Update to Yesterday's Mass Stabbing

Yesterday I posted about a "mass stabbing" at a high school near Pittsburgh. As tends to be the case with such emergencies, initial information was incomplete. I don't necessarily retract what I wrote then, but I've gotten some additional perspective which raises some new thoughts.

A college classmate of mine was an alum of that high school. She still knows many people in the area, and spoke to some of the families, including some who had witnessed the event. She assured me that the school did have an emergency plan in place, and that both school kids and (most importantly) the adults in the building acted quickly and appropriately. We can yet hope that as a result none of the casualties in this case become deaths (although a few are apparently in critical condition at local hospitals).

Assuming this to be true (and I have no reason to doubt my friend's report), this raises a couple of additional and related observations. First, the chaos point still holds. Despite the best-laid plans executed as well as possible, a 16 year old student with two knives (apparently kitchen knives, from recent reports) was able to seriously injure 20 fellow students, four of them critically. I still suspect that the number, and the stabber's ability to move about the school in doing so, is due to the initial chaos. A plan is only good once someone figures out what's going on and "pushes the button" to activate it. That undoubtedly took some time, time in which the violence could continue largely unabated.

This leads to a broader observation about the asymmetry of violence - something I've written about before. My claim then: Real security is hard - 100% security is impossible. This case tragically proves that point. As much as we need to be prepared, individually and organizationally, to mitigate these kinds of cases we delude ourselves if we think there is a "magic bullet" (arming teachers, better emergency plans, metal detectors, what have you) that is going to keep everybody safe 100% of the time. It is a tragic reality of our world that if someone is truly bent on causing mayhem and destruction, they will succeed to some degree. We may be able to influence that degree at the margin, but once you've reached that point you can't stop it from happening entirely unless you get very, very lucky.

Which leads to the final observation - one which NRA supporters and detractors can, I suspect, agree on. The real source of violence lies in the human heart. The answer therefore ultimately lies in real connections between people. I don't yet know who this boy was, or why he did this terrible thing. But other people did know him, before he came to this pass in his life. That's not to lay blame on parents, or friends, or teachers - this isn't about figuring out "who's at fault". But it is to say that the only real solution to violence we have is in healing the hearts of the people around us. And that, far more than guns or police or martial arts, is hard. But it is something we should dedicate ourselves to nevertheless, every day and whether we touch the heart of one person or twenty.

The Power of Terrorism Isn't In the Terrorists

Terrorism, and responses to it, have been back in the news lately. Revelations of NSA data-gathering, fresh memories of the Boston Marathon bombing, and the winding down of US involvement in Afghanistan have all combined to put "The War on Terror" back on the radar screen, even if we don't use that term very much anymore.

A couple of days ago, I blogged about what I regard as one of the key questions - not "how much privacy are we giving up?" but "how much security are we getting for it?" The good folks at the Dayton Business Journal were nice enough to republish it as a guest blog column, which has probably expanded the readership significantly. No angry emails or eggs on my window yet, though.

That post sparked a discussion, unsurprisingly, about the balance between how much to "spend" (in dollars or privacy or what have you) in fighting terrorism and what it's "worth". That discussion made me realize that I had stopped a level short in my previous thinking - and that one reason for disagreements about counterterrorism measures is that people can fundamentally disagree about the "value" of terrorism.

In that earlier column, I wrote this:

We don't comb through emails or phone calls for evidence that people are going to commit murder, or sell drugs, or rob banks, or any number of other illegal and harmful activities. And our political system is unable to put even the mildest controls on firearms. So why do we accept this "logic" when it comes to terrorism?

It's easy to point out that we apply different standards to things that are roughly equal in objective facts. Many (not all, but many) Americans are willing to put up with measures to prevent deaths by terrorism that they wouldn't agree to in preventing other kinds of deaths - even other violent deaths. From an economists' point of view, of course, this is crazy - but then, most of the world looks crazy to economists.

What I didn't ask in that previous column is, why? What is there about terrorist violence that makes it weigh more heavily - makes it "worth more" in our cost/benefit calculations? There is no objective answer, of course - different people can and do assign different values to such things. A friend of mine suggested a logic I hadn't considered before:

Terrorism isn't like car accidents - it's an attack on the state and the community. I don't see it as a cost-benefit calculation like bike helmet laws - it's not about the death toll, it's about sovereignty. (emphasis added)

There is, of course, no way of making an appeal to facts to support this argument - it's an argument about values. In particular, it's an argument based on the proposition that the intent or motive behind the violence alters its value, aside from how much damage it causes or to whom.

Violence has long carried symbolic meaning apart from its practical value. It is precisely that point that terrorism is designed to exploit. Terrorist groups lack the ability to cause enough damage to matter in practical military or security terms. Assuming that most terrorist groups have a political goal - change US foreign policy, or bring down the US government, or something similar - they just don't have the firepower to accomplish that by attacking the thing they want to change.

So they attack symbolically and emotionally important targets, either out of a sense of frustration and catharsis (not expecting to really "win" but feeling better because they "struck back"), or in hopes of inducing a disproportionate counter-reaction that advances their cause. In 1957 Eric Frank Russell wrote the novel Wasp in which he elucidated exactly this theory of how terrorism works:

“In given conditions, action and reaction can be ridiculously out of proportion … One can obtain results monstrously in excess of the effort … Let’s consider [an] auto smash-up…. The driver lost control at high speed while swiping at a wasp which had flown in through a window and was buzzing around his face…. The weight of a wasp is under half an ounce. Compared with a human being, the wasp’s size is minute, its strength negligible. Its sole armament is a tiny syringe holding a drop of irritant, formic acid. … Nevertheless, that wasp killed four big men and converted a large, powerful car into a heap of scrap.”

Here's the thing about the power of terrorism and terrorists: it has almost nothing to do with them, and almost everything to do with us. The objectively small amounts of damage terrorists cause loom large in large part because we assign weight to them far in excess of their actual size. In short, terrorists have power because we give it to them.

Now, I readily grant that not all death is equal in meaning. Some death (say, from old age at 95 or 100) is regrettable but expected - even a marker of something to celebrate. Other deaths (say, traffic accidents) are tragic, and so we look for ways to prevent more while recognizing that the world is an inherently dangerous place. Death by intentional violence is in a different category - in cases where one human dies at the hand of another, the malice of the act matters and changes its meaning.

But from my point of view, death by violence is equally tragic whether it's at the hands of a Muslim bomber or a South Chicago gang member. The presence of political motives (or, more often, vague political rationalizations - were the Boston Bombers really trying to accomplish something?) is, for me, vastly overshadowed by the fact that some people were willing, even eager, to kill others. That, to me, is the greatest tragedy.

There isn't really a prescription at the end of this so much as an observation. Terrorists and the violence they commit have exactly as much power as we give them. If we impute greater meaning to violence done by Muslims acting in small groups than we do to violence done by racist or homophobic whites or urban gang members in similar numbers, then of course we will be willing to expend more resources on preventing the former than on the latter. That is, collectively, our choice to make. I hope we can extend our national conversation to this level, rather than relying on sound bites and loud politicians to define those choices for us.

The NSA, Spying, and the Important Question We Aren't Asking

There's a lot of conversation going around about the NSA and recent revelations regarding the US government's massive collection of data, both domestic and foreign. There is speculation about the leaker (Edward Snowdon, apparently a Booz Allen employee), about the nature of the data being gathered (metadata on phone calls through Verizon, plus various other sorts of things that may or may not be foreign in origin), and about the legality and constitutionality of these efforts.

Many have pointed out that this is hardly a new Obama administration thing, that the Bush administration did many of the same things under the PATRIOT Act - which, although this disappoints some liberals, has helped take some of the partisan sting out of things.

These are all good and important questions (except the partisanship thing, which is silliness as usual). And to some degree, this has revived a much larger question: how much privacy are we willing to give up in exchange for security? That's an age-old question of governance critical to any age.

What I find missing from the conversation, however, is the other half of that question. We are focused on the how much privacy are we willing to give up part. What we're not talking about - at least, I haven't seen it yet - is how much security do we get, or even how much security should we expect.

What we're talking about, of course, is security from terrorist attacks. Protecting Americans from terrorist attacks is a legitimate concern of government, just as protecting us from foreign invasion or local crime are. But because terrorism is fundamentally asymmetric, you have to spend massive amounts to get small increases in protection - and even then, it's not perfect. It's never going to be perfect.

A case in point is the Boston Marathon bombing just a few weeks ago. This attack was carried out by what appear to be a pair of rank amateurs. It is almost certain that they used email, cell phones, and other communications before and during their attack. Yet the existing surveillance apparatus - as massive as it apparently is - was not enough to stop two young guys with no experience from blowing up bombs that killed three and injured more than 250.* The net which the NSA and others have cast isn't foolproof.

And this is very much the point. We can spend billions upon billions of dollars, and disaffected 20-somethings will still be able to blow up bombs in public places. We're not going to get perfect security from terrorism - and in the broader context, terrorism is one of the least of dangers in our society anyway (well behind alcohol-induced car accidents, murders, suicides, industrial accidents - there's a host of things that kill more Americans).

So in order to answer the question about how much privacy we're willing to give up in exchange for security, we have to decide how much security do we expect? If the answer is "a reasonable amount, but we know it's never going to be perfect", then the massive data-gathering the government is engaged in is probably a significant overreach. We could obtain the same result with far less effort, and far more privacy.

The problem, of course, is that politicians don't do rational calculations - because we don't let them. Any politician can be vilified, anytime something goes wrong, for "not having done enough". Michael Dukakis was raked over the coals - and ultimately lost his bid for the White House - in part because one criminal was paroled and went on to commit a crime.

Real-world reality dictates that we accept some level of vulnerability, and some number of deaths, just as we accept a certain level of car accidents, homicides, and other things (all of which kill more of us than terrorists do). How many accidental gun deaths committed by children have occurred in the last month?

But political reality - on the singular issue of terrorism (but not road accidents, or gun violence) - says to the politician, you must leave no stone unturned, no action untaken. You must be able to say, "we did everything we possibly could."

As usual, this is not the fault of our politicians - it's our own fault. We don't apply this logic to other arenas in life, else we would be driving on roads with 25 mph speed limits everywhere (imagine the lives we would save!) We don't comb through emails or phone calls for evidence that people are going to commit murder, or sell drugs, or rob banks, or any number of other illegal and harmful activities. And our political system is unable to put even the mildest controls on firearms. So why do we accept this "logic" when it comes to terrorism?

The government will stop this sort of massive spying when politicians are punished for overreaching on privacy but NOT punished every time there is a terrorist incident somewhere. Until then, they will continue to respond to the incentives we give them. And as long as we fail to ask questions about the security side and focus only on privacy, our privacy will continue to erode - without improving our security one bit.



* I am discounting out of hand the argument, made on the fringes, that the Boston explosions were a "false flag" attack planted by the government. There is no publicly available evidence to suggest that this is the case, and no obvious motive or outcome for having done so.

Real Security is Hard; 100% Security is Impossible

Sometimes, the targets are too easy. We've heard stories for years of problems with the security screening network in the US; now comes this:

LA Airport TSA Screeners 'ran drug ring'

To calm a frightened public in 2001 and 2002, Americans were told that the "new" TSA and DHS would guarantee our safety. But there are no guarantees. TSA jobs are, by all accounts, frequently unpleasant and not all that well-paid. Oversight can be lax (no pun intended here). When that happens, you're bound to get things like this. And if you can bribe someone to smuggle drugs through, what else would they smuggle for money?

Too, there's the problem of "fighting the last war". In this case, we have poured billions upon billions into securing the air traffic network. Why? Because 9/11 involved airplanes, and because it looks like it might be doable. But the two largest terrorist attacks/attempts on US soil prior to 9/11 both involved rental trucks (one directed at the World Trade Center, no less) - did we go after the rental truck industry? Then there are boats, problematic border crossings, and all the rest of it.

The fact is that terrorism is all about asymmetry, which makes guaranteed security impossible. Moreover, in the grand scheme of things terrorism ranks far behind murder, traffic accidents, and any number of health issues as a threat to American lives. Yes, it's more economically disruptive - to a point. But those disruptions are incredibly rare - indeed, vanishingly so in recent years.

For the most part, terrorism isn't much on the public radar these days. The presidential candidates have other things to talk about that are more attuned to Americans' concerns. And it isn't that we don't need some kind of response to terror threats, just as we need systems for dealing with natural disasters, auto accidents, murders, and a host of other problems. Here's hoping that this year's president campaign doesn't wander into the silly territory of pandering, wherein candidates promise us complete immunity from terrorists. Because there ain't no such thing.

"Normal" Fears and the Asymmetry of Terrorism

I heard about the rash of bomb threats at the University of Pittsburgh for the first time yesterday. This is a little surprising, in that I still have family in Pittsburgh, but none are associated with Pitt. I don't often hear the Cathedral of Learning - Pitt's 42-story grand tower - referred to on the radio, so it caught my ear.

What's perhaps a little more surprising is that this has been going on since mid-February - nearly two months. To date, there have been well over 50 bomb threats resulting in building closures. This is a massive level of disruption, all the more remarkable in that it has involved no actual bombs.

There are, I think, a couple of lessons here. First, if your objective is to disrupt normal systems and engender a certain level of fear, that is remarkably easy to do. Occasionally a high school kid pulls something like this to get out of an exam; he is almost invariably caught within days, if not hours. This has been going on for weeks, and the full resources of the FBI have as yet turned up nothing.

This illustrates a key point that a lot of experts make about terrorism: its inherently asymmetric nature. Whoever is doing this is armed only with a laptop and knowledge of how to stay undetected. Granted, disrupting a large university is not the same as blowing up a major landmark. But what if you did this to the ten largest universities in the country? Or to a series of government offices, or the major businesses in a metropolitan area? The potential is clearly there for significant disruption at nearly zero cost. Which is precisely why "terrorism" (an extremely broad category) is so popular as a means for the less powerful to fight against the more powerful.

Second, I find it at least a bit remarkable that it's taken nearly two months for this to show up on the radar screen. I suppose the fact that no actual bombs have gone off has something to do with that - there is no "bleeding" to "lead" the headlines here. But does this say something about our having come to terms with a "new normal" of security precautions? It used to be that a bomb threat campaign of this magnitude would be national news. Now it just rates an article in the Chronicle? I don't know whether that's good, bad, or indifferent - though much of what we see as "news" is surely less significant than this.

I don't have any conclusions here. I do feel for the Pitt students & faculty - for them, this is a major, life-disrupting problem. Let's hope - given that hope is all we have - that this particular problem doesn't spread itself farther than it already has.