrictive within a week - there's a security case to be made for mopping up people who weren't taken down in the first round of raids and being careful in the mean time, but not after you've mopped up the cell. (Although I suppose crippling the airlines until after November might be asmall price to pay, to some.)
Posted by: fishbane at Aug 10, 2006 9:06:02 PM
What is the economic cost of the airline disruption? That is a pretty big hit for low cost to terrorists, even if no one died.
Posted by: Zubon at Aug 10, 2006 9:16:14 PM
Presumably, you could take your carry on into the bathroom and mix everything there, so that would be a way of avoiding suspicion.
Posted by: Jason at Aug 10, 2006 9:22:58 PM
i wish the media / government agencies would spend more efforts increasing numerical literacy. a populace ignorant of probabilities is ever-scared of these rare & unfortunate events, even if they are almost certainly not going to be affected directly. maybe a battling cry economists could get behind, towards homo oeconomicus? :)
Posted by: Gregor J. Rothfuss at Aug 10, 2006 9:59:58 PM
I thought that the British sports drink was supposed to have a false bottom- and they'd secrete the stuff in there.
Posted by: TJ at Aug 10, 2006 10:17:23 PM
Thing is, the 9/11 plot was even more far-fetched. Dozens of suspicious Muslim chappies taking flight school lessons? Playing with flight simulators? Piloting multiple planes in to skyscrapers? If Oliver Stone made the movie before 9/11, he would be a laughing stock.
Posted by: Vish Subramanian at Aug 10, 2006 11:59:51 PM
Clearly, the solution is to abolish flying.
Posted by: shecky at Aug 11, 2006 12:45:31 AM
Gregor-I wish the government would increase their own numerical literacy.
Posted by: joan at Aug 11, 2006 2:20:02 AM
I second shecky's comment.
The humungus cost in lost time from all this extra airport security is completely disproportionate to the risk of this type of attack.
Posted by: Paul N at Aug 11, 2006 6:56:15 AM
All the elements of the claimed plot are things you could test independently, before getting on a plane. (Well, you'd need to find a non-suicide way to set the thing off for your experiments, or you'd show up as dumb even for a suicide bomber.)
I think it's just really hard to keep someone from bringing down a plane when they're on the plane and willing to die to do it. Making something blow up or setting a nasty fire before anyone can get to it, either one will work; maybe there are other techniques. I wonder how much we can really do to stop that. Maybe keeping people from using the plane as a low-budget cruise missile is as much as we can do....
Posted by: albatross at Aug 11, 2006 8:14:03 AM
1. The median Al Qaeda plan is pretty stupid. Remember the shoe bomber? Or the whole idea that attacking the U.S. would _decrease_ our military presence in the mideast? The problem is that (a) terrorist plans have a long-tailed distribution (b) even the stupid get lucky and (c) as Alex might say, our beaureaucratic defenses may be even stupider.
2. Most of the commenters here are completely wrong that the security is going to cause paralysis. All the news I've heard (in Atlanta, home of a really slow airport) is that security is actually going much faster than before, because travellers have quickly adapted their behavior to reduce carry-ons. This will also speed up boarding and reduce bumping people with your luggage, so it may be a net win. Maybe we should ban (or charge for) carryons permanently due to their high externalities.
Posted by: DK at Aug 11, 2006 8:55:45 AM
There's a very easy way to keep these idiots from turning planes into big cruise missles: Allow the passengers to carry knives, box cutters, and other pointy objects. Hell if I'm in a plane and so much as hear "Allah is God and Mohammed is his prophet" out of someone I will beat them to death with a whiskey bottle if I have to... Fires and explosives are a whole different ballgame though, one that the airlines should be vigilant about, but at the same time it is in the best interests of the passengers if they, themselves keep an eye out for suspicious activity on a plane.
Posted by: AnonymousOne at Aug 11, 2006 9:27:49 AM
There's a very easy way to keep these idiots from turning planes into big cruise missles: Allow the passengers to carry knives, box cutters, and other pointy objects. Hell if I'm in a plane and so much as hear "Allah is God and Mohammed is his prophet" out of someone I will beat them to death with a whiskey bottle if I have to... Fires and explosives are a whole different ballgame though, one that the airlines should be vigilant about, but at the same time it is in the best interests of the passengers if they, themselves keep an eye out for suspicious activity on a plane.
Posted by: AnonymousOne at Aug 11, 2006 9:30:10 AM
Google "Annie Jacobsen" musicians Syria. Dry run?
Posted by: Huggy at Aug 11, 2006 9:51:46 AM
The real problem is that the average s. b. candidate isn't good at getting things done and practice might cause them to have second thoughts. Most of the 911 terrorist thought it was a highjacking and that they would live.
Posted by: Huggy at Aug 11, 2006 9:55:50 AM
As a professional chemist, I have to say that yes, things like this could certainly work. The kinds of explosives mentioned in the media are the sorts of things used by suicide bombers before - there's plenty of know-how available out there. The starting materials aren't extremely hard to get, and the skill level needed to set them off isn't high. True, you run a good risk of blowing yourself up while making such things, but that's not much of a deterrent for these people.
The mid-air assembly is indeed the weak link in the whole idea. But unfortunately, I think that they might well have been able to carry it off.
Posted by: Derek Lowe at Aug 11, 2006 10:12:14 AM
Should the airlines be happy about the higher security? Yes it increases cost but if it also makes potential customers more comfortable with the safety of their product is it worth it? How many planes have to fall from the sky before the cost / benefit becomes worth it? Is one plane per year worth the cost or do you require one per month before you see the benefits?
What about security at professional sporting events? I haven't heard of a mass shooting at any NFL game, should they just not have any security entering the games because the cost isn't equal to the risk?
Posted by: Steven Roberts at Aug 11, 2006 11:14:13 AM
DK -- "The median Al Qaeda plan is pretty stupid... the whole idea that attacking the U.S. would _decrease_ our military presence in the mideast?"
It's not clear that was Al Qaeda's idea. I understood Bin Laden's goal was to stir up a global armed confrontation between Islam and the West. Which it seems to me, is pretty well underway.
Worth bringing up when we're talking about how to respond to the latest attempted attack.
Posted by: Anonymous at Aug 11, 2006 11:14:17 AM
DK -- "The median Al Qaeda plan is pretty stupid... the whole idea that attacking the U.S. would _decrease_ our military presence in the mideast?"
It's not clear that was Al Qaeda's idea. I understood Bin Laden's goal was to stir up a global armed confrontation between Islam and the West. Which it seems to me, is pretty well underway.
Worth bringing up when we're talking about how to respond to the latest attempted attack.
Posted by: Anonymous at Aug 11, 2006 11:17:15 AM
I may have overstated the case that the security waits aren't bad. they are still a little bit worse than normal. But usually when they change procedures, the disruption in wait times decays exponentially; people adapt too well for there to be a major long term impact. here in ATL we get lots of local news updates on airport conditions and changing procedures.
p.s. to Anonymous -- was it Bin Laden's goal to watch Hezbollah and Iran lead the global armed confrontation? probably not. In any case, though, you have a good point. But there are plenty of other dumb Al Qaeda plans to list, and a lot of evidence they accept plenty of dumb low-level operators. Their success comes from persistence, not from genius.
Posted by: DK at Aug 11, 2006 11:38:06 AM
at the risk of seeming callous, we can afford the occasional plane blowing up (happens without terrorists). what we can't afford is the use of planes as missiles with near nuclear explosive force (can you imagine the chaos if the idiots who flew the plane into the pentagon had hit the capitol instead?). as for letting knives on planes be the solution, that's silly -- the terrorists could just book the majority of seats on a plane and easily take out the other passengers with weapons (assuming we wouldn't notice the pattern of booking, that they could find that many volunteers for the mission, etc.).
Posted by: dj superflat at Aug 11, 2006 11:59:36 AM
"the whole idea that attacking the U.S. would _decrease_ our military presence in the mideast"
I think the idea was the opposite -- to draw the US into the Middle East and bog it down in fruitless retaliation. Which in turn would push ambivalent secular muslims towards the islamist cause, by having the US take on the role of merciless invader. Worked too. They certainly got lucky there, as their project intersected with the loony right's quixotic project of expanding american dominance throughout the world. Which is now completely derailed, thankfully, but at a terrible cost.
Posted by: tom at Aug 11, 2006 12:34:16 PM
"the whole idea that attacking the U.S. would _decrease_ our military presence in the mideast"
I think the idea was the opposite -- to draw the US into the Middle East and bog it down in fruitless retaliation. Which in turn would push ambivalent secular muslims towards the islamist cause, by having the US take on the role of merciless invader. Worked too. They certainly got lucky there, as their project intersected with the loony right's quixotic project of expanding american dominance throughout the world. Which is now completely derailed, thankfully, but at a terrible cost.
Posted by: tom at Aug 11, 2006 12:35:28 PM
It's high time we start screening for Ninja fighting skills.
Posted by: Whit Stevens at Aug 11, 2006 12:55:41 PM
Yes, DK, I do remember the shoe bomber. What was stupid about that plan? My understanding was that if he'd gone into the bathroom, he would have been able to make more attempts to light the bomb and succeeded. He failed because he was a show-off. Similarly, this plan failed probably because it wanted synchronized attacks, al Qaida's trademark.
Posted by: Douglas Knight at Aug 11, 2006 1:27:17 PM
