PERSPECTIVE ON TERRORISM : The Info Explosion Turns Lethal

Question: You’ve suggested these components of “third wave” warfare, or terrorism in the Information Age: scientific prowess in the form of development of deadly chemical and biological weapons, as well as the unlocked secrets of the atom; a broad, global pool of people with graduate-level education in the sciences and access to lethal knowledge, and free societies organized to defend against enemy or rogue states but not rogue individuals or small groups among their own population.

Answer: Yes, and this emergent reality poses a particular problem for democratic societies. If a state can use overwhelming force and repression, it can probably crush any threat within its territory, at least for a certain period of time. But democratic societies limit that kind of use of power by the state. The rise of stateless violence threatens not just repressive states but the socially necessary order of democratic societies.

I have little doubt that there will arise in response to these acts of violence a large sympathy among the average population to monitor anyone considered potentially dangerous. Will democratic states then begin monitoring cults, or, for that matter, religions in general, or other organizations like Greenpeace or any ethnic group that hails from a troubled homeland? What will that mean for freedom and pluralism?

*

Q: Something else you have written about makes us more vulnerable than in the past: In complex, interdependent systems--with airports, 747s, Eurotunnels, skyscrapers, subway systems--a small intervention can be leveraged into a mass disaster.

A: As the scientist Ilya Prigogine has noted, when a system becomes what he describes as “far from equilibrium,” it loses any linear relationship between cause and effect. In such a condition of disequilibrium, a small input can produce a disproportionately large effect.

This means politically that small groups or grouplets that choose to disrupt a society can do so massively, especially when their power is magnified though possession of lethal knowledge. To the extent that mass politics has seen its day, as I believe it has, there will be a proliferation of small congregations of people all trying to make their mark, some with violence. The Aum Supreme Truth sect has only something like a few thousand members in all of Japan.

*

Q: So, in the future, we must all live in the fear of some kook with a beef?

A: All of us today live with a kind of floating fear in the background of our lives. This makes me think of the way that Paleolithic humans lived in ancient times when they knew nothing about the external world. They had no reliable information, no scientific knowledge. Everything was uncertain. People were afraid of trees, stones and the sun. Today, it seems, we are heading back toward living constantly with that kind of anxiety.

*

Q: Talk about a deep irony--our anxiety today about an insecure environment comes not from ignorance, but from the wide dispersion of information, including lethal knowledge. What can be done? The chemical ingredients that went into producing the sarin gas, for example, were all legally available.

A: In the future, every product is going to be bar-coded and identified; everything will have its distinct signature and we will have tools that can monitor their use. Every canister of chemicals will have an ID number that will be readable, perhaps even detectable from a satellite. So, levels of surveillance--of goods as well as people--will rise, though you cannot of course see what is in the minds of people.

Moreover, as we move toward electronic money, we will be able to track all transactions . . . (and) all communications are inevitably going to be encrypted. There is already a race on between the code-makers and the code-breakers.

The encryption issue also involves a re-evaluation of the way we have looked at freedom of information. Reasonable people who believe in freedom of information have recognized that a certain modicum of secrecy by the state, until now, slowed proliferation of nuclear weapons. The question is: To what degree will it be possible to control information in the future in ways that will stop the spread of these chemical and biological weapons that are more easily manufactured? The answer is that it will be very, very difficult.

Though I lean toward a libertarian view on the free availability of information, I cannot simply brush aside the concerns of the FBI or Interpol that the inability to control the spread of certain information can lead to the mass murder of innocent people. The stakes are larger than they have ever been. It is one thing to say we don’t like big government and we don’t want Big Brother looking over our shoulder. But do we like the alternative of a world where the most ruthless and most depraved can gain access to the means of mass destruction, apply them and get way with it?