Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

Chapter Seven: War and Terrorism 75tralized energy facilities are arguably the cheapest and most effective way toattack another country. Significantly, attacks on key energy facilities areamong the prime tactics used by Soviet-trained guerrillas throughout theworld today. Similar tactics are of course available to any other attackers,whether working on their own or as surrogates for others. Who are some ofthese possible attackers, and what are their strengths and resources?There are believed to be about fifty terrorist organizations in the world,with an estimated total of about three thousand active members, and perhapsan equal number of peripheral supporters. A hard core of about two hundredmembers constitutes the “primary transnational threat.” 62 Because severalgroups sometimes participate jointly in an action, it is hard to estimate howmany terrorists might join in a single attack on a particular energy facility.In the U.S., where the nuclear regulatory philosophy encourages formulationof specific threat levels which licensees are to guard against, there is along-running debate over this number. It has risen steadily during the past tenyears. At first it was thought to be “several,” meaning three, of whom onecould be an insider, and there was a consensus that security systems even atnuclear plants—the best-guarded of all types of major energy facilities—werenot adequate for this threat. 63 Upgraded security measures were then againoutrun by a heightened threat estimate of a “small group” (six), aided by upto two insiders. More recently, after several official studies, a consensus hasemerged that “fifteen highly trained men, no more than three of [whom] …work within the facility..., [the insiders to include] anyone up to the higher levelsof management,” is a reasonable threat level. 64But this debate is reminiscent of the disputations of medieval theologians,since the history of criminal and terrorist enterprises clearly shows that attackersbring with them “as many as they need … to do the job, and no more. Thefact that most came with a handful of persons, three to six, thus does not representan upper limit on their capacity” but only their estimate of what wouldbe “necessary to accomplish their mission.” 65 More stringent security precautionsmight deter some attackers, but would simply elicit a stronger assaultfrom really determined attackers who thought the price was worthwhile.Indeed, what most protects energy facilities is not that they have fences andguards, but rather that relatively few people have a intense desire to attackthem. As the physicist and physician Dean Abrahamson has pointed out, vastlymore aircraft have crashed on purpose (e.g., through being shot down) thanby accident. Given “the inherent frailty of a technology that puts hundreds ofpeople in a cylinder of aluminum moving at six hundred miles per hour someseven miles up in the air,” it is not airport security systems or other defensesthat mainly serve to limit the crashes of civilian airliners, but rather the rela-