HI-TECH TERRORISM
R. A. Schultz
It is now apparent that the Islamofascist jihadists are fully prepared to utilize any means at hand to invoke terror in the West in order to advance their agenda of worldwide submission to Sharia law and the establishment of their New Caliphate. While general threats are made periodically and given widespread media attention, specific threats are rarely if ever promulgated, thus preserving at least some semblance of the element of surprise. In short, it’s not their style to make threats, but rather to carry out their acts without any specific warning.
Terrorists can damage highly populated and industrial nations in a variety of ways, including denial of critical services, disrupting network infrastructure, and inflicting massive loss of life. Attacks such as the mobile suicide truck bombs used by terrorists in Lebanon in 1983 have killed hundreds of Americans. However, these pale in comparison to the potential use of nuclear, chemical, biological, and radiological weapons.
The use of nuclear/radiological terrorism is a continuing concern. Such acts include: construction and use of an improvised nuclear device; seizure of a nuclear weapon, attacks on or sabotage of a nuclear weapons production facility, nuclear power plant, or nuclear waste storage site; attack on or theft of nuclear material in transport; and theft and use of radioactive materials as contaminants, or in dispersal devices known as "dirty bombs."
The potential for terrorist use of chemical/biological terrorism is great. Compared to nuclear devices, chemical and biological agents are more easily acquired, cheaper to produce, more difficult to detect, and can be employed against a variety of targets. Possible acts of chemical/biological terrorism include: detonation of a stolen chemical weapon or improvised chemical device; sabotage of a chemical production facility or chemical storage facility; contamination of municipal water supplies, and the spreading of bacterial disease organisms among the civilian population, livestock, agricultural products, or natural resources.
Consider this nightmare scenario: A terrorist group gains possession of a small quantity of smallpox virus stolen from a Russian laboratory. Three of the group’s members, seeking martyrdom, are voluntarily infected with the virus. In Teheran, the three board separate airliners, the first traveling to Mumbai and changing planes, going on to Singapore and then Tokyo. The second martyr boards a flight first to Athens, then to Tel Aviv. The third boards a flight first to Rome, then Frankfurt, London, and New York. All the while the three are traveling, they are infecting fellow airline passengers, flight crews, airport personnel and visitors, all of whom in turn are infecting family members, fellow employees, and anyone else they come in contact with. The result: a worldwide smallpox pandemic having the potential of wiping out possibly as much as two-thirds of the world’s population.
Many observers think of nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological attacks when referring to high-tech terrorism. However, technological advancements in conventional weapons development and advanced electronics are also causes for considerable concern. Examples of advanced technology which could prove to be valuable tools in a terrorist's arsenal include: high-order explosives; unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's or drones); remote-controlled explosive devices and long-range rocket delivery systems; electromagnetic pulse generators for erasing computer data bases of banking, financial, national security, law enforcement, or other essential records; and time-delay bombs with digital timers that can be set to detonate months later, not to mention the newly-emerging and little understood field of nanotechnology.
