Technical and Policy Issues of Counterterrorism--A Primer for Physicists
No longer threatened by a rival superpower, the US now faces the growing danger of clandestine terrorist groups. Effectively countering terrorists requires that physicists actively contribute to the nation's defense.
From the development of radar and nuclear weapons during World War II to the creation of intercontinental ballistic missiles and deterrence theories during the cold war, physicists have played an essential role in defining US national security strategies and in executing the scientific programs that made those strategies successful. The US deterrence system, composed of theory, policy, and operational hardware, inhibited the Soviet Union until the cold war ended. Since then, that single geographically and ideologically focused opponent has been replaced by a multitude of state and nonstate actors armed with biological, chemical, and possibly nuclear weapons. The new national security climate does not diminish the need for physicists--it only changes the character of their contributions.
Several years ago, we both left technical jobs at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to help improve the federal government's response to threats posed by the dissemination of weapons of mass destruction and to improve domestic responses to them. (Davis was associate director for earth and environmental sciences at LLNL; Prosnitz was the chief scientist for the nonproliferation, arms control and international security directorate.) One of us (Davis) joined the Department of Defense with primary responsibilities overseas; the other (Prosnitz) joined the Department of Justice with primary responsibilities at home. We each provided a technical perspective on policy and operational options for conducting the war on terrorism. Naturally, we embraced technology as a means both to enhance present counterterrorism systems and to create new options for the ultimate decision makers. Persuading interagency working groups of the value of technological options became an essential part of our jobs. That often frustrating and occasionally rewarding process taught us the many possible roles for physicists in _1fighting terrorism. Equally important, we identified some of the behavioral attributes that increase one's ability to make a difference.
Understanding the problem
Although the term terrorist appears to have had its origin in the French Revolution, activities that we would clearly classify as terrorist date back at least to the Sicarii Zealots of the first century. And terrorism is not new to the US. The assassinations of several US presidents, bombings at such places as the University of Wisconsin and Oklahoma City, and the existence of the Ku Klux Klan, the Weathermen, and other homegrown terrorist groups are all part of US history.
What is new is the emerging capability of terrorists to cause harm that is qualitatively and quantitatively much more destructive than in the past. The threat the US is facing is not that of a lone madman, but of highly organized terrorist groups.
Chemical, biological, and nuclear capabilities are now within the reach of subnational groups. When such capabilities are married to global communication, transportation, and finance infrastructures, new threats to our national security are born. These threats are not simply due to the emergence of new terrorist groups or passing sociological trends. Long after Al Qaeda is removed from the scene, the threats will still exist. If the US is to reestablish its traditional level of security, the fundamental technical basis of the threat must be better understood.
The techniques that were used to counter the clearly defined enemy of the cold war will not defeat terrorism. Post-cold war terrorists have no single defined base of operations and no easily identified sponsor. Training and organizational activities can be carried out in countries where the people are wholly unaware of the activities under way within their borders. A 21st-century terrorist leader has a truly global span of control and action. Communication and fiscal transfers occur surreptitiously through use of the Internet and other systems and may pass below the threshold of detection by intelligence organizations. When terrorists are ready to act, they have the luxury of choosing the time, location, and means. As we learned on September 11th, the human, fiscal, and political consequences of the acts of a small group enabled by modern technologies and global infrastructure can be enormous.
Understanding the nature of the threat leads to some obvious strategies to counter it. US authorities must not try to defend all places at all times and should avoid focusing too much on the most recent attack. In the first case, the costs are simply too high. In the second, the terrorists will likely switch to a different means of attack after an initial success. Suicide bombings are an unpleasant exception to this assumption. Terrorists clearly find such bombings to be effective and repeatedly successful. Although suicide bombings are not a strategic threat, they are very difficult to deal with because of their impact on public perceptions and confidence.
The asymmetric nature of the threat--that a few people can potentially cause harm to tens of thousands--mandates an essential element of any solution: the ability to identify and disrupt small, independent cells. However, counterterrorism activities carried out within the US are properly subject to many legal and policy constraints, and both privacy and civil rights must be protected. And the tactics used to _1fight terrorism should avoid both direct and indirect economic costs. Seemingly obvious solutions to the terrorism problem fail when confronted with policy and legal requirements that can be, and often should be, as immutable as any law of nature.
Components of the solution
Physicists are taught that, to solve a problem, one must clearly understand what is being asked. Reaching that understanding often involves simplification by elimination of extraneous conditions. As the issues become clear and solutions evident, complications may be added. And the essence of the 21st-century terrorist threat, that a few can threaten so many, is the imbalance we must reverse.
However, the asymmetry can be overestimated. As a nation, the US is only threatened physically and politically by multiple large-scale attacks. For a terrorist organization to mount such a campaign requires significant logistics and planning. A high-profile attack typically requires advanced surveillance, transport, weapons, financing, false documents, and overall planning and guidance. A defense strategy that forces the terrorists to use all of these resources not only makes an attack less likely to succeed, but increases the chances of uncovering the attack before it occurs. This strategy--forcing the terrorists to increase their signature while simultaneously developing better detection systems--is one that must be pursued. It is also important to make the successful execution of an attack even more difficult by deterring those who would provide shelter and resources to terrorists.
It is impossible to defend all places at all times, but a complete cycle of steps can be created that will require that terrorists assemble substantial assets in order to carry out a successful attack. This approach increases the chances of preventing terrorist acts and minimizes the social and human costs should an attack occur. The cycle consists of deterring supporters of terrorists, denying the assets needed to stage terrorist attacks, detecting and interdicting those who seek to commit terrorist acts, and managing crises and consequences. Attributing responsibility for an event, including those who provided direct support, followed by prosecution or retribution, closes the cycle by establishing deterrence. Each component of the cycle offers possible leverage of technology; each certainly contains policy, legal, and operational issues.
Deterrence is established by a clear governmental policy regarding the consequences of supporting terrorism or engaging in terrorist acts. For deterrence to succeed, it is essential that the US have a demonstrated will and capability to hold accountable those who are responsible for terrorist activities. Effective deterrent strategies must be designed around an understanding of what opponents of the US and, equally important, their supporters, hold dear. On this point, sociology assumes an importance equal to technology.
Of paramount importance to the war on terrorism is the denial of the tools of terrorism--especially weapons of mass destruction--to terrorists. Techniques of denial may range from the simple--better guards and fences--to technologically complex steps that include chemical weapons demilitarization, plutonium segregation and storage, and enriched uranium blending. Denial may also include technically and politically exotic techniques such as attribute determination performed on the Russian weapons-grade plutonium, as discussed in box 1 on page 40.
The ability of the US to detect potential threats has received a great deal of attention since September 11th. In a counterterrorism context, detection is broadly defined as techniques used to identify materials and individuals moving in and out of regions where terrorists are based, or toward potential targets. Methods to better defend US borders are discussed in box 2 on page 41. Activities involved in detection include finding indications and warnings of terrorist planning through the use of advanced information systems and analysis. Detection is enhanced both by forcing the enemy to use large infrastructures and by sorting out minor crimes from true national security threats. If detection is successful and produces "actionable intelligence," it can lead to interdiction using means up to and including force to prevent the planned event from occurring.
Crisis management consists of steps to minimize effects during terrorist attacks. Those steps range from immunizing all or part of the population (for example, first responders and medical personnel), to actively managing air-handling systems in large buildings. For more details, see box 3 on this page.
Consequence management involves the steps to mitigate damage from an attack and speed recovery. Technical components include having in place predictive codes for dosimetry, decontamination technologies, triage, and population management experts. Effective public communication and the associated psychological treatment of victims are important components of successful consequence management. Providing accurate information to people affected by an event is essential if the information is to be trusted and acted upon. Education and practice before an attack are necessary to instill knowledge and establish trust.
Attribution of the event is necessary to establish responsibility and to choose between a judicial or a military remedy. The future will likely bring multiple terrorist attacks and the public can be reassured only if it believes there is an aggressive, effective effort to catch the perpetrators and prevent future attacks. In the political and emotional aftermath of a major attack, quickly ruling out possible perpetrators may be as important as identifying the terrorists. Attribution capabilities close the circle by supporting deterrence and hence are vital and require considerable investment. Physicists and their traditional tools used in perhaps untraditional ways, have a great deal to offer in identifying the responsible parties. Some of the methods of identifying the sources of biological terrorism are discussed in box 4 on page 43.
How do physicists contribute?
Our positive experiences in Washington, DC, demonstrate that physicists have much to contribute to homeland security. As a group, physicists are inherently comfortable with complex systems problems and recognize that a silver bullet rarely exists for complex problems. Most physicists insist on quantitative analyses of problems and, as a result of project management experience, are comfortable and facile with having to make trades across disciplines.
Technologies developed by applied physicists not only have played a role in defense, but have made major contributions to the explosion of manipulative, analytical, and characterization technologies in the biosciences, chemical sciences, information sciences, and materials sciences. Applied physicists have become a diverse community linking and supporting other disciplines. It is precisely this last skill, linking multiple disciplines that will lead to success in countering the new threats to our security.
Challenges and investments
The positive identification of individuals crossing US borders is critical to detecting and deterring terrorist acts. Complete defense of the vast US borders against illegal entries is currently impossible. Subject to economic and political costs, technical means such as biometrics and "high-tech" identification cards can make it easier for authorities to positively identify people traveling across borders. Such cards, supported by border inspectors who have access to visa databases, can help create a "smart border" that will simultaneously expedite commerce and enhance domestic security. Border solutions must work for all modes of travel--pedestrian, bicycle, car, truck, train, boat, and airplane--and for all ages and nationalities. The system must function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in all climates and must respond to alerts in seconds, not minutes. New systems cannot be limited to official ports of entry. Better surveillance is needed along the entire border to deter those who would attempt to enter illegally. The current range of unattended sensors is measured in tens of meters; the border is measured in thousands of kilometers.
Close scrutiny of materials crossing either national boundaries or security perimeters within the country is also critical. Protective screening techniques range from simple radiation detectors, which are already in the hands of border inspectors and overseas customs agents, to scanners for the millions of cargo containers that enter the US annually. Cost, effectiveness, and reliability are crucial in those efforts. Containers might be effectively inspected by placing small detectors in each one, essentially creating smart containers as an alternative to elaborate port-based inspection systems. Sensors integrated into containers have days or weeks to monitor for proscribed materials rather than minutes in the ports. Smart containers may offer additional economic value in terms of product security and environmental control during shipping, and hence be seen as a benefit rather than a cost. Such systems obviously must be cheap and rugged. And with 16 million containers per year crossing US borders and port productivity a vital factor in economic competitiveness, the false alarm rate must be very low. Perfect security for all cargo containers moving through the world's ports is not achievable, but increasing the risk and cost of attempting to bring materials for weapons of mass destruction into the US is a valuable and effective deterrent.
Systems that provide indications and warning are particularly vital in minimizing the effects of biological agents. If an agent is dispersed covertly, the attack will only be detected when victims exhibit disease symptoms. In such an event, the resulting outbreak could overwhelm local medical response personnel with devastating results. The ultimate goal is to detect a biological agent in time to warn the public, not just treat the victims. Any credible near-term plan must be a mix of improved medical surveillance and active detection systems. DNA recognition and amplification by polymerase chain reaction techniques, and physics-based techniques such as aerosol sorting, photodissociation, and mass spectrometric analysis of molecular signatures, will likely be used in such detector systems. Other than the actual transducer, most components of a biodetection system are modern instruments of exactly the type experimental physicists have been designing for years.
Integrating distributed sensors to reduce false positives and other extraneous signals is also a technique long used by physicists. Creating a first-rate surveillance and detection system will involve multidisciplinary technological tradeoffs as well as sociological and economic considerations. Clearly, many of the analytical tools and system architectures are familiar to physicists.
Of particular importance in dealing with the consequences of any terrorist event are the predictions of the dispersal, deposition, and consequences--both immediate and delayed--of any release of radioactive, chemical, or biological agent. Both the US Department of Energy and the Department of Defense have dispersion modeling capabilities and programs to test and improve the predictive powers of those models. Although the models perform well in open terrain, much more work needs to be done to predict dispersal in urban environments. Cities have complex microclimates driven by temperature, humidity, and highly variable wind patterns caused by tall buildings.
The models must be accurate enough that first responders know how to stage their response, establish shelter zones, and determine the best evacuation routes. The ability to acquire real source data early in an event, insert the data into the simulation, and then produce multiple models of the event is critical. Accurate data and predictive models allow those responding to a terrorist event to make decisions with a reasonable degree of confidence. Again, the technical role of physicists is obvious. The educational and interpretive roles may be less obvious, but are no less important.
Part of the educational role in the war on terrorism is the creation of scenarios that can be used to test interagency relationships and practice responses across organizational lines. A central dilemma is that counterterrorist training is expensive and time consuming. Police, fire, public health, and other first responders have "day jobs" that are their primary responsibilities. Few cities can spare their frontline emergency personnel for extensive counterterrorism training, so training methods that are both time and cost effective are needed. Scenario play--the civilian equivalent of military war games--is essential to develop trust, authority, and communication across organizational lines. Running scenarios assesses not only responses to events, but also the quality of previous R&D investments, intelligence activities, and training. Gaming often elucidates gaps that can be filled by focused R&D.
Heavily weighted toward physics tools, the prediction of weapons effects helps create model scenarios and makes them credible. Physicists are most useful when they can assure that all aspects of a scenario are accurate. The lessons learned span resource management, medical care, communications, and the overtly political and psychological aspects involved in responding to an attack. By participating in the scenarios, physicists also become more familiar with the difficulties in communicating with nontechnical emergency managers and see, firsthand, all aspects of a mass casualty event.
Physics skills are required to develop the technological, operational, and decisional capabilities needed for the rapid attribution of nuclear and biological terrorist acts. If a nuclear attack should occur, database connections, sample acquisition, measurement capabilities, and knowledge of and access to design, explosion, and nuclear reaction codes of nuclear weapons will be essential in tracing the source of a detonated weapon. To that end, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) began a formal program of nuclear forensics in 2001.
In a biological attack, much of the information about weaponization, characterization, dispersion patterns, and distribution history of a biological agent will come from the tools of physics. Lessons learned from the current anthrax investigation suggest that a formal program similar to DTRA's nuclear forensics effort is needed for biological threats, and the FBI is working with the Department of Homeland Security to establish just such a program. It will encompass an all-discipline approach to plant, animal, and human pathogen forensic research and development and, of utmost importance, will include strict validation of all laboratory techniques.
These are immensely difficult forensic problems and technologists have a responsibility to define the "art of the possible." Leaving the political community unaware of the scope, precision, and uncertainty of physicists' capabilities would be as irresponsible as misleading them about the omnipotence of technical solutions. In the event of nuclear or large-scale biological terrorism, the political pressures for attribution--and the consequences of misattribution--will be enormous. Crisp operational plans, including technical procedures, are essential for an effective response. A formal decision-making system that enables an accurate interpretation of what occurred is also necessary. The system will likely have to address the decision of how best to pursue the perpetrators and, ultimately, if a judicial or more forceful military response is required. The technical community must be prepared to step forward and provide the absolute best it has to the nation's leaders.
How have we done?
We two authors feel that our years invested in the government have been fruitful and rewarding, and we hope our contributions have left the country better prepared for a challenging future. We've learned that physicists can still slide across disciplinary boundaries; that they can make contributions to difficult issues coupling policy, operations, and technology; and that our reflexive systems approach serves us well in multidisciplinary and multiorganizational problems. We've also learned that the policy and operational segments of the military, intelligence, public health, law enforcement, and other first responder groups are eager for our support in their battle against terrorism. It is clear that emerging terrorist threats are as daunting as those of the cold war. They will not be solved quickly, but they will be solved. Reestablishing the means and theory of deterrence, and of detecting and stopping terrorists, is a task that demands and requires the participation of physicists.
This document was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the US government. Neither the US government nor the University of California nor any of their employees makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the US government or the University of California. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the US government or the University of California and shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes. Work performed under the auspices of the US Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract W-7405-Eng-48.
Jay Davis is an experimental nuclear physicist who spent his career at Livermore as an accelerator and organization builder. He retired from the Livermore Laboratory in 2002.Don Prosnitz is a plasma physicist who has spent his career building lasers, accelerators and sensor systems of various types. He is currently deputy director for strategic plans in the homeland security office at Livermore.
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