Difference between revisions of "Talk:Lecture 2"

Revision as of 03:43, 10 September 2005

Ok, here we go.

I am not too sure of the perfect way to start this up, but I will just start with throwing out questions that came up for me in lecture.

General Issues

Premise: Something has changed, with the Third Wave of terrorism, so that now terrorists have a new goal of waging war. My first impression is that this still sounds like a tactic to me - the goals should be more concrete, such as gaining concessions from the United States, or Western Nations.

Q: Have the goals of terrorism changed? Under what conditions would Al Qaeda decide to call off the war, negotiate a truce, etc?

Premise: There have been changes in the nature of terrorism that now terrorists are more inclined towards causing mass casualties. In the past, perhaps it was constrained by the need to maintain good public support, or the support of the state sponsor.

Q: Does Al Qaeda have anything to protect that would cause it to shy away from total warfare?

• My thoughts: They seem unconcerned with public opinion within the US, besides perhaps creating fear. This may be a mistake since the ability of the U.S. government to wage counter-warfare is dependent upon public support. They certainly need to protect public opinion within the Arab world, whether among the people who are potential recruits, or the people who donate money to the organization. As such, I would expect that they would still be constrained in similar ways as under state sponsorship.

•  ?

Technology Issues

Complexity/Magic tree idea: One weakness that we have against terrorism is the complexity of our society, the fact that there are interdependent systems that often have hubs and leverage points. Case in point, a single tree falling in the right spot can cause wide-ranging power outages (with resulting problems).

Q: Does engineering systems to be robust against natural disasters (and minor ones like trees) and hooligans provide enough protection against a lot of the things that terrorists would do? Or are there ways in which terrorists might attack a complex system that is very different from nature and the hooligans?

Social Issues

I am just going to pose the question that Maurer asked, so that maybe some people will take a stab at it.

Q: Is outsourcing the most efficient way for Al Qaeda to wage war?

yes, because they want to get the message across with mass publicity. Then they take the blame for a terrorist action, and boom, more publicity...

But heres another question, should US and other democratic nation-states increase security on the 9/11 ann., or should this been happening everyday?

I actually thought that an interesting idea Professor Maurer alluded to was that outsourcing may be a more inefficient way of conducting business for terrorists than keeping things in-house would be. Professor Maurer mentioned the economist Ronald Coase. From what I read on the internet, Coase pointed out that, while outsourcing may traditionally be thought of as the most efficient way to get things done (since the market makes sure that tasks are performed by the firms that can do them at the least cost), transaction costs sometimes make outsourcing more inefficient than doing things in-house. In the case of a terrorist organization, I’m guessing that the most significant transaction costs are “enforcement and policing costs.” That is, when you contract out some part of a terrorist plot, you have to make sure that the party with whom you’re contracting 1) actually does what you’ve paid them to do and 2) doesn’t leak information to the authorities either on purpose or inadvertently. As Professor Maurer mentioned, Bin Laden has gotten burned trying to orchestrate complex plots using outside contractors (e.g. spending millions on unusable uranium, or having hard drives with sensitive information on them found by U.S. authorities). Anyway, I guess I’m wondering if Bin Laden’s outsourcing may make his plots easier to foil since outsourcing must make it harder for him to ensure quality and secrecy. Avi Springer