[Brian, Heritage Foundation, “President Wishes Away Terrorism”, May 23, http://blog.heritage.org/2013/05/23/president-wishes-away-terrorism/]
Today, President
Obama acknowledged the myriad terrorist threats
around the world during his remarks at the National
Defense University.
Yet his description was much rosier than reality
: “Today
, the core of al-Qaeda in
Afghanistan and Pakistan is on a path to defeat.” That point is debatable by itself, but it more importantly glosses over the numerous affiliated terrorist groups that have risen
to fill the void in the Middle
East and Northern Africa—groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Haqqani network, and Boko Haram. The President later said, “We must take these threats seriously, and do all that we can to confront them.” However, throughout this Administration’s tenure, it has continually done less than what is necessary—and what the U.S. is capable of—to provide security.
Special operations forces were deemed unnecessary in responding to disruption in Benghazi. America’s military presence in Europe is being systematically drawn down despite those forces’ critical role in the Libyan conflict in 2011
and both Iraq and Afghanistan. Overall, our security forces are shrinking at an alarming rate.Obama
also claimed, “Our alliances are strong,
and so is our standing in the world.” As The Heritage Foundation’s Dr. James J.
Carafano countered,
“Nothing could be farther from true. In the Middle East most of America’s friends see us declining, uncertain, and increasingly a power that can’t be depended on.” The President also fails to realize that the enemy gets a vote. As he continues to withdraw U.S. presence from the world, adversaries grow emboldened. They see America leaving as an opportunity to act without consequence
against peaceful people and even U.S. allies.

Norah
September 23
“United States is 'Woefully Unprepared' for Nuclear Terrorism”,
American Thinker, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/09/united_states_is_woefully_unpr.html
According to Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book “Obama‘s Wars“, the United States is not prepared for a nuclear terrorist attack:
¶
A “potential game-changer
” for us or for our enemies? What exactly does the president mean? On the topic of nuclear terrorism, economist and prolific author Thomas Sowell warned in 2009: ¶ “It took only two nuclear bombs to get Japan to surrender-
- and the Japanese of that era were far tougher than most Americans today. Just one bomb-- dropped on New York, Chicago or Los Angeles-- might be enough to get us to surrender."
¶
Sowell’s fears of a nuclear attack from Iran were at the forefront of his warning; yet, another continual threat which cannot be decoupled from the risk of nuclear terrorism is the crisis of our virtually unguarded border with Mexico
. In 2004, Time magazine reported: ¶ “Sharif al-Masri, an Egyptian who was captured in late August near Pakistan's border with
Iran and Afghanistan, has told his interrogators of "al-Qaeda's interest in moving nuclear materials from Europe to either the U.S. or Mexico," according to a report circulating among U.S. government officials
. Masri also said al-Qaeda has considered plans to "smuggle nuclear materials to Mexico, then operatives would carry material into the U.S.
" ¶ It is now believed that terrorist at-large, Adnan el-Shukrijumah, may have traveled into the United States via the Mexican border during 2004. A Wall Street
Journal op-ed by Representative Jane Harman and Senator Susan Collins related that Shukrijumah is “a trained nuclear technician allegedly tasked by al Qaeda with carrying off an "American Hiroshima” ". The op-ed further stated that Shukrijumah “once sought radioactive material from a university in Ontario, Canada" and that "news reports allege that this was an attempt to construct a dirty bomb.”
¶
Unfortunately, despite the danger of nuclear terrorism, little has changed over the years regarding border security, or lack thereof
. In August, Investor’s Business Daily reported that illegal immigrants from terrorist-sponsoring countries continually enter the
United States through the Mexican border: ¶ “In the last three years, the Department of Homeland Security caught and released 481 illegal aliens from nations designated as state sponsors of terrorism and "countries of interest," and those 481 are now fugitives. That may seem like a small number out of the thousands that arrive every day, but it took only 19 terrorists to fly passenger jets into the World Trade Center, the
Pentagon and target the White House or Congress ¶
After a Nigerian
passenger dubbed the Christmas Day bomber
almost succeeded in blowing up Northwest Flight 253 near Detroit, Nigeria and
13
other countries were put on a list whereby passengers from these countries flying into the U.S. would be subject to extra scrutiny
and screening.
¶ Ten of these countries —Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen — were defined as
"countries of interest." Four others — Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria — are listed as state sponsors of terror.
Yet citizens from these countries routinely walk across
or are brought across our southern border
.” ¶
Not only are we “woefully unprepared” for an nuclear attack, we are inexcusably allowing conditions which greatly increase the possibility of one
.

[John, a CIA officer for 32 years and served as deputy director and acting director from 2000-2004. He currently teaches at the Johns Hopkins University's School of
Advanced International Studies and is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, “Terrorism at a moment of transition”, 7/12, http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/12/terrorism-at-a-moment-of-transition/]
All of these al Qaeda elements remain radical, anti-western, violent, and dangerous
. But they are caught up in a debate over tactics, goals, and leadership that we always thought would come following bin Laden’s death. So this is a highly fluid moment of transition for international terrorism – when we can confidently discern trends but cannot predict end states with any assurance. Three major trends stand out: First, the battlefield is undergoing the most significant changes in a dozen years. With the
U.S. withdrawal from Iraq complete and its exit from Afghanistan underway, terrorists who choose to operate there will have more freedom of maneuver
- while we and others opposing them will have to do so more remotely and with less granular data. Apace with this in Iraq, several factors - Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's authoritarianism; Sunni attraction to the plight of brethren in neighboring Syria, and the hardening commitment to autonomy among Kurds have created opportunities for al Qaeda and raised anew questions about the country's long-term cohesiveness.
It was once the "worst case" to suggest that Syria and Iraq could each come apart. But with sectarian violence raging in Syria and centrifugal pressures in Iraq, this is no longer so hard to imagine
. In that case, the map of the Middle East would have to be withdrawn. And this would occur in circumstances brought about in part by terrorist groups who would then have the means to influence the outcome.
A second major trendopening up opportunities for terrorists is the increasing turmoil in governance across the arc of South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Although many analysts two years ago saw the
Arab Spring as a refutation of al Qaeda’s violent ideology, it is hard to portray recent events as anything other than a new world of opportunities for radical Islamists.
Syria is Exhibit A. It has become the primary engine driving the movement. It is a magnet for foreign fighters, now about 7% to 10% of the rebel force. They come from as far away as Britain and Bangladesh, as near as Iraq and Jordan, and from across North Africa.
When eventually the Syrian fighting ends, many of these experienced jihadists will filter back to homelands that are themselves in turmoil. They will find ample opportunities in countries where leaders are seeking to establish stable government
(Egypt); trying to supplant tribal differences with a semblance of central authority (Libya); managing protest in the midst of democratic transition (Tunisia); or simply trying to ride out the storm (Jordan,
Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Algeria). All of these conditions are especially pronounced in North Africa where the weakness of governments combines with geography to create some of the world’s least governed space.
Borders are hardly patrolled, governmental writ seldom extends beyond major urban centers, and the terrain is marked by long stretches of desert dotted with militant camps and centuries-old smuggling routes - now shared with terrorists and organized crime. It is no accident that the two most significant terrorist attacks in the last six months occurred here: the assault on the U.S. base in Benghazi, Libya, and the attack on the In Amenas natural gas plant in Algeria. Emblematic of the freedom that terrorists have here, the leader of the latter attack was able to use networks across the region to gather weapons and recruit fighters from Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, and
Mauritania.
A third major trend has to do with the debate underway among terrorists over tactics, targets, and ways to correct past errors. On targets, jihadists are now pulled in many directions. Many experts contend they are less capable of a major attack on the U.S. homeland. But given the steady stream of surprises they’ve sprung
– ranging from the 2009 “underwear bomber” to the more recent idea of a surgically implanted explosive
– it is hard to believe they’ve given up trying to surprise us with innovations designed to penetrate our defenses. We especially should remain alert that some of the smaller groups could surprise us by pointing an attacker toward the United States,
as Pakistan’s Tehrik e Taliban did in preparing Faizal
Shazad for his attempted bombing of Times Square in 2010. At the same time, many of the groups are becoming intrigued by the possibility of scoring gains against regional governments that are now struggling to gain or keep their balance – opportunities that did not exist at the time of the 9/11 attacks. Equally important, jihadists are now learning from their mistakes, especially the reasons for their past rejection by populations where they temporarily gained sway
. Documents from al Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb, discovered after French forces chased them from Mali, reveal awareness that they were too harsh on local inhabitants, especially

women.
They also recognized that they need to move more gradually and provide tangible services to populations – a practice that has contributed to the success of Hezbollah in Lebanon. We are now seeing a similar awareness among jihadists in Syria, Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen. If these “lessons learned” take hold and spread, it will become harder to separate terrorists from populations and root them out. Taken together, these three trends are a cautionary tale for those seeking to gauge the future of the terrorist threat.Al Qaeda today may be weakened, but its wounds are far from fatal.It is at a moment of transition, immersed in circumstances
that could sow confusion and division in the movement or, more likely, extend its life and impart new momentum.
So if we are ever tempted to lower our guard in debating whether and when this war might end, we should take heed of these trends and of the wisdom J. R. R. Tolkien has Eowyn speak in “Lord of the Rings”: "It needs but one foe to breed a war, not two ..."
(Walter Russell, professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College and editor-at-large of the American Interest, 3-4-13, “The Evolving Terror Threat” Wall Street Journal) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323829504578272033024365110.html
As France announces plans to stand down in Mali and the United States builds a new drone base in neighboring Niger, the conflict formerly known as the global war on terror is spreading and intensifying
. Many in Washington would like to talk about other things, but while the West might be tired of the war on terror, the war on terror isn't tired of the West.
America and its allies face an "existential threat,"
as British Prime Minister David Cameron recently said, and the conflict may last for decades.
So it is worth stepping back to see where matters stand. On 9/11, it became clear that all was not well in the post-Cold War, post-historical world. The war on terror has since gone through several phases. The first was Osama bin Laden's attempt to launch a true "clash of civilizations" between the West and the world of Islam. His strategy for achieving this goal was a series of spectacular blows against the citadels of Western power that would weaken the West and vest his movement with the prestige to draw Muslims worldwide to his banner. Bin Laden failed. In phase two of the war, effective counterterrorism blocked his efforts to mount repeated attacks on the scale of 9/11. The war in Iraq (however misguided some consider it) forced al Qaeda in Iraq into a contest that it lost politically as much as militarily. When the chips were down, Iraq's Sunni Muslims chose the Americans over al Qaeda. The awakening in Iraq was part of a much larger tide of opinion among Muslims around the world: The more they saw of al Qaeda, the less they liked it, and the less they thought it had anything to do with the Islam they learned from the Quran. By the end of the George W. Bush administration, the effort to launch a grand war against the West under the flag of al Qaeda had decisively failed. The Obama administration hoped to complete the marginalization and destruction of al Qaeda, extending Mr. Bush's military strategy and developing a more effective political counterstrategy that would further sideline radicalism by building deeper ties between the U.S. and the moderate Muslim majority. The military strategy worked reasonably well.
The campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan that included the death of bin Laden continues to degrade the capabilities and prestige of the original al Qaeda network, even if the American exit strategy from this difficult conflict remains unclear. The political strategy to reach out to
Muslims has had less success.
Failed American attempts to broker a peace between Israel and
Palestiniansundermined many Muslims' faith in the Obama administration's intentions
(or capacity).
The
Arab Springcaught the administration off balance, and Washington has struggled to maintain its priorities as the Middle East has drifted away from liberal democratic protest toward a darker agenda.
American effortsto build bridges to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood have alienated Egyptian liberals without establishing strong bonds with the Islamists. The U.S. failure to support effective humanitarian intervention in Syria
(even if prudent in terms of American domestic politics) has dramatically undermined the administration's effort to portray the new U.S. as a pro-democracy, humanitarian power guided by the responsibility to protect.
Meanwhile, even a weakened and ideologically marginalized al Qaeda has found ways to assert itself as a credible and sometimes powerful force. The emerging sectarian war in the Middle East between Muslim Sunnis and Shiites makes al Qaeda's fanatical fighters valuable once again to the powers of the Persian Gulf. The ultramilitants are emerging as significant forces
on the Sunni side in Syriaand Iraq,
and as a result they are regaining lost credibility and access to funding from affluent sympathizers in the region.
They have also found fertile ground in the weak states of North

Africa.
The question that confronts the U.S. and its allies now is twofold. How to counter the explosive growth of radical jihadist organizations and networks in Libya's post-Gadhafi vacuum and in surrounding states? And what to do about the integration of terrorist groups into the sectarian Sunni-Shiite war that spans the region and to some degree overlaps with America's own struggle to stop the Iranians from getting a nuclear weapon? At this stage, t he terrain favors America's enemies. In places like the wide swath of
Africa's Sahel region, and in Yemen, Syria and Iraq, it is difficult to establish strong states that can keep the extremists in check. The free-floating nature of the new jihadist movement also poses problems: At any given moment
, from Afghanistan to Mauritania, dozens of groups are competing for funds and followers, moving swiftly in response to perceived opportunities.
Yet this is war: One side makes a move, the other counters it, and so it goes until one side finds a strategy that the other cannot overcome
—or until the exhausted combatants accept a compromise peace. In the first phase of the war, al Qaeda tried to lead the world's
Muslims on a grand jihad. In the second phase the U.S. and its allies (including Muslim religious and civic leaders around the world) dealt effectively with that threat. Now al Qaeda has developed a way to remain relevant even without the broad support it once hoped for. The fourth stage of war, one hopes, will see the U.S. and its allies once again push al Qaeda and its allies to the margins
, relegating them permanently to the nuisance fringe.
At present al
Qaeda appears to have only a limited capacity to attack the U.S.
and its principal European allies.
But that could change quickly if the terrorists succeed in establishing havens in North Africa. This war isn't over, and the danger isn't past.

(Joshua, JINSA Fellow, Washington, DC-based consultant on national security studies, focusing primarily on terrorism, counterterrorism, and homeland security, 3-11-13, “Al Qaeda Threat to U.S. Not Diminished, Data
Indicates” The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) http://www.jinsa.org/fellowship-program/joshuasinai/al-qaeda-threat-us-not-diminished-data-indicates#.UbaiWvmsiSo
Conventional wisdom holds that the threat
to America posed by al Qaeda
and its affiliates is greatly diminished
compared to 9/11. Today, it is claimed, al Qaeda is less well organized, with many of its top leaders eliminated, and is so broken into geographically disparate franchises that it is unable to recruit, train, and deploy a specialized cell to carry out a comparable catastrophic attack against America. The fact that no al Qaeda terrorist attacks have been carried out in America over the last two years, while some 20 individuals have plotted to carry out attacks but were arrested and convicted during the pre-incident phases, is seen as evidence that this terrorist threat is decreasing domestically. Therefore, according to this thesis, security authorities should prepare for more numerous and frequently occurring but low casualty attacks mounted by less well-trained and capable homegrown operatives, particularly by what are termed
"lone wolves."
When a more complete compilation of all the components
involved in terrorism are taken into account, however, the magnitude of the threat becomes much clearer and includes a higher likelihood of attempts to carry out catastrophic attacks as well as evidence that al Qaeda continues to recruit and prepare terrorist operatives in the U nited S tates. Downplaying the terrorist threat posed by al Qaeda and its affiliates also has significant political implications due in part to the more than $70 billion that is spent annually on America's domestic counterterrorism programs (with larger amounts expended for overseas operations), all of which need to be continuously justified as cost effective by
Administration planners and Congressional appropriators. Such purported decline in al Qaeda attacks domestically
, however, is now being seized upon by those who favor reduced government funding for counterterrorism programs, including weakening the USA PATRIOT Act
, to support their position that a reduced threat requires reduced funding and resources.
When the trajectory of attacks by al Qaeda and its associates over the years are carefully studied,
however,
certain patterns recur.
Specifically, every time the threat is underplayed, it is invariably followed by a major attack. In the months leading up to the November 2012 elections, the media was filled with pronouncements that al Qaeda's threat had greatly diminished
as a result of the elimination of its leadership and the reduced operational role over attacks by what is termed "al Qaeda Central" in Pakistan's tribal areas.
While accurate on one level, this did not stop al Qaeda and its affiliates from continuing to launch major terrorist attacks, including
that by its Libyan affiliate against the U.S. consulate in
Benghazi on September 11, 2012, which led to severe political repercussions for the Administration for its unpreparedness to anticipate such an attack.
This was followed by the launching of the devastating cross-border attack against the natural gas facility in eastern Algeria
in mid-
January by another al Qaeda affiliate in Mali.
Thirty-six foreign workers were murdered in that attack, which, again, was unanticipated.
Moreover, the fact that a catastrophic attack against America comparable to 9/11 has not occurred over the past 11 years should not suggest that a future one is not being planned. In summer 2006, al Qaeda-linked operatives in London plotted to detonate liquid explosives on board 10 transatlantic airliners flying from the UK to America and Canada. In
September
2009
, Najibullah
Zazi and his associates were arrested for plotting to conduct a suicide bombing attack against the New York City subway system. On Christmas Day, 2009,
Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab failed to detonate plastic explosives while on board an airliner heading to Detroit.
Anwar al Awlaki, a former American extremist cleric, reportedly masterminded
Abdulmutallab's operation. Awlaki was killed in a drone attack in Yemen on September 30, 2011.
The killings of al Awlaki and
Samir Khan
, another American extremist who had made his way to Yemen in 2009, could well trigger a catastrophic attack by al Qaeda to avenge their deaths. The recent capture of
Osama
Bin Laden's son-in-law
, Sulaiman abu Ghaith, and the decision to try him in New York City, is also likely to trigger a major revenge attack against America.
Finally, organizing catastrophic terrorist attacks requires
extensive planning, funding and preparation. A terrorist group that feels
itself strong will take its time to carefully plan a few but devastating attacks
, while a group

that regards itself as weak may feel compelled to carry out frequent, but low-casualty attacks to demonstrate its continued relevancy. Some incident databases, such as a recent compilation of data about American al Qaeda terrorists by the UK-based
Henry Jackson Society, only account forcompleted attacks
and convictions of those arrested.
If such counting is expanded to include other factors
, however, then the overall threat becomes much more severe. Other factors
, therefore, should include
the potential consequences of the thwarted attacks
had they not been prevented, the number of radicalized Americans
who travel overseas to join al Qaeda-affiliated insurgencies, and the extent of radicalized activity by al Qaeda's American sympathizers in jihadi website forums and chatrooms.
A more complete accounting of the threat will
now reveal that the supportive extremist infrastructure for al Qaeda in America is actually not diminishing and that the purported "lone wolf" actors have actual ties to al Qaeda operatives overseas. We should not,
therefore, also be misled into complacency if catastrophic attacks by al Qaeda do not occur for lengthy periods. Nor so by the comforting but false sense of security that comes with believing that "lone wolf" attacks in the United States are not a product of al Qaeda
recruitment and support. It is also possible, nevertheless, that al Qaeda's terrorist planners are considering both types of attacks, infrequent catastrophic and frequent low casualty. This may explain why al Qaeda's propaganda organs are calling on its radicalized followers in the West to take matters into their own hands and embark on any sort of attacks that may be feasible at the moment, but with further surprise attacks of a catastrophic nature still ahead.
(Clifford, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, 6-6-13, “Al-Qaeda vs. Hezbollah”
National Review) http://www.nationalreview.com/article/350249/al-qaeda-vs-hezbollah-clifford-d-may
All this considered, can al-Qaeda still be considered a serious competitor? Yes, it can! Last weekend, my colleague, über-researcher Tom Joscelyn, pointed out that AQ and its affiliates now “are fighting in more countries than ever.” In Afghanistan, AQ maintains safe havens in the provinces of Kunar and
Nuristan. Its loyal ally, the Taliban, is responsible for a level of violence “higher than before the
Obama-ordered surge of American forces in 2010,” according to NATO’s International Security
Assistance Force. AQ and its affiliates have bases in northern Pakistan. The Pakistani government,
Joscelyn notes, “continues to be a duplicitous ally, sponsoring and protecting various al Qaeda-allied groups. The Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban, remains a threat after orchestrating the failed May 2010 bombing in Times Square.
The State Department announced in September 2010 that the TTP has “a
‘symbiotic relationship’ with al Qaeda.”
The AQ-affiliated al-Nusrah Front may be the most effective force fighting against Assad’s troops, and against Hezbollah and Iranian combatants in Syria. AQ is resurgent in neighboring Iraq, with April 2013 the deadliest month in that country in nearly five years, according to the U.N. AQ has expanded operations in Yemen. In Somalia, Shabaab — which formally merged with AQ last year — is far from defeated and has managed to carry out attacks in neighboring Kenya and Uganda as well.
In Nigeria, Boko Haram continues to slaughter Christians. In Egypt, al-Qaeda members and associates — including
Mohammed al-Zawahiri, the brother of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri — are operating more freely than ever. On 9/11/12 they hoisted an
AQ flag above the U.S. embassy in Cairo. Libyan groups closely linked to al-Qaeda were responsible for the 9/11/12 attack that killed
Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb easily took over northern Mali until French forces pushed them out of the population centers.
Al-Qaeda affiliates are becoming more visible and perhaps viable in Tunisia, too.

(Brian, senior adviser to the RAND president and the author of “Al Qaeda in Its Third Decade:
Irreversible Decline or Imminent Victory?”, 1-24-13, "The al Qaeda Threat in North Africa" RAND Corporation) www.rand.org/blog/2013/01/the-al-qaeda-threat-in-north-africa.html
But al Qaeda has proved to be resilient and opportunistic. Its ideology transcends its organization.
Organizationally, al Qaeda survives by insinuating itself into local conflicts which have deep roots. Al
Qaeda did notlead the Arab uprisings, despite its subsequent claims that its 9/11 attack set in motion the events that led to the Arab Spring. However, al Qaeda has been able to exploit the turmoil created by the uprisings to gain new footholds, especially in the Sahel, Sinai, Yemen, and Syria.
(Rohan, Head, International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research,
Singapore, Professor of Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of Security Studies, 1-7-13
“Terrorists to Bounce Back in 2013” The National Interest) http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/terrorists-will-bounce-back-2013-7932?page=1
Likely Future Developments The global threat landscape is likely to change dramatically starting next
year. Functionally and regionally, developments in Afghanistan will be the most influential. The Salafi-
Jihadists and a segment of Islamists consider Afghanistan “the mother of all battles.” If the jihadists reconstitute Afghanistan for a second time, it will affect not only Western security but also will impact
Asia’s rise. Driven by success, returning fighters will reignite conflicts in Kashmir, Xinjiang, Uzbekistan,
Mindanao, Arakan, Pattani, tribal Pakistan and other Muslim lands.In the backdrop of Obama’s pivot to Asia, battle-hardened fighters will threaten Asia. Seasoned to fight Western armies in Afghanistan, they will contest Asian armies, law-enforcement and intelligence services. Asian armies, twenty years behind Western militaries, will experience new threats from IEDs and suicide attacks. As in
Afghanistan, returning fighters may bleed standing armies in existing and new zones of conflict.
Committed to a generation-long fight, the strength of the foreign veteran is patience and resilience.
They will serve in many roles, including fighters, ideologues, combat trainers and financiers. The Bottom
Line Al Qaeda al Jihad, the core of the global terrorist movement, suffered massive degradation. Osama bin Laden was killed, but his associates and their new leader Ayman al-Zawahiri present a very real danger. Despite a smaller U.S. footprint after formal withdrawal in 2014, the United States will still remain the tier-one target of both al Qaeda al Jihad and the movement. Some associates such as al
Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) present a comparable, if not a greater threat to the United
States. Yemen, where AQAP is based, remains unstable. The Pakistani Taliban, as demonstrated in last year’s Times Square bombing attempt, has developed anti-Western orientations. Several new groups influenced by Salafi Jihadism, such as al Nusra Front, have emerged in Syria, Egypt and Libya. In place of one single al Qaeda, a multiplicity of anti-American, suicide-capable groups have emerged in the last 12 months. Like ordinary and organized crime, extremism and terrorism will remain long-term threats to the world.Some actions by state and nonstate actors aimed at countering the growing extremist and terrorist threat had unintended consequences. The movie trailer “Innocence of
Muslims” (released by a private U.S. citizen),U.S. government overt and covert support for the Arab
Spring, and announcing the U.S. military pullout from Afghanistan all increased the threat of ideological extremism and its vicious byproduct, terrorism.

(Mitchell, Executive Managing Director of K2 Intelligence and former Director of Intelligence Analysis for the New York Police Department from 2007 to 2012, 5-16-13, "The ever-evolving al-Qaeda threat" Foreign
Policy) afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/05/16/the_evolution_of_a_threat
Not surprisingly, Mr. Atwan makes a compelling case that while the death of
Osama bin Laden and the decimation of al
Qaeda Core's top leadership has hurt the central organization
that was based in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the movement and ideology, with its worldwide presence via regional associated movements, is asmuch of a menace to the West as ever and undiminished in its goal of a global caliphate.
Mr. Atwan spends considerable time discussing the poorly named "Arab Spring," the successive revolutions which occurred across the Arab world and the relationship that these events have with indigenous al Qaeda-associated movements that have their own deep roots in some of the very states that saw their governments topple, sectarian conflicts break into the open, and civil wars erupt.
While many
of us in the West hoped that the revolutions in the Arab states would herald better governance
and the opportunity for homegrown secularists with their own domestic legitimacy to rise, Mr.
Atwan saw a different future
- one where Islamist parties would dominate the ballot box and armed Islamists or AQAM would have a role to play as well.
Mr.
Atwan takes the reader on an impressive tour of the Islamic world, with chapters and sections on almost every country and region from Arabia to Uzbekistan. While some of the background history that he provides on each country or region is old news to regular readers of the New York
Times international section, they do provide the context in each locale for Mr. Atwan to make his most provocative argument - al Qaedaassociated movements are poised for a comeback when either the Islamists or secularists fail in their efforts of good governance, regardless of whether it is in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq,
Nigeria, North Africa, Sinai, or Central Asia. While the situation in each country is distinct, in general, regionalal Qaeda-type violence certainly seems unabated and potentially is on the upswing in countries like Iraq, Nigeria, Mali and Syria.
Mr. Atwan is at his best when explaining the tribal dynamics in such places as Yemen
, where different alliances among the tribes and their long standing dissatisfaction with any central government make them a natural ally of al Qaeda-associated movements
, who also seek to challenge the central government, are armed, and espouse an austere form of Islam that is not foreign to the locals. Mr.
Atwan draws similar astute insights about local dynamics when considering the prospects for growth for al Qaeda in the states of North Africa or the Islamic Maghreb.
(Editorial, 4-3-13, “The al Qaeda Franchise Threat” Wall Street Journal) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323415304578370782049694590.html
Seven weeks after Osama bin Laden's death in 2011, President Obama declared al Qaeda was "on a path to defeat." He has redeployed the phrase often to justify leaving Afghanistan and slashing defense.
Al Qaeda
, meanwhile, mocks predictions of its imminent defeat. Even as the U.S. has "decimated"
(the President's word) al Qaeda's senior leadership
—killing or capturing
13 of the top 20 most wanted terrorists— it pops up in new locales and forms. In recent months, al Qaeda has revived or started terrorist franchises in Iraq
and
Syria
, across northern Africa
and in
Nigeria.
It lost a haven in
Afghanistan but set up bases in
Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. It has
nimbly exploited opportunities and is more active
and in more places
, points out Rand analyst Bruce Hoffman, than on September 11
, 2001. Al Qaeda's tactics have changed by necessity. American special forces and drones drove what's left of the old "core" leadership underground. Administration officials discount the threat from the newer affiliates, saying Somalia's al Shabaab or al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb aren't actively plotting attacks on the U.S. Perhaps not now, but for how long?
The older Yemen affiliate turned into a more imminent threat than bin

Laden in Pakistan. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula sent the Christmas 2009 "underwear bomber."
Everywhere it is active, al Qaeda seeks a sanctuary to plot
the overthrow of pro-Western Muslim governments and attacks on the U.S.
Boston marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev may not have had direct links with al Qaeda's offshoot in Chechnya, the Islamic Emirate in the Caucasus. But investigators are looking into it, including a Russian press report that last year in Dagestan he tried to join and was seen with known militants. Tsarnaev was certainly influenced by Russian-language websites inspired by the movement. At various times, Bush Administration officials also predicted al Qaeda's demise. "The end of the global threat al Qaeda poses is now as visible as it is foreseeable," Deputy National Security AdviserJuan Zarate told London's Daily Telegraph in May 2008 after the Iraq success. The predictions never held.
The current resurgence has
also been assisted by the Arab Spring
. Starting in Tunisia, a wave of popular protests brought down secular authoritarian leaders. But instead of political freedom
and prosperity, the fruits of the Arab
Spring have so far been weak states
(Libya, Tunisia, Yemen), prolonged political turmoil
(Egypt), civil war
(Syria) and empowered Islamists
(all of the above).
Al Qaeda's
extremist message isn't drawing many recruits, but its operatives exploit the absence of state power.

(Editorial, 4-3-13, “The al Qaeda Franchise Threat” Wall Street Journal) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323415304578370782049694590.html
Fred
Kagan and
Katie
Zimmerman
of the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project have tracked al Qaeda's franchises.
Their map nearby shows a changed, more decentralized movement.
They identify five full-fledged affiliates, recognized as such by the al Qaeda core in Pakistan.
The most recent is al Shabaab
in Somalia, which was certified, so to speak, in
February last year when its leader released a video with al Qaeda boss Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Some analysts
and Administration officials have claimed that the Afghan Taliban and Boko Haram
, which fights for an Islamist Nigeria, don't coordinate with al Qaeda
. Lots of intelligence suggests otherwise. The leaders of Boko Haram were in contact with bin Laden in the last 18 months of his life, according to documents found at his
Abbottabad compound
that the Guardian reported on last year. As far back as 2003, the former al Qaeda leader started to talk about putting down roots in western Africa, says Mr. Hoffman.
Each of the affiliates is different, though all usually have leaders who served or trained with al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Growing out of Algeria's Islamist militancy, al Qaeda in the Maghreb was for years dismissed by Western intelligence as a criminal organization
, focused on lucrative smuggling and hostage-taking more than jihad.
As a result
, notes Mr. Kagan, it is al Qaeda's most financially stable outfit.
Yet with arms spilling from
Libya's civil conflict
and following a coup in Mali, al Qaeda in the Maghreb last year saw an opportunity to take over Mali. It was on the verge of overrunning the capital
, Bamako, before a French military intervention in January.
It has been pushed back but not defeated
. Recent reports say the fighters have moved north into Algeria and Libya.
The franchises work more closely together than the U.S. likes to admit
. Nigeria's
Boko Haram militants have trained in Mali. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
, which grew from a merger of the Saudi and Yemeni branches in 2009, shares fighters and know-how with al Shabaab
across the Red Sea. The Somali Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame was the conduit between the groups and pushed al Shabaab to strike Western targets outside Somalia. The U.S. Navy captured him in 2011 and he was indicted in New York on terrorism charges.
The Yemeni branch has tried to open an Egyptian subsidiary.
According to a Journal story last October, the Egyptian militant Muhammed Jamal Abu Ahmad last year secured Yemeni financing and asked for al Qaeda recognition.
Egypt's new authorities freed him in 2011 as part of an amnesty for political prisoners. He then took part in the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and is believed to be in Libya
. Egypt's poorly policed Sinai could be another terror haven in the making.
Perhaps the biggest current prize for al Qaeda is the Levant. After America's complete withdrawal from Iraq in December
2011, many al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) militants defeated in the surge were released from jail and reunited. Without a U.S. military presence, they killed more Iraqi civilians in violent attacks last year than in 2011. Meanwhile in
Syria, Jabhat al Nusra
("Front for the Victory"), one of the armed groups fighting to depose Bashar Assad, is indistinguishable from al Qaeda in Iraq
, Administration officials say.
Al
Nusra's troops are the best-trained and best-armed in the Syrian opposition
. As the U.S. sits on the sidelines, the Saudis, Qataris and Turks have financed and armed al Nusra.
The Journal reported in April that the CIA has ramped up its support to Baghdad to stop the al Qaeda fighters moving from Syria, but look for more bombings and sectarian strife. Bin Laden always dreamed of a foothold in the Levant.

(Editorial, 4-3-13, “The al Qaeda Franchise Threat” Wall Street Journal) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323415304578370782049694590.html
These al Qaeda gains are reversible, and not every case will require Western military intervention. Close security relationships, good intelligence and America's peerless special forces are strong weapons. The
U.S. can also do more to help weak governments in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere get a grip on their states. But all of this requires continuing vigilance and a willingness to keep on offense overseas, rather than make premature declarations of victory.

(Meggaen, research intern for the Project on Nuclear Issues, 3-21-13, "Doubting Deterrence of Nuclear Terrorism" Center for Strategic and International Studies) csis.org/blog/doubting-deterrencenuclear-terrorism
The risk that terrorists will set off a nuclear weapon on U.S. soil is disconcertingly high.
While a terrorist organization may experience difficulty constructing nuclear weapons facilities, there is significant concern thatterrorists can obtain a nuclear weapon or nuclear materials.
The fear that an actor could steal a nuclear weapon
or fissile material and transport it to the U nited
S tates has long-existed. It takes a great amount of time and resources (including territory) to construct centrifuges and reactors to build a nuclear weapon from scratch.
Relatively easily-transportable nuclear weapons
, however, present one opportunity to terrorists.
For example, exercises similar to the recent Russian movement of nuclear weapons from munitions depots to storage sites may prove attractive targets.
Loose nuclear materials pose a second opportunity.Terrorists could use them to create a crude nuclear weapon similar to the gun-type design of Little Boy. Its simplicity
– two subcritical masses of highlyenriched uranium – may make it attractive to terrorists. While such a weapon might not produce the immediate destruction seen at Hiroshima, the radioactive fall-out and psychological effects would still be damaging. These
two opportunities for terrorists differ from concerns about a “dirty bomb,” which mixes radioactive material with conventional explosives.
(Michael and Micah, fellows at the Council on Foreign Relations, 10-29-12, "Column:
Nuclear terror threat goes 'POOF'" USA Today) www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/10/28/column-nuclearterror-goes-poof/1664299/
President George W. Bush called it his "ultimate nightmare." Sen. John Kerry, running for president in
2004, said that it was "the greatest threat that we face." They were both talking about the terrifying possibility that a terrorist group could acquire a nuclear weapon and attack the U nited S tates. Yet this year, over the course of three presidential debates, the issue barely surfaced. That is dangerous:
Nuclear terrorism remains one of the very few vital risks to America, and the next president, whoever he is, will need to work vigilantly to prevent it. Fears about the prospect of nuclear-armed terrorists
date to the 1970s, and more recently to the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, when strategists feared that a crumbling Soviet empire might be unable to protect its vast stocks of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium. Over the next decade, though, many people's concerns subsided as their attention turned to a series of crises of the day. They were jolted out of that slumber on Sept. 11,
2001, when al-Qaeda revealed an appetite for mass destruction and demolished the old dictum that
terrorists wanted "a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead." Post-9/11 focus In the years that followed, Bush pumped money and diplomatic muscle into efforts to secure nuclear weapons and materials around the world. Barack Obama, upon entering office, seized on nuclear terrorism as a
priority, turbocharging previous initiatives and launching a series of Nuclear Security Summits to galvanize global efforts to prevent it. Yet if the recent debates are any indication, the cycle of shock
and trance is setting in again, as politicians and the public tire of worrying about the threat. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney referred to it obliquely Monday night when he claimed that Russia is abandoning Nunn-Lugar, a core U.S. program aimed at securing nuclear materials. Obama quickly

asserted that it would be "unacceptable" to allow Iran "to be able to provide nuclear technology to nonstate actors" and then moved on. This is a far cry for the attention that nuclear terrorism received in the past. Crying 'wolf'? This can partly be explained by excessive hype about the possibility that terrorists might acquire nuclear arms, particularly prominent in the years after 9/11. With no attack in the years since, some might be tempted to recall the boy who cried wolf. That has made warnings about nuclear terrorism less powerful today. But one needn't believe that a nuclear attack is probable to conclude that it should be a top-tier priority. Nuclear terrorism, however unlikely, is one of the few prospects that could truly devastate the USA. An atomic bomb detonated in a crowded downtown area could
kill hundreds of thousands of Americans promptly. On this scale, no other threat — such as fears of a
cyber Pearl Harbor or ongoing turmoil in the Middle East — compares.

(Graham, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon
Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School, 9-7-12, "Living in the Era of Megaterror" Belfer
Center) belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/22302/living_in_the_era_of_megaterror.html
Forty years ago this week at the Munich Olympics of 1972, Palestinian terrorists conducted one of the most dramatic terrorist attacks of the
20th century. The kidnapping and massacre of 11 Israeli athletes attracted days of around-the-clock global news coverage of Black September’s anti-Israel message. Three decades later, on 9/11, Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 individuals at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, announcing a new era of megaterror. In an act that killed more people than Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, a band of terrorists headquartered in ungoverned Afghanistan demonstrated that individuals and small groups can kill on a scale previously the exclusive preserve of states.
Today, how many people can a small group of terrorists kill in a single blow?
Had Bruce Ivins
, the
U.S. government microbiologist responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks, distributed his deadly agent with sprayers he could have purchased off the shelf,tens of thousands of Americans would have died. Had the 2001
“Dragonfire” report that Al Qaeda had a small nuclear weapon
(from the former Soviet arsenal) in New York
City proved correct
, and not a false alarm, detonation of that bomb in Times Square could have incinerated a half million Americans.
In this electoral season, President Obama is claiming credit, rightly, for actions he and U.S. Special Forces took in killing Osama bin Laden. Similarly, at last week’s Republican convention in Tampa, Jeb Bush praised his brother for making the United States safer after 9/11.
There can be no doubt that the thousands of actions taken at federal, state and local levels have made people safer from terrorist attacks. Many are therefore attracted to the chorus of officials and experts claiming that the “strategic defeat” of Al Qaeda means the end of this chapter of history. But we should remember a deeper and more profound truth.
While applauding actions that have made us safer from future terrorist attacks, we must recognize that they have not reversed an inescapable reality: The relentless advance of science and technology is making it possible for smaller and smaller groups tokill larger and larger numbers of people. If a Qaeda affiliate,
or some terrorist groupin Pakistan
whose name readers have never heard, acquires highly enriched uranium or plutonium made by a state, they canconstruct an elementary nuclear bomb capable of killing hundreds of thousands
of people.
At biotechlabs across the U nited
S tates and around the world
, research scientists making medicines that advance human well-being are
also capable of making pathogens, like anthrax, that can produce massive casualties.
What to do? Sherlock Holmes examined crime scenes using a method he called M.M.O.: motive, means and opportunity. In a society where citizens gather in unprotected movie theaters, churches, shopping centers and stadiums, opportunities for attack abound. Free societies are inherently “target rich.” Motive to commit such atrocities poses a more difficult challenge. In all societies, a percentage of the population will be homicidal. No one can examine the mounting number of cases of mass murder in schools, movie theaters and elsewhere without worrying about a society’s mental health.
Additionally, actions we take abroad unquestionably impact others’ motivation to attack us.As Faisal Shahzad, the 2010 would-be “Times
Square bomber,” testified at his trial: “Until the hour the U.S. ... stops the occupation of Muslim lands, and stops killing the Muslims ... we will be attacking U.S., and I plead guilty to that.” Fortunately, it is more difficult for a terrorist to acquire the “means” to cause mass casualties.
Producing highly enriched uranium or plutonium requires expensive industrial-scale investments that only states will make. If all fissile material can be secured to a gold standard beyond the reach of thieves or terrorists, aspirations to become the world’s first nuclear terrorist can be thwarted. Capabilities for producing bioterrorist agents are not so easily secured or policed. While more has been done, and much more could be done to further raise the technological barrier, as knowledge advances and technological capabilities to make pathogens become more accessible, the means for bioterrorism will come within the reach of terrorists.
One of the hardest truths about modern life is that the same advances in science and technology that enrich our lives also empower potential killers to achieve their deadliest ambitions. To imagine that we can escape this reality and return to a world in which we are invulnerable to future 9/11s or worse is an illusion. For as far as the eye can see, we will live in an era of megaterror.

(Shamil, staff writer, 4-9-13, “Why Pakistan's nuclear bombs are a threat” DW, International German
Broadcasting) http://www.dw.de/why-pakistans-nuclear-bombs-are-a-threat/a-16730597
Although the nuclear controversy involving Pakistan and Khan has subsided, the Islamic Republic's nuclear arsenal is a constant source of worry for the international community. Though Pakistan's civilian and military establishments claim that their nuclear weapons are under strict
state control,
many defense experts fear that they can fall into the hands of terrorists in the event of an Islamist takeover of Islamabad or if things get out of control for the government and the military. Pakistan
, which conducted its nuclear tests in 1998, is battling with a protracted Islamist insurgency which threatens to paralyze the state.
In the past decade,
Islamists not only attacked civilians but targeted military installations and bases as well. Some international experts say that the
Taliban and al Qaeda have their eyes on Pakistan's nuclear warheads. "Nuclear programs are never safe
. On the one hand there is perhaps a hype about Pakistani bombs in the Western media, on the other there is genuine concern,
"
Pakistani journalist and researcher Farooq Sulehria told DW. "The
Talibanization of the Pakistan military is something we can't overlook
. What if there is an internal Taliban take over of the nuclear assets?" Sulehria speculated.

(Graham, 2-12-13, “North Korea’s Lesson: Nukes for Sale” New York Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/opinion/north-koreas-lesson-nukes-for-sale.html
THE
most dangerous message North Korea sent
Tuesday with its
third nuclear weapon test is: nukes are for sale.
The significance of this test is not the defiance by the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, of demands from the international community.
In the circles of power in Pyongyang, red lines drawn by others make the provocation of violating them only more attractive. The real significance is that this test was, in the estimation of American officials, most likely fueled by highly enriched uranium, not the plutonium that served as the core of North Korea’s earlier tests.
Testing a uranium-based bomb would announce to the world — including potential buyers — that North Korea is now operating a new, undiscovered production line for weapons-usable material.
North Korea’s latest provocation should also remind us of the limits of Western policies, led by the
United States, that focus on “isolating” the hermit kingdom. Such policies do isolate us from the consequences of North Korea’s actions. For a decade, American policy makers’ attention has been consumed by Iran’s attempt to build its first nuclear weapon. During those years, American officials believe,
North Korea has acquired enough plutonium to make an arsenal of 6 to 10 nuclear bombs, depending on the size, and is now most likely producing enough highly enriched uranium for several more bombs every year.
Nuclear weapons can be made from only two elements: uranium that has been highly enriched, and plutonium. Neither occurs in nature. Producing enough of either fuel for a bomb requires a significant industrial plant. North Korea produced its stock of plutonium at its Yongbyon reactor, but that plant was shuttered in 2007 during a hopeful period in international talks about curbing its nuclear arms program. By then, Pyongyang had reduced its arsenal by one bomb, with its 2006 test, and in 2009 it used up a second bomb in another test. We should only hope that it continues conducting plutonium-fueled tests until this stockpile is eliminated. Those numbers figure heavily in the more realistic American assumption that North Korea would most likely use uranium fuel in a third test, rather than further deplete its limited stock of plutonium. Two years ago, North Korea unveiled a showcase uranium enrichment plant at Yongbyon capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for several bombs annually. There is no evidence, however, that this showcase has become operational. American experts therefore believe that
Pyongyang must have another still-undiscovered parallel plant that has been operating for several years. That plant by now could have produced several bombs’ worth of highly enriched uranium.
Hence the grim conclusion that
North Korea now has a new cash crop— one that is easier to market than plutonium. Highly enriched uranium is harder to detect and therefore easier to export — and it is also simpler to build a bomb from it.
The model of uranium-fueled bomb dropped on
Hiroshima in 1945 was so elementary, and its design so reliable, that the United States never bothered to test one before using it. Yet it killed more than 100,000 people. As the former secretary of defense Robert M. Gates put it, history shows that the North Koreans will “sell anything they have to anybody who has the cash to buy it.” In intelligence circles, North
Korea is known as “Missiles ‘R’ Us,” having sold and delivered missiles to Iran, Syria and Pakistan, among others. Who could be interested in buying a weapon for several hundred millions of dollars?
Iran is currently investing billions of dollars annually in its nuclear quest.
While Al Qaeda’s core is greatly diminished
and its resources depleted, the man who succeeded Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been seeking nuclear weapons for more than a decade. And then there areIsrael’s enemies, including wealthy individuals in some Arab countries, who might buy a bomb for the militant groups Hezbollah or
Hamas.
President
Obama has rightly identified nuclear terrorism as “the single biggest threat to U.S. security.” If terrorists explode a single nuclear bomb in an American city in the near future, there is a serious possibility that the core of the weapon will have come from North Korea. The
Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly warned the North Korean regime that it could not sell nuclear weapons
, materials or technologies without being held “fully accountable.” But the U nited
S tates used precisely these words before Pyongyang’s sale of a nuclear reactor to Syria — which by now would have produced enough plutonium for Syria’s first nuclear bomb had it not been destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in 2007. With what consequences for North Korea?Pyongyang got paid; Syria got bombed; and the U nited
S tates was soon back at the negotiating table
in the six-party talks.
Given America’s failure to

hold
Kim Jong-un’s father,
Kim Jong-il, accountable
when he sold Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, the technology from which to make a bomb, could the younger Mr. Kim imagine that he could get away with selling a nuclear weapon or bomb-making material? The urgent challenge is to convince him and his regime’s lifeline, China, that North Korea will be held accountable for every nuclear weapon of North Korean origin.

*note—this card says “no US retaliation”
(Meggaen, research intern for the Project on Nuclear Issues, 3-21-13, "Doubting Deterrence of Nuclear Terrorism" Center for Strategic and International Studies) csis.org/blog/doubting-deterrencenuclear-terrorism
The answer for U.S. policy is not deterrence. Deterrence involves convincing an adversary that the costs imposed upon him after taking an action will outweigh any benefits gained
. It requires altering the strategic calculus (i.e. the analysis of costs and benefits for taking a particular action) of the adversary. These costs come from either punishment imposed on the adversary or from denying the adversary the expected benefits.
In execution, deterrence requires policies of consistency and conditionality towards an adversary
: consistency in expressing the imposition of costs or denied benefits if the adversary takes a specific action and conditionality in that the possibility of retaliation depends upon the adversary’s decision to take the undesirable action.
These requirements of consistency and conditionality cannot be applied to a transnational threat like nuclear terrorism.Terrorists operate across states’ borders, but the burden remains on states to implement deterrence laws and policies that impose costs or deny benefits.
One could point to the “glorification” laws in the United Kingdom, which sought to deter suicide terrorism by criminalizing the praise of martyrdom, as an example of such a policy. However, not all countries are able or willing to implement such laws.
Alternatively, even countries that are able and willing may hesitate for fear of violating international or domestic norms.
For example, with the “glorification” laws, many accused British policymakers of infringing on the right to free speech.
Deterrence requires consistency
in the communication of certain retaliation should the adversary take an undesired action.
In the aggregate, states’ policies will likely lack this consistency and conditionality required for deterring nuclear terrorism.
This results in confusion and a lack of credibility for the threat of imposing costs or denying benefits. Of course, terrorists are not susceptible to more “traditional” forms of deterrence like holding territory at risk
(given that they do not own territory) or by threatening suicide terrorists with physical harm.
T hese flaws in other states’ policies have implications for the threat of nuclear terrorism in the U nited S tates.
Al-Qaeda may not be allowed to act in
, say,
Great Britain; yet, it may thrive in, say, Iran.
In this situation, it seems more accurate to say that Al-Qaeda has been prevented from operating in Great Britain, rather than claiming that Al-Qaeda has been deterred in its nuclear intentions.
Because of the difficulty of deterring transnational actors, many deterrence advocates shift the focus to deterring state sponsors of nuclear terrorism
. The argument applies whether or not the state intended to assist nuclear terrorists. If terrorists obtain a nuclear weapon or fissile materials from a state, the theory goes, then the
United States will track the weapon’s country of origin using nuclear forensics, and retaliate against that country. If this is U.S. policy, advocates predict that states will be deterred from assisting terrorists with their nuclear ambitions.
Yet, let’s think about the series of events that would play out if a terroristorganization detonated a weapon in the U nited
S tates.
Let’s assume forensics confirmed the weapon’s origin, and let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that country was Pakistan. Would the U nited
S tates then retaliate with a nuclear strike? If a nuclear attack occurs within the next four years
(a reasonable length of time for such predictions concerning current international and domestic politics), it seems unlikely. Why? First, there’s the problem of time. Though nuclear forensics is useful, it takes time to analyze the data and determine the country of origin. Any justified response upon a state sponsor would not be swift.Second, even if the U nited
S tates proved the country of origin, it would then be difficult to determine that Pakistan willingly and intentionally sponsored nuclear terrorism.
If Pakistan did, then nuclear retaliation might be justified. However, if Pakistan did not, nuclear retaliation over unsecured nuclear materials would be a disproportionate response and potentially further detrimental. Should the U nited S tates launch a nuclear strike at Pakistan, Islamabad could see this as an initial hostility by the United States, and respond adversely.
An obvious choice, given current tensions in South Asia, is for Pakistan to retaliate

against a U.S. nuclear launch on its territory by initiating conflict with India, which could turn nuclear and increase the exchanges of nuclear weapons. Hence, it seems more likely that, after the international outrage at a terrorist group’s nuclear detonation, the U nited
S tates would attempt to stop the bleeding without a nuclear strike.
Instead, some choices might include deploying forces to track down those that supported the suicide terrorists that detonated the weapon, pressuring Pakistan to exert its sovereignty over fringe regions such as the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and increasing the number of drone strikes in Waziristan.
Given the initial attack, such measures might understandably seem more of a concession than the retaliation
called for by deterrence models, even more so by the American public. This is not an argument against those technologies associated with nuclear forensics. The United States and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should continue their development and distribution. Instead, I question the presumed American response that is promulgated by deterrence advocates.
By looking at possibilities for a U.S. response to nuclear terrorism, a situation in which we assume that deterrence has failed, we cast doubt on the likelihood of a U.S. retaliatory nuclear strikeand hence cast doubt on the credibility of a
U.S. retaliatory nuclear strike as a deterrent. Would the U nited
S tates launch a nuclear weapon now unless it was sure of another state’s intentional sponsorship of nuclear terrorism? Any reasonable doubt of sponsorship might stay the United States’ nuclear hand. Given the opaqueness of countries’ intentions, reasonable doubt over sponsorship is inevitable to some degree
. Other countries are probably aware of U.S. hesitance in response to terrorists’ use of nuclear weapons. If this thought experiment is true, then the communication required for credible retaliatory strikes under deterrence of nuclear terrorism is missing.

(James Andrew, senior fellow and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at CSIS;
Underestimating Risk in the Surveillance Debate; Dec; http://csis.org/files/publication/141209_Lewis_UnderestimatingRisk_Web.pdf)
The phrase “terrorism” is overused, and the threat of terrorist attack is easily exaggerated, but that does not mean this threat it is nonexistent. Groups and individuals still plan to attack American citizens and the citizens of allied countries. The dilemma in assessing risk is that it is discontinuous. There can be long periods where no activity is apparent, only to have the apparent calm explode in an attack. The constant, low-level activity in planning and preparation in Western countries is not apparent to the public , nor is it easy to identify the moment that discontent turns into action. There is general agreement that as terrorists splinter into regional groups, the risk of attack increases. Certainly, the threat to Europe from militants returning from Syria points to increased risk for U.S. allies. The messy U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and (soon) Afghanistan contributes to an increase in risk.24 European authorities have increased surveillance and arrests of suspected militants as the Syrian conflict lures hundreds of Europeans. Spanish counterterrorism police say they have broken up more terrorist cells than in any other European country in the last three years.25 The chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, who is better placed than most members of Congress to assess risk, said in June 2014 that the level of terrorist activity was higher than he had ever seen it.26
If the United States overreacted in response to September 11, it now risks overreacting to the leaks with potentially fatal consequences. A simple assessment of the risk of attack by jihadis would take into account a resurgent Taliban, the power of lslamist groups in North Africa, the continued existence of Shabaab in Somalia, and the appearance of a powerful new force, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS )
. Al Qaeda, previously the leading threat, has splintered into independent groups that make it a less coordinated force but more difficult target . On the positive side, the
United States , working with allies and friends, appears to have contained or eliminated jihadi groups in Southeast
Asia .
Many of these groups seek to use adherents in Europe and the United States for manpower and funding. A Florida teenager was a suicide bomber in Syria and Al Shabaab has in the past drawn upon the Somali population in the United States. Hamas and Hezbollah have achieved quasi-statehood status, and Hamas has supporters in the United States . Iran, which supports the two groups, has advanced capabilities to launch attacks and routinely attacked U.S. forces in Iraq. The United Kingdom faces problems from several hundred potential terrorists within its large Pakistani population, and there are potential attackers in other Western European nations, including Germany, Spain, and the Scandinavian countries. France, with its large Muslim population faces the most serious challenge and is experiencing a wave of troubling anti-Semitic attacks that suggest both popular support for extremism and a decline in The chief difference between now and the situation before 9/11 is that all of these countries have put in place much more robust surveillance systems , nationally and in cooperation with others, including the United States, to detect and prevent potential attacks . Another difference is that the failure of U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the opportunities created by the Arab
Spring have opened a new “front” for jihadi groups that makes their primary focus regional. Western targets still remain of interest, but are more likely to face attacks from domestic sympathizers. This could change if the well-resourced ISIS is frustrated in its efforts to establish a new
Caliphate and turns its focus to the West. In addition, the al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen (al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) continues to regularly plan attacks against U.S. targets. 27 The incidence of attacks in the United States or Europe is very low, but we do not have good data on the number of planned attacks that did not come to fruition. This includes not just attacks that were detected and stopped, but also attacks where the jihadis were discouraged and did not initiate an operation or press an attack to its conclusion because of operational difficulties. These attacks are the threat that mass surveillance was created to prevent . The needed reduction in public anti-terror measures without increasing the chances of successful attack is contingent upon maintaining the capability provided by communications surveillance to detect, predict, and prevent attacks. Our opponents have not given up; neither should we.
(David E and Thom; NSA Director firmly defends surveillance efforts; Oct
12; www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/nsa-director-gives-firm-and-broad-defense-of-surveillanceefforts.html)
FORT MEADE, Md. — The director of the National Security Agency, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, said in an interview that to prevent terrorist attacks he saw no effective alternative to the N.S.A.’s bulk collection of telephone and

other electronic metadata from Americans.
But he acknowledged that his agency now faced an entirely new reality, and the possibility of Congressional restrictions, after revelations about its operations at home and abroad. While offering a detailed defense of his agency’s work, General Alexander said the broader lesson of the controversy over disclosures of secret N.S.A. surveillance missions was that he and other top officials have to be more open in explaining the agency’s role, especially as it expands its mission into cyberoffense and cyberdefense. Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, testified on Thursday before the Senate Intelligence
Committee.N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. CitizensSEPT. 28, 2013 “Given where we are and all the issues that are on the table, I do feel it’s important to have a public, transparent discussion on cyber so that the American people know what’s going on,” General
Alexander said. “And in order to have that, they need to understand the truth about what’s going on.” General Alexander, a career Army intelligence officer who also serves as head of the military’s Cyber Command, has become the public face of the secret — and, to many, unwarranted — government collection of records about personal communications in the name of national security. He has given a number of speeches in recent weeks to counter a highly negative portrayal of the N.S.A.’s work, but the 90-minute interview was his most extensive personal statement on the issue to date. Speaking at the agency’s heavily guarded headquarters, General Alexander acknowledged that his agency had stumbled in responding to the revelations by Edward J. Snowden, the contractor who stole thousands of documents about the
N.S.A.’s most secret programs. But General Alexander insisted that the chief problem was a public misunderstanding about what information the agency collects — and what it does not — not the programs themselves. “The way we’ve explained it to the American people,” he said, “has gotten them so riled up that nobody told them the facts of the program and the controls that go around it.”
But he was firm in saying that the disclosures had allowed adversaries, whether foreign governments or terrorist organizations, to learn how to avoid detection by American intelligence and had caused
“significant and irreversible damage” to national security. General Alexander said that he was extremely sensitive to the power of the software tools and electronic weapons being developed by the United States for surveillance and computer-network warfare, and that he set a very high bar for when the nation should use them for offensive purposes. “I see no reason to use offensive tools unless you’re defending the country or in a state of war, or you want to achieve some really important thing for the good of the nation and others,” he said. Those comments were prompted by a document in the Snowden trove that said the United States conducted more than 200 offensive cyberattacks in 2011 alone. But
American officials say that in reality only a handful of attacks have been carried out. They say the erroneous estimate reflected an inaccurate grouping of other electronic missions. But General Alexander would not discuss any specific cases in which the United States had used those weapons, including the best-known example: its years-long attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz. To critics of President
Obama’s administration, that decision made it easier for China, Iran and other nations to justify their own use of cyberweapons. General
Alexander, who became the N.S.A. director in 2005, will retire early next year. The timing of his departure was set in March when his tour was extended for a third time, according to officials, who said it had nothing to do with the surveillance controversy spawned by the leaks. The appointment of his successor is likely to be a focal point of Congressional debate over whether the huge infrastructure that was built during his tenure will remain or begin to be restricted. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who leads the Senate Judiciary Committee, has already drafted legislation to eliminate the N.S.A.’s ability to systematically obtain Americans’ calling records. And Representative Jim
Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican and co-author of the Patriot Act, is drafting a bill that would cut back on domestic surveillance programs. General Alexander was by turns folksy and firm in the interview. But he was unapologetic about the agency’s strict culture of secrecy and unabashed in describing its importance to defending the nation. He insisted that it would have been impossible to have made public, in advance of the revelations by Mr. Snowden, the fact that the agency collected what it calls the “business records” of all telephone calls, and many other electronic communications, made in the United
States. The agency is under rules preventing it from investigating that so-called haystack of data unless it has a “reasonable, articulable” justification, involving communications with terrorists abroad, he added. But he said the agency had not told its story well. As an example, he said, the agency itself killed a program in 2011 that collected the metadata of about 1 percent of all of the e-mails sent in the United States. “We terminated it,” he said. “It was not operationally relevant to what we needed.” However, until it was killed, the N.S.A. had repeatedly defended that program as vital in reports to Congress. Senior officials also said that one document in the Snowden revelations, an agreement with Israel, had been misinterpreted by those who believed that it meant the N.S.A. was sharing raw intelligence data on Americans, including the metadata on phone calls. Officials said the probability of American content in the shared data was extremely small. General Alexander said that confronting what he called the two biggest threats facing the United States — terrorism and cyberattacks — would require the application of expanded computer monitoring. In both cases, he said, he was open to much of that work being done by private industry, which he said could be more efficient than government. In fact, he said, a direct government role in filtering Internet traffic into the United States, in an effort to stop destructive attacks on Wall Street ,
American banks and the theft of intellectual property, would be inefficient and ineffective. “I think it leads people to the wrong conclusion, that we’re reading their e-mails and trying to listen to their phone calls,” he said. Although he acknowledged that the N.S.A. must change its dialogue with the public, General Alexander was adamant that the agency adhered to the law.
“We followed the law, we follow our policies, we self-report, we identify problems, we fix them,” he said. “And I think we do a great job, and we do, I think, more to protect people’s civil liberties and privacy than they’ll ever know.”

--- Professor of Law and Governmental Affairs Officer at Coast Guard Academy
(6/10/2013, Glenn, “Why we need government surveillance,” http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/10/opinion/sulmasy-nsa-snowden/)
The current threat by al Qaeda and jihadists is one that requires aggressive intelligence collection and efforts.
One has to look no further than the disruption of the New York City subway bombers (the one being touted by DNI Clapper) or the Boston Marathon bombers to know that the war on al Qaeda is coming home to us , to our citizens, to our students, to our streets and our subways. This 21st century war is different and requires new ways and methods of gathering information. As technology has increased, so has our ability to gather valuable, often actionable, intelligence. However, the move toward "home-grown" terror will necessarily require, by accident or purposefully, collections of U.S. citizens' conversations with potential overseas persons of interest. An open society, such as theUnited States, ironically needs to use this technology to protect itself. This truth is naturally uncomfortable for a country with a Constitution that prevents the federal government from conducting "unreasonable searches and seizures." American historical resistance towards such activities is a bedrock of our laws, policies and police procedures. But what might have been reasonable 10 years ago is not the same any longer. The constant armed struggle against the jihadists has adjusted our beliefs on what we think our government can, and must, do in order to protect its citizens.

[Amy, Koret-Taube Task Force on National Security and Law, “The Roots of Weak Congressional Intelligence Oversight”, http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/FutureChallenges_Zegart.pdf]
All three sources of expertise are far more robust in domestic policy than intelligence
. For individual legislators, this arrangement makes electoral sense. The desire to win reelection naturally steers members of Congress to focus on domestic policy issues, which offer greater political benefits and lower political costs.
For Congress
, however
, domestic political incentives weaken the legislature’s institutional power vis-à-vis the executive branch in intelligence policy
. The homegrown expertise problem: inattentive voters, weak interest groups, and bad geography. Although newly elected legislators come to Washington knowing a great deal about a variety of policy issues, almost nobody walks in the door an intelligence expert. This is partly because intelligence is a highly technical and cloistered business, requiring years of study or insider experience to understand
.
Of the 535 members of the 111th Congress, only 2 ever worked in an intelligence agency.19 This experience base stands in sharp contrast to the armed services committees, where typically a third of the membership or more has had military experience
.20 As one congressional intelligence staffer noted, military service may not make a legislator an instant expert on current issues, but “at least they know the rank structure. They can start asking questions. It’s like peeling an onion. You start with that background and then the questions get sharper.”
In intelligence
, by contrast, the staffer noted, “ it would be almost next to impossible to fill the committee with members who have any kind of operational and educational background in intelligence.”21 Instead understanding intelligence takes the one thing in shortest supply for a legislator: time.
As former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Bob Graham noted
, simply learning the basics usually “exhausts half” of a member’s eight-year term on the intelligence committee
.22 Admittedly, many policy areas are complicated and hard to understand from the outside. But only intelligence couples this inherent policy complexity with a trifecta of inattentive voters, weak interest groups, and bad geography. These features of the political landscape turn out to be daunting barriers to developing expertise. Ever since the 1950s, political scientists have found that
American voters care more about domestic than foreign policy issues
.23 In the past twenty years, despite the
Soviet Union’s collapse, two wars in Iraq, globalization, and the worst terrorist attack in US history
, voters have never listed foreign policy as the most important presidential election issue.
In the 1996 and 2000 elections, foreign policy ranked dead last.24 Congressional elections are even more local affairs
. As one member of Congress remarked, “My constituents back home don’t care how I vote on Bosnia.”25 An analysis of interest groups shows a similar disparity
between domestic and foreign policy. Of the 25,189 interest groups listed in the Encyclopedia of Associations in 2008, only 1,101, or 4 percent, were concerned with foreign policy. 26 Moreover, if campaign contributions are any indication, domestic policy groups appear to be significantly more powerful than their foreign policy counterparts
. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, only seven of the top hundred campaign contributors to congressional and presidential campaigns during the past twenty years have been foreign policy–related groups.27
And that’s foreign policy writ large. Intelligence policy attracts even less voter attention and weaker interest group support because the key issues are secret, less tangible, more bureaucratic, and not as obviously connected to US national security.
Classification plays a major role in limiting the influence and activities even among major intelligence equipment manufacturers.
Defense contractors can lobby publicly and vigorously for big-ticket defense weapons programs
such as the $28 billion F-22 fighter plane or the $40 billion aerial refueling tanker program.
28 Not so with major intelligence satellite programs, which are highly classified
. As one former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer noted,
“The F-22, the tanker, it’s all in the open. There’s lobbying in intelligence, but it’s nowhere near as much. And it’s all behind closed doors.”29
Nor can legislators with intelligence satellite manufacturers in their districts talk much about it.
Another congressional staffer noted that “legislators can’t go and hold intelligence awareness fundraisers in the district.
”30 In addition, voter attention to the bureaucratic details of intelligence agencies is naturally low compared to pressing foreign policy issues. Iran’s nuclear program is one thing; the FBI’s personnel system is quite another. As the House Permanent Select

Committee on Intelligence concluded in its 1996 report: Intelligence, unlike virtually all other functions of government, has no natural advocates in the public at large
. Its direct effect on the lives of most citizens is largely unfelt or unseen
; its industrial base is too rarefied to build a large constituency in many areas; it is largely an “inside the Beltway” phenomenon in terms of location, logistics, budget and concern. The only places where intelligence can hope to find some base level of support are from its Executive Branch masters and its congressional overseers.31 Finally, geography works against aligning electoral incentives to develop intelligence expertise
. Because intelligence is a national policy issue, those who care deeply about it are dispersed across congressional districts, which is bad news for developing congressional intelligence experts. To understand why, one need only compare agriculture policy to intelligence policy.
No matter what security threats confront the United States, Congress will always have an overabundance of farm subsidy experts and a shortage of intelligence experts. Why? Because farm interests are clustered in geographic regions with organized interests who provide free information and reward representatives for advocating their positions
. Senators James Harlan (R-IA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) belonged to different parties and served in different centuries, but both represented Iowa, compelling both men to know a great deal about farming and to serve on the Agriculture Committee. That kind of naturally occurring and self-reinforcing expertise system does not exist in intelligence.
Although surveillance satellite producers are based in certain regions, there is no Iowa equivalent for intelligence, no heavy geographic concentration of industry or a natural constituency that incentivizes legislators to learn the intelligence business and serve on the intelligence committees to help folks back home.
As the House Intelligence Committee concluded, committee service contains “more overt drawbacks than attractions: it likely offers no help vis-à-vis the interests of the
Members’ districts; it detracts time and attention from issues of direct interest to constituents; and there is little Members can say about what they do.”32 In sum, expertise does not arise naturally in intelligence. Although legislators may have strong personal policy interests,33 they know their time is precious and must be employed judiciously to win reelection
.34 Ceteris paribus, legislators are more likely to develop expertise on issues their constituents care about most and in areas where interest groups are powerful and plentiful.
[Amy, Koret-Taube Task Force on National Security and Law, “The Roots of Weak Congressional Intelligence Oversight”, http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/FutureChallenges_Zegart.pdf]
Term limits and on-the-job learning. The second route for developing congressional expertise—on-the-job
learning— has proven
equally challenging
. The same electoral incentives that discourage members from joining intelligence committees in the first place also encourage them to leave quickly
. Indeed, Congress has designed committee rules to ensure that this happens in intelligence but almost nowhere else.
Nearly all of Congress’s committees allow unlimited service so that members can rise in seniority
, become more powerful (and expert), and provide greater benefits to their districts.35
But the intelligence committees do not
. Instead
, the House Intelligence Committee has limited members to four terms since its inception in 1977
,36 and the Senate imposed term limits on members of the Select Committee on Intelligence for nearly thirty years, abolishing them only in 2005.37 These term limits are not determined by law but by internal House and Senate rules, which are far easier to change. Many contend that intelligence committee term limits were designed originally to keep legislators from being co-opted by the agencies they oversee. But that logic has never been applied to the armed services committees or most of Congress’s other committees, which presumably face similar co-optation challenges. Moreover, intelligence committee term limits have persisted for years, despite repeated calls from nonpartisan studies before and after 9/11 to strengthen expertise by abolishing the limits, including a 1996 report issued by the House Intelligence Committee’s own staff.38
A more compelling explanation is that term limits are electorally efficient, ensuring that members can quickly roll off the intelligence committees and onto committees that confer greater benefits to their constituents.
Serving on the intelligence committees is not a particularly attractive assignment.
Congress’s most powerful members have been avoiding the intelligence committees in increasing numbers, suggesting that the intelligence committees are actually less attractive now than they were twenty years ago. In 1987, 73 percent of the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee also held top leadership posts in the chamber, a strong indicator of the committee’s importance. Yet by 2007, only 33 percent of the committee could be classified as “movers and shakers” in the Senate. The percentage of movers and shakers serving on the House Intelligence Committee also fell,

from a high point of 47 percent in 1987 to just 25 percent in 2007 (see table 1).39
Whereas legislators with presidential aspirations can burnish their national security credentials, for most members overseeing intelligence is difficult and costly because it requires delving into highly technical issues without watchdog groups or any other information sources freely available in the unclassified world. Legislators also cannot talk about their committee work with constituents.
As former CIA director Michael V. Hayden put it, “No member ever gets a bridge built or a road paved by serving on the intelligence committee. It’s an act of patriotism.”40 Given these costs and benefits, term limits are an electoral godsend, ensuring that every legislator can switch to more attractive committee assignments, even though doing so hinders
Congress from developing intelligence oversight expertise.
[Amy, Koret-Taube Task Force on National Security and Law, “The Roots of Weak Congressional Intelligence Oversight”, http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/FutureChallenges_Zegart.pdf]
The expertise gap. Not surprisingly,
term limits have created substantial experience gaps between the intelligence committees and Congress’s other oversight committees
. From 1975 to 2008,
31 percent of the
Banking Committee and 30 percent of the Armed Services Committee served at least five congressional sessions, but just 15 percent of the Intelligence Committee served that long
(see figure 1).
The experience gap is even more pronounced in the House.
So-called long termers constituted 32 percent of the House
Armed Services Committee and 23 percent of the House Banking Committee but just 5 percent of the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence. Other metrics paint an even starker picture: The longest serving member of the House Armed Services Committee spent fifteen terms, or thirty years, on the committee. A dozen other representatives served twenty years or more.
In intelligence, the longest serving member spent twelve years on the committee, and the majority of legislators spent four years or less. In the 103rd Congress, one of House Intelligence Committee’s highest turnover years, eleven of nineteen members, or nearly two-thirds, were brand new to the committee
. As former CIA director Michael
Hayden concluded, “Term limits are stupid. I don’t know why they still have them but they are hanging themselves.”41
[Amy, Koret-Taube Task Force on National Security and Law, “The Roots of Weak Congressional Intelligence Oversight”, http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/FutureChallenges_Zegart.pdf]
Outsourcing to staff: The road not taken.
Congressional staff capabilities offer a third mechanism of developing institutional expertise. Yet Congress has not deployed staff capabilities to compensate for members’ expertise limitations
. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), called “Congress’s watchdog,” is widely considered one of the institution’s most potent oversight tools, evaluating, investigating, and recommending management improvements to federal agencies. Yet at the insistence of intelligence agencies and the US Justice Department,
the GAO has been prohibited from auditing the CIA and many other intelligence agencies for more than forty years
, even though one thousand GAO employees currently hold top secret security clearances, only seventy-three hold sensitive and compartmented information (SCI) clearances, which grant them access to the most sensitive intelligence information.42
Since 9/11, several congressional bills to grant GAO stronger intelligence auditing authority have failed.
The most recent of these efforts, the 2010 Intelligence Authorization Bill, makes
GAO auditing possible but unlikely by placing responsibility for determining GAO’s role in the hands of the Director of National Intelligence.
Although the House Intelligence Committee staff has grown, it continues to lag behind staffing levels in the Armed Services and Banking Committees, despite dramatic changes in the intelligence mission
, wrenching reform efforts in the Intelligence Community, and a doubling of the intelligence budget during the past ten years.43 The Senate’s intelligence committee staff has actually shrunk over time, from forty full-time staff in 1977 to thirty-four in 2007, a 15 percent decline. During the same period, the Armed Services Committee Staff ballooned by 59 percent and the Senate Banking Committee staff stayed roughly the same.44

[Steven, Heritage Foundation, “Phone Records and the NSA: Legal and Keeping America Safe”, June 20, http://blog.heritage.org/2013/06/20/phone-records-andthe-nsa-legal-and-keeping-america-safe/]
In the U.S., counterterrorism operations rely on tools such as the NSA surveillance program
and are overseen by Congress, the executive branch, and the courts to prevent gross misconduct and overreach. Before Congress and the American public decide to throw the baby out with the bathwater, they must understand that these programs keep us safe and allow the U.S. to adapt to the ever-changing, and very real, terrorist threat
. Over the past week, Snowden has inundated the world with details about the
NSA collection of telephone records from companies such as Verizon. However, according to a FISA court order, Verizon was only ordered to hand over “metadata” of the calls it processed. Metadata refers to basic information, including telephone number, location, and duration of the call, and the court order does not authorize the government to access the content of such conversations.
There is a growing body of legal precedent for the NSA program. In 1976 the Supreme Court upheld “the third party doctrine,” which states that anyone who voluntarily provides information to a third party, such as a telephone service provider, cannot object if it is later turned over to the government. What’s more
, in 1979, the Supreme Court held in Smith v. Maryland that the government did not need a warrant to obtain phone record information as it did for the content of such communications
. T he information was not constitutionally protected because there was no true expectation of privacy. As a result, metadata collection is not protected under the 4th Amendmen t and is perfectly legal
. U.S. law enforcement and Intelligence agencies depend on tools and methods, such as the leaked NSA program, to combat homegrown radicalization and to fight the ongoing threat from terrorist cells such as the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen
. Moreover, NSA Director General Keith
Alexander testified to Congress that these surveillance programs have helped foil dozens of terrorist attacks.
These include,
he stated
, an attempted suicide plot against the New York City subway system by
Najibullah Zazi, who pleaded guilty. Since 9/11, the U.S. has thwarted over 50 terrorist plots against
America’s homeland
. In addition to continued reliance on counterterrorism devices such as the Patriot Act and the NSA surveillance programs, Congress must take action to plug the remaining gaps in our counterterrorism system. For instance, there should be increased visa coordination to prevent known terrorists from boarding airplanes and travelling to the U.S. Additionally, Congress should foster greater cooperation among local, state, and federal agencies to streamline their information-sharing capabilities. The current debate raging over
Snowden’s leaking of the secret NSA surveillance program is no doubt a healthy exercise for a thriving democracy. The scope of the metadata collection and how the government uses it should come under close scrutiny. However,
Congress and the American people should understand that these programs
— which are under
judicial, executive, and legislative oversight—are vital tools for law enforcement and intelligence officials in countering the ongoing threat of terrorism
.
[Kimberly, Associated Press, “NSA: Surveillance Programs Foiled Some 50 Terrorist Plots Worldwide”, June 18, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/nsasurveillance_n_3460106.html]
The director of the National Security Agency insisted
on Tuesday that
the government's sweeping surveillance programs have foiled
some
50 terrorist plots
worldwide in a forceful defense echoed by the leaders of the House Intelligence
Committee. Army Gen. Keith Alexander said the two recently disclosed programs – one that gathers U.S. phone records and another that is designed to track the use of U.S.-based Internet servers by foreigners with possible links to terrorism – are critical in the terrorism fight.
Intelligence officials have disclosed some details on two thwarted attacks, and Alexander promised additional information to the panel on thwarted attacks that the programs helped stop. He provided few additional details
. The programs "assist the intelligence community to connect the dots,"
Alexander told the

committee in a rare, open Capitol Hill hearing.
Alexander got no disagreement from the leaders of the panel, who have been outspoken in backing the programs since
Edward
Snowden
, a 29-year-old former contractor with Booz Allen
Hamilton
, disclosed information
to The Washington Post and the Guardian newspapers. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the committee, and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the panel's top Democrat, said the programs were vital to the intelligence community
and assailed Snowden's actions as criminal. "It is at times like these where our enemies within become almost as damaging as our enemies on the outside," Rogers said. Ruppersberger said the
"brazen disclosures" put the United States and its allies at risk. The general counsel for the intelligence community said the NSA cannot target phone conversations between callers inside the U.S. – even if one of those callers was someone they were targeting for surveillance when outside the country.

(Linda Renee, J.D., Magna Cum Laude, California Western School of Law; This Isn't Your
Founding Fathers' Fourth Amendment: Analyzing the Constitutionality of Warrantless Metadata
Collection under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; 51 Cal. W. L. Rev. 7)
Conclusion The events of September 11 , 2001 demonstrated America's vulnerability to terrorist attacks at home. The government responded with legislation creating new agencies
, new protections, and new methods of gathering intelligence designed to predict and prevent future similar catastrophes. The cost of this enhanced protection is unavoidable pressures on privacy. The NSA's telephony metadata collection program is one such program designed to predict and prevent terrorist attacks . Congress impliedly approved the program as it currently functions through its reauthorization of section 215 of the Patriot Act. Therefore, the program is statutorily allowed. Addressing the larger issue, the program does not represent an impermissible search under the Fourth Amendment. The only data collected is information voluntarily provided by telephone users to their third-party telephone providers. While the scope of the data collection is vast, the data itself is not protected by the Fourth Amendment. So long as the data analysis is limited to queries concerning suspected foreign agents or terrorists, and so long as the data collected does not expand to include substantive content of the telephone calls, the program is a permissible, legal national security tool.
(Linda Renee, J.D., Magna Cum Laude, California Western School of Law; This Isn't Your
Founding Fathers' Fourth Amendment: Analyzing the Constitutionality of Warrantless Metadata
Collection under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; 51 Cal. W. L. Rev. 7)
The statutory authority cited by the government for the metadata collection is the FISA business records provision, added by section 215 of the
Patriot Act and codified at 50 U.S.C. § 1861. n43 Titled "Access to Certain Business Records for Foreign Intelligence and International Terrorism
Investigations," section 215 allows the FBI to apply to a FISA court for an order "requesting production of any tangible things," including telephony metadata. n44 The provision allows such requests for information relevant to "an investigation to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities." n45 The statute expressly limits the investigations to those concerning foreign governments and their agents and individuals in contact with, or known to, a suspected agent of a foreign power who is the subject of such authorized investigation. n4 6The NSA surveillance program disclosed by the Guardian clearly encompasses telephony metadata for individuals who are not involved with foreign governments or terrorist activities. However, while the metadata is collected without regard to the foreign intelligence requirement, the FISA Court orders allowing metadata collection"strictly limit access to, analysis of, and dissemination of information derived from the metadata to valid counter-terrorism purposes." n47 To accomplish this, the stored metadata is only accessible through search queries by a very limited number of NSA officials, resulting in a very small percentage of the metadata actually being analyzed.n48These searches are only approved based on "facts giving rise to a reasonable,[*16] articulable suspicion that the selection term to be queried is associated with one or more of the specified foreign terrorist organizations." n49 The Government argues that Congress permits the collection scheme used by the NSA under section 215. n50 As evidence, the Government points to congressional reauthorization of section 215 in 2010. n51 This reauthorization occurred after all members of Congress had received a report on the telephony metadata program. n52 This reauthorization, made with full knowledge of how the statute was being implemented, shows congressional approval and provides statutory authority for the metadata program under section 215.

(Evan and Wes; DHS intelligence report warns of domestic right-wing terror threat; Feb 20; www.cnn.com/2015/02/19/politics/terror-threat-homeland-security/; kdf)
Washington (CNN) They're carrying out sporadic terror attacks on police, have threatened attacks on government buildings and reject government authority.A new intelligence assessment, circulated by the Department of
Homeland Security this month and reviewed by CNN, focuses on the domestic terror threat from right-wing sovereign citizen extremists and comes as the Obama administration holds a White House conference to focus efforts to fight violent extremism.
Some federal and local law enforcement groups view the domestic terror threat from sovereign citizen groups as equal to -- and in some cases greater than -- the threat from foreign Islamic terror groups , such as ISIS, that garner more public attention. The Homeland Security report, produced in coordination with the FBI, counts 24 violent sovereign citizen-related attacks across the U.S. since 2010. The government says these are extremists who believe that they can ignore laws and that their individual rights are under attack in routine daily instances such as a traffic stop or being required to obey a court order .
They've lashed out against authority in incidents such as one in 2012, in which a father and son were accused of engaging in a shootout with police in Louisiana, in a confrontation that began with an officer pulling them over for a traffic violation. Two officers were killed and several others wounded in the confrontation. The men were sovereign citizen extremists who claimed police had no authority over them. Among the findings from the Homeland Security intelligence assessment: "(Sovereign citizen) violence during 2015 will occur most frequently during routine law enforcement encounters at a suspect's home, during enforcement stops and at government offices."
The report adds that "law enforcement officers will remain the primary target of (sovereign citizen) violence over the next year due to their role in physically enforcing laws and regulations." The White House has fended off criticism in recent days for its reluctance to say the words
"Islamist extremism," even as the conference this week almost entirely focused on helping imams and community groups to counteract the lure of groups like ISIS. Absent from the White House conference is any focus on the domestic terror threat posed by sovereign citizens, militias and other anti-government terrorists that have carried out multiple attacks in recent years. An administration official says the White House is focused on the threat from all terrorists, including from sovereign citizen and other domestic groups. "I don't think it's fair to say the (White
House) conference didn't address this at all," the official said, adding that President Barack Obama addressed the need to combat "violent ideologies" of all types. An official at the Justice Department, which is leading the administration's counter-radicalization effort, says many of the tactics aimed at thwarting radical Islamic recruitment of young people can also be used to fight anti-government extremist groups. While groups like ISIS and al Qaeda garner the most attention, for many local cops, the danger is closer to home. A survey last year of state and local law enforcement officers listed sovereign citizen terrorists, ahead of foreign Islamists, and domestic militia groups as the top domestic terror threat. The survey was part of a study produced by the University of Maryland's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. In 2013, a man who held anti-government views carried out a shooting attack on three Transportation Security Administration employees at Los Angeles International Airport, killing one TSA officer. Last year, a couple killed two police officers and a bystander at a Las
Vegas Walmart store. Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that by some estimates, there are as many as 300,000 people involved in some way with sovereign citizen extremism. Perhaps 100,000 people form a core of the movement, he said. The federal government's focus on the domestic groups waxes and wanes, Potok said, in part because the threat from foreign groups like al Qaeda and its affiliates. Potok says sovereign citizen groups have attracted support because of poor economic conditions. Some groups travel the country pitching their ideology as a way to help homeowners escape foreclosure or get out of debt, by simply ignoring the courts and bankruptcy law.
The Homeland Security report's focus on right-wing terrorists is a subject that garnered political controversy for the Obama administration in the past. In 2009, a Homeland Security report on possible recruitment of military veterans by right-wing militia groups prompted an outcry from veterans groups.
The report was produced by staff members during the Bush administration but wasn't published until then Homeland Security Janet Napolitano had taken office. Napolitano criticized her own agency for the report.
(Dan; New FBI official: Terror threat in Ohio is surprising; May 30; www.bucyrustelegraphforum.com/story/news/state/2015/05/30/new-fbi-official-terror-threat-ohiosurprising/28217115/)
CINCINNATI – The new head of the FBI's wide-ranging Cincinnati division says the threat of homegrown terrorists in her native state is surprising and scary .
Angela Byers became special agent in charge of the office that covers 48 of
Ohio's 88 counties in late February, just after back-to-back arrests of young men in Cincinnati and Columbus in separate cases alleging they were plotting attacks in the United States. Both have pleaded not guilty to all charges. Byers told The Associated Press in an interview she was surprised at the threat level in Ohio, and she suspects many people in the Midwest don't realize that "violent extremists" can pop up anywhere."It's scary. And it's scary to us. I'm not sure the general public quite gets the gravity of

it," she said. She said counterterrorism efforts are ongoing in her office, although she couldn't comment on any possible other cases. "It seems like once we get one guy, another guy pops up high on the radar," she said. "We just keep moving from one to the next." The cases that broke this year in her division were the arrests of Christopher
Lee Cornell, of suburban Cincinnati, on charges he planned to attack the U.S. Capitol, and Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud, 23, of Columbus, accused of planning to attack a military base or prison after returning from terrorist training in Syria. Mark Ensalaco, the director of human rights research at the University of Dayton, who has written about Middle East terrorism and the Sept. 11 attacks, said trying to detect homegrown "lone wolves" before they act is "a nightmare for national security." But he said use of confidential informants and federal electronic surveillance can raise concerns about protecting citizens' rights.

[John, law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was an official in the Justice Department from 2001-03 and is a visiting scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute, “Why We Endorsed Warrantless Wiretaps”, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124770304290648701.html#mod=rss_opinion_main]
It is absurd to think that a law like FISA should restrict live military operations against potential attacks on the United States
. Congress enacted FISA during the waning days of the Cold War. As the 9/11 Commission found, FISA's wall between domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence proved dysfunctional and contributed to our government's failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks.
Under FISA, to obtain a judicial wiretapping warrant the government is supposed to show probable cause that a specified target is a foreign agent.
Unlike, say, Soviet spies working under diplomatic cover, terrorists are hard to identify. Yet they are vastly more dangerous.
Monitoring their likely communications channels is the best way to track and stop them.Building evidence to prove past crimes
, as in the civilian criminal system
, is entirely beside the point
.
The best way to find an al Qaeda operative is to look at all email, text and phone traffic between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the U.S. This might involve the filtering of innocent traffic, just as roadblocks and airport screenings do.In FISA, President Bush and his advisers faced an obsolete law not written with live war with an international terrorist organization in mind
. It was to meet such emergency circumstances that the Founders designed the presidency. As John Locke first observed, foreign threats "are much less capable to be directed by antecedent, standing, positive laws." Legislatures are too slow and their members too numerous to respond effectively to unforeseen situations. Only the executive can act to protect the "security and interest of the public." The power to protect the nation, said Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist, "ought to exist without limitation," because "it is impossible to foresee or define the extent and variety of national exigencies, or the correspondent extent & variety of the means which may be necessary to satisfy them." To limit the president's constitutional power to protect the nation from foreign threats is simply foolhardy. Hamilton observed that "decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch will generally characterize the proceedings of one man, in a much more eminent degree, than the proceedings of any greater number." "Energy in the executive," he reiterated, "is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks." Clearly, the five inspectors general were responding to the media-stoked politics of recrimination, not consulting the long history of American presidents who have lived up to their duty in times of crisis. More than a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt authorized the FBI to intercept any communications, domestic or international, of persons "suspected of subversive activities . . . including suspected spies." FDR did not hesitate long over a 1937 Supreme Court opinion (United States v. Nardone) interpreting federal law to prohibit electronic surveillance without a warrant. It is too late to do anything about it after sabotage, assassinations and 'fifth column' activities are completed," he wrote in a secret 1940 memo authorizing the wire tapping. Indeed, he continued to authorize the surveillance even after
Congress rejected proposals from his attorney general, Robert Jackson, to authorize national security wiretapping without a warrant.
Every federal appeals court to address the question has agreed that the president may gather electronic intelligence to protect against foreign threats. This includes the special FISA appeals court, which in a
2002 sealed case upholding the constitutionality of the Patriot Act held that "the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information
." The court said it took the president's power "for granted," observing that "FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power." Now, according to the inspectors general, those of us in government following the 9/11 terrorist attacks should have assumed that the usual peacetime rules for domestic wiretaps applied and interpreted FISA in a most curious way -- to delete the president's traditional authority as commander in chief to collect signals intelligence in wartime. The 1952 Supreme Court case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer is the IG's lodestar. In Youngstown, the Court addressed President Harry Truman's effort to seize steel mills shut down by a labor strike during the Korean
War. Truman claimed that maintaining production was necessary to supply munitions and material to American troops in combat. Youngstown correctly found that the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the exclusive power to make law concerning labor disputes. It does not, however, address the scope of the president's power involving military strategy or tactics in war. If anything, it supports the proposition that one branch cannot intrude on the clear constitutional turf of another. Moreover, earlier Justice Departments -- reaching across several administrations from both parties -- had likewise concluded that Youngstown did not limit the president's legitimate conduct of foreign affairs and national security policy. This is why all administrations have refused to accept the 1973 War Powers
Resolution and have regularly engaged in military conflicts without congressional approval. Our
Constitution created a presidency whose function is to protect the nation from attack. Gathering intelligence -- including intercepting enemy communications -- has long been a key aspect of war. Our military and intelligence agencies cannot attack or defend the nation unless they know where to aim.

As we confront terrorists who remain intent on attacking the U.S., using weapons we cannot anticipate, we should be skeptical of those who insist that we radically change the way this country has always made war.
Yoo 14 [John, Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley Law School; Visiting
Scholar, American Enterprise Institute. “The Legality of the National Security Agency's Bulk Data
Surveillance Programs,” Summer, 2014, I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, 10
ISJLP 301, lexis]
FISA, and the law enforcement mentality it embodies, creates several problems. FISA requires "probable cause" to believe that someone is an agent of a foreign power before one can get a warrant to collect phone calls and e-mails. n35An al Qaeda leader could have a cell [*309] phone with 100 numbers in its memory, ten of which are in the United States and thus require a warrant . Would a FISA judge have found probable cause to think the users of those ten numbers are al Qaeda too? Probably not. Would our intelligence agencies even immediately know who was using those numbers at the time of captured al Qaeda leader's calls? The same is true of his e-mail, as to which it will not be immediately obvious what addresses are held by U.S. residents. In our world of rapidly shifting e-mail addresses, multiple cell phone numbers, and Internet communications, FISA imposes slow and cumbersome procedures on our intelligence and law enforcement officers. n36 These laborious checks are based on the assumption that we remain within the criminal justice system, and look backwards at crimes in order to conduct prosecutions, rather than within the national security system, which looks forward in order to prevent attacks on the American people. n37FISA requires a lengthy review process, in which special FBI and DOJ lawyers prepare an extensive package of facts and law to present to the FISC. n38 The Attorney General must personally sign the application, and another high ranking national security officer, such as the President's National Security Advisor or the Director of the FBI, must certify that the information sought is for foreign intelligence. n39 Creating an existing database of numbers that can be quickly searched can allow the government to take advantage of captured al Qaeda numbers abroad, before the cells within the United States break their contacts . A critic, however, might argue that billions of innocent calling records are not "relevant" to a terrorism investigation. Even if terrorist communications take place over the phone, that cannot justify the collection of all phone call records in the United States, the vast
[*310] majority of which have nothing to do with the grounds for the search. The FISC rejected this argument because, to be useful, a database has to be broad enough to find terrorist calls.
"Because known and unknown international terrorist operatives are using telephone communications, and because it is necessary to obtain the bulk collection of a telephone company's metadata to determine those connections between known and unknown international terrorist operatives as part of authorized investigations," the court observed, " the production of the information sought meets the standard for relevance under
Section215." n40 Aggregating calling records into a database, the court found, was necessary to find the terrorist communications and the links between terrorists . n41 It may not even be possible to detect the links before such a database is created. If a database is not comprehensive, in other words, then the government will only be able to glimpse incomplete patterns of terrorist activity, if it can glimpse any at all. Relevance is a slippery concept, but it cannot require that every piece of information obtained by subpoena must contain information related to guilt . Even when grand juries subpoena the business records or communications of a criminal suspect, it is likely that the large majority of the items will not have any relationship to the crime. Nonetheless, a grand jury may subpoena all of a suspect's financial records to find those that pertain to a criminal conspiracy. A different way to view the NSA's telephone calling record program is that the
"relevant" tangible "thing" is the database itself, rather than any individual calling record.

(Rohan, Head, International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research,
Singapore, Professor of Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of Security Studies, 1-7-13
“Terrorists to Bounce Back in 2013” The National Interest) http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/terrorists-will-bounce-back-2013-7932?page=1
Most terrorist attacks use the gun and the bomb. But the emerging threat of terrorism confronting the world will not be confined to conventional terrorism. The threat from chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear terrorism is on the rise.
However, recent developments in Syria, Iran and North Korea increase the likelihood of a biological outbreak. In the spectrum of unconventional agents, anthrax and smallpox are favored by threat groups. With terrorists recruiting from a cross section of society, a dozen scientists and technicians became vulnerable to supporting or staffing terrorist weapons acquisition and manufacturing programs.
Both securing government storage and research facilities as well as periodic screening of scientific and support staff is paramount to prevent proliferation. In the event of an outbreak, accidental or deliberate first responders should be vaccinated and immunized.
[The Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group’s WMD Working Group, “WMD Terrorism: An Update on the Recommendations of the Commission on the
Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism”, http://homeland.house.gov/sites/homeland.house.gov/files/AspenWMDPaper.pdf]
The AWG recognizes that the bio-threat remains undiminished
: • Al Qaeda’s efforts to develop an anthrax weapon were unsuccessful, but neither is there evidence that the organization’s bio-weapons ambitions have diminished. Ayman al Zawahiri, who led the biological program, is currently head of al Qaeda.
• The threat of bioterrorism is not limited to any particular nation or terrorist organization. Thus, the elimination of any regime or terrorist organization will not eliminate the threat
. • The risk of bioterrorism is a function of intent, capability, and vulnerability. •
The procedures and equipment required to develop bioweapons are dual-use and readily available. • The availability of pathogens for use as bioweapons is ubiquitou s, as effectively demonstrated in a recent study.3 •
The US government has limited ability to reduce intent of hostile actors
and virtually no ability to reduce the capability of our enemies to produce such weapons. • Therefore, our primary defense is the ability to respond. • In its final report, the WMD Commission concluded that the best strategy for biodefense was improving the ability to respond. Rapid detection and diagnosis, adequate supplies of medical countermeasures and the means to rapidly dispense them, and surge medical capacity are among the critical elements required for effective response. • While bioattacks cannot be entirely prevented, proper response can prevent an attack from becoming a catastrophe. • The longrange strategy is to develop protective and response capabilities that would minimize the effect of a bioattack and thus remove bioweapons from the category of WMD. Although spending on biodefense was ramped up after the anthrax letters of 2001, the sense of urgency has receded and bio-preparedness has suffered. Many experts worry that complacency and shrinking budgets have left the nation under-prepared.
In
October
2011, the Bipartisan WMD Terrorism Research Center
, led by former Senators Graham and Talent, released a report card on America’s bio-response 5 capabilities
. This comprehensive report was guided by a dozen of the nation’s top biodefense, public health, and medical experts
. The report assessed seven critical categories
of response across six levels of attack—ranging from small-scale (such as the anthrax letters of 2001) to a full-blown global crisis with the potential for millions of illnesses and/or deaths
. Weakness in preparedness for a large-scale bio-event was evident by deficiencies in a range of capabilities including diagnosis, attribution of cause, availability of medical countermeasures, and medical management.
(Each of these categories received a grade of D or F, meaning they met few or none of the analysts’ prescribed expectations.)4

Gregory D.
, Assistant Professor, Department of Public and International Affairs and Deputy
Director, Biodefense Program, George Mason University, "Biosecurity Reconsidered," INTERNATIONAL
SECURITY, Spring
, p. 96+, ASP.
The prospect of a terrorist group acquiring
and using biological weapons has becomeone of the most feared threats to international security
. Writing in 2006, UN Secretary-General Annan warned, "
The most important under-addressed threat relating to terrorism
, and one which acutely requires new thinking on the part of the international community, is that of
terrorists using a biological weapon
." 84 In 2008 the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass
Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism judged that it was more likely than not that a biological terrorist attack would take place within five years. 85
Biological terrorism is included
in cell 3a of the figure, given that the purpose of such attacks-to achieve political change through the use of violence
--threatens the institutions, policies, and legitimacy of a state.

[Simon, AFP, “UN atomic agency sounds warming on ‘nuclear terrorism’”, http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/07/01/un-atomic-agency-sounds-warning-on-nuclearterrorism/#ixzz2ccQesW2r]
The head of the UN atomic agency warned Monday against complacency in preventing "nuclear terrorism
", saying progress in recent years should not lull the world into a false sense of security. "
Much has been achieved in the past decade," Yukiya Amano of the International Atomic Energy Agency told a gathering in Vienna of some 1,200 delegates from around
110 states including 35 ministers to review progress on the issue. "Many countries have taken effective measures to prevent theft, sabotage, unauthorised access, illegal transfer, or other malicious acts involving nuclear or other radioactive material. Security has been improved at many facilities containing such material." Partly as a result, he said, "there has not been a terrorist attack involving nuclear or other radioactive material." "
But this must not lull us into a false sense of security. If a 'dirty bomb' is detonated in a major city, or sabotage occurs at a nuclear facility, the consequences could be devastating
. "Nuclear terrorism" comprises three main risks: an atomic bomb, a "dirty bomb" -- conventional explosion spreading radioactive material -- and an attack on a nuclear plant. The first, using weapons-grade uranium or plutonium, is generally seen as
"low probability, high consequence" -- very difficult to pull off but for a determined group of extremists, not impossible
. There are hundreds of tonnes of weapons-usable plutonium and uranium -- a grapefruit-sized amount is enough for a crude nuclear weapon that would fit in a van -- around the world
. A "dirty bomb" -- a "radiological dispersal device" or RDD -- is much easier but would be hugely less lethal. But it might still cause mass panic. "If the Boston marathon bombing (in April this year) had been an RDD, the trauma would be lasting a whole lot longer," Sharon Squassoni from the Center for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS) told AFP
. Last year alone, the IAEA recorded 17 cases of illegal possession and attempts to sell nuclear materials and 24 incidents of theft or loss.And it says this is the "tip of the iceberg
". Many cases have involved former parts of the Soviet Union, for example Chechnya, Georgia and Moldova -- where in 2011 several people were arrested trying to sell weapons-grade uranium -- but not only.
Nuclear materials that could be used in a "dirty bomb" are also used in hospitals, factories and university campuses and are therefore seen as easy to steal.
Major international efforts have been made since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States to prevent nuclear material falling into the wrong hands. US President Barack Obama hosted a summit in 2010 on the subject which was followed by another one in Seoul last year. A third is planned in The Hague in March. A report issued in Vienna on Monday to coincide with the start of the meeting by the Arms Control Association and the Partnership for Global Security said decent progress had been made but that "significant" work remained. Ten countries have eliminated their entire stockpiles of weapons-grade uranium, many reactors producing nuclear medicines were using less risky materials and smuggling nuclear materials across borders, for example from Pakistan, is harder, it said. But some countries still do not have armed guards at nuclear power plants, security surrounding nuclear materials in civilian settings is often inadequate and there is a woeful lack of international cooperation and binding global rules
(Meggaen, research intern for the Project on Nuclear Issues, 3-21-13, "Doubting Deterrence of Nuclear Terrorism" Center for Strategic and International Studies) csis.org/blog/doubting-deterrencenuclear-terrorism
The risk that terrorists will set off a nuclear weapon on U.S. soil is disconcertingly high.
While a terrorist organization may experience difficulty constructing nuclear weapons facilities, there is significant concern thatterrorists can obtain a nuclear weapon or nuclear materials.
The fear that an actor could steal a nuclear weapon
or fissile material and transport it to the U nited
S tates has long-existed. It takes a great amount of time and resources (including territory) to construct centrifuges and reactors to build a nuclear weapon from scratch.
Relatively easily-transportable nuclear weapons
,

however, present one opportunity to terrorists.
For example, exercises similar to the recent Russian movement of nuclear weapons from munitions depots to storage sites may prove attractive targets.
Loose nuclear materials pose a second opportunity.Terrorists could use them to create a crude nuclear weapon similar to the gun-type design of Little Boy. Its simplicity
– two subcritical masses of highlyenriched uranium – may make it attractive to terrorists. While such a weapon might not produce the immediate destruction seen at Hiroshima, the radioactive fall-out and psychological effects would still be damaging. These
two opportunities for terrorists differ from concerns about a “dirty bomb,” which mixes radioactive material with conventional explosives.
[The Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group’s WMD Working Group, “WMD Terrorism: An Update on the Recommendations of the Commission on the
Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism”, http://homeland.house.gov/sites/homeland.house.gov/files/AspenWMDPaper.pdf]
If terrorists are unlikely to fabricate or steal nuclear weapons, might hostile nations secretly provide terrorists with such weapons to carry out deniable attacks against their foes?
Many analysts see this as one of the dangers posed by Iran’s nuclear program.
Iran’s
suspected efforts to acquire nuclear weapons does increase the danger of nuclear terrorism
, although perhaps not directly. It is difficult to foresee Iran relinquishing operational control by turning a nuclear weapon over to Hezbollah or any other terrorist protégé. Al Quds remains Iran’s operational arm and almost certainly would never hand over a nuclear device to another party. If Iran had nuclear weapons, its arsenal would pose a more insidious threat. Even perceived possession could increase Iran’s strategic influence. But it could also become a strategic liability by making Iran a likely target if, for example, an incident of nuclear terrorism were to occur
. Because elements of Iran’s nuclear program are clandestine, it is not possible for the outside world to have confidence in its security measures.
Also, while Iran’s government has been stable
for the past three decades
, internal rivalries and political divisions remain. 7
Further, a presumed Iranian nuclear capability would encourage other countries in the region to follow suit, leading to nuclear proliferation in a turbulent part of the world. Countries could seek shortcuts to acquisition, using clandestine networks or attempting to purchase weapons from those with existing arsenals. Intelligence operations may not be geared to look for novel nuclear acquisition routes other than “mini-Manhattan
Projects” or new AQ Khan networks. It also seems unlikely that North Korea would turn over its nuclear weapons to foreign terrorists. In past terrorist attacks, North Korea has relied on its own operatives. The government’s record of exporting advanced weapons and nuclear technology for commercial reasons, however, is a reason for serious concern.
A collapse of the North Korean state would prompt alarm about the disposition and control of its nuclear arsenal
. Current trends in
Pakistanare worrisome
. Its political situationborders on chaos, and the country is infested with violent extremists, including Taliban, the Haqqani network, and Lashkar-e-Taiba, as well as the remnants of al Qaeda’s central command.
Some of these groups operate under the influence of Pakistan’s intelligence services
. In addition, religious radicalization seems to be spreading throughout the country, affecting even the officer corps of the army and raising questions about Pakistan’s long-term stability.
Despite Pakistan’s military commanders’ assurances that the country’s nuclear arsenal remains secure, political turmoil and attacks on major military targets fuel continued concern.
One can easily envision scenarios in which terrorists, rogue elements in the military, or combinations of the two seize a nuclear weapon or some component, such as a fissile core.
Under such circumstances, the situation would be unclear and loyalties uncertain. Further
, it is unlikely that Pakistani commanders’ first action would be to summon foreign intervention to secure their nuclear arsenal.
In any case, how confident can anyone be that the United States could do anything effective in time?
Christopher C.
, Professor, International Law, Georgetown Unviersity and Alexander Ian
Parkhouse, “Nuclear Terrorism in a Globalizing World: Assessing the Threat and the Emerging
Management Regime,” STANFORD JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW v. 45, Summer 20
, p. 205.

The 9/11 attacks
on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. remain a stark reminder of the vulnerability of the United States to foreign terrorist strikes. Those events also raise serious concern over the prospect that terrorists might acquire and detonate nuclear weapons in order to achieve their radical aspirations. The reality of this threat is magnified today by the increasing availability of nuclear weapons, the inadequate security of nuclear materials, and magnified by the enhanced capability that globalization affords terrorist groups to plan, coordinate and launch transnational assaults on a large scale
. n4 While an array of multilateral legal instruments and other international initiatives have emerged since 9/11, the ability to counter the threat of nuclear terrorism requires wider and closer cooperation among governments - circumstances that still appear to be lacking.
Graham
Andrei
, terrorism analysts, “The New Containment: An Alliance
Against Nuclear Terrorism,” THE NATIONAL INTEREST, Fall 20
, npg.
In sum: even a conservative estimate must conclude that dozens of terrorist groups have sufficient motive to use a nuclear weapon, several could
potentially obtain nuclear means
, and hundreds of opportunities exist for a group with means and motive to make the U nited S tates
or Russia a victim of nuclear terrorism
.
The mystery
before us is not how a nuclear terrorist attack could possibly occur, but
rather why no terrorist group has yet combined motive, means and opportunity to commit a nuclear attack. We have been lucky so far, but who among us trusts luck to protect us in the future?

Christopher C.
, Professor, International Law, Georgetown Unviersity and Alexander Ian
Parkhouse, “Nuclear Terrorism in a Globalizing World: Assessing the Threat and the Emerging
Management Regime,” STANFORD JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW v. 45, Summer 20
, p. 209.
Concern over the possibility of nuclear terrorism has its origins in the extensive nuclear arms buildup that took place during the Cold War.
Use of nuclear weapons by a terrorist group, however, was considered an unlikely scenario until the events of September 11
, 2009 exposed America's vulnerability to attack and politicians discovered the extent of al-Qaeda's nuclear ambitions
. n17
Theprogressive expansion of international trade, transportation, and communication networks that facilitate pervasive international interactions, coincidentally empowered terrorist groups. When these globalization processes encounter poorly secured nuclear weapons and materials in some states, the likelihood of nuclear terrorism becomes an even more pronounced threat to global security
.
Christopher C.
, Professor, International Law, Georgetown Unviersity and Alexander Ian
Parkhouse, “Nuclear Terrorism in a Globalizing World: Assessing the Threat and the Emerging
Management Regime,” STANFORD JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW v. 45, Summer 20
, p. 206-207.
The technologies and processes that make globalization beneficial to societies simultaneously empower sub-national actors and ideological extremists and thus render states more porous to external penetration and more vulnerable to violent disruption
.n12
Terrorists
, too, can use cell phones, computers, fax machines, e-mail, the internet, monetary transfers, and air transportation to plan, coordinate, and carry out violent attacks
against Western societies. n13 This capability of terrorist [*207] groups was dramatically demonstrated by the tragic consequences of 9/11, and it was in the immediate aftermath of these events that the threat of nuclear terrorism became soberly evident. Indeed, the recovery of al-Qaeda documents in Afghanistan depicting the design of nuclear weapons and the interception of information regarding meetings between Osama bin
Laden and nuclear specialists in August 2001 highlighted the undeniable determination of al-Qaeda to seek ways and means to commit acts of nuclear terrorism
. n14
Jason D.
, Senior Research Professor, Center for Counterproliferation Research, National Defense
University, “The Best Defense: Counterproliferation and U.S. National Strategy,” WASHINGTON
QUARTERLY, Spring 20
, pp. 115-133.
Nor is the threat of WMD attack confined to state actors. Although states should remain a principal focus, terrorists and other nonstate actors have never before ranked as high among U.S. national se curity concerns. If Aum Shinrikyo did not sound the clarion call, then Al Qaeda certainly has. According to Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, intelligence collected in Afghanistan revealed that
Al Qaeda was “working to acquire some of the most dangerous chemical agents and toxins
, … pursuing a sophisticated biological weapons research program, … seeking to acquire or develop a nuclear device
, …and may be pursuing a radioactive dispersal device.”12 The continuing diffusion of technology, the ongoing risk of diversion of weapons-related expertise, and the clear potential for particular actors — whether at the national or subnational level— to contemplate mass destruction collectively foreshadow

an ominous future. WMD-equipped states may also share their capacities with terrorist or other subnational organizations that seek to inflict mass casualties
. The product: a distinctly dangerous intersection of threats to U.S. security.

Peter D.
, Professor, Science and Security, Department of War Studies King's College
London and Jeffrey G. Lewis, executive director, Managing the Atom Project, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, "The Bomb in the Backyward," FOREIGN POLICY, November/December 20
, p. 34-35.
Would terrorists build a nuclear device? Presumably, some terrorist organizations want to kill as many people as possible at the lowest cost . Like any organization, sophisticated terrorist outfits are concerned with “cost effectiveness.” It is a gruesome business, but very similar attacks may result in widely different casualties depending on the target. For example, the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in 2003 killed a relatively small number of people compared to the 2002 Bali bombings, despite the use of relatively similar devices. But, if one considers the bulk of terrorist attacks, the relationship of cost to casualties follows a simple curve, with the cost per casualty increasing as the size of the terror attack increases— from the relatively inexpensive Madrid bombing
(which cost less than $10,000, or around $50 per murder) to the September 11 attacks (which cost $400,000–$500,000, or about $170 per murder). Some might claim that thinking about terrorist attacks in terms of cost-versus-casualty ratios fails to capture the essentially political ends of a terrorist group.
Cost data from previous attacks suggest that al Qaeda is sometimes willing to pay a significant premium to attack high-profile, heavily protected targets
that may produce fewer casualties, but have greater political implications, such as a U.S. embassy or Naval vessel. For example, the October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen may have cost $10,000, but with 17 casualties, it added up to a pricey $590 per murder.
Yet terrorists do not have to pay a premium for a nuclear attack; on a per murder basis, nuclear weapons are both cheap and can be used against highprofile targets. And a nuclear attack induces great fear
. Its specter has hung over the world since the United States dropped Little Boy on
Hiroshima. To put it in strictly commercial terms, terrorists would likely find a nuclear attack cost effective.
The simple appeal of nuclear terrorism can be illustrated with a hypothetical situation. A failed nuclear detonation, one that produced only a few tens of tons in yield, could kill 10,000 people in just a few hours if the device exploded in a crowded financial center. Not only would 10,000 persons represent the upward limit of a conventional terrorist attack, but that figure would also exceed the combined casualties in all of al Qaeda’s attacks over the entire history of the organization. And that’s a “worst-case” scenario for the terrorists. A
“successful” nuclear detonation would kill 10 times as many people. If terrorists could construct a successful device that killed 100,000 people for a cost of $10 million dollars—about $100 per murder— it would be a bargain, considering that most of al Qaeda’s attacks have been mounted in the $100 to $300 per murder range. A nuclear terrorist attack that cost $5 million would result in a cost per murder comparable to the Madrid bombings. So, just how difficult an enterprise would this be? What would a terrorist group have to do to build a bomb that would kill 100,000 people for less than $10 million?

Christopher C.
, Professor, International Law, Georgetown Unviersity and Alexander Ian
Parkhouse, “Nuclear Terrorism in a Globalizing World: Assessing the Threat and the Emerging
Management Regime,” STANFORD JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW v. 45, Summer 20
, p. 218.
A further cause for alarm is the
relative ease with which nuclear weapons can be produced.
According to experts, production of a nuclear weapon is relatively simple once nuclear materials are obtained.
n69 Indeed, the simplest design for a nuclear weapon -
the gun-type design used at Hiroshima - can be made after simply referring to literature available in the public domain
. n70 As noted in a report by Congress in the 1970s, in order to build a viable nuclear device one would need ""modest machine-shop facilities... . The financial resources for the acquisition of necessary equipment on open markets need not exceed a fraction of a million dollars
[,] ... a person capable of researching and understanding the literature in several fields and a jack-of-all trades technician,'" n71 in addition to the nuclear material
. Considering that inexperienced graduate students have produced both simple gun-type and more complex implosion-type bombs, U.S. intelligence concludedthat prior to 9/11 the capacity to make such a bomb was well within the capabilities of al-Qaeda
. n72
Matthrew
, Associate Professor, Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
SECURING THE BOMB 2010, April 20
, p. 16.
Repeated assessments by the U.S. government and other governments have concluded that it is plausible that a sophisticated terrorist group could make a crude nuclear explosive —capable of destroying the heart of a major city
—if they got enough plutonium or HEU. A “guntype” bomb made from HEU, in particular, is basically a matter of slamming two pieces of HEU together at high speed. An “implosion-type” bomb—in which precisely arranged explosives crush nuclear material to a much higher density, setting off the chain reaction—would be substantially more difficult for terrorists to accomplish, but is still plausible, particularly if they got knowledgeable help (as they have been actively attempting to do).12
One study
by the now-defunct congressional Office of Technology Assessment summarized the technical reality: “A small group of people, none of whom have ever had access to the classified literature, could possibly design and build a crude nuclear explosive device...
Only modest machine-shop facilities that could be contracted for without arousing suspicion would be required .”13 Indeed, even before the revelations from Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence concluded that
“fabrication of at least a ‘crude’ nuclear device was within al-Qa’ida’s capabilities, if it could obtain fissile material.”
Peter D.
, Professor, Science and Security, Department of War Studies King's College
London and Jeffrey G. Lewis, executive director, Managing the Atom Project, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, "The Bomb in the Backyward," FOREIGN POLICY, November/December 20
, p. 36.
How many people would it take to construct a crude nuclear device
? In a 1977 government report on safeguards against nuclear proliferation, the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment estimated that a smal l group, including a “person capable of searching and understanding the technical

literature in several fields and a jack-of-alltrades technician,” could build a nuclear device for a sum that “need not exceed a fraction of a million dollars.” Adjusted for inflation, that’s less than $3 million today. The constraint we have placed on our wouldbe bomb-makers is a total of 19 persons — the same number of hijackers who orchestrated the September 11 attacks—working over the course of a year in the United States. We estimate that a three-person physics team, including a relatively senior physicist and two postdoctoral students, would be capable of rendering the design in three to six months. Their salaries during the course of a year would total approximately $200,000. In addition to the physics team, the project could comprise a few small engineering teams to address the following: casting the uranium for the device, constructing the proper gun, assembling the supercritical mass of uranium, overseeing the electronics, and finally, the actual detonation.

Matthrew
, Associate Professor, Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
SECURING THE BOMB 2010, April 20
, p. 22.
A crude terrorist nuclear bomb would be considerably larger than the plutonium or HEU at its core, perhaps weighing a ton or so. Nevertheless, just as interdicting smuggling of nuclear materials poses immense challenges, it would also be extremely difficult to stop terrorists from smuggling a crude nuclear weapon to its target. A nuclear bomb might be delivered, intact or in ready-to-assemble pieces, by boat or aircraft or truck. The length of national borders, the diversity of means of transport, the vast scale of legitimate traffic across borders, and the ease of shielding the radiation from plutonium or especially from HEU all operate in favor of the terrorists.
Building the overall system of legal infrastructure, intelligence, law enforcement, border and customs forces, and radiation detectors needed to find and recover stolen nuclear weapons or materials, or to interdict these as they cross national borders, is an extraordinarily difficult challenge.20
Matthrew
, Associate Professor, Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
SECURING THE BOMB 2010, April 20
, p. 18-19.
The nuclear material needed for a bomb is small and difficult to detect. Once such material has left the facility where it is supposed to be, it could be anywhere, and finding and recovering it poses an immense challenge
. The plutonium re- quired for an implosion-type nuclear bomb would fit in a soda can. The HEU required for the simplest type of nuclear bomb for terrorists to make, a less efficient “guntype” bomb that slams two pieces of HEU together at high speed, is smaller than two two-liter bottles.17 The radiation from plutonium, and particularly from HEU, is weak and difficult to detect, particularly if the adversaries attempting to smuggle it use any significant amount of shielding
. The detectors that are being widely deployed throughout the world — or even the more expensive Advanced
Spectroscopic Portals (ASPs) that are being considered to replace them— would have little chance of detecting HEU metal if it had significant shielding .18 (Plutonium’s radiation is more penetrating and easier to detect.) To date, only one of the successes in seizing stolen nuclear material reportedly included the material being detected by one of these detectors; the others were the result of police and intelligence efforts, often including participants in the conspiracy or people they were trying to convince to help them or to buy their stolen nuclear material informing the police.19
Douglas Alan
, Canadian Centre for Arms Control and Disarmament and Professor, Political Science,
Simon Frasier University, "Weapons of Mass Destruction and the End of War?" HUMANITAS, Spring
20
, p. 33.
A crude 10 to 15 kiloton atomic bomb could be made from about 45 kilograms of HEU shaped into two metallic hemispheres that when driven together would be about the size of a cantaloupe. Smuggling several dozen 23 kilogram ‘cantaloupe’ halves encased in leadlined containers would be certainly a dangerous and risky undertaking, but there is public evidence suggesting that past Soviet governments may have already done it.5
American borders were quite porous during the Cold War and they have not been tightened appreciably since the events of 9/11.
6 Even though the U.S. defence budget is larger than the next 12 countries’ military spending combined, and even though the American military is far ahead of all other armies in the development of the
Revolution in Military Affairs (complex information processing networks for the battlefield, remote sensing from satellites or robotic aircraft, stealthy aircraft and missiles, and the acquisition of inexpensive ‘precision guided munitions’), American citizens are far from being safe inside their own borders. Aerial robots, 2 billion dollar stealth bombers

and even antiballistic missile defences costing tens of billions of dollars are irrelevant to the threat posed by smuggled atomic devices in the trunks of rental cars
.
Christopher C.
, Professor, International Law, Georgetown Unviersity and Alexander Ian
Parkhouse, “Nuclear Terrorism in a Globalizing World: Assessing the Threat and the Emerging
Management Regime,” STANFORD JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW v. 45, Summer 20
, p. 212-213.
Moreover, globalization enables terrorist groups to transport nuclear weapons more stealthily from their places of origin to intended targets. As a result of globalization and commercial liberalization, massive amounts of international trade and commerce occur everyday. Given the sheer volume of goods entering all states, the chance of detecting illicit commodities is lower
. n38 In the case of the United States, as of late 2008 there were 317 entry points into the country, which makes the volume of goods entering the United States that much more difficult to detect and thoroughly examine. n39 This is significant because, with respect to nuclear materials, only small amounts of easily concealable fissile material are needed to create dangerous devices. Accordingly, physical detection is made more difficult and smuggling nuclear material in large containers becomes more practicable
. n40 Electronic detection instruments, while in development and being [*213] tested in limited cases, have not yet been fully deployed. n41 Meanwhile, large amounts of illegal drugs and immigrants enter even the most highly industrialized countries like the
United States every year, testifying to the ease with which groups could simply smuggle nuclear materials across porous state borders. n42
These developments render the threat of nuclear terrorism a far more serious policy issue than previously acknowledged, as they afford terrorist organizations greater power and easier means to accomplish their nuclear ambitions to destroy western societies
. n43 Meanwhile, globalization means that "new threats cannot be contained and controlled within one State" and will consequently require international solutions. n44
Christopher C.
, Professor, International Law, Georgetown Unviersity and Alexander Ian
Parkhouse, “Nuclear Terrorism in a Globalizing World: Assessing the Threat and the Emerging
Management Regime,” STANFORD JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW v. 45, Summer 20
, p. 211-212.
The danger that al-Qaeda's nuclear ambitions pose to the United States is compounded by the manner in which the processes of globalization have impacted the world. These impacts have not only empowered other purveyors of jihadist violence, but they also have simplified the means by which such terrorists can smuggle and deliver nuclear weapons to their intended targets
. Notwithstanding the debate over the pros and cons of globalization, it is widely accepted that, "the technological revolution presupposes global computerized networks and the free [*212] movement of goods, information, and peoples across national boundaries." n33 In the same ways that these occurrences facilitate more efficient functioning of daily life in many states, globalization concomitantly creates more and speedier networks through which international terrorist organizations can perpetrate violent attacks. n34 Technological innovations such as the internet and telecommunication networks that have accompanied globalization allow terrorists to communicate with one another across the globe, and thus contribute to the ease with which they can orchestrate and execute complex missions. n35 With respect to nuclear terrorism, terrorists can now discover the location of fissile materials and plan attacks on nuclear facilities with much greater ease. Meanwhile, they are also able to utilize tools like the internet to disseminate and access information concerning the construction of nuclear devices. n36 As such, globalization has allowed terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda to transform themselves into powerful non-state actors with specialized technological knowledge that can subvert the goals of powerful states. n37

Robert J.
, Herter Professor of International Relations, Brandeis University, “Geopolitics Updated,”
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY v. 24 n. 3, Winter 1998/19
, ASP.
It is the third type of threat-fanatical terrorists or rogue states armed with NBC weapons
-that the United
States should worry about most.
Such groups and states possess three attributes that could make them harder to deter than normal actors.[5]
First, they are highly motivated to gain their aims,making them more prepared than normal actors to use force to achieve their objectives.
Second, they are indifferent to the suffering of their citizens or supporters, making them more willing to take greater losses. Third, they are poor calculators, making them more likely to misperceive a defender's threats or to ignore such threats
. If governments or terrorist groups possess such traits, they will be hard to deter and more willing to use NBC weapons if they have them to achieve their political objectives.
Uri
, PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado, February
(Deterrence Terrorism and American Values, Homeland Security Affairs, Vol. 3 No. 1)
By now, the arguments are familiar for why deterring a group such as al-Qaeda is a complex endeavor.
First, terrorists are highly motivated and therefore they are willing to risk anything
– their lives in the case of suicide-bombers – to accomplish a goal. Second, the political goals of terrorist groups are often very broad,
idealistic, ambiguous, or unclear. Third, terrorists are difficult to locate. Terrorist networks operate trans-nationally and therefore make reprisals difficult to “return to sender.” Fourth, it remains undecided how deterrence can work against an enemy that understands that the ultimate policy goal of the U.S. is not to coexist with groups like al-Qaeda, but to eradicate them
. Finally, terrorists often attempt to incite retaliation. Terrorists have used the collateral damage caused by retaliatory efforts to foment more support for their organization
or broader cause. In total, the deck is stacked against deterrence playing a significant role in U.S. counterterrorism policy.
James J.
, Professor and Chair, Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate
School
James A.
, Fellow, Naval Postgraduate School, “U.S. Policy on Preventive War &
Preemption,” THE NONPROLIFERATION REVIEW, Spring 20
, pp. 113-123.
Second, deterrence generally does not work against terrorists. Stateless and usually spread over wide regions or even among continents, Terrorists do not present a viable target for retaliation.
The death and destruction that can be visited upon a terrorist organization in a retaliatory attack is greatly exceeded by the damage even small terrorist cells can inflict on civilian society.
Terrorists often seek a disproportionate response from the governments they attack in the hope of provoking a sympathetic response from some target audience. Thus, savage reprisals in kind can actually play into the hands of terrorists.

Barry L.
, “Averting Armageddon: Preventing Nuclear Terrorism in the United States,” DUKE
JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE & INTERNATIONAL LAW v. 8, Fall 19
, p. 113-115.
The credibility of a terrorist threat from the technical end is one thing, but what about intent? Would a rogue state or subnational actor really execute an act of nuclear terror, knowing what the price would be? Is not an act of nuclear terror inherently suicidal? No, it is not.
Nuclear terror can be anonymous. Even if the attack is claimed, retaliation may still be problematic
. These and other factors make the threat of nuclear terror more likely, because the traditional deterrent of nuclear retaliation that kept the Soviets at bay may not apply to terrorists.
A generally accepted lesson of the Cold War is that the United States and the Soviet Union never exchanged nuclear salvos (at least once both sides had substantial arsenals) because of MAD doctrine. MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) dictated that even if one country fired its weapons in a surprise attack, the opposing country [*114] would either be able to retaliate in time, or have enough of its arsenal survive the first strike to ensure that the attacker was wiped out. Thus, nuclear war was a no-win situation. While experts may argue about the value of MAD and its role in history, what seems clear is
that, for deterrence to work, one must know who the attacker is.
As Joseph Nye has observed, "
The logic of deterrence fails when there is no return address
." n248
Deterrence is problematic because the threat of retaliation must be absolutely credible. If a terrorist group detonates a nuclear weapon in New
York and the authorities trace the bomb to the group, what sort of retaliation is credible (or justifiable)? Say the group is based in the Bekaa
Valley. Should the United States nuke Lebanon? Perhaps the bomb was stolen from Iran. Should the United States nuke Iran? Maybe the
Iranians provided the bomb, but claim it was stolen. Then what? Perhaps the Iranians supplied a bomb to be used against Iraq, but the subnational actor executing the attack decided to shift targets. Should a country which allows the theft of nuclear materials or weapons, either through inadequate security, corruption, or negligence be denied its nuclear arsenal and related capabilities? For example, if Iran cannot safeguard its nuclear weapons, should the United States take down its entire nuclear infrastructure? What about Russia, which easily falls into the same category?
One more element in the deterrence problem is that of the rational actor
. n249
The MAD doctrine assumes that no one wants his own group, population, or country to be eradicated. But suppose that the perpetrator of nuclear terror is an Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, or that a subnational group of similar bent is involved. Indeed, some members of such groups might even stay with the bomb until it goes off. If a group has no fear of death, deterrence will not work
. If a group believes that the coming dawn of a new century means "the end is near" and it must be helped along (as was true for Aum Shinrikyo), deterrence will not work. Dealing with actors who do not behave in a "rational" way increases the uncertainty factor inherent in nuclear terrorism. [*115] Rationality also influences perception, and perceptions about the credibility of a U.S. deterrent may not be as strong as one might think
. For example, one could argue that Saddam Hussein did not believe the United States would come to the defense of
Kuwait because of his understanding of Vietnam and the American public's aversion to heavy casualties. n250 More recent incidents in
Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Haiti could create some confusion as to American resolve and embolden terrorists. n251

(Susan, Journal on Science and World Affairs, Vol. 2, pgs. 29-41
However, many analysts and policy makers have argued that nuclear terrorism is not inevitable. Robin Frost argues that obtaining access to fissile material and consequently assembling an explosive device would prove to be a very difficult for a terrorist organisation. Frost does not limit the definition of terrorist organisations to al-
Qaeda; he includes many other such organisations
. These organisations draw their motivations from multifarious political, spiritual and historical events, like Aum Shinriko in Japan, the National Liberation Front of Nigeria, the Irish Republic
Army, and other separatist organisations who could find ‘hostage- taking, conventional bombings, shoot and run sniper attacks more feasible and cheaper to attain their terrorist motivations’ [22].
Despite these criticisms, the sheer danger posed by the possibility of a nuclear-armed al- Qaeda makes focus on this organisation highly relevant.Even Frost has contended that al- Qaeda stands today as the most dangerous religious terrorist organisation [23]. Frost even concedes that al-Qaeda has attempted to acquire a nuclear weapon and is obsessed with killing American citizens.

Nicholas D.
, "Guarding Pandora's Box: Strengthening Physical Protection at Facilities that House
Weapons of Mass Destruction and Related Materials," FORDHAM INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL v. 32,
February 20
, p. 1049-1050.
In order to make a nuclear weapon, terrorists need only expertise, equipment, and the proper material
. n42
With the uncovering of rogue Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan's illegal nuclear trading network, the burgeoning of websites dedicated to bomb instruction, and evidence of blueprints and instructional manuals in the hands of terrorists, the expertise element is something of a foregone conclusion
. n43
Widely available are schematic diagrams of nuclear explosive devices that demonstrate the method for achieving fission explosion
. n44 What is more, having amassed [*1050] enough fissile material, terrorists can easily procure the equipment needed to complete the weapon in almost all industrialized states.
n45 Further, current technology is incapable of detecting shielded nuclear weapons on boats or trucks
. n46 One expert has accordingly stressed focusing on preventing terrorists from acquiring the material they need rather than on attempting to curb the spread of expertise or related dual-use equipment, an almost impossible task. n47
Bob
Jim
, chairs, Commission on the prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction
Proliferation and Terrorism, "Nuclear Proliferation Endangers World Stability," MIAMI HERALD, 9-15-
, www.heritage.org/Research/Commentary/2008/09/Nuclear-proliferation-endangers-world-stability, accessed 5-1-10.
The environment for the use of nuclear and biological weapons has changed. Although Russia is doing a better job of securing its stockpiles and therefore is less of a threat,
North Korea and Iran have taken its place. North Korea has gone from two bombs worth of plutonium to an estimated ten. Iran has gone from zero centrifuges spinning to more than 3,000
. In what some have termed a "nuclear renaissance
," many nations are now seeking commercial nuclear power capacity that will add to the inventory of nations and scientists who could extend their interest to nuclear weapons. With the nuclear surprises we've experienced in Iran, Syria and North Korea, it is clear that current nonproliferation regimes and mechanisms can no longer be certain to prevent more nuclear proliferation or the theft of bomb-usable materials
.

Matthrew
, Associate Professor, Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
SECURING THE BOMB 2010, April 20
, p. 17-18.
Unfortunately, there is also a real risk that terrorists could get the plutonium or HEU needed to make a nuclear bomb.
As described in more detail in the next chapter, important weaknesses in nuclear security arrangements still exist in many countries, creating weaknesses that outsider or insider thieves might exploit
. And as discussed in the previous chapter, theft of the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons is not a hypothetical worry but an ongoing reality — the
IAEA has documented 18 cases of theft or loss or plutonium or HEU, confirmed by the states concerned. HEU-fueled research reactors, for example, sometimes located on university campuses, often have only the most minimal security measures in place. Many have few or no armed guards; very loose arrangements (if any) to screen personnel before granting them access to the reactor and its nuclear material; few means to detect intruders until they are entering the nuclear material areas; and little revenue to pay for more substantial security arrangements.
In some cases, the security in place amounts to little more than a night watchman and a chain-link fence
. In countries such as Pakistan, even substantial nuclear security systems are challenged by immense adversary threats, both from nuclear insiders—some with a demonstrated sympathy for Islamic extremists—and from outside attacks that might include scores or hundreds of armed attackers. In Russia, there have been dramatic improvements in security and accounting for nuclear materials since the early 1990s, and the most egregious security weaknesses—gaping holes in fences, lack of any detector to set off an alarm if plutonium or
HEU is being removed—have been corrected, with U.S. and other assistance and Russia’s own efforts. But significant risks remain, from insider corruption to weak nuclear security regulation. In the end, all countries where these materials exist —including the U nited S tates —have more to do,
and need to continually reassess their efforts, to ensure that the security and accounting measures they have in place are sufficient to meet the evolving threat.
A nuclear security system not focused on continual improvement is likely to see its effectiveness decline over time as complacency sets in.
Nicholas D.
, "Guarding Pandora's Box: Strengthening Physical Protection at Facilities that House
Weapons of Mass Destruction and Related Materials," FORDHAM INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL v. 32,
February 20
, p. 1048-1049.
Taken together, there are 442 operating nuclear power reactors worldwide and 248 research reactors
that are currently in operation in over forty countries around the world. n34 In the research reactor fuel cycle worldwide, there are approximately twenty tons of HEU - enough uranium for hundreds of weapons. n35
Research reactors in particular are highly at risk given that they are ordinarily found in industrial or academic environments where physical security is lacking
. n36 Commentators lament [*1049] that very little is known about how many states have acquired significant levels of HEU. n37 Apart from the aforementioned facilities, there are forty fuel fabrication plants, seven re-processing plants, thirteen enrichment plants, eighty-nine separate storage facilities, and eighteen conversion plants worldwide
. n38 Additionally, there are seventy-four other facilities under safeguards, which contain 641 significant quantities ("SQs") of HEU. n39
There exist other nuclear fuel cycle facilities and materials in nuclear weapon states and non-Nuclear
Proliferation Treaty states alike. n40 Thus, ensuring the optimal physical security of just these facilities before another terrorist attack is a labor no less challenging than cleaning the Augean stables in a day; and the agency scarcely has the manpower of Hercules. n41

Christopher C.
, Professor, International Law, Georgetown Unviersity and Alexander Ian
Parkhouse, “Nuclear Terrorism in a Globalizing World: Assessing the Threat and the Emerging
Management Regime,” STANFORD JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW v. 45, Summer 20
, p. 208.
Three key factors portend the possibility that nuclear terrorism might actually occur. First, the porous security conditions for storing nuclear weapons and fissile materials in Russia and Pakistan, coupled with the weak safeguards for research reactors worldwide, provide inviting opportunities for terrorists to acquire nuclear materials
. Second, a nuclear weapon can be made with relative ease. Third, a global nuclear market has emerged that enhances the prospects for increased proliferation of nuclear materials.
These factors magnify the reality of the nuclear terrorism threat
. Policymakers in Western states initially concluded that, because of the global nature of the threat, any strategy should focus on countering nuclear terrorism by securing nuclear materials, bolstering efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons programs, and criminalizing activities associated with such acts.
Matthrew
, Associate Professor, Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
SECURING THE BOMB 2010, April 20
, p. vi.
But serious risks remain, as evidenced by recent incidents at nuclear sites and ongoing cases of theft or loss of weapons- usable nuclear material.
Upgraded security systems will not last forever unless states provide the resources to sustain them and write and enforce rules that require sites and transporters to maintain effective security and accounting systems. Strong security cultures—in which all relevant staff take security seriously, every day—are also an essential component of effective nuclear security.
Based on unclassified information on the quantity and quality of nuclear stockpiles around the world, the security levels in place, and the adversary threats these security systems must protect against, it appears that the highest risks of nuclear theft today are in: • Pakistan
, where a small and heavily guarded nuclear stockpile faces immense threats, both from insiders who may be corrupt or sympathetic to terrorists and from large-scale attacks by outsiders;
• Russia
, which has the world’s largest nuclear stockpiles in the world’s largest number of buildings and bunkers; security measures that have improved dramatically but still include important vulnerabilities (and need to be sustained for the long haul); and substantial threats, particularly from insiders, given the endemic corruption in Russia; and • HEU-fueled research reactors, which usually (though not always) use only modest stocks of HEU, in forms that would require some chemical processing before they could be used in a bomb, but which often have only the most minimal security measures in place —in some cases little more than a night watchman and a chain-link fenc e.
Christopher C.
, Professor, International Law, Georgetown Unviersity and Alexander Ian
Parkhouse, “Nuclear Terrorism in a Globalizing World: Assessing the Threat and the Emerging
Management Regime,” STANFORD JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW v. 45, Summer 20
, p. 215.
A principal factor contributing to nuclear experts' concerns about unsecured nuclear weapons relates to Russia. With almost 16,000 nuclear weapons and more than two tons of nuclear material in storage sites, Russia's weak security infrastructure, combined with its corrupt security culture, make its fissile material highly vulnerable to theft
. n52 As noted earlier, the demise of the Soviet Union greatly upset the security of Russia's nuclear weapons and fissile materials. In the early 1990s, inspectors observed that Russian military facilities were guarded by little more than simple chain link fences and that, in many cases, people could walk in and steal material without being detected. n53 Since then, Russia has made considerable progress in securing its nuclear facilities. Yet, even today, Russian efforts to secure its nuclear materials fail to completely accord with inventoried material control and

accounting practices. The task of securing these highly sensitive materials been outsourced to Russian companies, whose security efforts are heavily under-funded.n54 Many of the soldiers used to patrol these facilities are both under-equipped and, in some cases, inexperienced; Russia uses untrained and underpaid conscripts to guard some of its nuclear material stockpiles. n55 To complement this problem, some Russian nuclear weapons lack the security systems of U.S. warheads, thus making them easier to detonate should they be stolen. n56
Christopher C.
, Professor, International Law, Georgetown Unviersity and Alexander Ian
Parkhouse, “Nuclear Terrorism in a Globalizing World: Assessing the Threat and the Emerging
Management Regime,” STANFORD JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW v. 45, Summer 20
, p. 218-219.
A final major cause for increased worry over the threat of nuclear terrorism is the revelation that a global black market in nuclear weapons now exists that serves to further proliferation
. n73 Perhaps the most blatant example of such illicit sales was the "Wal-
Mart" of nuclear materials that A.Q. Khan
, the former head of Pakistan's nuclear program, administered.
Khan ran a market in trading nuclear secrets to governments such as North Korea, Iran, and Libya for more than twenty years before he confessed in
February 2004 after his illegal activities were detected and exposed by the United States. n74 Russian technicians have also been caught attempting to sell material, n75 and U.S. intelligence reports on Russia opine, "It is likely that undetected smuggling has occurred, and we are concerned about the total amount of material that could have been diverted over the last 15 years." n76
The
[*219] existence of a nuclear materials black market is highly problematic for those who wish to combat nuclear terrorism
. Indeed, North Korea used this market to acquire enough fissile material to produce 5-12 nuclear weapons; n77
Iran similarly purchased its own nuclear energy program and pursues uranium enrichment, with the likely intent of producing a nuclear weapon. n78
Proliferation of nuclear technologies to dangerous states raises the likelihood of theft by terrorist groups while fostering concern that these governments might sell weapons to terrorist s. n79 As a result of these developments, fears of nuclear terrorism have escalated considerably, prompting a need for a reevaluation of relevant international law and policy.
Christopher C.
, Professor, International Law, Georgetown Unviersity and Alexander Ian
Parkhouse, “Nuclear Terrorism in a Globalizing World: Assessing the Threat and the Emerging
Management Regime,” STANFORD JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW v. 45, Summer 20
, p. 217-218
Civilian power reactors and the 140 research reactors found throughout the world present additional challenges in securing nuclear materials. Many of these reactors are relics from the 1950s
Atoms for Peace program and equivalent versions created by the Soviet Union and China. n65 While some of these reactors may not contain enough nuclear material to produce a single weapon, at least 128 of them do. n66 Security for these sites remains the responsibility of governments.
Given that some are found in global "hot spots," they may be subject to attack by warring parties or have very lax security standards
, which in the past has resulted in criminal groups such as the Italian mafia getting access to nuclear materials. n67
The U.S. government cited the existence of nuclear reactors in such unstable regions as a marked security concern given how easily nuclear materials might be transported from these areas of instability to the United States
. Problems of security, however, are not limited to these regions. In many states, security amounts to little more than an unarmed guard and a chain-link fence perimeter. No less shocking, an ABC News report in 2005 found sleeping guards and security doors propped open with [*218] books at nearly all twenty-five of the United States university-based research reactors. n68 As a consequence, this material's vulnerability to theft in the United States compounds anxieties about the security conditions of fissile materials in places like
Russia and Pakistan.

Victoria
, journalist, “Why Its Time to Worry About the Bomb,” FINANCIAL TIMES, November 24,
20
, p. 11.
A nuclear bomb attack would certainly render the health system virtually useless.
"The ability to help victims of a nuclear bomb blast is very limited, which is why the focus has to be on prevention,"
says Ira Helfand, a Massachusetts emergency room physician and co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, which argues against nuclear proliferation. Scientists are concerned, however, that the US is not preparing itself better for other types of nuclear attacks, specifically a "dirty bomb", or terrorism at a nuclear power plant.
"If you were unhappy with the government's response to bio-terrorism, just wait till you see the government's response to a nuclear attack
," says Bill Hoehn, Washington director for the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory
Council, a research group. "They are even less prepared for such an event."
Jessica
, JFK School of Government, Harvard University, THE ULTIMATE TERRORISTS, 19
, p. 49.
Despite these admirable efforts to improve the government's ability to minimize loss of life in the event of chemical or biological attacks, problems remain. "It is likely that the terrorist use of a weapon of mass destruction in a large metropolitan area.
. . would overwhelm the capabilities of many local and state governments almost immediately:
'
Jonathan Tucker concluded in 1997.29 Too little attention has been paid to industrial and agriultural chemicals, anti-crop and anti-livestock agents, and crude dissemination techniques for chemical and biological agents. The government needs to increase its surveillance of diseases of public health importance in humans, animals and plants. Pharmaceuticals manufacturers should be paid to maintain an adequate stockpile of drugs to be used in case of biological attack, and the drugs should be continuously rotated to prevent them from becoming dated. For some agents, pharmaceuticals have yet to be developed; the government should facilitate relevant research. More exercises are needed to clarify the chain of command in practice (as distinct from on paper) and to ensure that emergency personnel are psychologically and physically prepared. "
, November 14, 20
, npg.
A new PSR report, "Projected U.S. Casualties and Destruction of U.S. Medical Services from Attacks by Russian Nuclear Forces," released at the briefing, demonstrates that there is no effective medical response to nuclear war
. The report describes the medical impact of a nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and Russia at current force levels and if Russian strategic warheads are cut to around 500. Warhead retargetting by Russia to avoid proposed U.S. missile defenses could lead to far higher casualties.
Ira Helfand, M.D., of PSR explained,
"This important medical study shows that no preparations could help the U.S. survive a nuclear attack, by accident or design
. Presidents Bush and Putin need to go much further to make us safe from this ultimate catastrophe."

Charles
(Dir., Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies), JIHADISTS AND WEAPONS OF MASS
DESTRUCTION, 20
, 205.
Despite the technological security provided by PALs, "they are only effective if the codes for the locks are also kept secure,"
notes Zia Mian. "
If anyone can have access to [or guess] the codes then PALs offer little if any restraint as command and control devices
," Mian warns.
Charles
, (Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations), COMBATING WEAPONS OF MASS
DESTRUCTION: THE FUTURE OF INTERNATIONAL NONPROLIFERATION POLICY, 20
, 35.
Even if terrorists can steal an intact nuclear weapon, they confront other technical hurdles to detonating the weapon. Most modern nuclear weapons are believed to be equipped with integral security features such as permissive action links (PALs). To enable a PAL-equipped nuclear bomb, a special security code must be entered. If there are too many unsuccessful tries in entering the code, the weapon disables itself. These codes are highly protected. However, it is possible that terrorists could bribe or coerce officials to surrender the code to unlock a weapon. Some older Russian tactical nuclear weapons may not employ PALs. Also, it is unknown whether India, Israel, and Pakistan use PALs on their nuclear arms
.

Matthew
, (Prof., Government, Harvard U.), DEBATING TERRORISM AND COUNTERTERRORISM:
CONFLICTING PERSPECTIVES ON CAUSES, CONTEXTS, AND RESPONSES, 20
, 175-176.
The radiation detectors being put in place
today at ports and border crossings
worldwide simply cannot detect HEU metal even modestly shielded
, and, in any case, it seems very likely that al-Qaeda operatives
, known for carefully collecting intelligence on adversary defenses and means to overcome them, would choose one of the myriad possible routes for moving their nuclear material that did not pass through a monitored border crossing equipped with large, readily observable radiation detectors
.
Moorthy
, (Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics, Stony Brook U.), DEFEATING POLITICAL ISLAM: THE
NEW COLD WAR, 20
, 225.
A nuclear device smuggled through American ports could be among the likely ways a nuclear attack might be carried out on American soil.
The Department of Homeland Security has been aware of this possibility and is looking into setting up a massive system of radiation detectors in many American ports. However, the annual trillion dollars of complex trade that the United State would not wish to disrupt with nervous measures, nuclear proliferation initiated by
Pakistan, and possible loose nukes from the former Soviet Union are likely to keep
American ports vulnerable for many years to come
.

(Graham T., director of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, “How
Likely is a Nuclear Terrorist Attack on the United States?,” Council on Foreign Relations, April 16, http://www.cfr.org/publication/13097/how_likely_is_a_nuclear_terrorist_attack_on_the_united_states
.html)
But Dr. Levi raises the possibility that, were terrorists to get their hands on enough nuclear weapons material to make a bomb, their design might fail. If a terrorist’s ten-kiloton nuclear warhead were to misfire
(known to nuclear scientists as a
“fizzle”) and produce a one-kiloton blast, bystanders near ground zero would not know the difference
.
Such an explosion would torch anyone one-tenth of a mile from the epicente r, and topple buildings up to one-third of a mile out.
Does the real possibility of a fizzle or failure mean that terrorists won’t attempt a nuclear attack? Not necessarily
. If terrorists pursued only fool-proof plans, they would have begun suicide bombing attacks on U.S. public transportation by now
. But from a terrorist’s point of view, why pursue a course of action with a 95 percent chance of success, but at most forty victims, if you have a 10 percent chance at killing five-hundred thousand
?

Matthew
is a senior research associate at the Project on Managing the Atom in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government,
ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POLITICAL & SOCIAL SCIENCE, September
, p. 146
Finally, some argue that in the absence of a stable sanctuary with large fixed facilities, it would be nearly impossible for a terrorist group to make a nuclear bomb
. The overthrow of the
Taliban regime and the removal of al Qaeda's Afghan sanctuary undoubtedly disrupted al Qaeda's nuclear efforts significantly. But two crucial points should be made. First, large fixed facilities are not necessarily required for putting together a crude nuclear explosive
, and the time required may be distressingly short (as suggested by the U.S.
Department of Energy's [1994] security regulations).
The building that South Africa used to assemble its nuclear weapons, for instance, is a very ordinary-looking warehouse
, with little external sign of the deadly activities that went on inside (Albright 1994).
11 Terrorists might well process nuclear material or manufacture a crude nuclear bomb on the premises of an apparently legitimate front company operating in a developed country. Second, a wide range of possible sanctuaries still exists
. Indeed, in March 2004, former
Director of Central Intelligence George Ten et expressed his concern regarding stateless zones in approximately fifty countries
around the world where central governments have no consistent reach
.
In as many as half of those zones
, Tenet said
, terrorist groups were thriving (U.S. Senate 2004).

Matthrew
, Associate Professor, Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
SECURING THE BOMB 2010, April 20
, p. 13-14.
Most terrorist groups are focused on small-scale violence to attain local objectives. For them, the old adage that “terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead” holds true, and nuclear weapons are likely to be irrelevant or counterproductive for their goals. But a small set of terrorists with global ambitions and nihilistic visions clearly are eager to get and use a nuclear bomb
. Osama bin Laden has called the acquisition of nuclear weapon s or other weapons of mass destruction a “religious duty
.” For years, al Qaeda operatives have repeatedly expressed the desire to inflict a “Hiroshima” on the United
States
.2
Al Qaeda operatives have made repeated attempts to buy nuclear material for a nuclear bomb, or to recruit nuclear expertise
. Shortly before the 9/11 attacks, for example, bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri met with two senior Pakistani nuclear scientists to discuss nuclear weapons.3 Former CIA Director George Tenet reports that the two provided al Qaeda with a rough sketch of a nuclear bomb design, and that U.S. officials were so concerned about the activities of the
“charity” they had established (whose board of directors also included a range of senior retired military officers, and which reportedly also offered nuclear weapons help to Libya) that President Bush directed him to fly to Pakistan and discuss the matter directly with Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf. 4 Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmoud, the more senior of the two, had long argued that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons rightfully belonged to the whole worldwide “ummah,” or Muslim community, and had advocated sharing nuclear weapons technology.
Matthrew
, Associate Professor, Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
SECURING THE BOMB 2010, April 20
, p. v.
Several facts frame the danger: • Al Qaeda is seeking nuclear weapons and has repeatedly attempted to acquire the materials and expertise needed to make them . • Numerous studies by the U.S. and other governments have concluded that it is plausible that a sophisticated terrorist group could make a crude nuclear bomb if it got enough of the needed nuclear materials . • There have been over 18 documented cases of theft or loss of plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU), the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons. Peace activists have broken into a Belgian base where U.S. nuclear weapons are reportedly stored; two teams of armed men attacked a site in South Africa where hundreds of kilograms of HEU are stored; and Russian officials have confirmed that terrorist teams have carried out reconnaissance at Russian nuclear weapon storage facilities. • The immense length of national borders, the huge scale of legitimate traffic, the myriad potential pathways across these borders, and the small size and weak radiation signal of the materials needed to make a nuclear bomb make nuclear smuggling extraordinarily difficult to stop
.
Peter D.
, Professor, Science and Security, Department of War Studies King's College
London and Jeffrey G. Lewis, executive director, Managing the Atom Project, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, "The Bomb in the Backyward," FOREIGN POLICY, November/December 20
, p. 33-34.
The cylinder turned out to be a dud. But had it actually contained highly enriched uranium, and if bin Laden’s deputies had managed to use it to assemble, then transport and detonate a nuclear bomb, history would have looked very different. September 11 would be remembered as the day when hundreds of thousands of people were killed.
Osama bi n Laden’s long-standing interest in developing nuclear weapons is deeply troubling, and the attempt to purchase uranium

from the Sudanese was far from an isolated incident. Al Qaeda operatives have repeatedly tried to acquire nuclear materials over the years
. In August 2001, a month before the
September 11 attacks, bin Laden received two former Pakistani nuclear officials, asking them to help recruit other Pakistani scientists with expertise in building nuclear weapons. After the military effort to oust the Taliban from Afghanistan,
U.S. forces found extensive documents, including crude bomb designs, at an al Qaeda safe house in
Kabul
. In 2003, bin Laden sought a fatwa from an extremist Saudi cleric permitting the use of weapons of mass destruction, calling their acquisition a “religious duty
.” As recently as September, al Qaeda put out a call urging nuclear scientists to join its war against the West . Bin Laden’s attempt to purchase highly enriched uranium in the past belies the conventional wisdom that terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead.
Clearly, some terrorists do want a lot of people dead. Could a nuclear attack by bin Laden, or any other terrorist, actually happen
? Some say it would be impossible, mistakenly believing that terrorists do not have the motivation, or the ability, to assemble the highly sophisticated, modern tools necessary for the task. Most observers, however, agree that a small group could construct a lethal nuclear weapon since they are conceptually simple devices. After all, the technology involved in creating a nuclear weapon is more than 60 years old. In fact, it is perhaps easier to make a gun-assembled nuclear bomb than it is to develop biological or chemical weapon s.
Scott D.
, Professor, Political Science, Stanford University, "Nuclear Dangers in South Asia,"
FORUM ON PHYSICS AND SOCIETY, April 20
, npg.
After tragic events of September 11, 2001, no one doubts that terrorists might be interested in killing a lot of people
. But it remains worth discussing in our effort to understand how serious is the risk of nuclear terrorism in the future, what is the relationship, if any, between the spread of nuclear weapons to increased numbers of states and the danger that terrorist organizations will get and use nuclear weapons?
Some terrorists, like Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaida network, have been quite open in stating their desire for nuclear weapons.
Indeed, after Osama bin Laden declared a
Jihad ( holy war) against the U nited S tates, he was asked about reports that he wanted nuclear weapons and replied, “to possess the weapons that could counter those of the infidels is a religious dut y.”
Any terrorist leader with this kind of strategic vision is not likely be deterred from using nuclear weapons or radiological weapons against the United States
.
Christopher C.
, Professor, International Law, Georgetown Unviersity and Alexander Ian
Parkhouse, “Nuclear Terrorism in a Globalizing World: Assessing the Threat and the Emerging
Management Regime,” STANFORD JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW v. 45, Summer 20
, p. 210-211.
During the last decade, the determination of al-Qaeda to acquire nuclear weapons, the information and communication powers afforded to them by globalization, and the existence of fissile nuclear materials in unstable regions have all contributed to the transformation of the threat of nuclear terrorism from a hypothetical scenario into a policy issue of grave concern
. n27 In its examination of the terrorist threats facing the United States after the events of
September 11, 2001, the 9/11 Commission averred that, "preventing terrorists from gaining access to weapons of mass destruction must be elevated above all other problems of national security ... [the President] should develop a comprehensive plan to dramatically accelerate the timetable for securing all nuclear weapons material around the [*211] world." n28
This report was based on the discovery of documents by the United States describing the extent of al-Qaeda's

nuclear ambitions
. In 1998, Osama bin Laden declared that the acquisition of nuclear weapons was a "religious duty." n29 Since this time, reports indicate that al-Qaeda has made numerous attempts to purchase nuclear weapons on the black market, but these efforts have been thwarted by supposed sellers scamming al-Qaeda. n30 Indeed, the CIA's Bin Laden Unit has documented what it describes as a
"professional" attempt to acquire nuclear weapons by al-Qaeda, which prompted the conclusion that "there could be no doubt after this date
[late 1996] that al-Qaeda was in deadly earnest in seeking nuclear weapons. n31 This particular attempt even involved meetings with Pakistani nuclear scientists, as well as calls for other scientists with nuclear expertise to join the fight against the United States. In spite of the disruption of al-Qaeda's network since the War on Terror began in 2001, U.S. officials continue to warn that its members retain the ability to launch terrorist nuclear attacks coordinated from its new bases in Pakistan
. n32 As such
, the desire of al-Qaeda to conduct massive nuclear attacks against the United States is one of the principal factors that has made nuclear terrorism a real threat in the 21st century
.
Bob
et al., Chair, WORLD AT RISK: THE REPORT OF THE COMMISSION ON THE PREVENTION OF
WMD PROLIFERATION AND TERRORISM, December 20
, p. 65-67.
The National Intelligence Estimate added that “al Qaeda will continue to try to acquire and employ chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material in attacks and would not hesitate to use them if it develops what it de ems is sufficient capability.” Another senior intelligence official responsible for dealing with terrorism recently affirmed that al Qaeda has strengthened its ties with Pakistani militants in the past year
, replenished its midlevel lieutenants, enjoys in the FATA many of the benefits it enjoyed in Afghanistan before September 11, and remains the most serious terrorist threat to the United States.

Dr Ian
,, Research Director, British American Security Information Council, “Keeping the Lid On:
Nuclear Security and the Washington Summit,” BASIC, 4-7-
, www.basicint.org/pubs/BASIC-Nukesecurity-full.pdf
According to the recent final report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non- Proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND), chaired by former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans and former Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs Yoriko Kawaguchi, President Obama’s fear of nuclear terrorism is justified. There are terrorist actors in existence
, the Commission noted,
‘who would, if they could, cause massive and indiscriminate havoc in almost any one of the world’s major cities’
(ICNND, 2009: 39).
Al Qaeda is known to have sought nuclear weapons
before, and to have had a nascent nuclear program in Afghanistan prior to September 2001.1
Other groups, such as
Aum Shinrikyo, are also known to have sought a nuclear weapons capability and it seems likely that in future, groups motivated by a wide range of different ideas will seek to do the same
.2 The ICNND further noted that, moving forward, terrorist groups were likely to be able to match their intent with real capability.
Terrorist groups wishing to carry out an attack using a nuclear bomb, as opposed to an attack using a ‘dirty bomb’ or conventional explosives, would face substantial challenges and difficulties, not least in acquiring sufficient fissile material, overcoming the technical challenges of designing and building a device, keeping their activities secret for a lengthy period of time while the bomb was in preparation, and successfully delivering the bomb to target, probably across international borders, but these barriers could likely be overcome. While the risk of a terrorist dirty bomb is deemed much greater than a full terrorist nuclear explosion (because the technical barriers to be overcome are fewer), the risk of the latter, according to the ICNND, ‘is not negligible’ (ICNND,
2009: 39).3
John Alex
, JD Candidate, Georgetwon University, Combating Terrorism and Weapons of Mass
Destruction: Reviving the Doctrine of a State Necessity,” GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL v. 87, April
19
, p. 1026-1028.
Defined as the "threat or use of violence in order to create extreme fear and anxiety in a target group so as to coerce them to meet the political objectives of the perpetrators," n22 terrorism has assumed even greater destructive overtones with the close of the twentieth century.
The threat that terrorists will turn to more lethal instruments suchas
WMDs to accomplish their goals proceeds from their willingness to inflict greater destruction, as well as from the greater accessibility of WMDs in the modern age and continued state sponsorship of terrorism.
There are mounting indications that terrorists will increase the lethalness of their attacks in the future. Traditionally, terrorists shied away from WMDs [*1027] because a host of factors constrained the amount of force that they used, including a reluctance to alienate perceived support for their cause, incite massive retaliation, or "imperil [the] group's cohesion." n23
Nevertheless, most analysts have detected a weakening of
these constraints.
n24
First, the public has arguably become "desensitized" to terrorist acts because they are relatively commonplace in society; n25 in order to fulfill the primary objective of terrorism -- inciting fear to achieve quasipolitical, ethnic or religious goals -groups may find it necessary to inflict greater destruction on their targets
. n26
Second, if a particular group is losing its "struggle" and faces extinction, it may disregard the traditional constraints and make "a last desperate attempt to defeat the hated enemy by arms not tried before." n27
Finally, the traditional constraints apply less in the context of groups fueled byethnic hatreds or religious fanaticism because
" ethnic hatreds lend themselves to genocidal strategies,
" and strong, religious factionsthat believe they are acting for God have a ready justification for killing scores of people. n28 By some accounts, such groups are replacing politically motivated terrorists. n29 In sum, the weakening of the traditional constraints on terrorists may compel them to inflict greater destruction on society. WMDs supply the perfect tool

to the terrorist group seeking to "shock" the public because they are lethal on a large scale and not necessarily difficult to deploy
. A crude nuclear device could have destroyed much of lower Manhattan if the World Trade Center bombers had included one in their arsenal of explosives. n30 Chemical and biological weapons, for their part, are extremely toxic; the dispersal of certain biological agents would approximate the lethality of a nuclear explosion, and chemical nerve agents such as sarin could claim significant casualties. n31 Furthermore, the dispersal method of certain biological and chemical agents increases their attractiveness, enhancing the terrorists' ability to escape because there is often an interval between the release of the agent and its apparent effects on human beings. n32 In effect, a cruise missile or [*1028] singular, tremendous explosion is not the only means of deploying a WMD n33 capable of devastating entire segments of a population or city.
Bob
et al., Chair, WORLD AT RISK: THE REPORT OF THE COMMISSION ON THE PREVENTION OF
WMD PROLIFERATION AND TERRORISM, December 20
, p. xix-xx.
The number of states that are armed with nuclear weapons or are seeking to develop them is increasing.
Terrorist organizations are intent on acquiring nuclear weapons or the material and expertise needed to build them. Trafficking in nuclear materials and technology is a serious, relentless, and multidimensional problem. Yet nuclear terrorism is still a preventable catastrophe
. The world must move with new urgency to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons nations—and the United States must increase its global leadership efforts to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and safeguard nuclear material before it falls into the hands of terrorists. The new administration must move to revitalize the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
Matthrew
, Associate Professor, Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
SECURING THE BOMB 2010, April 20
, p. 14-16.
Before al Qaeda, the Japanese terror cult Aum Shinrikyo also made a concerted effort to get nuclear weapons
.10
Chechen terrorists have certainly pursued the possibility of a radioactive “dirty bomb
,” and there are at least suggestive indications that they also have pursued nuclear weapons— including two incidents of terrorists conducting reconnaissance at secret nuclear weapon storage sites, confirmed by Russian officials. There are at least some indications that
Pakistani groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba may also be interested —a particularly troubling possibility given the deep past connections these groups have had with Pakistani security services
, their ongoing cooperation with al Qaeda, and the example of in-depth cooperation on unconventional weapons provided by al Qaeda’s work with Jemaah Islamiyah on anthrax.11 With at least two groups going down this path in the last 15 years, and possibly more, there is no reason to expect that others will not do so in the future.
Dr Ian
,, Research Director, British American Security Information Council, “Keeping the Lid On:
Nuclear Security and the Washington Summit,” BASIC, 4-7-
, www.basicint.org/pubs/BASIC-Nukesecurity-full.pdf, accessed 4-10-10.
2.1
The risk of nuclear terrorism is real. The intent of certain terrorist groups like Al
Qaeda and Aum Shinrikyo to go nuclear if possible has been demonstrated but recent investigations into the issue have also concluded that the risk of terrorist groups acquiring the capability is ‘not negligible’
(ICNND, 2009: 39).

, Robert Ayson, Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies:
New Zealand at the Victoria University of Wellington, 2010 (“After a Terrorist Nuclear Attack: Envisaging
Catalytic Effects,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Volume 33, Issue 7, July, Available Online to
Subscribing Institutions via InformaWorld)
But these two nuclear worlds—a non-state actor nuclear attack and a catastrophic interstate nuclear exchange—are not necessarily separable.
It is just possible that some sort of terrorist attack, and especially an act of nuclear terrorism, could precipitate a chain of events leading to a massive exchange of nuclear weapons between two or more of the states that possess them
. In this context, today’s and tomorrow’s terrorist groups might assume the place allotted during the early Cold War years to new state possessors of small nuclear arsenals who were seen as raising the risks of a catalytic nuclear war between the superpowers started by third parties. These risks were considered in the late 1950s and early 1960s as concerns grew about nuclear proliferation, the so-called n+1 problem. It may require a considerable amount of imagination to depict an especially plausible situation where an act of nuclear terrorism could lead to such a massive inter-state nuclear war. For example, in the event of a terrorist nuclear attack on the United States, it might well be wondered just how Russia and/or China could plausibly be brought into the picture, not least because they seem unlikely to be fingered as the most obvious state sponsors or encouragers of terrorist groups. They would seem far too responsible to be involved in supporting that sort of terrorist behavior that could just as easily threaten them as well. Some possibilities, however remote, do suggest themselves. For example, how might the United States react if it was thought or discovered that the fissile material used in the act of nuclear terrorism had come from Russian stocks
,40 and if for some reason Moscow denied any responsibility for nuclear laxity? The correct attribution of that nuclear material to a particular country might not be a case of science fiction given the observation by Michael May et al. that while the debris resulting from a nuclear explosion would be “spread over a wide area in tiny fragments, its radioactivity makes it detectable, identifiable and collectable, and a wealth of information can be obtained from its analysis: the efficiency of the explosion, the materials used and, most important … some indication of where the nuclear material came from
.”41 Alternatively, if the act of nuclear terrorism came as a complete surprise, and American officials refused to believe that a terrorist group was fully responsible
(or responsible at all) suspicion would shift immediately to state possessors
. Ruling out Western ally countries like the United Kingdom and France, and probably Israel and India as well, authorities in
Washington would be left with a very short list consisting of North Korea, perhaps Iran if its program continues, and possibly Pakistan. But at what stage would Russia and China be definitely ruled out in this high stakes game of nuclear Cluedo? In particular, if the act of nuclear terrorism occurred against a backdrop of existing tension in Washington’s relations with Russia and/or China, and at a time when threats
had already been traded between these major powers, would officials and political leaders not be tempted to assume the worst? Of course, the chances of this occurring would only seem to increase if the United States was already involved in some sort of limited armed conflict
with Russia and/or China, or if they were confronting each other from a distance in a proxy war, as unlikely as these developments may seem at the present time. The reverse might well apply too: should a nuclear terrorist attack occur in Russia or China during a period of heightened tension or even limited conflict with the United States, could Moscow and Beijing resist the pressures that might rise domestically to consider the United States as a possible perpetrator or encourager of the attack? Washington’s early response to a terrorist nuclear attack on its own
soil might also raise the possibility of an unwanted (and nuclear aided) confrontation with Russia and/or China. For example, in the noise and confusion during the immediate aftermath of the terrorist nuclear attack, the U.S. president might be expected to place the country’s armed forces, including its nuclear arsenal, on a higher stage of alert. In such a tense environment, when careful planning runs up against the friction of reality, it is just possible that Moscow and/or China might mistakenly read this as a sign of U.S. intentions to use force
(and possibly nuclear force) against them
. In that situation, the temptations to preempt such actions might grow, although it must be admitted that any preemption would probably still meet with a devastating response.

Dennis Ray
, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Yangin Campus, South Korea, “World on
Fire: Two Scenarios of the Destruction of Human Civilization and Possible Extinction of the Human
Race,” FUTURES v. 41, 20
, pp. 683-93, ScienceDirect.
In a remarkable website on nuclear war, Carol Moore asks the question ‘‘Is Nuclear War Inevitable??’’ [10].4 In Section 1, Moore points out what most terrorists
obviously already know about the nuclear tensions between powerful countries. No doubt, they’ve figured out that the best way to escalate these tensions into nuclear war is to set off a nuclear exchang e. As Moore points out, all that militant terrorists would have to do is get their hands on one small nuclear bomb and explode it on either Moscow or Israel
.
Because of the
Russian ‘‘dead hand’’ system
, ‘‘where regional nuclear commanders would be given full powers should Moscow be destroyed,’’ it is likely that any attack would be blamed on the U nited S tates’’
[10].
Israeli leaders
and Zionist supporters have
, likewise, stated
for years that if Israel were to suffer a nuclear attack
, whether from terrorists or a nation state, it would retaliate with the suicidal ‘‘Samson option’’ against all major Muslim cities in the Middle East.
Furthermore, the Israeli Samson option would also include attacks on Russia and even ‘‘anti-Semitic’’ European cities
[10]. In that case, of course,
Russia would retaliate, and the U.S. would then retaliate against Russia.
China would probably be involved as well, as
thousands, if not tens of thousands, of nuclear warheads, many of them much more powerful than those used at Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, would rain upon most of the major cities in the Northern Hemisphere.
Afterwards
, for years to come, massive radioactive clouds would drift throughout the Earth in the nuclear fallout, bringing death or else radiation disease that would be genetically transmitted to future generations in a nuclear winter that could last as long as a 100 years, taking a savage toll upon the environment
and fragile ecosphere as well.

Mohamed
, political analyst for the Al-Ahram,
8/26/
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm, Boxer
What would be the consequences of a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even if it fails, it would further exacerbate the negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are now living.
Societies would close in on themselves, police measures would be stepped up at the expense of human rights, tensions between civilisations and religions would rise and ethnic conflicts would proliferate. It would also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness that a different type of world order is imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more critical scenario is if the attack succeeds. This could lead to a third world war, from which no one will emerge victorious
. Unlike a conventional war which ends when one side triumphs over another, thiswar will be without winners and losers. When nuclear pollution infects the whole planet, we will all be losers.
4/12/
(Paul, G and Mail, "Obama’s new nuclear strategy maintains first-strike option ", http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/obamas-new-nuclear-strategy-maintains-first-strikeoption/article1525600
In the administration’s view, terrorists with a stolen warhead in the back of a truck or a shipping container poses the biggest danger . “ The greatest threat to U.S. and global security is no longer a nuclear exchange
between nations, but nuclear terrorism by violent extremists
and nuclear proliferation to an increasing number of states,” Mr. Obama said.
Martin
, Professor, Stanford University, "Defusing the Nuclear Threat," Spring 20
, www.nuclearrisk.org/primer.php, accessed 9-12-10.
Although clearly different in nature, nuclear terrorism and nuclear war are coupled.
One of the possible triggers for a full-scale nuclear war is an act of nuclear terrorism. Particularly if directed against an American or Russian city, the resultant chaos has the potential to push the world over the nuclear cliff, much as a terrorist act in Sarajevo in 1914 was the spark that set off the First World War
.Conversely, the danger of nuclear terrorism is increased by the large number of nuclear weapons. With over 25,000 still in existence and thousands of people involved in their maintenance, storage and security, the chance for error, theft or illicit sale is much too high. More than fifteen years after the bipartisan Nunn-Lugar Act initiated funding for dismantling and protecting "loose nukes" in the former Soviet Union, that effort is only about half complete [NTI 2007].
Martin
, Professor, Stanford University, "Defusing the Nuclear Threat," Spring 20
, www.nuclearrisk.org/primer.php, accessed 9-12-10.
Nuclear proliferation and the specter of nuclear terrorism are creating additional possibilities for triggering a nuclear war. If an American (or Russian) city were devastated by an act of nuclear terrorism, the public outcry for immediate, decisive action would be even stronger than Kennedy had to deal with when the Cuban missiles first became known
to the American public.
While the action would likely not be directed against Russia, it might be

threatening to Russia
(e.g., on its borders) or one of its allies and precipitate a crisis that resulted in a full-scale nuclear war. Terrorists with an apocalyptic mindset might even attempt to catalyze a full-scale nuclear war by disguising their act to look like an attack by the U.S. or Russia
.
Matthrew
, Associate Professor, Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
SECURING THE BOMB 2010, April 20
, p. 6.
Unfortunately, as described in the next chapter, al Qaeda has been actively seeking a nuclear bomb for years. Moreover, as already noted, there have been repeated cases of real theft of the materials needed to make a nuclear bomb, and government studies have warned that if a sophisticated terrorist group got enough of these materials, they might well be able to fabricate at least a crude nuclear bomb. The likelihood of terrorists detonating a nuclear bomb may not be high, but the consequences would be so catastrophic — not only for the targeted country but for the entire world —that urgent action is justified to reduce the danger
.10 No one in their right mind would operate a nuclear power plant upwind of a major city if it had a 1% chance each year of a Chernobyl- scale release—the danger would be understood by all to be too great.
Yet the international community may well be accepting an even greater risk of nuclear devastation of a major city by terrorists as a result of the way nuclear weapons and materials are managed around the world today
.
Matthrew
, Associate Professor, Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
SECURING THE BOMB 2010, April 20
, p. v.
No one knows the real likelihood of nuclear terrorism. But the consequences of a terrorist nuclear blast would be so catastrophic that even a small chance is enough to justify urgent action to reduce the risk
. The heart of a major city could be reduced to a smoldering radioactive ruin, leaving tens to hundreds of thousands of people dead.
Devastating economic consequences would reverberate worldwide. America and the world would be changed forever.

Christopher C.
, Professor, International Law, Georgetown Unviersity and Alexander Ian
Parkhouse, “Nuclear Terrorism in a Globalizing World: Assessing the Threat and the Emerging
Management Regime,” STANFORD JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW v. 45, Summer 20
, p. 220-221.
While economic impacts of an act of nuclear terrorism
largely remain hypothetical, the gravity of such an attack would undoubtedly intensify political and legal pressures among governments to act in a coordinated manner. The economic repercussions of a ten kiloton nuclear device being detonated in a major American city could reach into the trillions of dollars
. n86
Not only would such an event exact
[*221] an immediate toll on the economy of the targeted state, it would also reverberate throughout the entire global economy
. Indeed, if a nuclear device were detonated in a major U.S. port - for example, New York, Los Angeles or New Orleans - a recent
Congressional study suggests that the global economy would come to an abrupt halt
. n87
Given the interconnectedness of today's globalizing world, the economic shock would extend worldwide . Financial, commercial, banking, communication services, investments, and business activities would be severely crippled , if not annihilated . Such an event would be devastating to international economic security
, suggesting that this threat be addressed urgently and thoroughly.
[National Review Online, October 28, 2008 Phil Kerpen, policy director for Americans for
Prosperity From Panic to Depression?, http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWQ3ZGYzZTQyZGY4ZWFiZWUxNmYwZTJiNWVkMTIxMmU=]
It’s important that we avoid all these policy errors
— not just for the sake of our prosperity, but for our survival. The Great Depression
, after all, didn’t end until the advent of World War II, the most destructive war in the history of the planet. In a world of nuclear and biological weapons and non-state terrorist organizations that breed on poverty and despair, another global economic breakdown
of such extended duration would risk armed conflicts on an even greater scale

JD 2006 College of William and Mary [Patrick, 47 Wm and Mary L. Rev. 1427, lexis]
Organizations such as the Russian military
and Minatom are now operating in circumstances of great stress.
Money is in short supply, paychecks are irregular, living conditions unpleasant ... [D]isorder within Russia and the resulting strains within the military could easily cause a lapse or a breakdown in the
Russian military's guardianship of nuclear weapons.
38 Accordingly, there is a significant
and ever-present risk that terrorists could acquire a nuclear device or fissile material from Russia as a result of the confluence of Russian economic decline and the end of stringent
Sovietera nuclear
security measures.
39
Terrorist groups could acquire a nuclear weapon by a number of methods, including "steal[ing] one
intact
from the stockpile of a country possessing such weapons, or ... [being] sold or given one
by [*1438] such a country, or [buying or stealing] one from another subnational group that had obtained it in one of these ways." 40
Equally threatening
, however,
is the risk that terrorists will steal or purchase fissile material and construct a nuclear device on their own.
Very little material is necessary to construct a highly destructive nuclear weapon.
41 Although nuclear devices are extraordinarily complex, the technical barriers to constructing a workable weapon are not significant.
42 Moreover, the sheer number of methods that could be used to deliver a nuclear device into the United States makes it incredibly likely that terrorists could successfully employ a nuclear weapon once it was built.
43 Accordingly, supplyside controls that are aimed at preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear material in the first place are the most effective means of countering the risk of nuclear terrorism. 44 Moreover, the end of the Cold War
eliminated the rationale for maintaining a large militaryindustrial complex in Russia, and the nuclear cities were closed. 45 This
resulted in at least 35,000 nuclear scientists becoming unemployed in an economy that was collapsing.
46 Although the economy has stabilized somewhat, there [*1439] are still at least 20,000 former scientists who are unemployed or underpaid and who are too young to retire, 47
raising the chilling prospect that these scientists will be tempted to sell their nuclear knowledge, or steal nuclear material to sell, to states or terrorist organizations with nuclear ambitions.
48
The potential consequences of the unchecked spread of nuclear knowledge and material to terrorist groups that seek to cause mass destruction in the United States are truly horrifying. A terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon would be devastating in terms of immediate human and economic losses
. 49 Moreover, there would be immense political pressure in the U nited
S tates to discover the perpetrators and retaliate with nuclear weapons, massively increasing the number of casualties and potentially triggering a full-scale nuclear conflict.
50 In addition to the threat posed by terrorists, leakage of nuclear knowledge and material from Russia will reduce the barriers that states with nuclear ambitions face and may trigger widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons. 51 This proliferation will increase the risk of nuclear attacks against the United States [*1440] or its allies by hostile states, 52 as well as increase the likelihood that regional conflicts will draw in the United States and escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. 53
Gregg
, author, CNN, November 2, 20
. Available from the World Wide Web at: http://www.cnn.com/transcripts/0111/01/gal.00.html, accessed 5/1/05.
Terrorists may not be held by this, especially suicidal terrorists, of the kind that al Qaeda is attempting to cultivate. But I think, if I could leave you with one message, it would be this: that the search for terrorist atomic weapons would be of great benefit to the Muslim peoples of the world in addition to members, to people of the
United States and Western Europe, because if an atomic warhead goes off in
Washington,
say, in the current environment or anything like it, in the 24 hours that followed, a hundred

million Muslims would die as U.S. nuclear bombs rained down on every conceivable military target in a dozen Muslim countries.
(Nicole- Asst. Prof., Politics and Economics, Royal Military College of Canada,”
Wild Globalization and Terrorism: Three Scenarios,” World Future Society, http://www.wfs.org/mmmorgan.htm)
The terrorist act can reactivate atavistic defense mechanisms which drive us to gather around clan chieftans.
Nationalistic sentiment re-awakens, setting up an implacable frontier which divides
"us" from "them," each group solidifying its cohesion in a rising hate/fear of the other group
. (Remember Yugoslavia?) To be sure, the allies are trying for the moment to avoid the language of polarization, insisting that "this is not a war," that it is "not against Islam," "civilians will not be targeted." But the word "war" was pronounced, a word heavy with significance which forces the issue of partisanship. And it must be understood that the sentiment of partisanship, of belonging to the group, is one of the strongest of human emotions. Because the enemy has been named in the media (Islam), the situation has become emotionally volatile
.
Another spectacular attack, coming on top of an economic recession could easily radicalize the latent attitudes of the U nited S tates
, and also of Europe, where racial prejudices are especially close to the surface and ask no more than a pretext to burst out. This is the Sarajevo syndrome: an isolated act of madness becomes the pretext for a war that is just as mad
, made of ancestral rancor, measureless ambitions, and armies in search of a war. We should not be fooled by our expressions of good will and charity toward the innocent victims of this or other distant wars. It is our own comfortable circumstances which permit us these benevolent sentiments. If conditions change so that poverty and famine put the fear of starvation in our guts, the human beast will reappear. And if epidemic becomes a clear and present danger, fear will unleash hatred in the land of the free, flinging missiles indiscriminately toward any supposed havens of the unseen enemy
.
And on the other side, no matter how profoundly complex and differentiated Islamic nations and tribes may be, they will be forced to behave as one clan by those who see advantage in radicalizing the conflict, whether they be themselves merchants or terrorists
.
John L- President, Arlington Institute, “The Next Sound You Hear,” World Future Society, http://www.wfs.org/mmpetersen.htm
But there seems to be a rather specific objective behind all of this.
There is an end-game that these terrorists seem to have in mind
, and it is not just to kill a bunch of Americans. The analysis that I read points to all of this being the Islamic radicals’ first assault in a war aimed at elevating Islam to being the major influential religion and political system in the world. How might they do that with the relatively limited resources that they have? Again, the most salient thinking that I’ve found suggests that they’d like to turn America against Islam, and vice-versa. A holy war between Islam and the West
.How do you do that? Get the U.S. to overreact. Focus the unhappiness of the vast numbers of desperately poor Muslims around more high-profile injustice visited on them indiscriminately by American retaliation for the September 11 attacks. Mobilize them around a gross inequity . . . the same way that Americans (and the West) have mobilized around a great inequity.
The third principle is therefore: Provoke Over-Reaction. Get the West to seemingly strike out against "Islam
" — again. Give them the basis for moving their religious war into high-gear. If this is the framework for a second strike, then where should we look? We should look for places where a relatively small, sophisticated effort can produce inordinate social pain and anger. Produce an event that will cause Americans, in the fury of the aftermath, to look with hate upon every Arabic-looking person they see and strike out in vengeance
. (
That, of course, is the predictable way in which things work in many places on the planet.) The best of all worlds would be a nuclear

counter-strike that wiped out a bunch of innocent Muslims — that would start the war for sure
. Where are our vulnerabilities in this kind of scenaric world? Obviously, there is the possibility of a nuclear or biological attack, and that is where we will immediately put up our defenses.
(Brad, “Nuclear Attack a Real, if Remote, Possibility,” Christian Science Monitor)
In addition, several
US lawmakers have said America should be prepared to use its tactical nuclear weapons to
prevent or respond to another domestic terrorist attack
. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - repeating long-standing
US military doctrine - has not ruled that out.
While the former Soviet Union has been a top concern - officials there can't account for all nuclear-weapons items, and many now-jobless nuclear scientists may be susceptible to bribery - much of the focus is now on Pakistan.
Louis Rene
, Professor, Political Science, Purdue University, TERRORISM AND GLOBAL SECURITY:
THE NUCLEAR THREAT, 19
, p. 47.
Nuclear terrorism could even spark full-scale nuclear, war between states. Such war could involve the entire spectrum of nuclear conflict possibilities, ranging from a nuclear attack upon a nonnuclear state to systemwide nuclear war.
How might such far-reaching consequences of nuclear terrorism come about?
Perhaps the most likely way would involve a terrorist nuclear assault against a state by terrorists “hosted” in another state.

Edwin
, President, Heritage Foundation, “Avoiding the Next Nightmare,” 20
www.hertiage.org/views/2001/ejf01-22.hml
Like you, I don't know the answer. But I do know, or at least suspect, that if Tel Aviv had been targeted, the Israelis would have retaliated against the murderers and their supporters with such overwhelming fury and force that the entire Middle East would now be engulfed in war
. They wouldn't have asked anybody's permission, and they wouldn't have worried much about coalitions. The Israelis have had to deal with radical
Islam for decades. Their safety -- indeed, their very survival as a nation -- depends on their ability to keep this enemy reasonably at bay. The
United States has blanched at their tough tactics at times, and Jerusalem normally will go only so far when Washington expresses its displeasure, but they've earned their reputation for toughness the hard way. This tiny outpost of Western democracy wouldn't respond to a bloody massacre on the scale of Sept. 11 with benefit concerts.
They would launch an immediate and explosive response, directed not only at the terrorists but at the "good neighbors" who had provided the terrorists with resources and safe harbo r: Iraq, the Palestinian Authority (the killers formerly known as the PLO), Syria, the Syrian puppet regime in Lebanon, and any other neighbors that were complicit in the attack.
Such a nightmare scenario could lead easily to World War III
. So we need to ask ourselves seriously: What would the
United States do if Tel Aviv became the target of a devastating attack killing thousands, or tens of thousands, and the Israelis decided, once and for all, to wage a war to end all wars in the Middle East?

Robert
, Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies: New
Zealand at the Victoria University of Wellington,
(“After a Terrorist Nuclear Attack: Envisaging
Catalytic Effects,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Volume 33, Issue 7, July, InformaWorld)
A terrorist nuclear attack, and even the use of nuclear weapons in response by the country attacked in the first place, would not necessarily represent the worst of the nuclear worlds imaginable. Indeed, there are reasons to wonder whether nuclear terrorism should ever be regarded as belonging in the category of truly existential threats. A contrast can be drawn
here with the global catastrophe that would come from a massive nuclear exchange between two or more of the sovereign states that possess these weapons in significant numbers.
Even the worst terrorism that the twenty-first century might bring would fade into insignificance alongside considerations of what a general nuclear war would have wrought in the Cold War period. And it must be admitted that as long as the major nuclear weapons states have hundreds and even thousands of nuclear weapons at their disposal, there is always the possibility of a truly awful nuclear exchange taking place precipitated entirely by state possessors themselves.
But these two nuclear worlds —a non-state actor nuclear attack and a catastrophic interstate nuclear exchange— are not necessarily separable
. It is just possible that some sort of terrorist attack
, and especially an act of nuclear terrorism, could precipitate a chain of events leading to a massive exchange of nuclear weapons between two or more of the states that possess them. In this context, today’s and tomorrow’s terrorist groups might assume the place allotted during the early Cold War years to new state possessors of small nuclear arsenals who were seen as raising the risks of a catalytic nuclear war between the superpowers started by third parties. These risks were considered in the late 1950s and early 1960s as concerns grew about nuclear proliferation, the so-called n+1 problem.
It may require a considerable amount of imagination to depict an especially plausible situation where an act of nuclear terrorism could lead to such a massive inter-state nuclear war
. For example, in the event of a terrorist nuclear attack on the United States, it might well be wondered just how Russia and/or China could plausibly be brought into the picture, not least because they seem unlikely to be fingered as the most obvious state sponsors or encouragers of terrorist groups. They would seem far too responsible to be involved in supporting that sort of terrorist behavior that could just as easily threaten them as well. Some possibilities, however remote, do suggest themselves. For example, how might the United States react if it was thought or discovered that the fissile material used in the act of nuclear terrorism had come from Russian stocks,40 and if for some reason Moscow denied any responsibility for nuclear laxity? The correct attribution of that nuclear material to a particular country might not be a case of science fiction given the observation by Michael May et al. that while the debris resulting from a nuclear explosion would be “spread over a wide area in tiny fragments, its radioactivity makes it detectable, identifiable and collectable, and a wealth of information can be obtained from its analysis: the efficiency of the explosion, the materials used and, most important … some indication of where the nuclear material came from.”41 Alternatively, if the act of nuclear terrorism came as a complete surprise
, and American officials refused to believe that a terrorist group was fully responsible (or responsible at all) suspicion would shift immediately to state possessors.
Ruling out Western ally countries like the United Kingdom and France, and probably Israel and India as well, authorities in
Washington would be left with a very short list consisting of North Korea, perhaps Iran if its program continues, and possibly Pakistan. But at what stage would Russia and China be definitely ruled out in this high stakes game of nuclear Cluedo?
In particular, if the act of nuclear terrorism occurred against a back drop of existing tension in Washington’s relations with Russia and/or China, and at a time when threats had already been traded between these major powers, would officials and political leaders not be tempted to assume the worst?
Of course, the chances of this occurring would only seem to increase if the United States was already involved in some sort of limited armed conflict with Russia and/or China, or if they were confronting each other from a distance in a proxy war, as unlikely as these developments may seem at the present time. The reverse might well apply too: should a nuclear terrorist attack occur in
Russia or China during a period of heightened tension or even limited conflict with the United States, could Moscow and Beijing resist the pressures that might rise domestically to consider the United States as a possible perpetrator or encourager of the attack?
Washington’s early response to a terrorist nuclear attack
on its own soil might
also raise the possibility of an unwanted (and nuclear aided) confrontation with Russia and/or China
. For example, in the noise and confusion during the immediate aftermath
of the terrorist nuclear attack, the U.S.

president might be expected to place the country’s armed forces, including its nuclear arsenal, on a higher stage of alert. In such a tense environment
, when careful planning runs up against the friction of reality, it is just possible that Moscow and/or China might mistakenly read this as a sign of U.S. intentions to use force (and possibly nuclear force) against them. In that situation, the temptations to preempt such actions might grow
, although it must be admitted that any preemption would probably still meet with a devastating response
.
As part of its initial response to the act of nuclear terrorism (as discussed earlier)
Washington might decide to order a significant conventional (or nuclear) retaliatory or disarming attack against the leadership of the terrorist group and/or states seen to support that group
. Depending on the identity and especially the location of these targets,
Russia and/or China might interpret such action as being far too close for their comfort, and potentially as an infringement on their spheres of influence and even on their sovereignty
. One far-fetched but perhaps not impossible scenario might stem from a judgment in Washington that some of the main aiders and abetters of the terrorist action resided somewhere such as Chechnya, perhaps in connection with what Allison claims is the “Chechen insurgents’ … long-standing interest in all things nuclear.”42 American pressure on that part of the world would almost certainly raise alarms in Moscow that might require a degree of advanced consultation from Washington that the latter found itself unable or unwilling to provide.
There is also the question of how other nuclear-armed states respond to the act of nuclear terrorism on another member of that special club
. It could reasonably be expected that following a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States, both Russia and China would extend immediate sympathy and support to
Washington and would work alongside the United States in the Security Council. But there is just a chance, albeit a slim one, where the support of Russia and/or China is less automatic in some cases than in others. For example, what would happen if the United States wished to discuss its right to retaliate against groups based in their territory? If, for some reason, Washington found the responses of Russia and China deeply underwhelming, (neither “for us or against us”) might it also suspect that they secretly were in cahoots with the group, increasing (again perhaps ever so slightly) the chances of a major exchange. If the terrorist group had some connections to groups in Russia and China, or existed in areas of the world over which Russia and China held sway, and if Washington felt that Moscow or Beijing were placing a curiously modest level of pressure on them, what conclusions might it then draw about their culpability? If Washington decided to use, or decided to threaten the use of, nuclear weapons, the responses of Russia and China would be crucial to the chances of avoiding a more serious nuclear exchange. They might surmise, for example, that while the act of nuclear terrorism was especially heinous and demanded a strong response, the response simply had to remain below the nuclear threshold. It would be one thing for a non-state actor to have broken the nuclear use taboo, but an entirely different thing for a state actor, and indeed the leading state in the international system, to do so. If Russia and China felt sufficiently strongly about that prospect, there is then the question of what options would lie open to them to dissuade the United States from such action: and as has been seen over the last several decades, the central dissuader of the use of nuclear weapons by states has been the threat of nuclear retaliation.
If some
readers find this simply too fanciful
, and perhaps even offensive to contemplate, it may be informative to reverse the tables. Russia
, which possesses an arsenal of thousands of nuclear warheads and that has been one of the two most important trustees of the non-use taboo, is subjected to an attack of nuclear terrorism. In response, Moscow places its nuclear forces very visibly on a higher state of alert and declares that it is considering the use of nuclear retaliation against the group and any of its state supporters. How would Washington view such a possibility?
Would it really be keen to support Russia’s use of nuclear weapons, including outside Russia’s traditional sphere of influence? And if not, which seems quite plausible, what options would Washington have to communicate that displeasure?
If China had been the victim of the nuclear terrorism and seemed likely to retaliate in kind, would the United States and Russia be happy to sit back and let this occur? In the charged atmosphere immediately after a nuclear terrorist attack, how would the attacked country respond to pressure from other major nuclear powers not to respond in kind? The phras e “how dare they tell us what to do” immediately springs to mind. Some might even go so far as to interpret this concern as a tacit form of sympathy or support for the terrorists. This might not help the chances of nuclear restraint.

Patrick F.
, JD Candidate @ College of William and Mary,
(William & Mary Law Review, 46
Wm and Mary L. Rev. 1427)
The potential consequences of the unchecked spread of nuclear knowledge and material to terrorist groups that seek to cause mass destruction in the United States are truly horrifying.
A terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon would be devastating in terms of immediate human and economic losses
. 49 Moreover, there would be immense political pressure in the U nited
S tates to
discover the perpetrators and retaliate with nuclear weapons, massively increasing the number of casualties and
potentially triggering a full-scale nuclear conflict
. 50
In addition
to the threat posed by terrorists, leakage of nuclear knowledge and material from Russia will reduce the barriers that states with nuclear ambitions face and may trigger widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons. 51
This proliferation will increase the risk of nuclear attacks against the United States [*1440] or its allies by hostile states, 52 as well as i ncrease the likelihood that regional conflicts will draw in the U nited
S tates andescalate to the use of nuclear weapons
. 53
(Marko, PhD at Monash University, Teaches at LaTrobe University and the University of
Melbourne, "The nuclear terror of Bush 'negligence policy", June 16th, Eureka Street, Vo 18 No 12, http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=75850
It was not widely reported, but in February the Bush Administration enacted what may turn out to be one of the most significant policy decisions it has made in response to 9/11. President
Bush signed new presidential guidance that provides an entirely new mission for US nuclear forces
.
The White House has
effectively developeda new policyon the deterrence of nuclear terrorism.
The policy was announced in a little-noted closed speech given by Stephen
Hadley
, President Bush's national security adviser, at Stanford University. He stated
that, 'as part of this strategy to combat nuclear terrorism, the President has approved a new declaratory policy to help deter terrorists
from using weapons of mass destruction against the United States, our friends, and allies'. He also stated that, 'as many of you know, the United States has made clear
for many years that i t reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force
to the use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States, our people, our forces and our friends and allies'.
The phrase 'overwhelming force' has always been understoodto refer to the employment of nuclear weapons.
The Bush Administration has seemingly developed a far-reaching policy that is partly designed to deter the acquisition of fissile material by terrorists.
It would seek to deter al Qaeda indirectly by deterring state actors from providing assistance,
such as knowingly transferring fissile material to terrorists.
But more may be at play here. The United States may actually have developed a 'negligence doctrine'
for the deterrence of nuclear terrorism. As former Bush Administration official Elbridge Colby observed of the new policy
, 'any and all thinking of participation, complicity, or negligence
in the face of a catastrophic attack against the United States or its allies should have reason to worry about the retaliation that would follow
'.
If through nuclear forensics the fissile material used in a nuclear terrorist attack were attributed to a
Russian or Pakistani facility, the United States may well respond,
under the new policy, by striking Russia or Pakistan using nuclear weapons
. This would be a proportionate attack, most likely employing low-yield
B61-11 nuclear weapons.
A negligence doctrine would involve striking even if the fissile materials were stolen, not just knowingly leaked, from one of their facilities on grounds that they were 'negligent' in their handling of fissile materials
. Most analysts argue that should fissile material be stolen and used to fuel an improvised bomb it would most likely come from a Russian facility. The central aspect of any deterrence posture is

credibility — advocates of a negligence doctrine argue that this type of deterrence would be credible because the United States has, or will soon have, a nuclear first strike capability against Russia. This is extremely wishful thinking. By no means can the US be said to have a first strike capability. In fact, a negligence doctrine increases the chance of what should properly be regarded as the leading security threat facing the world, namely inadvertent nuclear wa r
. Imagine if a nuclear weapon was detonated in New York that employed fissile material attributed to a Russian nuclear facility
, and that, immediately thereafter, the US decided to adhere to a negligence policy and strike back
with a limited low yield nuclear strike
. Russia would likely respond in kind. This would set off a chain reaction leading
, at best, to limited and controlled exchanges or, at worst, to an all out exchange
. Quite literally, the Bush Administration may have handed al
Qaeda the keys to Armageddon.
The negligence doctrine quite clearly violates the most elementary principles of natural justice. It is clear that the civilian population of, say, Pakistan would in no way be liable for negligence. If implemented — and policies such as this can create 'commitment traps
' — the negligence doctrine will properly be taken as a monumental act of injustice throughout the Islamic world, which would support al Qaeda's political objectives. In the so-called 'war on terror' there is more to be gained through consideration of issues such as Middle East policy and inter-cultural and religious dialogue than there is in military posturing.
Caitlin
, PhD candidate and member of the Security Studies Program in the Department of
Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Spring
(Deterring a Nuclear 9/11, The
Washington Quarterly 30:2, Project Muse)
U.S. leaders also would want to emphasize that retaliation, perhaps in kind, perhaps through devastatingly precise conventional attacks, would be strategically necessary and politically unavoidable in the aftermath of a terrorist nuclear detonation.
The U.S. government could not sit idly by, knowing the origin of a terrorist nuclear weapon detonated on its soil, and not retaliate
against the state(s) or substate organization(s) responsible for it, especially if those states or organizations had a history of supporting terrorism.
To do otherwise would be to invite follow-on attacks and to allow the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans to go unanswered.
The American public would demand retribution, especially if the terrorists themselves were nowhere to be found. Or so U.S. leaders could claim
, whether it is true now or not. The more that U.S. leaders publicly emphasize the possession of an attribution capability and a willingness to retaliate against those who assist terrorists, the more the public will in fact expect such retaliation.
Charles D.
, science and technology fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, 5 October
(Prevention Not Retaliation, Foreign Policy Forum Archives)
Either candidate could find himself in a damned if he does or damned if he doesn’t situation. Many voters would demand instant revenge. Others would argue that retaliation would send a strong message of deterrence
. That is, a devastating U.S. response would tell countries with nuclear material that if you let this dangerous material slip out of your hands, the United States would wreak destruction
on your territory.
Buta nuclear retaliatory response risks violent escalation
.
If terrorists stole nuclear material from a Russian research reactor site, for example, should Washington nuke Moscow? Short of conclusive evidence of the Russian government’s complicity, such a response would be madness and self-defeating. As in the movie and book “Fail Safe,” where a U.S. nuclear bomber accidentally destroyed Moscow, the American president may have to sacrifice
New York to restore balance
–through an eye for an eye -- between the United States and Russia.
Another plausible nuclear terrorist scenario involves terrorists seizing small amounts of weapons-usable material from many nuclear facilities in several countries. Eventually, they gather enough material to make a bomb. Should the United States launch retaliatory attacks against all these countries? Or should Washington punish the country that originally supplied this material? Over many decades, the United States and Russia have provided highly enriched uranium, usable for nuclear bombs, to dozens of countries. Nuclear

forensics on detonated uranium would most likely point to the United States and Russia as sources for the terrorist’s bomb. Launching a retaliatory attack against ourselves, of course, makes no sense.
Michael
, September
(Deterring State Sponsorship of Nuclear Terrorism, CFR, Special Report No.
39)
That debate took center stage in October 2006 when President George W.
Bush declared that the United States would hold North Korea “accountable” if it transferred nuclear weapons or materials to terrorist groups. That was widely interpreted as a threat to retaliate against North
Korea if its materials or weapons were used in a terrorist attack against the United
States
.3 Since then, U.S. policy has expanded
in scope. It was most recently updated by National
Security Adviser
Stephen J.
Hadley
in a February 2008 speech
: The president has approved a new declaratory policy to help deter terrorists from using weapons of mass destruction against the United States , our friends, and allies. … The United States has made clear for many yearsthat it reserves the right to respond with over- whelming force to the use of weapons of mass de-struction
. …
Additionally, the United States will hold any state, terrorist group, or other non-state actor fully accountable for supporting or enabling terrorist efforts
to obtain or use weapons of mass destruction … This statement was notable for three reasons. First, President Bush referred only to
North Korea, but Hadley’s statement applied universally.
4 Second,
Hadley’s remarks appeared to open the door to retaliation in response to inadvertent loss of control over nuclear weapons or materials. Third, Hadley’s statement was remarkable for juxtaposing his declaration about nuclear terrorism with a reference to “over-whelming force.”
By doing that, rather than by simply speaking about “accountability,” he appeared to suggest that the United States might resort to a nuclear response
.
Rueben
28 June
(North Korea, Nuclear Deterrence and a Negligence Doctrine, http://securityandpolitiks.blogspot.com/2009/06/north-korea-nuclear-deterrence-and.html)
This doctrine seeks to deter terrorists indirectly by deterring state actors
from passing on the knowledge or material to terrorist groups.
The US states that: 'any and all thinking of participation, complicity, or negligence in the face of a catastrophic attack against the United States or its allies should have reason to worry about the retaliation that would follow'
.
Sounds like a clear deterrent threat to me
. The problem with this is that even if the material used to conduct a terrorist attack was stolen from the original facility the state in question would be held accountable and the doctrine would have the US launch a 'proportionate' strike.Any strike by the US upon, say, Russia, Pakistan or China, would necessitate a response. Pakistan could probably be deterred, but China or Russia would be unlikely to back down - they have strategic deterrent postures with the US and thus will feel compelled to respond - tit for tat.America may believe that it has escalation dominance in any exchange that breaks out. 'Escalation Dominance' is a strategic theory where one state is able to escalate a conflict to a stage whereby its adversary it forced to back down - it cannot sustain the 'costs' of continued escalation. This is known as 'intra-war' deterrence - the ability to deter an adversary during a war.In the 'real' world, outside the abstract theories of strategists, it would be extremely hard to 'manage' a conflict once it begins and to calculate the pain threshold of an adversary. So, a negligence doctrine could result in catatrophic and uncontrollable war if applied and acted upon
.
Marko
24 August
(The Nuke Strategy Wonk, http://scisec.net/?p=43)

Barack Obama’s running mate, Sen Joe Biden, wrote of the deterrence of nuclear terrorism in a Wall
Street Journal Op-Ed
(titled CSI:Nukes) that, …
Now is the time for a new type of deterrence: We must make clear in advance that we will hold accountable any country that contributes to a terrorist nuclear attack,
whether by directly aiding would-be nuclear terrorists or willfully neglecting its responsibility to secure the nuclear weapons
or weapons-usable nuclear material within its borders.
Deterrence cannot rest on words alone. It must be backed up by capabilities … OK, the VP won’t set policy (Biden is no Cheney) but anyhow let’s not think that expansive conceptions of deterrence are just a Republican thing.

Dr Ian
,, Research Director, British American Security Information Council, “Keeping the Lid On:
Nuclear Security and the Washington Summit,” BASIC, 4-7-
, www.basicint.org/pubs/BASIC-Nukesecurity-full.pdf, accessed 4-10-10.
However, the consequences of a major nuclear security incident would be wider, and last longer, than even any of this analysis would indicate.
Regardless of the fact that terrorists may not leave a known return address, it is very difficult to imagine any country subject to a nuclear terrorist attack not responding with massive military force directed at whatever target was thought responsible. The public and political pressure to identify the perpetrators and any states assisting them would be huge.
Instability, economic chaos and wider conflict would almost certainly follow both the original attack and the response to it. Moreover, the consequences of a nuclear security incident of this kind for the political sustainability of the global civil nuclear renaissance, and therefore for the strategies of many countries trying to achieve energy security while mitigating the effects of climate change could be severe
(Bunn, 2009: 112).
A post nuclear security incident world may be one suffering a very heavy and internationally widespread backlash against all things nuclear. Failure to take the nuclear security challenge seriously could therefore lead not only to major and largescale international conflict and economic disruption but also to a global failure to respond to the challenge of climate change in time.
Improved nuclear security, in this context, is in the interests of all states.

Christopher C.
, Professor, International Law, Georgetown Unviersity and Alexander Ian
Parkhouse, “Nuclear Terrorism in a Globalizing World: Assessing the Threat and the Emerging
Management Regime,” STANFORD JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW v. 45, Summer 20
, p. 204-205.
In the period after the attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11), nuclear terrorism has emerged as the foremost threat to Western security. The prospect of a suicide bomber driving a truck armed with a crude nuclear device into the heart of a major urban area is today considered the ultimate nightmare
. During that debates preceding the 2004 U.S. presidential election, both
George W.
Bush and
John
Kerry
agreed that the gravest security concern to the U nited S tates in the twenty-first century was that a nuclear weapon might fall into the hands of terrorists. n2
Similarly, [*205] after United Nations experts issued a report in 2004 on major threats to world security that included nuclear terrorism
, Secretary-General Kofi
Annan underscored this concern by asserting that, "nuclear terrorism is still often treated as science fiction ... I wish it were.
But unfortunately we live in a world of excess hazardous materials and abundant technological know-how, in which some terrorists clearly state their intention to inflict catastrophic casualtie s." n3

Kurt M.
, Senior Vice President & Kissinger Chair in National Security, CSIS, “Nuclear
Proliferation Beyond the Rogues,” THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, Winter 2002-20
, pp. 7-15.
York and Washington. Certainly, there is heightened vigilance regarding new domestic threats inside industrialized democracies and elsewhere.
The ways in which an increase in domestic terrorism can lead to larger systemic insecurity, however, have re-ceived less attention
. The logical response to greater homeland security challenges is for each country to tighten borders, intensify intelligence and situational awareness, and increase cooperation with the United States and other leading states, not to seek the development of nuclear weapons. Yet, one cannot fully dismiss some potentially illogical or, more precisely, unforeseen responses to wider and more frequent domestic attacks on a global scale. In such an environment, states might reconsider their nuclear position, viewing nuclear capability as a psychological assurance for its citizens as well as a viable deterrent against external threats, particularly In the face of rogue regimes’ support of nonstate actors.
The potential interaction between groups such as Al Qaeda and rogue states with nuclear ambitions has not been lost on many U.S. allies and friends, and states could potentially regard a nuclear capability as a deterrent to being targeted by this collusion of terrorists and rogue states. A manifest increase in threats to homeland security alone is probably not enough to trigger nuclear recalculation, although heightened anxiety over domestic vulnerability to external threats, coupled with other troubling domestic or foreign trends, could trigger a country to reassess its nuclear options more broadly.

, "Hot Docs: The Risk of Biological or Nuclear Terrorism, Restoring the Balance in the Middle
East," 12-3-
, lexis.
Warning Against the Risk of WMD Attack:
A commission appointed by Congress calls it "more likely than not" that terrorists will attack with w eapons of m ass d estruction, perhaps biological or nuclear, " by the end of 2013." The U nited
S tates is not adequately prepared for the current threat
, it warns, saying that even though progress has been made since 2001, "the risks are growing faster than our multilayered defenses. Our margin of safety is shrinking, not growing
." The Commission on the
Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, chaired by former U.S. senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent, issues its report, "World at Risk," which was requested by the 9/11 commission to assess the state of current counterterrorism operations. The report offers recommendations for policymakers, scientists, diplomats, and citizens. In particular, the study focuses on nuclear and biological weapons, which carry the greatest risk for mass casualties. The group highlights the risk of biological agents, saying that terrorists are "more likely" to obtain these than nuclear materials, and calls upon the scientific community to adopt a "culture of security awareness."

Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism (
), PREVENTION OF WMD PROLIFERATION AND TERRORISM REPORT CARD, January 20
, p. 1.
The assessment was based on four factors
.
First, there is direct evidence that terrorists are trying to acquire w eapons of m ass d estruction.
Second, acquiring WMD fits the tactical profile of terrorists. They understand the unique vulnerability of first-world countries to asymmetric weapons —weapons that have a far greater destructive impact than the power it takes to acquire and deploy them. The airplanes that al Qaeda flew into the World Trade Center were asymmetric weapons.
Third
, terrorists have demonstrated global reach and the organizational sophistication to obtain and use WMD.
As recent actions by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula demonstrate, the al Qaeda network is expanding through international partnerships. In particular, it is well within their present capabilities to develop and use bioweapons. As the Commission’s report, World at Risk, found, if al Qaeda recruits skilled bioscientists, it will acquire the capability to develop and use biological weapons.
Fourth, the opportunity to acquire and use such weapons is growing exponentially because of the global proliferation of nuclear material and biological technologies
.
Nicholas D.
, "Guarding Pandora's Box: Strengthening Physical Protection at Facilities that House
Weapons of Mass Destruction and Related Materials," FORDHAM INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL v. 32,
February 20
, p. 1043-1044.
The shape-shifting menace of
twenty-first century terrorism has the international community scrambling to keep up
. n1 Osama bin Laden has called obtaining nuclear weapons a religious "duty
." n2 His terrorist organization,
Al-Qaeda, which has experimented with toxins and chemicals for use in attacks, is training its rank-and-file to use these poisons with manuals that explain the manufacture of deadly substances
. n3 Meanwhile, the internet, with its instantaneous information sharing and inherent anonymity, has witnessed the number of terrorist websites balloon to around 4,800.
n4 Thus, the specter of nuclear, chemical, and biological terrorism has left the United Nations Security
[*1044]
Counci l concerned, not to say frantic
. n5
Matthew
, Professor, Department of Criminal Justice, University of Illinois-Chicago, “The New
Terrorism and International Law,” TULSA JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL LAW v. 10,
20
, p. 302-304.
The contemporary era has ushered in a "new terrorism." n44 Terrorist groups, in the past, generally possessed coherent ideological platforms and aspirations and selected targets which advanced and symbolized these goals. n45 They were sensitive to the need to maintain political legitimacy and avoided intentionally targeting innocents. n46 The
"new terrorists
," in [*303] contrast, are driven by an apocalyptic and millenarian religiously-based worldview which posits that the world must be destroyed in order to cleanse the globe of paganism and impurity
. n47
This predisposes contemporary terrorists to develop and to deploy nuclear, biological and chemical weapons (
NBC
) of mass destruction (
WMD
), n48 which are increasingly available in the global marketplace
. n49 The trend is towards increasingly lethal terrorist incidents and an escalating number of fatalities. n50
This is encouraged by the

enhanced technological sophistication of terrorists
n51 who increasingly are drawn from the ranks of amateur attackers who lack the capacity to carefully calibrate and to control the consequences of their violent conduct.
n52 The spectacular incident also has become the currency of the contemporary terrorists who are caught in a spiral of ever-more dramatic acts of violence to attract media and public attention and to draw the young and impressionable to their ranks. n53
The tightly organized, hierarchical terrorist organization has been replaced by fluid, decentralized and specialized cells which temporarily cooperate and coalesce around particular projects. n54 The individuals involved often lack clear organizational identities and increasingly fail to claim credit or to offer an explanation for the attack. n55 Terrorists also increasingly transcend national boundaries and rely on technology to coordinate and cooperate in their [*304] operations and to carry out operations across the globe. n56 Terrorist groups also rely on a far-flung, sophisticated and difficult to penetrate international financial networks which involve cooperation with drug cartels and petty criminals and other illegitimate enterprises as well as with legitimate charitable organizations, mining interests, currency traders and businesses. n57 This new terrorism also is associated with the advent of the "superterrorist
," n58 individuals characterized by a megalomaniacal desire to leave a historically unprecedented mark of mass devastation and death.
n59 These pernicious personalities are distinguished by a fascination with technological innovation and implementation rather than by a strong commitment to a political cause. n60
Destruction rather than doctrine is the animating aspect of their activity
. n61 The sadistic "super-terrorist" thus belies the conventional conception of terrorists as reasonable and rationale individuals who have adopted violent tactics in order to achieve limited political objectives. n62
, "Modeler Raises Estimate of Terror Attack Losses," 7-28-
, p. 4.
If there were a terrorist attack in the United States, the estimated insured losses have increased 8% in the past year due largely to the growing risk of chemical or biological attacks, according to Risk Management Solutions Inc.'s 2009 terrorism model.
While there have been no successful
nuclear, chemical, biological and radiological terrorist acts, numerous planned attacks have been disrupted worldwide
, said Andrew Coburn, London-based director of terrorism research for
Newark, Calif.-based RMS. In a report, ``Terrorism Risk: 7-Year Retrospective, 7-Year Future Perspective,'' RMS said 1
,450 planned terrorist attacks have been disrupted worldwide since 2001. Strong indications that terrorist groups have resumed NBCR programs and are actively attempting to acquire such materials means the possibility of an NBCR attack in the U nited
S tates cannot be discounted
, Mr. Coburn said.
Bob
Jim
, chairs, Commission on the prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction
Proliferation and Terrorism, "Nuclear Proliferation Endangers World Stability," MIAMI HERALD, 9-15-
, www.heritage.org/Research/Commentary/2008/09/Nuclear-proliferation-endangers-world-stability, accessed 5-1-10.
Few comments or questions on this issue have been posed to the presidential candidates, even though preventing WMD proliferation should be on the short list of priorities for
a McCain or Obama
White House
. And it rarely appears on polls of the most urgent concerns of citizens. So, in 2008, after seven years in which there have been no successful terrorist attacks inside the country, why not relax? Here are the reasons: Terrorists have continued to demonstrate the intent to acquire a WMD capability. As Director of National Intelligence
Admiral Michael
McConnell said
in his Sept. 10, 2007, testimony to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee, " al Qaeda will continue to try to acquire and employ chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material in attacks and would not hesitate to use them if it develops what it deems is sufficient capability
."

Dennis
, (Dir., U.S. National Intelligence), CURRENT AND FUTURE WORLDWIDE THREATS TO THE
NATIONAL SECURITY OF THE UNITED STATES, Hrg. Senate Comm. on Armed Services, Mar. 10, 20
, 14.
Under the
strategic direction of
Usama
Bin Ladin
and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al
Qaeda remains intent on attacking U.S. interests worldwide, including the U.S.
Homeland. Although al Qaeda's core organization in the tribal areas of Pakistan is under greater pressure now than it was a year ago, we assess that it remains the most dangerous component of the larger al Qaeda network.
Al Qaeda leaders still use the tribal areas as a base from which they can avoid capture, produce propaganda, communicate with operational cells abroad, and provide training and indoctrination to new terrorist operatives.
Howard
, (Former Intelligence Officer, U.S. Marine Corps), HOW YOU CAN KILL AL QAEDA, 20
,
15.
Al-Qaeda is, at this very moment, the greatest threat to U.S. national security. Al-Qaeda leadership effectively inspires Muslims to kill U.S. citizens
. Through its unchallenged online messaging to the Muslim public, al-Qaeda garners its critical support and future recruits. Although there is a plethora of influential counter-al-Qaeda ideologues, these counter-voices lack the online marketing to reach general Muslim audiences, and so are unable to undermine alQaeda's violent messages.
Thomas
, (Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute), GROUND TRUTH: THE FUTURE OF
U.S. LAND POWER, 20
, 15.
The situation now should be clear to all. Al
Qaeda continues to be at war with the U nited
S tates, whether or not we choose to be at war with al Qaeda.
Its leaders constantly reiterate their determination to destroy our allies throughout the world and then to destroy us
. They continually reaffirm the centrality of the war in Iraq to their struggle, and their desire to use Iraq as a base for further expansion and violence.
They constantly back their words with actions throughout the world, including attempts--fortunately unsuccessful to date--to attack the American homeland.

–professor of international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of
Government. (Stephen M “In the National Interest: A grand new strategy for American for eign policy”, http://bostonreview.net/BR30.1/walt.php).
A terrorist attack involving WMDs —especially one involving a nuclear weapon— would be another matter entirely
. If a nuclear bomb were to go off in any major American city, hundreds of thousands of lives could be lost in an instant.
The economic damage would be enormous and far-reaching
. We could not know if additional attacks were coming, and we might have little idea how and where to retaliate. Such an event would
probably haveincalculableimplications for America’s security, prosperity, civil liberties, and foreign policy
. Indeed, it could bethe most significant single event in American history
.
[National Review Online, October 28, 2008 Phil Kerpen, policy director fo r Americans for Prosperity From
Panic to
Depression?, http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWQ3ZGYzZTQyZGY4ZWFiZWUxNmYwZTJiNWVkMTIxMmU=]
It’s important that we avoid all these policy errors
— not just for the sake of our prosperity, but for our survival. The Great Depression
, after all, didn’t end until the advent of World War II, the most destructive war in the history of the planet. In a world of nuclear and biological weapons and non-state terrorist organizations that breed on poverty and despair, another global economic breakdown
of such extended duration would risk armed conflicts on an even greater scale

Harvey
, Visiting Lecturer, Forensic Psychiatry, Tel Aviv University, “The ‘Suicide’ Bomber: Is It a
Psychiatric Phenomenon?” PSYCHIATRIC BULLETIN v. 26, 20
, pp. 285-287. Available from the Wrold
Wide Web at: http://pb.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/26/8/285
Although terrorism throughout human history has been tragic, until relatively recently it has been more of an irritant than any major hazard.
However, the existence of weapons of mass destruction now renders terrorism a potential threat to the very existence of human life
(Hoge & Rose, 2001). S uch potential global destruction, or globicide as one might call it, supersedes even that of genocide in its lethality
.
Although religious factors are not the only determinant of ‘suicide’ bombers, the revival of religious fundamentalism towards the end of the 20th century renders the phenomenon a major global threat
. Even though religion can be a force for good, it can equally be abused as a force for evil. Ultimately, the parallel traits in human nature of good and evil may perhaps be the most durable of all the characteristics of the human species. There is no need to apply a psychiatric analysis to the
‘suicide’ bomber because the phenomenon can be explained in political terms. Most participants in terrorism are not usually mentally disordered and their behaviour can be construed more in terms of group dynamics (Colvard, 2002). On the other hand, perhaps psychiatric terminology is as yet deficient in not having the depth to encompass the emotions and behaviour of groups of people whose levels of hate, low self-esteem, humiliation and alienation are such that it is felt that they can be remedied by the mass destruction of life, including their own.

(Terrorism is highly probable- it will cause extinction Reducing the nuclear threat: The argument for public safety By Richard Rhodes | 14 December 2009 Rhodes is the author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), which won the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, National Book Award, and
National Book Critics Circle Award. It was the first of four volumes he has written on the history of the nuclear age. Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (1995), Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the
Nuclear Arms Race (2007), and The Twilight of the Bombs (forthcoming in autumn 2010) are the others.
He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard and MIT, and currently he is an affiliate of the Center for
International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.
The response was very different among nuclear and national security experts when Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar surveyed them in 2005. This group of
85 experts judged that the possibility of a WMD attack
against a city or other target somewhere in the world is real and increasing
over time. The median estimate of the risk of a nuclear attack somewhere in the world by 2010 was 10 percent. The risk of an attack by 2015 doubled to 20 percent median.
There was strong
, though not universal, agreement that a nuclear attack is more likely to be carried out by a terrorist organization than by a government
. The group was split 45 to 55 percent on whether terrorists were more likely to obtain an intact working nuclear weapon or manufacture one after obtaining weapon-grade nuclear material. "The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is not just a security problem," Lugar wrote in the report's introduction. "It is the economic dilemma and the moral challenge of the current age. On September 11, 2001, the world witnessed the destructive potential of international terrorism. But the September 11 attacks do not come close to approximating the destruction that would be unleashed by a nuclear weapon.
W eapons of m ass d estruction have made it possible for a
small nation, or even a
subnational group, to kill as many innocent people in a day as national armies killed in
months of fighting during World War II
. "The bottom line is this," Lugar concluded: "For the foreseeable future, the U nited
S tates and other nations will face an existential threat from the intersection of terrorism and w eapons of m ass d estruction
." It's paradoxical that a diminished threat of a superpower nuclear exchange should somehow have resulted in a world where the danger of at least a single nuclear explosion in a major city has increased (and that city is as likely, or likelier, to be Moscow as it is to be Washington or New York). We tend to think that a terrorist nuclear attack would lead us to drive for the elimination of nuclear weapons. I think the opposite case is at least equally likely :
A terrorist nuclear attack would almost certainly be followed by a retaliatory nuclear strike
on whatever country we believed to be sheltering the perpetrators.
That response would surely initiate a new round of nuclear armament and rearmament
in the name of deterrence, h owever illogical. Think of how much 9/11 frightened us; think of how desperate our leaders were to prevent any further such attacks; think of the fact that we invaded and occupied a country, Iraq, that had nothing to do with those attacks in the name of sending a message.
[Sheldon, Salon.com, March 31 http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/03/31/knowledge/index.html]
A similar trend has appeared in proposed solutions to high-tech terrorist threats. Advances in biotech, chemistry, and other fields are expanding the power of individuals to cause harm, and this has many people worried. Glenn E. Schweitzer and Carole C.
Dorsch, writing for The Futurist, gave this warning in 1999:
"Technological advances threaten to outdo anything terrorists have done before; superterrorism has the potential to eradicate civilization as we know it."
Schweitzer and Dorsch are so alarmed that they go on to say, "Civil liberties are important for a democratic society; the time has arrived, however, to reconfigure some aspects of democracy, given the violence that is on the doorstep." The
Sept. 11 attacks have obviously added credence to their opinions. In 1999, they recommended an expanded role for the CIA, "greater government intervention" in Americans' lives, and the "honorable deed" of "whistle-blowing" -- proposals that went from fringe ideas to policy options and talk-show banter in less than a year. Taken together, their proposals aim to gather information from companies and individuals and feed that information into government agencies. A network of cameras positioned on street corners would nicely complement their vision of
America during the 21st century. If after Sept. 11 and the anthrax scare these still sound like wacky Orwellian ideas to you, imagine how they will sound the day a terrorist opens a jar of Ebola-AIDS spores on Capitol Hill. As Sun Microsystems' chief scientist, Bill Joy, warned: "We

have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-century technologies -- robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology
-- pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self-replicate. A bomb is blown up only once -- but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control." Joy calls the new threats "knowledge-enabled mass destruction."
To cause great harm to millions of people, an extreme person will need only dangerous knowledge
, which itself will move through the biosphere, encoded as matter, and flit from place to place as easily as dangerous ideas now travel between our minds. In the information age, dangerous knowledge can be copied and disseminated at light speed, and it th reatens everyone. Therefore, Joy's perfectly reasonable conclusion is that we should relinquish "certain kinds of knowledge." He says that it is time to reconsider the open, unrestrained pursuit of knowledge that has been the foundation of science for 300 years. " Despite the strong historical precedents, if open access to and unlimited development of knowledge henceforth puts us all in clear danger of extinction
, then common sense demands that we reexamine even these basic, long-held beliefs."
Yonah
, Professor and Director, Inter-University Center for Terrorism, “Terrorism in the
Twenty-First Century: Threats and Responses,” DEPAUL BUSINESS LAW JOURNAL v. 12, Fall 1999/Spring
20
, p. 79-80.
More specifically, present-day terrorists have introduced into contemporary life a new scale of terror violence in terms of both threats and responses that has made clear that we have entered into an Age of Terrorism with all of its serious implications to national, regional, and global security concerns
. n25
Perhaps the most significant dangers that evolve from modern day terrorism are those relating to the safety, welfare, and rights of ordinary people; the stability of the state system; the health of economic [*67] development; the expansion of democracy; and possibly the survival of civilization itself.

(Harvey- is a senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information and
Resource Service, " America's Nuclear Terrorist Threat To Itself", New Humanist, http://www.newhumanist.com/nuclear.html)
No sane nation hands to a wartime enemy atomic weapons set to go off within its own homeland, and then lights the fuse.
Yet as the bombs and missiles drop on Afghanistan, the certainty of terror retaliation inside America has turned our 103 nuclear power plants into weapons of apocalyptic destruction, just waiting to be used against us. One or both planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, could have easily obliterated the two atomic reactors now operating at Indian Point
, about 40 miles up the Hudson.
The catastrophic devastation would have been unfathomable. But those and a hundred other American reactors are still running
. Security has been heightened. But all are vulnerable to another sophisticated terror attack aimed at perpetrating the unthinkable
. Indian Point Unit One was shut long ago by public outcry. But Units 2 & 3 have operated since the 1970s.
Back then there was talk of requiring reactor containment domes to be strong enough to withstand a jetliner crash. But the biggest jets were far smaller than the ones that fly today. Nor did those early calculations account for the jet fuel whose hellish fire melted the critical steel supports that ultimately brought down the Trade Center.Had one or both those jets hit one or both the operating reactors at Indian Point, the ensuing cloud of radiation would have dwarfed the ones at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. The intense radioactive heat within today's operating reactors is the hottest anywhere on the planet. So are the hellish levels of radioactivity.
Because Indian Point has operated so long, its accumulated radioactive burden far exceeds that of Chernobyl, which ran only four years before it exploded. Some believe the WTC jets could have collapsed or breached either of the Indian
Point containment domes. But at very least the massive impact and intense jet fuel fire would destroy the human ability to control the plants' functions. Vital cooling systems, backup power generators and communications networks would crumble.
Indeed, Indian Point Unit One was shut because activists warned that its lack of an emergency core cooling system made it an unacceptable risk. The government ultimately agreed. But today terrorist attacks could destroy those same critical cooling and control systems that are vital to not only the Unit Two and
Three reactor cores, but to the spent fuel pools that sit on site. The assault would not require a large jet. The safety systems are extremely complex and virtually indefensible. One or more could be wiped out with a wide range of easily deployed small aircraft, ground-based weapons, truck bombs or even chemical/biological assaults aimed at the operating work force. Dozens of US reactors have repeatedly failed even modest security tests over the years. Even heightened wartime standards cannot guarantee protection of the vast, supremely sensitive controls required for reactor safety. Without continous monitoring and guaranteed water flow, the thousands of tons of radioactive rods in the cores and the thousands more stored in those fragile pools would rapidly melt into super-hot radioactive balls of lava that would burn into the ground and the water table and, ultimately, the Hudson.
Indeed, a jetcrash like the one on 9/11 or other forms of terrorist assault at Indian Point could yield three infernal fireballs of molten radioactive lava burning through the earth and into the aquifer and the river. Striking water they would blast gigantic billows of horribly radioactive steam into the atmosphere. Prevailing winds from the north and west might initially drive these clouds of mass death downriver into New York City and east into Westchester and Long Island.
But at Three Mile
Island and Chernobyl, winds ultimately shifted around the compass to irradiate all surrounding areas with the devastating poisons released by the on-going fiery torrent. At Indian Point, thousands of square miles would have been saturated with the most lethal clouds ever created or imagined, depositing relentless genetic poisons that would kill forever.In nearby communities like Buchanan, Nyack, Monsey and scores more, infants and small children would quickly die en masse.
Virtually all pregnant women would spontaneously abort, or ultimately give birth to horribly deformed offspring. Ghastly sores, rashes, ulcerations and burns would afflict the skin of millions. Emphysema, heart attacks,

stroke, multiple organ failure, hair loss, nausea, inability to eat or drink or swallow, diarrhea and incontinance, sterility and impotence, asthma, blindness, and more would kill thousands on the spot, and doom hundreds of thousands if not millions. A terrible metallic taste would afflict virtually everyone downwind in New York, New Jersey and New England, a ghoulish curse similar to that endured by the fliers who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagaskai, by those living downwind from nuclear bomb tests in the south seas and Nevada, and by victims caught in the downdrafts from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
Then comes the abominable wave of cancers, leukemias, lymphomas, tumors and hellish diseases for which new names will have to be invented, and new dimensions of agony will beg description.Indeed, those who survived the initial wave of radiation would envy those who did not.Evacuation would be impossible, but thousands would die trying.
Bridges and highways would become killing fields for those attempting to escape to destinations that would soon enough become equally deadly as the winds shifted.
Attempts to quench the fires would be futile.
At Chernobyl, pilots flying helicopters that dropped boron on the fiery core died in droves. At Indian Point, such missions would be a sure ticket to death. Their utility would be doubtful as the molten cores rage uncontrolled for days, weeks and years, spewing ever more devastation into the eco-sphere. More than 800,000 Soviet draftees were forced through Chernobyl's seething remains in a futile attempt to clean it up. They are dying in droves. Who would now volunteer for such an
American task force? The radioactive cloud from Chernobyl blanketed the vast Ukraine and Belarus landscape, then carried over Europe and into the jetstream, surging through the west coast of the United States within ten days, carrying across our northern tier, circling the globe, then coming back again.
The radioactive clouds from Indian Point would enshroud New York, New
Jersey, New England, and carry deep into the Atlantic and up into Canada and across to
Europe and around the globe again and again.The immediate damage would render thousands of the world's most populous and expensive square miles permanently uninhabitable. All five boroughs of New York City would be an apocalyptic wasteland.
The
World Trade Center would be rendered as unusable and even more lethal by a jet crash at Indian Point than it was by the direct hits of 9/11.
All real estate and economic value would be poisonously radioactive throughout the entire region. Irreplaceable trillions in human capital would be forever lost.
As at Three Mile
Island, where thousands of farm and wild animals died in heaps, and as at Chernobyl, where soil, water and plant life have been hopelessly irradiated, natural eco-systems on which human and all other life depends would be permanently and irrevocably destroyed,
Spiritually, psychologically, financially, ecologically, our nation would never recover
.This is what we missed by a mere forty miles near New York City on September 11. Now that we are at war, this is what could be happening as you read this.
There are 103 of these potential Bombs of the Apocalypse now operating in the United
States.
They generate just 18% of America's electricity, just 8% of our total energy. As with reactors elsewhere, the two at Indian Point have both been off-line for long periods of time with no appreciable impact on life in New York. Already an extremely expensive source of electricity, the cost of attempting to defend these reactors will put nuclear energy even further off the competitive scale.

, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,
("The Taliban's Atomic Threat", May, http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB124121967978578985.html
His words are not reassuring in light of the Taliban's military and political gains throughout Pakistan.
Our security
, and that of friends and allies world-wide, depends critically on preventing more adversaries
, especially ones with otherworldly ideologies, from acquiring nuclear weapons
. Unless there is swift, decisive action against the Islamic radicals there,
Pakistan faces two very worrisome scenarios. One scenario is that instability continues to grow
, and that the radicals disrupt
both
Pakistan's weak democratic institutions and the military.
Often known as Pakistan's "steel skeleton" for holding the country together after successive corrupt or incompetent civilian governments, the military itself is now gravely threatened from within by rising pro-Taliban sentiment
. In these circumstances -- especially if
, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified recently, the nuclear arsenal has been dispersed around the country
-- there is a tangible risk that several weapons could slip out of military control. Such weapons could then find their way to al
Qaeda or other terrorists
, with obvious global implications
. The second scenario is even more dangerous.
Instability could cause the
constitutional government to collapse entirely and the military to fragment
.
This could allow a well-organized
, tightly disciplined group to seize control of the entire Pakistani government.
While Taliban-like radicals might not have even a remote chance to prevail in free and fair elections, they could well take advantage of chaos to seize power. If that happened, a radical Islamicist regime in
Pakistan would control a substantial nuclear weapons capacity
.
Not only could this second scenario give international terrorists even greater access to Pakistan's nuclear capabilities
, the risk of nuclear confrontation with India would also increase dramatically
. Moreover
, Iran would certainly further accelerate its own weapons program, followed inexorably by others in the region
(e.g.,
Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey) obtaining nuclear weapons
, perhaps through direct purchase
from Islamabad's new regime.

Stephen, Natl Sec Studies, “The Fragile state of container security,” testimony before the senate, March 20 http://www.cfr.org/publication.html?id=5730
A year later I joined with former senators Warren Rudman and Gary Hart in preparing our report, “America: Still Unprepared—Still
In Danger.” We observed that “nineteen men wielding box-cutters forced the United States to do to itself what no adversary could ever accomplish: a successful blockade of the U.S. economy .
If a surprise terrorist attack were to happen tomorrow involving the sea, rail, or truck transportation systems that carry millions of tons of trade to the United States each day, the response would
likely be the same
—a selfimposed global embargo .” Based on that analysis, we identified as seco nd of the six critical mandates that deserve the nation’s immediate attention: “Make trade security a global priority; the system for moving goods affordably and reliably around the world is ripe for exploitation and vulnerable to mass disruption by ter rorists.” This is why the topic of today’s hearing is so important. The stakes are enormous. U.S. prosperity —and much of its power—relies on its ready access to global markets. Both the scale and pace at which goods move between markets has exploded in recent years thanks in no small part to the invention and proliferation of the intermodal container. These ubiquitous boxes —most come in the 40’x8’x8’ size—have transformed the transfer of cargo from a truck, train, and ship into the transportation equivalent of connecting Lego blocks. The result has been to increasingly diminish the role of distance for a supplier or a consumer as a constraint in the world marketplace.
Ninety percent of the world’s freight now moves in a container.
Companies like Wal-Mart and Ge neral Motors move up to 30 tons of merchandise or parts across the vast Pacific Ocean from Asia to the West Coast for about $1600. The transatlantic trip runs just over a $1000
—which makes the postage stamp seem a bit overpriced. But the system that underpins the incredibly efficient, reliable, and affordable movement of global freight has one glaring shortcoming in the post-9-11 world
—it was built without credible safeguards to prevent it from being exploited or targeted by terrorists and criminals. Prior to September
11, 2001, virtually anyone in the world could arrange with an international shipper or carrier to have an empty intermodal container delivered to their home or workplace. They then could load it with tons of material, declare in only the most general terms what the contents were, “seal” it with a 50-cent lead tag, and send it on its way to any city and town in the United States. The job of transportation providers was to move the box as expeditiously as possible. Exercising any care to ensure that the integrity of a container’s contents was not compromised may have been a commercial practice, but it was not a requirement. The responsibility for making sure that goods loaded in a box were legitimate and authorized was shouldered almost exclusively by the importing jurisdiction. But as the volume of containerized cargo grew exponentially, the number of agents assigned to police that cargo stayed flat or even declined among most trading nations. The rule of thumb in the inspection business is that it takes five agents three hours to conduct a thorough physical examination of a single full intermodal container. Last year nearly 20 million containers washed across America’s borders via a ship, train, and truck. Frontline agencies had only enough inspectors and equipment to examine between 1-2 percent of that cargo. Thus, for would-be terrorists, the global intermodal container system that is responsible for moving the overwhelming majority of the world’s freight satisfies the age-old criteria of opportunity and motive.
“Opportunity” flows from (1) the almost complete absence of any security oversight in the loading and transporting of a box from its point of origin to its final destination, and (2) the fact that growing volume and velocity at which containers move around the planet create a daunting “needle-in-the-haystack” problem for inspectors. “Motive” is derived from the role that the container now plays in underpinning global supply chains and the likely response by the U.S. government to an attack involving a container.
Based on statements by the key officials at U.S. Customs, the Transportation Security Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Department of Transportation, should a container be used as a “poor man’s missile,” the shipment of all containerized cargo into our ports and across our borders would be halted.
As a consequence
, a modest investment by a terrorist could yield billions of dollars in losses to the U.S. economy by shutting down —even temporarily—the system that moves “just-in-time” shipments of parts and goods.
Given the current state of container security, it is hard to imagine how a post-event lock-down on container shipments could be either prevented or short-lived. One thing we should have learned from the 9-11 attacks in volving passenger airliners, the follow-on anthrax attacks, and even last fall Washington sniper spree is that terrorist incidents pose a special challenge for public officials. In the case of most disasters, the reaction by the general public is almost always to assume the event is an isolated one. Even if the post-mortem provides evidence of a systemic vulnerability, it often takes a good deal of effort to mobilize a public policy response to redress it. But just the opposite happens in the event of a terrorist attack —especially one involving catastrophic consequences. When these attacks take place, the assumption by the general public is almost always to presume a general vulnerability unless there is proof to the contrary. Government officials have to confront head-on this loss of public confidence by marshalling evidence that they have a credible means to manage the risk highlighted by the terrorist incident. In the interim as recent events have shown, people will refuse to fly, open their mail, or even leave their homes. If a terrorist were to use a container as a weapon-delivery devise, the easiest choice would be high-explosives such as those used in the attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Some form of chemical weapon, perhaps even

involving hazardous materials, is another likely scenario. A bio-weapon is a less attractive choice for a terrorist because of the challenge of dispersing the agent in a sufficiently concentrated form beyond the area where the explosive devise goes off. A “dirty bomb” is the more likely threat vs. a nuclear weapon, but all these scenarios are conceivable since the choice of a weapon would not be constrained by any security measures currently in place in our seaports or within the intermodal transportation industry.
This is why a terrorist attack involving a cargo container could cause such profound economic disruption
. An incident triggered by even a conventional weapon going off in a box could result in a substantial loss of life. In the immediate aftermath , the general public will want reassurance that one of the many other thousands of containers arriving on any given day will not pose a similar risk. The President of the United States, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and other keys officials responsible for the security of the nation would have to stand before a traumatized and likely skeptical American people and outline the measures they have in place to prevent another such attack. In the absence of a convincing security framework to manage the risk of another incident,
the public would
likely insist that all containerized cargo be stopped until adequate safeguards are in place. Even with the most focused effort, constructing that framework from scratch could take months —even years. Yet, within three weeks, the entire worldwide intermodal transportation industry would effectively be brought to its knees —as would much of the freight movements that make up international trade.