Saturday, November 16, 2002

We apparently have a foiled attempt by terrorists to release cyanide on the London underground. Apparently there is an al Qaeda connection.

Given Britain's profile in the war against terrorism, this doesn't greatly surprise me, sadly. Again, what is striking is how low tech a means of attack this is. While very posionous, cyanide is very easy to obtain and is likely to disperse pretty rapidly. Nerve gas it isn't. September 11 was purely an attack that involved no physical resources at all, and since then we have seen bombs and now cyanide. That is about it. No nuclear weapons, no biological weapons, and no particularly powerful chemical weapons. Al Qaeda sometimes brags a log but seems technologically much less capable than was, for instance, Aum Shinkriyo.

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