5 ms·

Look at the Boston Marathon bombings. 2 people armed with basic weapons and simple explosives pretty much ground Boston to a halt for several days. I can think

Look at the Boston Marathon bombings. 2 people armed with basic weapons and simple explosives pretty much ground Boston to a halt for several days. I can think of a number of fairly simple mechanisms to shut down a city. I think the reason we don't see such attacks is that they are not sexy. Crashing planes into buildings or huge coordinated attacks on security forces are effective recruitment tools. Basic attacks on infrastructure or other soft targets, while incredibly effective, aren't very interesting.

cryoshon 11y ago
This is one more reason for counter-terrorism strategy as it's currently envisioned being bogus security theater. Ultra-effective, low-risk, completely unsecured and simple to exploit angles of attack haven't ever been attacked, and nobody is even worried about it. You don't see railroads being sabotaged, power lines being cut, or roads being intentionally blocked. You don't see water supplies or manufacturing facilities being attacked. You don't see civil infrastructure being mobbed by faulty paperwork, false claims, or otherwise. You don't see disinformation for the sake of reducing economic efficiency. Instead, attacks so far have focused on showy but ultimately one-off violent events in which the perpetrators essentially kill themselves, mostly in already high-security areas. It makes a good propaganda bit for both sides, but doesn't actually impede function. I suppose it's a good thing that prospective jihadis aren't motivated by charts showing decreased output.
- metheus 11y ago
  > It makes a good propaganda bit for both sides, but doesn't actually impede function. The 9/11 attacks impeded function. The functioning of airlines, for example, have been impeded. Efficiency of flight for every individual traveler is reduced by needing to arrive at an airport an extra hour early. If we agree that making things proceed through big bureaucratic processes is effective sabotage, then consider that the TSA is an entire bureaucracy that would not exist if not for high profile suicide terror. The functioning of government has been impeded. Enormous amounts of political capital and willpower have been wasted dealing with the war on terror, allowing domestic priorities to languish. The USA, goaded into a decade of counter-productive flailing, is now highly challenged to enact foreign policy strategies. Those are two things, I think there are many, many others. > ...a good thing that prospective jihadis aren't motivated by charts showing decreased output. Why should we assume this? We might just not be looking for it.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Yeah. 9/11 was an almost perfectly executed terror attack with great outcome for the terrorist. It thrown the entire West into state of running around like chickens with heads cut off. The amount of economic waste and it caused is enormous, not to mention destruction of freedoms. If terrorists really "hate our freedom", then they succeeded perfectly in making us damage it on our own. As for why we don't see more of such attacks? I'd say it's mostly because people generally are not that destructive. Blowing shit up is not the default action. "Charts showing decreased output" from the hand of foreign states playing economic games with each other on the other hand...
marcosdumay 11y ago
Well, the reason we are not seeing those simple attacks is because terrorism is something that almost does not exist. There are many more cases of cities closing because of one or two people carrying explosives than because of people crashing planes on buildings. It's just that one must look over huge timespans or population in order to find any of those cases. And people do look for finding the planes.
curiousGambler 11y ago
To be fair, the Boston and Mass State police ground Boston to a halt in order to find those responsible. If we had collectively decided not to do so, the city could have continued operating just fine from an economic perspective. This could still be construed as caused by those two people, but I think the distinction is worth pointing out. As an aside, those were an intense few days to say the least.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I think most people don't realize that in terror attacks, the direct damage (e.g. bomb going off and killing people) is only collateral, means to an end - the real damage is causing a severe overreaction in the target (think of auto-immune diseases). Halting a city down for a day can do orders of magnitude more damage than some bomb killing some people. This should really be taught in schools: the right way to deal with a terrorist attack is to just ignore it. Classify it as any other action of an organized crime group and have police handle them using established procedures. Treating such act as special and spreading fear is actually doing terrorists' work for them.

cryoshon 11y ago

This is one more reason for counter-terrorism strategy as it's currently envisioned being bogus security theater. Ultra-effective, low-risk, completely unsecured and simple to exploit angles of attack haven't ever been attacked, and nobody is even worried about it. You don't see railroads being sabotaged, power lines being cut, or roads being intentionally blocked. You don't see water supplies or manufacturing facilities being attacked. You don't see civil infrastructure being mobbed by faulty paperwork, false claims, or otherwise. You don't see disinformation for the sake of reducing economic efficiency. Instead, attacks so far have focused on showy but ultimately one-off violent events in which the perpetrators essentially kill themselves, mostly in already high-security areas. It makes a good propaganda bit for both sides, but doesn't actually impede function. I suppose it's a good thing that prospective jihadis aren't motivated by charts showing decreased output.

metheus 11y ago
> It makes a good propaganda bit for both sides, but doesn't actually impede function. The 9/11 attacks impeded function. The functioning of airlines, for example, have been impeded. Efficiency of flight for every individual traveler is reduced by needing to arrive at an airport an extra hour early. If we agree that making things proceed through big bureaucratic processes is effective sabotage, then consider that the TSA is an entire bureaucracy that would not exist if not for high profile suicide terror. The functioning of government has been impeded. Enormous amounts of political capital and willpower have been wasted dealing with the war on terror, allowing domestic priorities to languish. The USA, goaded into a decade of counter-productive flailing, is now highly challenged to enact foreign policy strategies. Those are two things, I think there are many, many others. > ...a good thing that prospective jihadis aren't motivated by charts showing decreased output. Why should we assume this? We might just not be looking for it.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Yeah. 9/11 was an almost perfectly executed terror attack with great outcome for the terrorist. It thrown the entire West into state of running around like chickens with heads cut off. The amount of economic waste and it caused is enormous, not to mention destruction of freedoms. If terrorists really "hate our freedom", then they succeeded perfectly in making us damage it on our own. As for why we don't see more of such attacks? I'd say it's mostly because people generally are not that destructive. Blowing shit up is not the default action. "Charts showing decreased output" from the hand of foreign states playing economic games with each other on the other hand...

marcosdumay 11y ago

Well, the reason we are not seeing those simple attacks is because terrorism is something that almost does not exist. There are many more cases of cities closing because of one or two people carrying explosives than because of people crashing planes on buildings. It's just that one must look over huge timespans or population in order to find any of those cases. And people do look for finding the planes.

curiousGambler 11y ago

To be fair, the Boston and Mass State police ground Boston to a halt in order to find those responsible. If we had collectively decided not to do so, the city could have continued operating just fine from an economic perspective. This could still be construed as caused by those two people, but I think the distinction is worth pointing out. As an aside, those were an intense few days to say the least.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
I think most people don't realize that in terror attacks, the direct damage (e.g. bomb going off and killing people) is only collateral, means to an end - the real damage is causing a severe overreaction in the target (think of auto-immune diseases). Halting a city down for a day can do orders of magnitude more damage than some bomb killing some people. This should really be taught in schools: the right way to deal with a terrorist attack is to just ignore it. Classify it as any other action of an organized crime group and have police handle them using established procedures. Treating such act as special and spreading fear is actually doing terrorists' work for them.