Aerospace Daily September 17, 2001
Pike: Relatively low-tech nature of terrorist attacks not surprising
LOW-TECH TERROR: "Over the last decade there has obviously been a tendency to focus on the exciting, high-end threats, and the expensive solutions to them," says John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org. "I have been of the view all along that it's the technologically less sophisticated threats that are far more likely to actually confront us. Terrorist organizations are extraordinarily risk averse. They're always going to be looking for the simplest possible plan, and given the choice between a low-tech plan and a high-tech plan, they're going to choose the low-tech plan every time." Pike believes that if the U.S. response to the aircraft attacks precludes such an approach in the future, "that chemical weapons attacks [may] become the best available option [for terrorists]. But given a choice between hijacking an airplane and building a chemical or biological weapons production facility that would probably be of more danger to its operators than the intended targets ... I'm not at all surprised that they hijacked airplanes."
Copyright 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
