Microsoft Alum Writes Counterterrorism Paper That Nails The Real Threat en-us Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500 Fri, 26 Dec 2014 22:33:00 -0500 Geoffrey Ingersoll Abstractthoughmuch? Sun, 22 Sep 2013 20:33:21 -0400 Clearly, if Brazil has a high level of gun control but a higher homicide rate, then your point about the high availability of guns in the US is moot. There's a lot more terrifying shit per capita going on in Brazil. What harm is there in making it easy for a law-abiding citizen to own a gun? Ronnelini Sun, 22 Sep 2013 19:11:07 -0400 Well said, but add to list of imprisonment all the bankers that, with the help of key politicians, shamlessly stole the retirement funds of millions of Americans, and caused the economic suffering of a billion of the world's poor by instigating the housing collapse. God has a special furnace for them. Bryan Slatner Sun, 22 Sep 2013 14:52:37 -0400 Minor point: anthrax is a bacterium, not a fungus. Don Turnblade Sat, 21 Sep 2013 17:20:07 -0400 Sorry Nathan Myhrvold, the cold war is over. Resurfacing a classic cold war risk exposure case, the uncontrolled bomber with a nuke is fair game but not new or unaccounted for. One can find this scenario as the basis for classic post-apocolyptic comic magazine series. "The mad man who simultaneously blew up Moscow and New York and plunged the world in the new distopia with a heroic band of adventurers struggling to survive -- read more next week." If this the the finest form of Risk Management one can produce, perhaps Marvel Comics needs to hire you. But, I suggest updating your Risk Management skill sets. Displeased, Don Turnblade MBA, MS Physics (Genuine Cold War Credentials.) CISSP-ISSMP, CISM, CISA, Six Sigma Black Belt. thedailyrant57 Sat, 21 Sep 2013 16:18:43 -0400 Sure you do buddy, I'm sure you have similar sources that say the world governments are covering up UFOs as well. I spent 15 years working in the intelligence community and it is my professional opinion that both you and the author are completely full of shit. So Go back to your parent's basement and adjust your tin foil hat El Catcha Fri, 20 Sep 2013 23:11:48 -0400 And that invalidates André's argument? How so? André Kenji De Sousa Fri, 20 Sep 2013 17:56:38 -0400 But we are not talking about homicides. Launch on Warning Fri, 20 Sep 2013 16:25:12 -0400 hahahaaaa! lolz you can't even spell mattw0699 Fri, 20 Sep 2013 16:06:44 -0400 You aren't going to read any sources. And even if you did you wouldn't believe them because you wouldn't like what they say. Anyway, I have sources for everything I said plus a lot more. For those interested in sources, please direct your attention to my blog on emerging risks: 1913intel dot com The menu at the top contains an item called zFAV. Please explore this. Also check out my About page. Finally, check out my China catagory. Launch on Warning Fri, 20 Sep 2013 15:48:20 -0400 I'm sorry, this is article one of the stupidest, fear-mongering pieces of garbage I've read anywhere. Rather than "knowing as much about security as anyone," Myhrvold seems completely out of touch. As far as "WMD" - even assuming the Syrian rebels can weaponize and use sarin gas, it looks like the maximum kill-count achievable in a terrorist attack is about a thousand. They got real lucky with the twin towers. Conflating a million-dead attack with a cyber-attack launched from a third world internet cafe is just stupid. kellydorsey8 Fri, 20 Sep 2013 14:21:40 -0400 "The novelty of our present situation is that modern technology can provide small groups of people with much greater lethality than ever before." Cortes, with a hundred and fifty Europeans and their germs, eventually killed over 90% of the tens of millions of "New World" inhabitants. Until the 1940's, there were NO antibiotics. Death was often just a minor infection - whether from musket flesh wound, appendicitis, or a British smallpox infected gift blanket. If one wants to scare the people out of their privacy and constitutional rights like a rabid Bush, they should at least consider history or maybe an illustrated 'Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies' by Jared Diamond. The US defeated and the US Constitution understood the threats of the MOST powerful Empire on earth - where "the sun NEVER sets on the British Empire." Americans only need to enforce the US Constitution, proven to work for centuries, and imprison the recent politicians that endlessly violate the Bill of Rights and betray our nation for their personal wealth. thedailyrant57 Fri, 20 Sep 2013 13:40:46 -0400 way to compare completely unrelated events like they have any meaning. I think it's a far stretch to go from a simple dispute over uninhabited Islands to a Nuclear Conflict between China and The United States. Have you even read anything about the dispute over the islands? Do you really believe that China is going to take military action against Japan over uninhabited islands? Sure China is doing some chest thumping, because they are trying to show the world that their are a developing Naval power, but that is the extent of it. I'd leave this one to the experts who actually study this region for a living. You're other points are meaningless as well. "Three of the four Joint Chiefs said the other day that if sequestration sticks, then they can't fight and win a major war. " The Joints Chiefs of Staff are always going to say something negative anytime their budget is threatened. Do you really think they are going to come out in public and agree any forced budget cuts? I mean seriously. What leader of an organization doesn't have to be the miitary would say, yeah sure go ahead make mandatory cuts by X percent or X amount, we really didn't need that money anyway, we've been wasting it all these years. As far as degrading our combat capabilities, that's a factor of being at war for over a decade "Nuclear launch crews suffer from incompetence, rot and crisis." Really? So you have served in the USAF then and worked as part of one of the launch, maintence crews then? Or were in the Squadron and Wing leadership? Or maybe worked on a Standards and Evaluation Crew or inspection Crew? If not then do you have any facts to back this up? " Our nuclear weapons have been cut to the point where some are saying it is dangerous. The remaining nuclear force is very old" Again, based on what facts? We're not talking about something that's sitting in storage in someone's basement and then we're like oh sh!t we need to use these, hope they work. All of these systems are maintained and have to be inspected. PapaSwamp Fri, 20 Sep 2013 13:40:17 -0400 Brazil has a higher homicide rate that the US... thedalton Fri, 20 Sep 2013 13:28:06 -0400 What exactly is his "view" based upon? Do you really think the governments of the world know nothing of such threats or possibilities? That they are ignoring them? thedalton Fri, 20 Sep 2013 13:26:39 -0400 When you read: "Myhrvold wonders openly why Washington is so focused on "tactical" terror attacks — bus bombs, for example — rather than "strategic," larger-scale terror attacks." I wonder how they know what the government is or is not doing? Do these people actually think the U.S. government, or any government for that matter, should run headlines in newspapers telling the world exactly what security threats and measures they are concentrating on? The article basically implies that the people running our government have never heard of such threats and possibilities. That they are just now uncovering these possibilities. Ridiculous. Li-Jen Chu Fri, 20 Sep 2013 13:15:25 -0400 Myhrvold doesn't work in security per se, but he has the money and power to get his view published. ibsteve2u Fri, 20 Sep 2013 12:58:42 -0400 You take ". Indeed, it is perfectly feasible, from a technological standpoint, to kill every man, woman, and child on earth." and add it to "a more likely scenario is that a strategic-terror attack in the next decade or so will kill between 100,000 and one million Americans. " and you have created another reason to employ technology and force against the people(s) of America and the world...another driver for a knee-jerk response of stripping the citizenry of the freedoms that they still enjoy so that those who feel their net worth or self-image makes them more "valuable"...more "likely" targets of terrorism can both feel "safer" and flaunt that power through its application. When all someone does is attempt to remove freedom from a people(s) in response to the perceived presence of a frustrated and disgruntled populace rather than seek to understand why more and more people(s) believe that their political systems and governments offer them no form of redress other than violence and address that issue, I name that the sadism of totalitarianism masquerading as concern for the public or national welfare. Rusty Shackleford Fri, 20 Sep 2013 12:38:51 -0400 Actually, Mr. Myhrvold misses the real threat of global terrorism - America's oil addiction. It's America's continuing addiction to cheap energy to support a wasteful consumerist lifestyle regardless of cost that's causing dubious and dangerous activities in regions of the world that want us gone. Get rid of the need for foreign oil and gets rid of the reason to be the the foreign antagonist to most of the world. Consequently, the motivation for counter-imperialist actions (i.e. "terrorism") declines accordingly. mattw0699 Fri, 20 Sep 2013 12:38:34 -0400 Actually, the situation is much worse than Myhrvold believes. Forget terrorism, and start thinking about nuclear war. Here's why: Did you ever think about how a fruit vendor in Tunisia could bring down nations with one act of defiance? What about that shot in Sarajevo that started World War I? This tells you the key to great change, like war, is recognizing when things are more or less at a tipping point, or pre-collapse state. Something is at a tipping point if a small event can have a huge impact. Right now the conflict between China and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands is at a tipping point. This particular conflict is fairly rapidly escalating with no end in sight. And more and more people are openly talking about the possibility of an incident (small event) that could quickly escalate out of control and lead to a China-US nuclear war (huge impact). Sounds bad, right? Well, it gets worse. Three of the four Joint Chiefs said the other day that if sequestration sticks, then they can't fight and win a major war. Nuclear launch crews suffer from incompetence, rot and crisis. Our nuclear weapons have been cut to the point where some are saying it is dangerous. The remaining nuclear force is very old. If terrorists could kill a few thousand people, and terrorists using WMDs could kill a few hundred thousand, then nuclear war could terminate the US. And the threat of nuclear war this evening is very real. Time to wake up. thedailyrant57 Fri, 20 Sep 2013 12:36:44 -0400 That's a cute school research paper, but it doesn't cover anything new. Apparently the author has never heard of wargames, modeling & simulations, red teams or forecasting. The DoD and the Intel Community and even Law Enforcement have already beaten these scenarios like a dead horse the last 25 years. There is not one single thought here that hasn't already been covered in other papers or books Please, one person could not gain access to anything that could kill millions let alone billions of people. That is simply science fiction not reality. I would suggest the author of the paper actually spend some time reading up on National Security and he would see that they do focus on a range of threats. I don't know maybe start by reading <a href="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" ></a> André Kenji De Sousa Fri, 20 Sep 2013 12:30:36 -0400 The f* problem is that there are so many firearms in the United States that terrorists don´t need nukes or any s* like that. Three or four random guys with semiautomatic rifles could kill DOZENS of people in a public building until the SWAT arrives. I for one say Fri, 20 Sep 2013 12:24:47 -0400 Give me liberty or give me death Ben Gauzy Fri, 20 Sep 2013 12:23:56 -0400 "The United States is more focused on stopping a guy who blows up an airplane and kills 300 people than on a guy who intentionally spreads smallpox and kills 300,000." Same mentality that sees the bandit robbing a bank gets a prison sentence and a Wall Street Banskter gets a pass and a bonus. d Fri, 20 Sep 2013 11:51:18 -0400 "Every time the screws get tightened, terrorists win just a little bit more." They do until the "terrorist's" go 1 step to far and pull off that large attack that kills 100k to 1M everyday people in a western non muslim country. At that point the population will finally say enough all ready go sort them out. Governments will final have a public mandate to do what has to be done without liberal lefty media being able to scream you cant do that is not pc. The greatest Allie of the terrorist are the liberal lefty PC mob's and their media. A simple truth so many don't want to hear. Tmac Fri, 20 Sep 2013 11:42:36 -0400 . . That's worse! That means Barry can take you out with a drone strike no questions asked. Aqua Buddha Fri, 20 Sep 2013 11:23:14 -0400 Nukes are 70 year old tech and are obsolete! American has and has used a far more dangerous class of weapons called Super Scalar!!! more cupcakes Fri, 20 Sep 2013 11:23:03 -0400 Myhrvold needs to see a psychotherapist, or psychiatrist as soon as he can get an appointment, unless this is a pandemic investment ruse, which is BTW out of place, irresponsible. I think his intelligence and notably wisdom is lacking seriously. Working for someone of lesser purported intelligence, has warped his worldview, and unjustifiably inflated his self importance, considerably. Quite a contrast with the brilliance and commonsense of Joy Covey who was in fact brilliant, while Myrhvold might be a mental midget. dnaumov Fri, 20 Sep 2013 11:21:36 -0400 Good thing I have no intention of ever crossing the US border and/or coming to the states. Tmac Fri, 20 Sep 2013 11:20:35 -0400 . . If he was really concerned about fighting terrosism he would try to get Al-Quaida to use Microsoft's products: "Syrian rebels use an iPad to aim mortars" <a href="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" ></a> Tmac Fri, 20 Sep 2013 11:17:09 -0400 . . Unfortunately you gotta take the good with the bad There are worse sites out there Trust me Tmac Fri, 20 Sep 2013 11:15:19 -0400 . . Be careful brother. According to the DHS, you're starting to sound like a terrorist BlackbrierNet Fri, 20 Sep 2013 10:50:23 -0400 This is nothing new. Analysts have been writing about the "Lone Wolf" terrorist for over a decade. Myhrvold is rather late to the game. As far as cyber goes, it is a significant problem, and US networks are pounded every day with attacks. But if it was as easy to shut down the country as described in the article, it probably would have happened before now. We are focused on the tactical AND strategic. You just can't see it all. buckethead Fri, 20 Sep 2013 10:33:19 -0400 Where is Robert Johnson? buckethead Fri, 20 Sep 2013 10:32:41 -0400 I have not yet quit reading BI in protest of the shallow, pandering, and thoughtless posts. Considering the continual spreading of propaganda from the war machine and the fed (bedfellows, no doubt) is compelling me to act. Sure, it's nice to counter the BS, but BI gains clicks from my counter. trooble Fri, 20 Sep 2013 10:27:17 -0400 Not really. Of course nukes are the only ones with irretrievable lethality. The other two are bad, but not in the same league by a factor of 100 or 1000. And nukes leave tell-tale signs that cannot be covered up and can be sniffed remotely. Nearly everyone is normal and safe in the modern world, nearly everyone will turn in anyone who they perceive as posing a threat to their existence. Any other people would have be be exceedingly smart or lucky to pull off stuff undetected, and such evil people are rarely so smart or lucky. But, you say, what about all those terrorists who attacked our troops in the Middle East? Good point, but not good enough. Those people saw themselves as defending their nation-state, and no nation, not even the US, has enough goodwill to overpower the moral appeal of one's nation-state. The terrorists who attacked our soldiers would not transfer to the higher level of evil hypothesized in this editorial. Bubba Shawn Fri, 20 Sep 2013 10:01:45 -0400 NSA mission, existence and purpose is to protect the federal government. dnaumov Fri, 20 Sep 2013 09:35:34 -0400 Way to miss the real terrorist threat: goverments of our countries, worldwide, looking to remove liberty and freedoms in the name of "safety". Every time the screws get tightened, terrorists win just a little bit more.