CATASTROPHIC SUPEREMPOWERMENT

A prevailing theme of global guerrilla theory is that personal superempowerment will change the face of warfare. Most of the superempowerment we see today is from rampant globalization (infrastructure/connectivity in travel to economics to communications) which has radically improved the ability of small groups to conduct guerrilla warfare. We see the results of this in Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria and other garden spots around the world.

Nuclear Terror

However, globalization has made catastrophic super-empowerment possible too, in the form nuclear terrorism. Fortunately, the critical materials necessary for the development of nuclear bombs still reside primarily within state control due to the difficulty of their manufacturing. So while globalization may make these materials more accessible -- in that it is easier to acquire, manipulate, and deliver nuclear materials than ever before -- it is still difficult and likely not something that could be repeated with any frequency. This makes the probability of any nuclear terrorist event resemble a power curve with a very steep and relatively stable coefficient -- which means that while catastrophic events may occur, they are likely to be very rare.

Carlson Curves and Bioterror

The probability of catastrophic threats from superempowerment changes when we take into account technologies that are subject to rapid rates of improvement due to Moore's law. The most prominent of these technologies, for the medium term, is biotechnology. The best source I have found that measures the onset of this is Robert Carlson's "The Pace and Proliferation of Biological Technologies." He provides:

• Evidence that biotechnology is improving at rates equal or better than Moore's law. These "Carlson Curves" plot the reduction in cost and the improvements in productivity available to individual practitioners. This means that very soon, in less than a decade, the technologies necessary for individuals to build catastrophic pathogens will be cheap and widely available. "Labs on a chip" are in the offing.
• The knowledge and information necessary for developing catastrophic pathogens will be globally dispersed. As Carlson points out, work that used to require a PhD a couple of years ago is now accomplished by lightly trained technicians. Further, the low capital costs of laboratory development and its importance to the private sector means that this training and technology will be widespread. Finally, most of the information necessary for even extremely dangerous pathogens is available online.
• There are no material barriers to the production of biological weapons. While certain reagents are currently controlled, the manufacturing processes for these materials and their widespread usage pose few barriers to circumvention. Unlike nuclear proliferation, there aren't any natural choke points.

The Revised Potential for Bioterror

So while the potential of bioterror now has a power law distribution steeper than nuclear terror (due to a transient difficulty in the production of pathogens), the coefficient of this curve will quickly change as biotechnology progresses. Not only will large events be more likely, we will likely see the development of a fat tail composed of small events by careless practitioners as tinkering networks develop to take advantage of this newfound superempowerment. Finally, as we saw with Phishing networks, some of these tinkerers will naturally flow into criminal networks that will actively produce weapons of bioterror for profit, and thereby become critical contributors to the global open source war now underway.

Comments

[Duncan Kinder]

John, you should add three DVD's to your list of recommneded purchases at the right of your blog:

1) Frankenstein
2) Godzilla
3) The Sorceror's Apprentice

[adam]

John,

Its possibly a bit of bad timing that you're suggesting that nuclear terrorism is possible at the same time as Israel is announcing its intentions to do an act of, well, nuclear terrorism.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2535310,00.html

OK, admittedly its the "Hitler Diaries" and "Iraq WMD" Sunday Times, but they did do the first stories on Israel / South African nuclear weapons.

[John Robb]

Not to distract from the discussion on the above topic, though it probably will, but the situation between Israel and Iran is dire. Iran may be making a Saddam level mistake: provoking a nuclear power with existential damage without having a nuke of your own. The psychology is paramount here. The Israeli threat is very real and should be taken seriously. Perhaps the only gating factor is fitting a 5 kiloton warhead into a package that can follow the path drilled by a bunker buster.

[enigma_foundry]

Yes, this is quite problem. It is especially disheartening that the present US administration has done almost nothing to prevent a catastrophic black swan bio-terror event.

A working, complete Syndromic Surveillance would be a start towards a bio-defense program, however we are far from having that today, which I had explored in a post over at Freedom to Tinker:

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1030

However, against a well-conceived bio-terror attack, the syndromic surveillance system would not be very useful; against those well-conceived attacks we will need a sentinel based based system, which is a system of sentinels whose every illness would be closely tracked, analyzed and pro-actively sequenced. My preliminary studies indicate such a system will need to have approx. 40,000 sentinels to have a 95% confidence level in detecting certain types of long-prodrome agents in a timely manner. Such a system requires extensive planning and development and is needed about TWO YEARS AGO. It is not a luxury. Not to build such a system in the face of the very real threats that presently exist is negligent beyond words.

These posts may be of interest:

A recent article in the Economist is discussed here:
http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/2006/12/29/economist-on-bio-terrorism/

The role of the free press in preventing disease outbreaks:
http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/2006/12/23/the-free-press-famines-and-disease-outbreaks/

A worst-case attack methodology discussed:
http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/2006/12/05/conceptualizing-biological-warfare-defense/

[Z]

"Iran may be making a Saddam level mistake: provoking a nuclear power with existential damage without having a nuke of your own."

Sorry, John, to distract from the intended topic...but then again, a post nuclear world would be manna for global guerrillas so not totally OT.

My question is why would Iran go out of their way to provoke (or give an excuse to ) Israel/U.S. with talk of destruction and now most recently the holcaust conference? Why not have a friendly Khatami-style public face while the centrifuges spin away?

Iran seems very confident that no one will attack it. I'm curious where that confidence comes from and typical answers about the U.S. being bogged down in Iraq, Starights of Hormuz, price of oil, etc. just dont seem satisfying.

Either Iran is miscalculating or they know something we don't. Is there any chance at all that they have nukes already? Would the Israelis consider that possibility before launching a strike?

Thanx,
Z

[Gordon Housworth]

John

We did a unclass red team effort some time ago to look at the ability to produce chembio devices in a below the radar method from open source, non-exotic materials. The unofficial verbals that filtered back to us was an implied agreement of our findings as the comment was 'we didn't know that it was so easy to discern from open source.' (Such comments are not unusual from those who live inside the bubble.)

Two notes are cited below, the 2004 piece addresses the chem side, which is now approaching a 'bolt together' level as microreactors enter the market. The "master bomber" concept is applicable here, i.e., the designer produces a supply chain of assembly, tailors it to local products, the attacker comes in clean, consults the web, and assembles locally. The 2006 piece looks more at bio. Both leave me less concerned at a nation state's nuclear assets than asymmetric attacker, what we like to call the "Gastarbeiter from Düsseldorf" or your superempowered 5GW player.

From the 2004 piece:

"it is now one of our truisms that every technology has its glide slope (where the angle of descent indicates the cost threshold of acquisition over time) where its capacity will ultimately get to anyone's desktop, anywhere and for any purpose… Two of the glide slops that we track in an effort to anticipate potential threats are chemical and biological agent production. We have long taken for granted that the market-entry restraints on chemical (including organophosphate or nerve agent) and bio-agent production, as well as their detection thresholds, have plummeted to the point that batch sizes for "low-casualty" attacks (few thousand casualties) relatively easy to produce…"

Manufacturing efficiency gives rise to a new arms race: convergence of legitimate pharma-chemical, illicit drug, and CW/BW agent
10/19/2004
http://spaces.icgpartners.com/index2.asp?NGuid=DFEDFBC45ACD4BE8AA680861A2701579

Designer bioagents: Why a potential Iranian, or existing Pakistani or DPRK, nuclear weapon does not overly excite me
10/4/2006
http://spaces.icgpartners.com/index2.asp?NGuid=CACA23B6AC404E5E89F39503CFAF6E30

Gordon Housworth

[trom ed lov]

@Z "My question is why would Iran go out of their way to provoke (or give an excuse to ) Israel/U.S. with talk of destruction and now most recently the holcaust conference?"

Because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (and the radical religious leaders behind him) don't care if they destroy Iran - they believe that worldwide catastrophe is necessary to bring about the 12th imam. His radical brand of Islam believes they can hasten the 12th imam's coming by helping to create world chaos. Chaos = he wins.
(see http://www.allaboutpopularissues.org/12th-imam.htm)

Of course, that is Ahmadinejad's branch. Don't take these comments to say that this is the view of all Muslims - it is probably not the majority view even of the citizens of Iran.