Steven D. Levitt is setting up a terrorism think tank at The New York Times:
My general view of the world is that simpler is better. My guess is that this thinking applies to terrorism as well. In that spirit, the best terrorist plan I have heard is one that my father thought up after the D.C. snipers created havoc in 2002. The basic idea is to arm 20 terrorists with rifles and cars, and arrange to have them begin shooting randomly at pre-set times all across the country. Big cities, little cities, suburbs, etc. Have them move around a lot. No one will know when and where the next attack will be. The chaos would be unbelievable, especially considering how few resources it would require of the terrorists. It would also be extremely hard to catch these guys. The damage wouldn’t be as extreme as detonating a nuclear bomb in New York City, of course; but it sure would be a lot easier to obtain a handful of guns than a nuclear weapon.
He’s calling for ideas, wants to get them out in the open, and is playing off the whole effort as some kind of public service:
I’m sure many readers have far better ideas. I would love to hear them. Consider that posting them could be a form of public service: I presume that a lot more folks who oppose and fight terror read this blog than actual terrorists. So by getting these ideas out in the open, it gives terror fighters a chance to consider and plan for these scenarios before they occur.
Mr. Levitt is either short-sighted or selfish. I guess it doesn’t matter which. I imagine that many people have tossed this idea around but most of us have enough sense to self-censor rather than kick off an open source terrorism movement. I could tell you a half dozen things that I am shocked that terrorists haven’t done – but I wont. They haven’t discovered those opportunities yet so why would I, or anyone else, want to risk cluing them in? The bottom line is this is an interesting exercise but it doesn’t belong in The New York Times.
