The World Trade Center's twin towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington were on Tuesday subjected to devastating terrorist attacks. The atrocities will prompt a wide-ranging review of US security and intelligence systems which, on Tuesday's evidence, failed spectacularly.
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The U.S. government is now actively engaged in preparing the nation for highly destructive acts of terrorism, especially those involving chemical and biological weapons. This effort involves multiple federal agencies and a wide variety of programs. Collectively known as the “U.S. domestic preparedness program,” these programs are a very recent innovation in American governance. The budget of federal weapons of mass destruction (WMD) preparedness programs has grown from effectively zero in 1995 to approximately $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2000. 1 This made the U.S. domestic preparedness program one of the fastest growing federal programs of the late 1990s.
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The threat of terrorism has received enormous attention in the last decade. Anxieties ran particularly high at the turn of the millennium, which fortunately passed without a major terrorist incident. Virtually all states expend some resources to combat terrorism. The policies, programs, and operations that governments undertake to meet this challenge are known collectively as counterterrorism. Although this term is only a few decades old, the practice of counterterrorism is as old as terrorism itself. Like terrorism, counterterrorism is easily recognized, even if its boundaries are somewhat imprecise.
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The threat of biological weapons (BW) is usually associated with terrible outbreaks of human illness. Receiving substantially less attention from the media, however, is the fact that BW can also be used against agricultural targets as strategic economic weapons. Agriculture accounts for about 13 percent of the United States' annual gross domestic product. 1996 U.S. cash receipts for livestock, poultry, and crops totaled more than $200 billion. An attack on agriculture could have enormous economic consequences.
Nothing could be more central to U.S. and world security than ensuring that nuclear warheads and their essential ingredients—plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU)—do not fall into the hands of terrorists or proliferating states. If plutonium and HEU become regularly available on a nuclear black market, nothing else we do to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons will succeed. Similarly, unless stockpiles of nuclear warheads and fissile materials can be secured, monitored, and verifiably reduced, it will be impossible to achieve deep, transparent, and irreversible reductions in nuclear arms. Measures to control warheads and fissile materials, therefore, are central to the entire global effort to reduce nuclear arms and stem their spread. The tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and hundreds of tons of plutonium and HEU that remain in the U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles represent a deadly legacy of the Cold War, and managing them securely must be a top U.S. security policy priority.
Topic:
Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, and Terrorism
In 1996 the U.S. Congress passed and the president signed the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Act on domestic preparedness for terrorism using weapons of mass destruction. That law directs various departments and agencies of the federal government to make available to state and local governments training and equipment to respond to acts of terrorism involving the use of radiological, biological, and chemical weapons. The program—costing tens of billions of dollars per year—seeks to train local law enforcement, fire, medical, and other emergency response personnel to deal with such an attack against the American public.
Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University
Abstract:
The information infrastructure is increasingly under attack by cyber criminals. The number, cost, and sophistication of attacks are increasing at alarming rates. Worldwide aggregate annual damage from attacks is now measured in billions of U.S. dollars. Attacks threaten the substantial and growing reliance of commerce, governments, and the public upon the information infrastructure to conduct business, carry messages, and process information. Most significant attacks are transnational by design, with victims throughout the world.
Topic:
Security, International Law, Science and Technology, and Terrorism
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
There is a wide spectrum of potential threats to the American homeland that do not involve the threat of overt attacks by states using long-range missiles or conventional military forces. Such threats include covert attacks by state actors, state use of proxies, independent terrorist and extremist attacks by foreign groups or individuals, and independent terrorist and extremist attacks by residents of the US. These threats are currently limited in scope and frequency. No pattern of actual attacks on US territory has yet emerged that provides a clear basis for predicting how serious any given form of attack will be in the future, what means of attack will be used, or how lethal new forms of attack will be if they are successful.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Serious military threats to U.S. security have diminished dramatically since the end of the Cold War. The threat from conventional Russian military forces has all but disintegrated and would take many years to reconstitute. China would take 20 to 30 years to transform its bloated and obsolete military into a major threat to U.S. vital interests. The militaries in both nations should be watched, but they may never develop into credible threats.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Cold War, Nuclear Weapons, and Terrorism
According to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, terrorism is the most important threat the United States and the world face as the 21st century begins. High-level U.S. officials have acknowledged that terrorists are now more likely to be able to obtain and use nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons than ever before.