Terrorism is deeply scary. The most frightening events of the 21st century center around terrorism. As a result many communities spend trillions of dollars to stop it from happening. But this money is not well spent. This is a case of not asking the right questions, and the result of not asking the right questions is not working on the right problem, so trillions of dollars being wasted.
The right question is “Why do terrorists commit these acts?” The right answer is, “To advertise a cause.”
This answer means that fighting terrorism is not about combating evil people. It’s about combating evil advertising.
Pop Quiz time:
What do the Haymarket Bombing incident of 1886 and the 9-11 Disaster of 2001 have in common?
A whole lot it turns out. The most important being that they were hugely memorable terrorist incidents in their decades, and they changed the course of public thinking on hot social issues of their day. The burning Twin Towers are an icon of the 2001 event and are still a potent image today. The caricature of a bomb-toting anarchist ready to cause trouble is a similar iconic image that dates from the Haymarket incident.
Three other things they have in common is what makes both memorable:
Here are some details.
Public authority figures killed - in the 9-11 incident about 400 first responders died. At Haymarket seven policemen were killed by a bomb thrown into their midst.
Foreigners involved - the 19 hijackers who died on the four planes of the 9-11 incident were all from Yemen. They had been living in Hamburg when the plot was hatched. Who threw the bomb at Haymarket was never actually determined - there was a lot of confusion in what was happening at the rally at the time it was thrown. But in the panic of the following days a mix of one American and six immigrants were accused, arrested, and soon tried and convicted. What they had in common was supporting the anarchy movement. And in the panic that followed the Haymarket bombing, in the public’s eyes Anarchy became the al-Qaeda of those days - the evil, scary movement ready to support all kinds of sneaky violence. (Prior to Haymarket, Anarchy goals and ideals sounded a lot like today’s Libertarian goals and ideals.)
New technology involved - in the case of 9-11 no one had ever turned a jet plane into a suicide bomb. There had been many hijackings previously, but in every case before 9-11 it was the goal of everyone - hijackers, passengers, pilots and negotiators - to have the plane land safely. In addition, the al-Qaeda terrorists added a huge cherry on top by flying into a skyscraper. Wow! What a scary combination! (Plowing one into the Pentagon was a nice try at topping it.) In the Haymarket case dynamite had been patented in 1867, just twenty years earlier. Dynamite was the first compact, portable high explosive that was easily obtained by the public. Like using a jet plane, using dynamite for an act of public violence was a concept that had been thought about, but never acted upon prior to this incident. It was scary in much the same way.
Authority figures killed, foreigners involved, modern technology being used in a new way to do the killing. This is a potent combination for making a memorable terrorist event. This combination deeply powers the protective instinct in the community, but this is a time when good analytic thinking is needed to decide what to protect against.
The waste that followed these events, the goat sacrificing, was protecting from the wrong thing. Both of these incidents stirred deep fears and the community acted upon those fears in panicked ways, which means they were using heart-thinking, not head-thinking. In both cases the costs of this hasty heart-thinking have been huge. I will go into the 9-11 costs in detail.
This 26 Apr 13 WSJ The Numbers Guy article, “Bill for a Bombing Can Be Hard to Tally” by Carl Bailik, is about the costs of terrorist disasters. From the article: “Economists still haven't reached a consensus on the cost of the far-deadlier Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Questions such as whether to count the cost of the war in Afghanistan, the plunge in the stock market after the attacks and the post-9/11 fall in airline travel, have led to a broad range of estimates, from less than $100 billion to more than $2 trillion.”
Personally, I go with the 2 trillion.
To give these numbers some perspective, the World Trade Center (WTC) itself was insured for 3 billion. These cost estimates show how this Blunder (my term for a panic reaction) grew to involve much, much more than two skyscrapers, four jet planes and thousands of deaths. The added cost (waste is also a good word) was self-inflicted because we as a community got afraid... very afraid, and we ignored that fine proverb about vengeance - “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” Instead calling for some cool-headed analysis of how to respond to the 9-11 incident, the American public called for action. “Blame Bush” if you like, but in those scary days of the early 2000's, the President had well beyond a simple majority of Americans rooting for him. He had some of the highest popularity ratings in history, in the 70% range.
My way of looking is this: The terrorists inflict one WTC of damage, on America; America responded by inflicting 20 to 1,000 WTC's on itself. What this means is: What we need to be protecting ourselves from is not the terrorist act, but the huge emotional response to it. We need to remember that the terrorist act is advertising. If we don’t respond to it, if we don’t “buy the product”, the advertisers will find a different way of promoting their cause. I cover this in more detail below.
Terrorism uses violence to promote a cause. What separates it from other ways of using violence to promote a cause - such as a French or Russian Revolution - is that it is done on the cheap and by a small group.
In the 21st century, terrorism strategies have been modified to adapt to modern communication techniques, other technologies, and contemporary deep fears. One of the new and spooky twists is that terrorism symbiotes with formal news media. The news media thirsts for news that lots of people want to watch, and a community's instinct to become fearful is an easy instinct to resonate with. It is the basis for the famous media saying, “If it bleeds, it leads.” The formal news media loves a story about violence, and if there are famous people or places involved, innocents harmed, and threats of a repeat, that's icing on the top. Terrorism provides all of the above and very inexpensively as far as terrorist decision makers are concerned. The people who commit these acts are volunteers and the equipment they need is dirt cheap. Again, terrorism is a form of advertising. It's about promoting a cause. The leaders of the groups which perform terrorist acts are constantly monitoring, “What was the payback? How much attention did we grab?” for the violence they plan and execute. The leaders watch, and so to the volunteers. If the volunteers don’t see enough personal glory in what they are being asked to do, they will pass.
A different point of view is that terrorists are “bad to the bone”, as in, deeply evil people. These deeply evil people will be doing these terrible things with or without publicity. And because they are evil, they are sneaky and break rules. This means the effective way for a community to fight them is with fire, as in, have the police forces and military forces combating them be sneaky and break rules, too, just like we see in spy movies. To help them find these evil people and foil their plots, police forces should know everything about everyone. That way they know who to watch, and when to act. This fire-with-fire solution has the virtue of letting many people, people for whom the fear instinct is well developed, sleep better at night. This is why communities will support spending a whole lot of money on sneaky anti-terrorist activities, sneaky in the sense that the public doesn’t know the specifics of what these activities are. This is the same as supporting spying, but on a much bigger scale, and with the enemy in our midst as well as on some distant shore.
When this point of view is pursued by the community, some people sleep better, others fret at the loss of privacy and civil liberties, and the rise of secret police. I fret at the loss of civil liberties and the huge waste that comes with spending lots of time, money, and attention on trying to solve the wrong problem.
An obvious and direct cost is the increase in security expenses. According to this 11 Sep 13 Pew Research Center article, “U.S. spends over $16 billion annually on counter-terrorism”, America has spent over 500 billion since 9-11, and 16 billion in 2013. This spending on counter-terrorism has transformed the Washington DC area into one of America's biggest job creators. Fear has transformed The Beltway into a premier boom town of the 2010's.
A second direct cost is erosion of civil liberties. Who decides who is a terrorist, and who gets to look where for them? A continuing example of civil liberties erosion is the suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo - they have been there, without any kind of trial, for more than a decade. Rule of Law can’t deal with these people? If Rule of Law can’t deal with them, who else can it not deal with? America's surge in SWAT-style tactics when dealing with all kinds of suspects, not just terrorists, is an example of extending this civil liberties erosion.
The secondary costs are much greater. The TSA, charged with protecting our airports, acts like a modern state-sponsored religion. “Worship at the Altar of the Holy Metal Detector and your plane will fly better... Oh, and did I mention that all must worship?” Welcome to a modern form of religious intolerance. And, yes, this is about faith, not fact. If this searching ritual was about fact then what you say around the TSA inspecting areas should make no difference because what a person says does not affect physical facts. In real life what is being said makes a lot of difference.
It gets worse. Looking for something that's going to happen once in a blue moon is something machines and computers do well, not people. This means that the tens of thousands of people whose job it is to look for and stop terrorists are going to be terminally bored. This boredom means that all kinds of corruption, sloppiness, and system gaming become serious temptations. Add to this the secret, black ops nature of many counter-terrorist jobs and... whew! What waste will be supported!
Then there is the enfranchisement issue. How can people stay enfranchised when so much is so secret? Here is a simple example.
Person A, in a black suit and sunglasses, comes up to Person B, in an informal tourist outfit.
A: I'm from the government and I'm here to help you. Show me your wallet.
B: How do I know you're from the government?
A: You don't, I'm a secret agent.
B: I know our government authorizes secret agents... But how do I know you are one of them?
A: I have this secret agent ID card. [shows B the card, B looks it over]
B: OK... who can I call to confirm that this ID card is for real, not something you just made up two days ago?
A: Sorry, that's classified information. Now, hand over your wallet.
B: Can I ask a policeman?
A: He won't know anymore that you do, sorry.
Person B cannot confirm that Person A is for real. After this encounter how can we expect Person B to be willing to support his government in the future? How can he tell the difference between government employees and con artists? This fictional episode demonstrates the kind of disenfranchising that not following Rule of Law leads to.
Another example of a “Blunder Scar” (my term for an enduring problem caused by a Blunder) is the current state of US airports and air travel. This 29 Mar 14 Economist article, “America’s awful airports: A new ranking”, talks about how terrible the service and facilities are at American airports compared to the overseas airports they connect to. From the article, “Soggy pizza, surly security staff and endless queues: American airports offer a shabby welcome to the greatest nation on earth. On March 26th Skytrax, a consultancy, released its list of the world’s 100 best airports. The highest-ranked in America was tiny Cincinnati, at 27th.”
Why is this? My answer is that this is happening because of the Blunder Scar from the 9-11 Disaster. Even before 9-11 many Americans had a deep-seated fear of flying, but the 9-11 Disaster changed how that fear was expressed. Thanks to the TSA rituals American flyers now expect they have to endure the flying experience. They have no hope of enjoying it. They feel they have to put up and shut up. Compare this to the expectations a traveler has when he or she arrives at their hotel, assuming they will be greeted with high standards of customer service as well as first-rate quality accommodations. The long term result of this fear has been a paralysis of what Americans expect from their flying experience. Americans don't expect planes to get better, they don't expect airports to get better, they don't expect the experience to get better. Instead they expect things will stay the same.
What can be done to erase this scar... to get over it, and allow commercial travelers to once again enjoy flying?
First on the list is to understand that fear of flying and airport security are two different issues. The current TSA rituals treat them as one and the same. So Americans need to decide if the TSA is in the business of making airports more secure, or the business of helping passengers to sooth their fear of flying. If the TSA is in the help-calm-fears business, then treat their airport presence like the new religion it is and make it optional to endure the ritual and sacrifices, as in, freedom of religion. People can walk by the searching and checkpoints (or whatever rituals replace them) if they feel confident the plane will fly fine without engaging in them. If the TSA is in the airport security business, then reform the TSA practices to make them discrete instead of obtrusive. Currently the obtrusive TSA rituals serve to vividly and frequently remind Americans that they have something to be scared of. This helps the scar endure and with it the paralysis of expectations for improving air travel.
Enough about flying, back to terrorism. What is the best way to reduce terrorism?
If terrorism is about advertising a cause, then the best way to reduce it is to ignore the advertisement. This means even though something terrible and scary has happened, stay on target, conduct business as usual. Business as usual is the primary defense against terrorism.
Yes, this is something that has to be learned. It has to be learned by practice, practice, practice - instinct won't help. We need to learn that “business as usual” is the primary weapon against terrorism because it sucks all the promotional value out of it. If someone is advertising, and the community is ignoring it, they will get discouraged and find some other way of promoting.
The media must learn how to change its coverage of terrorism - it should report, but it shouldn't promote. One thing this means is a lot less coverage... of the incident, of people being brave and selfless, and of people shouting in various ways, “We won't be bowed by terrorists!” This is going to be tough for the media, this is juicy stuff! But, like eating your vegetables, it is good for you. The community must help the media. They must learn to call the excess reporting something that is in poor taste, and call the media up on it - tell them, “Don’t do this! If you keep this up, I’m switching channels.” Once again, this is something that has to be learned, by both the community and the media.
As far as finding a terrorist goes, the best people for sniffing out terrorists are enfranchised neighbors. These are the people who care about their communities and feel that what they do matters. These are the people who are watching what is happening in their neighbor’s back yard just because they are neighborly and curious. Neighbors can spot crazy people, including terrorists, and report them. Until we have ubiquitous and “smart” surveillance where computers are doing 99% of the looking (which is not that far off), neighbors are going to have ten thousand times the observing power of police and anti-terrorist units because there are so many more neighbors than police and they spend a lot more time watching. This reporting will happen if neighbors feel enfranchised. If they feel disenfranchised they won’t bother. An example of deeply disenfranchised is Gaza. “Launch a rocket from my neighbor’s backyard?… Meh! I don’t care.”
Terrorism is scary. But the key to combating it is to remember that it is about advertising a cause. The key combating terrorism is to combat its advertising value. One of the key steps in doing that is to not let it affect how we live. “Business as usual” should be the motto after a terrorist incident. The second key is to have the media be aware that this is advertising and have them do their part to not report it in a way that is giving exposure to the terrorist cause. The more successful we are at these steps, the more the terrorists will look for other ways to promote their causes.